{"nrhp_refnum":"88002461","name":"US Post Office-Kensington","other_names":["Kensington Station"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"421 McDonald Ave.","address_restricted":false,"city":"New York","county":"Brooklyn","state":"NY","lat":40.64367055900004,"lon":-73.97919309999997,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1988-11-17","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Politics/Government","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A two-story brick post office at 421 McDonald Avenue in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, New York, built in 1935-6 and designed by consulting architect Lorimer Rich.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the building is architecturally significant for its distinctive, academic application of the Colonial Revival style to a public building, resembling an early-nineteenth-century residence. It is also tied to 1930s federal building programs meant to ease Depression-era unemployment, and to Rich's work as a consulting architect for the Supervising Architect of the Treasury.","narrative":"Kensington Station is a brick post office at 421 McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn, built in 1935-6 during the Great Depression. It was designed by Lorimer Rich, a consulting architect hired under a 1930 amendment to the Public Buildings Act that let the Treasury's Supervising Architect engage outside designers. The two-story building is painted white and has a gable roof with mock chimneys, multi-paned windows and a projecting pedimented portico on Doric piers. Its Colonial Revival design draws on Georgian and Greek Revival forms and was meant to look like an early-nineteenth-century house. That academic approach made it less typical than most New York post offices of the decade, and it closely resembles West Farms Station in the Bronx, also by Rich. The exterior remains largely intact, though later additions include a one-story north wing, and the interior has been substantially altered. Original lobby features such as the wood dado, lockboxes and terrazzo floor survive.","period_of_significance":"1935-6","architect_builder":"Lorimer Rich","architectural_style":"Colonial Revival (drawing on Greek Revival and Georgian forms)","criteria":[],"status_note":"Exterior retains a high degree of integrity; the interior has been substantially altered. Condition is marked excellent and the building is occupied and used as a postal station.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:50:45.01347-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/88002461.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/88002461/84bc016aeb-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/88002461/84bc016aeb-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"Jim.henderson","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kensington_PO_jeh.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Jim.henderson</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kensington_PO_jeh.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75313321","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Post_Office_(Kensington,_Brooklyn)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7890984"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/brooklyn/us-post-office-kensington-88002461/"}