Once upon a time, when a post office was the hub of communications for a community, its building was a grand affair. Made of sandstone, they were often the most impressive building in a suburb except perhaps for the odd church or bank building.

This one, for example, was constructed in 1900 and opened on 19 January 1901. It made use of surplus sandstone that had been quarried in the area for Customs House and the GPO building in the city. (Remember that Pyrmont was once home to a stone quarry.)

But over the past 20 years the importance of snail mail has declined, telegrams have been reduced to distant memories, and "rationalisation" of government services has come to the fore, The grand post office buildings were often vacated for cheaper "shopfront" premises, often looking more like a stationery store than a true post office of old. In some cases there's no post office as such, merely a concession run by, say, a local newsagent.

This was the fate of the Pyrmont post office. It's now a few hundred metres down the road (behind me) in a nondescript 60's style commercial building next to a hardware store. Its formerly grand premises were presumably sold off and have had various residents since then, the latest being a branch of a community bank. The old sandstone still cuts a warm and reassuringly sturdy image, though, especially when lit by warm lighting around dawn.
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Edit September 2023: Mail volumes have presumably continued to decline (probably at a faster rate) in the 10 years since I wrote that. They declined by 3.7% excluding census and electoral mail in 2022, but good luck finding any hard data on what the value is. As with most corporate reports these days, everything that you REALLY need to know is - if it is available at all - hidden behind corporate obfuscation and bullsh** wrapped in an obscenely large dose of virtue signalling that you need to cut through before you can even APPROACH anything relevant. And Google yields very little that is relevant either. Why a government owned monopoly needs to conceal these figures from its owners the taxpayers is not clear.

But I digress. The downgraded post office that I referred to is still operating. The hardware store that it moved in next door to is not, however. The story behind which can be found in my PAD 2015 gallery, specifically the shot for 5 June of that year.

Nor is the Bendigo Bank still here. It had moved in in December of 2009. It was still there almost 10 years later, in October of 2019. However by February of 2020 its signage was gone and a large banner reading "LEASE" flapped above the building...and was still there at least 2 years later.

Also, the building to the right of this was, at the time, the Commonwealth Bank branch for Pyrmont. I shot it for one of my earliest PADs, that of 22 January 2010. I updated the photo only a few weeks ago and thus recall what I wrote then: "This seemingly eternal edifice shut its doors sometime between April and November of 2021. At the time of writing it was still for lease."