The Old Post Office becomes a dazzling urban fairgrounds
For generations of Americans, the local post office was far more than a symbol of federal power: the dispenser of mail and a source for tax, Social Security and Selective Service forms. The P.O. was also a social spot, where neighbors met to gossip and hear the news. That tradition has been gloriously and ingeniously revived in Washington's Old Post Office, halfway between the White House and the Capitol on Pennsylvania Avenue. Once an embarrassing derelict, the ten-story, 1899 Romanesque wedding cake of Maine granite...