Qualla: U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, New Bern

U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, New Bern: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Three murals hang behind the judge's bench in the second-floor courtroom at 413 Middle Street. The first shows a 1787 legal proceeding called Bayard v. Singleton - the case where a North Carolina court first asserted that the legislature's power could be limited by a constitution, decades before John Marshall would name the doctrine judicial review. The second shows Christoph de Graffenried recruiting settlers from the Palatinate for the New World in 1710, the founding moment of New Bern itself. The third shows the First Provincial Convention of North Carolina meeting in New Bern in 1774, on the road to revolution. David J. Silvette painted them in 1938 for $3,000, commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture. The murals tie the building to its town and its town to the long American argument about justice, liberty, and freedom.

U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, New Bern: Replacing the 1897 Building

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

New Bern's first federal building stood at Pollock and Craven streets, a Romanesque Revival post office and courthouse built in 1897. By the early 1930s the town had outgrown it. The U.S. Treasury chose a new site - the block bounded by Middle, Broad, Hancock, and New streets - a...

U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, New Bern: Smallwood's Georgian Revival

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Local architect Robert F. Smallwood designed the building in the Georgian Revival style - a deliberate echo of colonial-era classical architecture, appropriate for a town that had once served as a colonial capital. Three stories, granite base, red brick veneer laid in common bond...

U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, New Bern: Marble Floors and Murals

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Inside, the postal lobby on the first floor ran the full width of the east wall. Royal black-and-white marble pilasters topped with Ionic plaster capitals; Alabama creme and black marble tiles set on a diagonal; coved plaster ceilings with massive bronze octagonal light fixtures;...

U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, New Bern: Where the Law Was Done

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For decades after the building opened, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina sat in the upstairs courtroom. During World War II, the United States Marine Corps Command Contingent occupied the second and third floors, repurposing the federal courthouse...

U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, New Bern: Still Standing, Still in Use

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Post Office vacated the building in 1992 but retained ownership; the U.S. General Services Administration took over in 2004 and led a renovation. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 as a contributing structure within the New Bern Histor...