{"nrhp_refnum":"97000150","name":"Little Post Office","other_names":["VDHR File No. 120-47"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"207 Starling Ave.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Martinsville (Independent City)","county":"Martinsville","state":"VA","lat":36.684990662000075,"lon":-79.86551556699999,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1997-02-21","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Politics/Government"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A one-story, gable-fronted brick building at 207 Starling Avenue in Martinsville, Virginia, built in 1893 and used as a contract post office, with a frame rear wing joined by mid-twentieth-century infill.","why_significant":"The building is tied to the star route mail delivery system, the main method of rural mail delivery in the late nineteenth century. Contractor John B. Anglin built it in 1893 to help oversee hundreds of star route contracts across many states. It is a small, finely detailed Queen Anne building and a known local landmark.","narrative":"Built in 1893 at 207 Starling Avenue, this small gable-fronted brick building in Martinsville, Virginia, served as a contract post office until 1917. Its builder, John B. Anglin, was a mail contractor who held hundreds of star route contracts, the horse-and-wagon delivery routes that carried mail from rail depots to rural post offices. By 1895 he held over three hundred routes in five states, and he ran this business from the office. The Queen Anne detailing includes corbeled brick openings, a molded cornice, stained-glass panes in the front door and an iron mail slot marked \"Letters.\" A frame wing was joined to the rear in the mid-twentieth century. After the Anglins left for Oklahoma in 1917, later owners used the building for storage and then as a private office, and a rehabilitation was completed in 1995. The property is valued locally for its link to the postal service's star route era and as a well-known Martinsville landmark.","period_of_significance":"1893-1917","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Queen Anne","criteria":["A"],"status_note":"Rehabilitated in 1995; the interior is now used as a private office and the property is listed with a current domestic secondary-structure function.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:51:59.722204-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/76/6818/41681876/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/97000150.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/97000150/4950c92ca3-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/97000150/4950c92ca3-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"MarmadukePercy","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Little_Post_Office_Martinsville_Virginia.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">MarmadukePercy</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:The_Little_Post_Office_Martinsville_Virginia.JPG"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"06000805","name":"East Church Street-Starling Avenue Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/virginia/east-church-street-starling-avenue-historic-district-06000805/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41681876","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Post_Office","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16894205"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/martinsville/little-post-office-97000150/"}