1964-65 New York World's Fair Groundbreaking and Dedication Booklets

UNITED STATES

POST OFFICE

CEREMONIES

APRIL 15, 1963

GROUNDBREAKING AT THE NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR 1964-1965

Excerpts from remarks by U.S. Post Office and
World's Fair officials at the U.S. Post Office
groundbreaking ceremonies, New York World's
Fair, Monday, April 15, 1963.

RICHARD C. PATTERSON [Chief of Protocol] : Ladies
and gentlemen, our first speaker graduated from Notre
Dame with highest honors. He's been active in public
relations, has spent a great deal of time in the newspaper
field and is at present professor of journalism at Notre
Dame. It is my great pleasure to present Mr. James F.
Kelleher, Special Assistant to the Postmaster General.
JAMES KELLEHER: Thank you very much Ambassador,
ladies and gentlemen. We are very pleased to see you
all here today to mark what is for us a very significant

start. Over the two-year span of the Fair the Post Office
Department will have the obligation and the privilege
of providing special mail service for the hundreds of
exhibitors and millions of visitors who will be present at
the Fair. This building will be unique in many ways
because it is the only building being built for participants
by the Fair authorities, as a key service to the Fair and
its patrons. It is a unique building because it will be the
first ever occupied by the United States Post Office De-
partment which has been specifically designed. It will be
equipped and furnished with the dual purpose of pro-
viding mail service and giving the public an opportunity
to see how that mail service is provided. In this building
we will have a working model of every kind of mecha-
nized equipment used in post offices throughout the coun-
try today and to be used in the foreseeable future. We
will equip this building with the kind of machinery that

Cover: Rendering of U. S. Post Office at New York World's Fair. Postal officials describe it as the first in the country
specifically designed for both exhibit and operational purposes.

11963 New York World's Fair 1964-1965 Corporation

we project for some 200 large post offices around the
country in the next ten years, to handle more efficiently
through the aid of machines, some 60 percent of the
country's mail volume.

This post office will be so constructed that the handling
of the mail within the post office will be fully visible to
the public and millions of visitors to the Fair will have the
opportunity to actually see their mail being processed
from the time they purchase stamps to the time their
mail is dispatched by any of a half-dozen means of trans-
portation to destinations all over the world. There will
be many special aspects to our Fair postal service, includ-
ing seven-day service throughout the Fair to all of the
exhibitors, the best in each type of mail service that's
available in all parts of the country, and the best of our
international service, including multi-lingual clerks to
serve the millions of people Mr. Moses tells us to expect
from overseas.

Postmaster General Day is quite anxious to have you
know that we look forward to making this Fair post

Discussing the artist's rendering of the U.S. Post Office at
the Fair are: (left to right) Postmaster John Hogan, Mr.
Robert Moses, Mr. Sean Keating and Borough President Mario
Cariello.

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A bulldozer, with the able assistance of Patrick Kelleher,
son of James F. Kelleher, breaks ground for the U.S. Post
Office at the Fair. Looking on are: (left to right) John Hogan,
Postmaster of Flushing,- Sean Keating, Regional Director of the
New York Post Office; Mario Cariello, Borough President of
Queens; James F. Kelleher, Special Assistant to the Postmaster
General; Sydney W. Bishop, Assistant Postmaster General of
the United States; and Robert Moses, president of the World's
Fair.

office an example of the improving service we are attempt-
ing to give to the country as a whole. Mr. Moses, Mr. Day
asked me particularly to bring you the message that after
much expectation on the part of the World's Fair Cor-
poration, our Post Office Staff Advisory Group will be
meeting in Washington in July. We are sure that their
favorable attention then will be directed to your applica-
tion for a special commemorative stamp to mark the New
York World's Fair. Now, at least, we have some place to
sell it should they recommend it. Thank you all very much.

RICHARD PATTERSON: Thank you very much Mr.
Kelleher. Our next speaker is very popular around New
York City. Starting long ago, before he entered the Fed-
eral Service, he was director and deputy commissioner of
many departments and then Commissioner of the Board
of Standards and Appeals. Now, as you know, he is
Regional Director of the New York Office of the Post
Office Department. I have great pleasure in presenting
Mr. Sean Keating.

MR. KEATING: Ambassador Patterson, Mr. Moses,
ladies and gentlemen. These oratorical Irishmen like Jim
Kelleher don't leave anything for anybody else to say. I
have three purposes in being here: first, to bring the
benediction of a brogue ; second, to thank Commissioner
Moses and the World's Fair Corporation for the cooper-
ation they have given us; and third, to view with John
Hogan, the Postmaster of Flushing, the problems with
which we are going to be confronted during the years the
World's Fair is in progress.

RICHARD PATTERSON: Thank you Mr. Keating. And
now we are to present the Assistant Postmaster General
of the United States, who hails from Denver and was a
practicing lawyer in Cheyenne Wells, Colorado. For six
years he was Deputy District Attorney in Cheyenne Wells.
He was counsel in the Law Department of the Pruden-
tial Insurance Company in California, and has had long
and great experience in law and in public life. It's an
honor, therefore, for me to present Sidney W. Bishop,

Assistant Postmaster General of the United States.
SIDNEY BISHOP: Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Borough Pres-
ident, Mr. Moses, ladies and gentlemen. To anybody con-
nected with the building phase of the post office this is
the most exciting time when the mind and the muscle
of man work to make a tangible reality of a project such
as the World's Fair. It's a privilege for us to participate.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Moses
and the World's Fair Corporation for their fine coopera-
tion, that which makes it possible for us to bring the finest
kind of mail service to the exhibitors and to the public
who will be here in millions, to participate in the
Fair. We estimate at least ten million people will use the
World's Fair Post Office. On behalf of Postmaster Gen-
eral Day and the Post Office Department, we thank you.

RICHARD PATTERSON: Thank you very much. Mr.
Cariello, the Borough President of Queens is here, and
ladies and gentlemen, I asked him to come forward to
say a few words.

MARIO CARIELLO: Thank you very much Ambassador
Patterson. President Moses, Mr. Bishop, Mr. Kelleher,
Sean Keating, other distinguished members of the World's
Fair and good citizens. As Borough President of Queens,
I'm very happy to be at this ceremony marking the
groundbreaking of another post office in this great bor-
ough. I want, at this time, to thank Mr. Moses for his
wonderful cooperation. We are working very closely for
the success of the Fair and for the utilization of these
grounds, after the Fair, as a beautiful "Central Park" of
Queens. Thank you very much.

RICHARD PATTERSON: Thank you, Mr. President.
And now, my friends, I give you the Honorable Robert
Moses, president of the New York World's Fair 1964-
1965.

ROBERT MOSES: In an enterprise of this kind, there has
to be a certain amount of give and take and I think that
the agreement that was made between the Postmaster
General, Mr. Day, and his associates and the Fair, is most

reasonable. It was arrived at in the most friendly way. I
don't know the relative importance of one kind of
communication over another in the total scale, but it
remains a fact that the post office is the avenue for world
communication and domestic communication.

I hesitate to compare it with radio, television, Telstar
or any other method of communication, but it remains the
basic way — the method most people use for messages not
conveyed over the telephone. It's been the most efficient
communication agency in the world since the days of
Benjamin Franklin. Though the cost of mailing has gone
up somewhat, so has the cost of everything else gone up.

You're not only going to have a service for the Fair,
but as has been indicated, you're going to have an exhibit
which will rank with any other exhibit in the Fair. These
are facilities which the post office will use afterwards.

We're delighted about this building, and I can't say
too much by way of thanks to Mr. Day and his associ-
ates, Congressman Delaney, Mr. Keating and to others
who worked on this project.

THE U. S. POST OFFICE

will occupy

a 23,354 sq. ft. site

in the

Service Area,

north of the

Industrial Area.

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U. S. POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT

J. EDWARD DAY, Postmaster General, Washington, D.C.
SEAN P. KEATING, New York Regional Director
JOHN HOGAN, Postmaster of Flushing
FRANK VIOLA, Design Engineer

NEW

YORK WORLD'S FAIR 1964-1965 CORPORATION

Flushing 52, N.Y.

Tel. 212-WF 4-1964

ROBERT MOSES, President

THOMAS J. DEEGAN, JR., Chairman of the Executive Committee

WILLIAM E. POTTER, Executive Vice President

CHARLES POLETTI, Vice President, International Affairs and Exhibits

STUART CONSTABLE, Vice President, Operations

WILLIAM BERNS, Vice President, Communications and Public Relations

ERWIN WITT, Comptroller

MARTIN STONE, Director of Industrial Section

GUY F. TOZZOLI, (Port of New York Authority) Transportation Section

ERNESTINE R. HAIG, Secretory of tfie Corporation and
Assistant to the President

WILLIAM WHIPPLE, JR., Chief Engineer