The company office that became the post office

The Rockhill Iron and Coal Company office stands on the east side of Main Street in Robertsdale, just south of the East Broad Top tracks and across them from the stone company store. The Historic American Buildings Survey report on it, whose history and description runs to a single paragraph written by project historian Lola Bennett in 1989, dates the building to around 1917. The National Register nomination for the Robertsdale Historic District puts it at about 1914, and the 1991 county inventory of industrial sites groups it with the hotel, new depot and post office the company built before the First World War as the mines around Robertsdale expanded.

The survey calls it imposing: two and a half stories of concrete block, with detailing it reads as a statement of the building's importance. There are large paired double-hung sash windows on the facade, transoms over the entrances, brick corbeling at the cornice, and brick quoins, lintels, sills and door surrounds. The district nomination gives the footprint as 25 by 60 feet with a 10 by 24 foot ell on the south side, under a hipped roof with hipped dormers at the east and west ends.

Tax records, the survey says, first valued the office at $2,000, more than any other single structure Rockhill owned except the company store.

Since 1965, the survey says, the building has housed the Robertsdale post office. Before that the post office had a building of its own across Main Street, a two-story concrete block structure the survey's overview report dates to about 1915 from tax records; the inventory says it ran there until the 1960s, with the postmaster's family living upstairs, and was leased to commercial tenants after the office moved across the street. The overview adds that the Robertsdale post office was established in 1875, and in its early years the mail came in by rail and was sorted at the company store.

The district nomination, whose photograph of the office was taken in October 1988, found it well maintained and keeping a high degree of integrity, while the older post office building across the street stood vacant.

In tax records, this building was originally valued at $2,000, more than any other single structure Rockhill owned, after the company store. Since 1965, this building has housed the Robertsdale post office.Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, Rockhill Iron & Coal Company Office, written data pages, HABS PA-5555 data pages, p. 2 · character 1,358 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · Library of Congress survey record, read in full

← All stories from Wood township

Have something to add to this story, or a photograph of it? Send it here →