National Postal Museum (NPM)

Allen Kane, Director
In the summer of 1993, the National Postal Museum opened in the historic City Post Office Building, located next to Union Station. The Museum was created with the cooperation of the United States Postal Service and houses over 6.0 million objects, making this one of the largest collection of its kind.

The systematized movement of written communication is thousands of years old. The message and the medium are intrinsically connected to our need for interpersonal communication and the national necessity to mark territorial boundaries. Mail provides citizens and their government with mutual access. Postal monies have provided the capital that encouraged transportation routes and road maintenance. Mail boosts morale in the military and makes the goods of the world accessible to all. It transports the national culture, promotes capitalism, migration, community and identity formation, and provided a communication link encouraging the formation of like citizenry long before the existence of the Internet. Mail contracts supplied financial fodder for transportation growth and demonstrated the usefulness of mail as a medium of connection, be it for individuals, businesses or government.

America’s postal history can be defined through the use of objects as small as stamps and as large as the nation’s first Highway Post Office bus. It is expressed in heartrending letters from soldiers on foreign battlefields and through the explosion of direct mail marketing. America’s postal history is the story of the people who made the service work and those who use it.

Museum Assets
The NPM website has a section dedicated to research which includes papers from the annual Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposia and Sundman lectures, finding guides and industry white papers (I don’t think we do these anymore).The Museum has the best scientific philatelic research laboratory in the world, open to all researchers. The instruments include a VSC-6000 (Video Spectral Comparator), a 1200x Leica Microscope, an electronic micrometer, an X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer and a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer. These instruments allow for a non-destructive scientific analysis of objects.

The National Postal Museum Library is one of the largest and most important research facilities for the study of philately and the history of postal operations in the world. The library contains extensive runs of major American philatelic journals and major subject-oriented journals published worldwide. The collection of monographs on philately and postal history is nearly complete, with emphasis on materials in the English language and those of special importance.

Although the National Postal Museum Library focuses mainly on philately and postal operations in the United States, the philatelic collections are international in scope. In particular, Russia, Peru, The UPU, Great Britain, Germany and France are well represented. With more than 5,000 books, 6,000 serial titles, manuscript files, photographs and many auction catalogues, the collection also includes major archival holdings, including files from the United States Post Office, the Highway Post Office, the Aerial Mail Service, the Railway Mail Service, and the Panama Canal Zone Post Office. The major archival collections include the Post Office Department files of the Third Assistant Postmaster General, including original letters sent to various post office officials and replies discussing stamp issues and related postal subjects.

RESEARCH STAFF

EDQUIST, Linda S., Museum Specialist, Conservation. B.I.S. (1990) George Mason University; M.B.A. (2008) Walden University. Research specialties: philatelic conservation; exhibition conservation; nonprofit management.

PIAZZA, Daniel, Curator of Philately. B.A. (1998) Wagner College M.A. (2004) Syracuse University. Research specialties: early American history to 1815; postage stamps and postal history.

POPE, Nancy A., Historian and Curator of Postal History. B.A. (1979) University of Oregon; M.A. (1985) George Washington University. Research specialties: U.S. postal history; labor history and technology; delivery and transportation history; westward expansion; pony express; rural delivery and letter writing.

HEIDELBAUGH, Lynn R., Curator. B.A. (1996) Bryn Mawr College; M.A. (2001) George Washington University. Research specialties: U.S. postal operations history; business history; tourism and tourist industry history.