Post Office Palace

On February 17, 1907, Mexico City awaited with great interest a grand event: the inauguration of the most magnificent building that the Porfirio regime had erected up to that point. On the old Santa Isabel Street, at the corner with San Andrés, the Central Post Office or Postal Palace opened its doors before the diplomatic corps and the cabinet. President Díaz approached one of the mailboxes inside and deposited some cards designed by the artist Leonardo Izaguirre, thus marking the beginning of operations of the new facility, continuing the tradition of a service that had existed in Mexico since pre-Hispanic times. In this location, there had been a building from the colonial era known as the hospital of the third order, which by then had become the Hotel de Ferrocarrileros; there, the construction of the central post office had been projected in 1898. The then Minister of Public Works, by express instructions from General Porfirio Díaz, spared no effort or expense; the architect in charge of the project was the Italian Adamo Boari, while the calculations and conception were the work of the Mexican Gonzáles Garita. The building is set on a Chicago-style foundation, which was in vogue at that time and executed in Mexico by Milliken BROS from New York. Adamo Boari conceived the Postal Palace project within the lines of a European palace that could well have been located in any of the great capitals of the era. Despite its dimensions and the predominance of mass over void, the building does not give any sensation of heaviness. It showcases a unique blend of Venetian, Gothic, Plateresque, and Art Nouveau styles.

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