Rural Delivery No.5 is a photograph by Phyllis Taylor which was uploaded on April 8th, 2017.
Rural Delivery No.5
A typical scene alongside a country road in rural America. ... more
Title
Rural Delivery No.5
Artist
Phyllis Taylor
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
A typical scene alongside a country road in rural America.
When Rural Free Delivery Service began, first as an experiment in 1896 and later as an official service in 1902, patrons looked around their homes and farms for anything they could find to use as a mailbox. As a result, rural letter carriers found themselves face-to-face with a hodgepodge of homemade, semi-functional "mailboxes." Old coal oil, syrup and food containers were dragged out, sometimes with sticky remnants of the original contents pooled inside the box, and slapped on top of poles set out along the road.
In 1901, after having received a fair share of complaints from rural carriers about the large number of often unsuitable assortment of mailboxes used by their patrons, the Post Office Department appointed a five-man commission to examine commercial rural mailbox designs. Of the 63 mailboxes submitted for consideration, only 14 met the specifications, which meant that patrons who wanted R.F.D. service would have to buy a box from the selected list of manufacturers.
Uploaded
April 8th, 2017
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