The most beloved version of the General Post Office stood at the junction of Des Voeux Road Central and Pedder Street from 1911 to 1976. It was a granite-and-red-brick Edwardian structure, sturdy and civic and a little grand, and Hongkongers gave it an affectionate nickname: "the Old Lady of Pedder Street." Joseph Ting, the former chief curator of the Hong Kong Museum of History, later called it Hong Kong's most beautiful building. It was demolished in 1976, cleared away to make room for the Central station of the MTR being excavated beneath the street. The land it occupied became World-Wide House. The pillars of the old building were saved and can still be seen at Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, in the New Territories — architectural salvage with a long commute.

The current GPO at 2 Connaught Place was built in 1976 on reclaimed land — new ground, literally, that hadn't existed when the previous building went up. Its design carries an unusual constraint. When Hongkong Land paid a record price for the site directly to the south, it negotiated a stipulation: no building to the north of Connaught Centre (now Jardine House) could obstruct its views. The government agreed, and as a result the GPO was capped at a maximum height of 120 feet. Architect K. M. Tseng designed it as a five-storey building with foundations capable of supporting an additional two floors, should the height restriction ever be lifted. It also houses Hong Kong's first central vacuum-cleaning system — a forgotten curiosity of 1970s civic infrastructure, the kind of detail that makes a building strange.

No government institution in Hong Kong has moved as often. From its first home above St. John's Cathedral (1841–1846), the GPO relocated to Queen's Road Central, opposite D'Aguilar Street, where it remained until 1911. Then came the Pedder Street building, the one people mourned. Then the current Connaught Place address, which has been the headquarters of Hongkong Post ever since. Each move followed the same pattern: the harbour was the artery through which the city's correspondence flowed, and the post office had to stay close. Reclamation just kept pushing the shoreline further out. The GPO spent its first century as a building on the water's edge; since 2007, when the latest reclamation work was completed, it has been surrounded by land on all sides.

As of 2018, the current GPO building was scheduled for demolition — a plan met with preservation advocates who argue that even this relatively recent brutalist structure deserves protection as part of Hong Kong's architectural and civic history. The building sits adjacent to Jardine House and the International Finance Centre, neighbours of a grandeur that would make almost anything look modest. But the GPO has been modest and useful for half a century, processing letters and parcels and passport applications while the towers grew up around it. Whether it survives the demolition order remains uncertain. Hong Kong has demolished beautiful buildings before; the Old Lady of Pedder Street is proof enough of that.