Why the National Postal Museum is the Greatest Museum You’ve Never Heard of

America has long been a land of ambition. The country that saw the moon and decided to walk on it. That saw a mountain and decided to carve some faces on it. That sees a liter-size cup and thinks it’s just a “Big Gulp”. And yet in the heart of the nation’s capital, there lies one underappreciated gem that is the apogee of American achievement and aspiration: the National Postal Museum.

That ambition is baked into the very fabric of the museum’s existence. I may be young, but I'm not fool enough to believe there was ever a time when one could expect massed throngs of tourists descending upon a postal museum. And yet a museum was created nonetheless. 

One might imagine, therefore, that the museum must have been set up in Ye Olden Times, in the before when all that existed was light, the sky, and a constitutionally-authorized federal delivery service, whence Adam and Eve would derive most of their entertainment. Some history buffs, if they have studied this subject in-depth, may refute that and instead think it was perhaps in the 1800s or so, on the basis that a United States Postal Service museum would likely come after the establishment of a United States.

And yet it was created, in fact, only in the 1990s, long after the rip-roaring excitement of post had died down. And not only was it established so late, but it was also strategically placed right in the heart of Washington DC, surrounded by some of the country’s most visited attractions and museums (most of which are free). Like Goliath, it strode into perhaps the most competitive museological arena in the country and dared any museum to challenge it.

What could have possessed them to make such a bold stance? It is said that Joan of Arc once proclaimed: “to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying” (granted, she probably didn't say that, on account of it coming from a play and also the fact she tended to speak French). The creators of the museum were no doubt possessed by the same spirit as the Maid of Orleans. Powering the museum is a belief, an ironclad belief, that yes, this is what the world needs. A world without a National Postal Museum is scarcely a world worth living in.

One can imagine them, sitting there, with visions of the National Postal Museum as one of America's great attractions. Crowds round the block while the White House and the Washington Monument fade into insignificance, straining to escape the Postal Museum's shadow. How sweet the glue on the envelope must have tasted as they mailed away the paperwork to create the museum.

The site that was chosen was the old City Post Office Building, a large and opulent reminder of the glory days of American mail. The building occupies the site of the former baseball stadium for the Washington Nationals, Swampoodle Grounds, named after the neighborhood in which it stood. (This rather magnificent name derives from its prior life as the Wild West of Washington, a time when it was all swamp, apparently filled with malaria, and when gangs of young men called “poodles” roamed the streets causing trouble, like a less fluffy version of modern packs of poodles. Alas, the place has changed over time and is now called NoMa, a name so boring it doesn't deserve an explanation.)

Consequently, the museum occupies a space with a grand total of around 100,000 square feet, which is to say it's rather large. The atrium of the museum has a 90 foot tall ceiling, and is so long that they decided to suspend three planes from the ceiling next to each other, just to fill some of the space. Wherever you turn, there are decorative carvings, sparkling chandeliers, and smooth marble.

However this extravagance pales in comparison to the actual museum exhibits, where clearly no expense was spared. Take, for instance, the “Mail Through the Ages” exhibit. Lesser museums might content themselves with some plaques, some half-hearted pictures. Not the National Postal Museum. For they decided to recreate entire settings so that you can feel like you, too, can be a postal worker. Consider the early postal service section, which contains about three sentences worth of explanation about how they used to travel through forests. For this section they decided to construct an entire artificial forest, complete with dark lighting and a path through which you walk, for a truly immersive delivery experience. Or take the post in the 1800s section, wherein they have constructed a city street, with an archway and vintage-styled carriage, and where they have hired actors to read old letters sent from around the world, in their original languages.

This can-do attitude permeates the whole museum. Want a train? There’s one there. An exhibit on designing the perfect mailbox? Also there. A series of rooms where they make the postal police seem like the special forces? It’s your lucky day. There’s a stuffed dog. There’s the “National Stamp Salon”. There’s not one but two exhibits about baseball for reasons that are at best tangential to the postal service. Whatever you can imagine and so, so much more than you would ever possibly imagine are within this museum. One particular highlight is the philately section, a section so extensive and well-financed, so keen to show itself off, that it starts to seem fittingly masturbatory.

As you walk through the museum, questions tug away at the edges of your mind, a voice in the distance trying to lift you from the opium stupor of curatorial bliss into which you have been thrust. Why is this here? Who is this for? What does it all mean?

A poll a few years ago found that the US Postal Service was the most popular federal agency in the country, with 91% of respondents having a favorable view of it. One might think that postal services are popular all over the world, but that is not the case. The UK’s Royal Mail, for instance, only has a satisfaction rating of 43%. In my opinion, this is what the museum sets out to answer: what is it about the US Postal Service that makes it hold such an exalted position in American society?

The truth is that the National Postal Museum isn’t really just about the post. When you look at the dizzying variety of exhibits, you see that it’s trying to capture something more. What it really seems to me to be is a museum that situates the US Postal Service at the center of a grand narrative about American mythology, the story of the American story, if you will.

In this telling, the postal service symbolically ties the country together, an organization central to everyday life that has existed from the very beginning of the country all the way through to the present day. From the prominent statue of the first Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin through to the letters from the Westward Expansion, from the uniform of Amelia Earhart when she carried mail to the burnt-out mailbox from 9/11, the museum highlights the ever-present nature of the Postal Service throughout American history. In a country of vast distances and vast diversity, it is the Postal Service that connects the people to one another and to a shared past.

Now, it is certainly a rosy vision, not only of the Postal Service, but of the country. But that optimism, that ambition, that blind ignorance of reality, it all comes together to make the National Postal Museum a singularly unique experience. Nowhere else can you spend time throwing around postal packages and playing in postal trucks while simultaneously musing on the nature of communication. They say that sometimes the absence of limitations is the enemy of art; by being forced to examine US history through the truly very specific lens of the Postal Service, the National Postal Museum is a showcase of some truly incredible creativity and enterprise.

I am well aware that most people reading this will not be convinced to go visit. I am similarly aware that many who have visited may be even less convinced. But if what you want is a museum that makes you think, makes you feel, and makes you learn about former criminal-turned-educational hand puppet Elwood P. Zap, then the National Postal Museum truly delivers.