Core77

The Design Evolution of Mailboxes

…for better or worse

By Rain Noe - April 29

in Object Culture

For most of the 20th century, U.S. mailboxes looked like this:

They hewed to the principle of good design and form follows function. As with the USPS' blue mail deposit boxes, the top is rounded to shed water.

The classic mailbox is made of galvanized steel, which was once inexpensive to produce. The carrier signal flag is a nice touch; if the postal delivery driver has no mail to deliver to you that day and the flag is down, they know there's no need for them to stop.

That design dates back to 1915 and is credited to Roy Jorolemon, a USPS engineer; as these are still being manufactured decades after his death, it has to be considered a winning design.

Even still, in the mid-2010s the USPS realized the nature of mail was changing, as letters decreased and e-commerce-driven packages increased. They thus rolled out this Next Generation Package Mailbox, sized to accommodate USPS package boxes:

While user feedback was positive, the market response was muted. It's reasonable to believe the rise of package theft played a role in the low uptake; packages are easier to steal from the end of a driveway, whereas packages on a porch demand brazenness from the thief (and, with the rise of doorbell cameras, provide an opportunity to catch them on tape).

Some manufacturers branched out into different materials like plastic. I find these ugly as the plastic, lacking steel's properties, requires that reveals and surface changes be molded into it for structural purposes.

Beyond that, a diversity of mailbox designs now exists. America is a rich country and people get bored, so new mailbox designs are often style exercises. Modernism wins the day here.