I recently had the pleasure of working with my dad on a project for the Naperville Bank & Trust in Naperville. The bank purchased the historic 1939 Post Office building to be used as their new downtown location. We were asked to work on a couple projects for them that would incorporate original items found in the post office during its time of operation.

The first project was to dismantle a series of old, brass post office box doors and create a wall display that would be placed inside the wall of the presidents office, while still visible to the rest of the bank. Removing the doors seemed like a simple task at first, but ended up being rather complex because of how they were originally manufactured. Since the post office box keys were nowhere to be found, we had to remove the doorspiece by piece. That meant cutting apart welds and disassembling the locks from the inside of the boxes. A very tedious task when you have large hands! We then fabricated trim out of cherry wood to match the original trim throughout the building. The display was finished by adding a sign on top of the display that closely matches the original font used by the Post Office back in 1939. Take a look at the pics below!

The second project was to build special display kiosks that would showcase post office and Naperville artifacts. These items would be chosen and curated in cooperation with the Post Office and Naperville Heritage Society. The kiosks were fabricated with cherry veneered plywood and trimmed in solid cherry stock. The artifacts would rest on white museum-grade linen and surrounded by 1/4″ UV resistant acrylic. Take a look at the pics below!