M is for Mailbox

Mailbox! Mailbox! Mailbox! I don't know where this is, or when it was taken, but I remember being struck by how quaint the juxtaposition seemed: the carvings on the doorway celebrating the newest form of 20th century mechanized communication, some kind of personal wireless telegraph (all the kids had them, they ran around sending each other useless messages, like .-. --- ..-. .-.. and -. --- -! .-.. --- .-..!), and a mailbox, the waystation for written communication well before the electronic age. I also liked the little concrete slab it sits on, almost as if they weren't allowed to bolt it to the sidewalk but still needed to secure it somehow.

Taken somewhere in Manhattan is all I can remember, I'm wondering if it could have been the Telephone Building down near Canal Street? I think what caught my eye about this scene is all the rectangles: The carved panels, all of the window panes and the doors, the mailbox and the panels within it, dozens of vertical rectangles.