Here’s a local landmark that shows its age as well as some apparent indifference to its needs and fascinating history. Although this structure’s exact age is not clear, records show that it’s over 100 years old.
Except for one distinguishing feature, it’s a traditional New England connected house that was a family home. This style of structure was built for harsh winters and frequently is described as “big house-little house-back house-barn” architecture. (The back house was a privy outhouse.)
The distinguishing feature here is that little, sagging segment with a chimney to the right of the barn in the image. That’s where the North Brooklin U.S. Post Office was housed in the early decades of the 20th Century. Some culturally important mail came through there.
In 1933, renowned author E.B. White and his wife, famous New Yorker magazine editor Katharine S. White, bought a house nearby and used that Post Office to ship and receive manuscripts that became world-famous works.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, post offices in rural communities often were integrated into existing structures. Locally prominent and/or popular citizens who were capable were employed as federal postmasters. They included farmers, professionals and merchants. And, frequently, the federal post office was in a dedicated area of their home or place of work. (For many, the farm was a place of both home and work.)
The North Brooklin Post Office in this house reportedly wasn’t discontinued until 1958. Its operations were consolidated into the Brooklin Post Office, a single federally owned building a few miles to the south that has been in at least three locations itself.
(Image taken in North Brooklin, Maine, on October 6, 2026.)