The weather outside is frightful.
How lucky that Snow flurries and cold winds , as our friends in America know only too well in winter, even inside by the crackling fireplace There is enough to do. Wishlist for Santa Claus or Invitations to the holiday dinner write, for example. But after the letter is finished, the important question arises: How should one now send and a Get an answer when it's windy and stormy outside?
The solution is the mailbox.
An icon of the American lifestyle
The Curbside mailbox is an icon of the American lifestyle like no other. This is hardly surprising, considering how closely it is linked to the history of the United States. Benjamin Franklin was partly responsible for the American postal system and thus created the conditions for the use of the iconic tin boxes.
Nevertheless, it took a while until the design that we now know from the roadsides American suburbs and small towns actually can no longer imagine life without can, even begin its triumphal march through the nation. Even up to the Mid-19th century Americans did not have the luxury of mail delivery to their doorsteps, but had to collect their mail from central post offices. 1863 began the United States Postal Service (USPS) slowly so that mail in the big cities directly to households However, mailboxes were out of the question here as well. The postmen had to ring the doorbell and wait until the letters could be handed over to the recipients personally. A tedious and usually time-wasting Process in which the postmen are estimated to one and a half hours a day just spent waiting in front of closed doors.
The USPS quickly recognized this and, together with the increasing number of cities with mail delivery, a solution urgently needed. The first draft for the American mailbox was 1892 patented and was not much more in design than a door slot with attached box to catch the letters that have been put in – a long way from today’s mailboxes.
The development of the Collection boxes for letters to be sent. While in small communities curbside boxes can still often be used for both receiving and posting letters, in large cities already in 1858 first central collection boxes These collection boxes were a design by Albert Potts , whose company produced, among other things, street lamps. The collection box was integrated into these lampposts and accordingly very small , which is a frequent emptying necessary and led to the switch to the stand-alone mailboxes that exist today in the 1890s.
Even though it was the first such system on a large scale, the idea of this centralized collection system for letter mail was not new. over 200 years earlier the Frenchman tested Renouard De Valayer a system, unfortunately short-lived at that time, under the same principle in Paris.
What many may not know: the iconic mailbox even has a official name . The “Joroleman Box” , named after its inventor Roy J. Joroleman and patented in the year 1915 , is characterized by its iconic shape with a flat, rectangular base and one curved top out of.
The iconic design the box with the curved body is not only beautiful to look at, but also serves, especially in the cold season, a very pragmatic purpose . The round top ensures that accumulated snow from a certain amount onwards it slides off the box as if by itself, instead of letting it collapse under its weight sooner or later.
Also the height the piles on which the boxes were mounted was and still is on Efficiency At the beginning it was exactly the Seat height of the postman on his Horse-drawn carriage , so that this without dismounting open the mailbox and put the mail in. Today, this feature has been adapted and allows the delivery person to open the letters only through a handle from the car window the delivery vehicles and drive directly to the next house.
Another fundamental element of Joroleman’s design is the iconic flag on the side of the mailbox. When folded up, this serves to inform the recipient and postman whether a shipment in the box A useful feature, especially on snowy days when you don’t want to for free want to go out the door.
The design was so successful and efficient for the work of the postal workers that the Post Office Department of the US Government until 1923 every private household and every company by law committed to install its own mailbox and also adapted the design of the central collection boxes to the basic plan of a square base and a curved top.
The fact that today’s design has become so iconic is probably due (besides the simply appealing style) to its long supremacy . In 1915, the USPS uniform guidelines for the design of the roadside mailboxes, which nationwide validity Previously, households had often resorted to very spartan solutions, for example simply using old bins and the like to DIY mailboxes The risks for the shipments, and sometimes also for the delivery personnel, were sometimes not negligible. These new, uniform regulations were only in 1970 relaxed by also other designs to be permitted for official use in public spaces.
If you want to use your mailbox not only from wind and weather , but also want to dress stylishly, then we have practical Mailbox Cover in many seasonal designs from the autumnal scarecrow to the friendly snowman to the classic American flag.
➡️ Buy Mail Box Covers at American Heritage
By the way: If you do not take the detour via post office etc., but send your wish list directly from Santa Claus you have the opportunity to do so. However, you should some time, bear spray and warm clothes Although there are many Santa Claus mailboxes in the USA as well as in Germany at Christmas time with supposedly a direct line to old Saint Nick, the official Santa Claus mailbox stands in his unofficial hometown Longyearbyen on the Norwegian archipelago of Spitsbergen/Svalbard, only 1,310 km from the North Pole.
