Los Angeles Terminal Annex Post Office

The Los Angeles Terminal Annex Post Office was built in 1940 as the work of Gilbert Stanley Underwood, the celebrated architect behind iconic National Park lodges including the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite and structures at Bryce Canyon and Zion. Serving as Consulting Architect for the U.S. Treasury Department, Underwood designed this $3 million New Deal facility to process the exploding mail volume of a rapidly growing Los Angeles. The building was explicitly conceived as an architectural companion to Union Station, with both structures intended to create a monumental gateway anchoring this corner of downtown.

The three-story structure spans approximately 400,000 square feet, making it the largest by usable area among California's 22 post offices listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Two prominent 70-foot towers flank the main building, each crowned with cupolas specifically designed to evoke the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, creating visual harmony with nearby Olvera Street. Built with reinforced concrete and steel framing, the structure features 44-inch concrete columns engineered to support heavy mail-processing equipment. The architectural style blends Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival elements with Depression Moderne touches, plus Pueblo and Islamic decorative influences, creating the rich hybrid aesthetic common to New Deal federal buildings in California.