{"nrhp_refnum":"86000151","name":"US Post Office-Arlington","other_names":["Arlington Post Office"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"3118 N. Washington Blvd.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Arlington","county":"Arlington County","state":"VA","lat":38.885612724000055,"lon":-77.09521867699993,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1986-02-07","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Community Planning and Development","Art","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A one-story brick Georgian revival post office at 3118 North Washington Blvd. in Arlington, Virginia, built in 1937 under Louis A. Simon, Supervising Architect of the Treasury. It has a pentagonal plan on a triangular site.","why_significant":"It was the first federal building in Arlington County and helped unify the county's separate suburban villages into one community with a single Arlington identity. It is also an excellent example of Georgian revival architecture adapted to a modern aesthetic, and its interior murals reinforce its civic role. The form says the exceptional significance needed for a building under 50 years old is met only for Criterion A.","narrative":"Built in 1937, this one-story brick post office at 3118 North Washington Blvd. in Arlington, Virginia, follows a pentagonal plan that fits a triangular lot at the meeting of Washington Boulevard and North Hudson Street. Its entrance faces the point of the triangle, under a domed portico flanked by arched tripartite windows. The design came from the office of Louis A. Simon, Supervising Architect of the Treasury, and appears to draw on Tudor Place in Georgetown. Inside, the lobby has marble walls, a terrazzo floor and seven murals by Auriel Bessemer showing Virginia history and local recreation. The building opened in December 1937 as the first federal building in Arlington County. It consolidated postal service that earlier came from several separate post offices and offered a shared address for communities that had thought of themselves as individual villages. It was listed for this role in county identity and for its architecture. Later changes were mostly in service areas and left the public facades and lobby largely intact.","period_of_significance":"1937","architect_builder":"Louis A. Simon, Supervising Arch.; J.K. Ruff of Baltimore (general contractor)","architectural_style":"Georgian revival","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Occupied and in use as the Arlington main post office; condition marked good, with later alterations that the form says do not affect integrity.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:51:59.794288-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/86/6795/41679586/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/86000151.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/86000151/e32399321d-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/86000151/e32399321d-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Slowking4","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arlington-po024.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Slowking4</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arlington-po024.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41679586","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Post_Office_(Arlington,_Virginia)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q14713407"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/arlington-county/us-post-office-arlington-86000151/"}