Cedar City Post Office Building and Lunt Statue

Prior to the post office building being built, the Cedar City Main Post Office operated out of another building in town. For a time, the post office was within the Golden Rule store; in 1931, it moved to the Cedar Lumber and Hardware building. The federal government paid $45,000 for the Tabernacle building and land in 1931 for construction of the Cedar City combined post office and federal office building. Some of the funds were raised by local residents through the efforts of the Chamber of Commerce. A new church construction committee received $29,000 of the proceeds.

The post office building's architects were a Utah firm from Salt Lake City. Lewis Cannon of Cannon & Feltzer was a Salt Lake City native born in 1872. John Fetzer was born in Bavaria, Germany in 1882 and emigrated to the United States in 1905; he settled in Salt Lake and soon was designing stations for the Union Pacific Railroad. The pair designed a number of major buildings in Utah; the National Register significance of the post office is partly due to the association with the firm. A Salt Lake contractor, Norman Jacobson, finally began construction of the foundation after delays due to unexpected soil properties; the cornerstone was laid on June 15th, 1933. The building cost $100,000 to build and used $12,000 of Utah granite and marble. The Forest Service moved into its new offices in the building in early January 1933, followed by the Postal Service at the end of the month.

The building is one of the most impressive monumental structures in the city. Only one other building in the city's commercial district - the First Security Bank Building on the corner of Harding and Main - exhibits the Neo-classical style. The Classical Revival style building is two stories tall, of red brick on a raised basement. The west side of the structure features six fluted terra cotta Ionic columns framing a central entrance. The columns support a terra cotta entablature as wide as the building. The projecting cornice with dentils is below a terra cotta belt course which supports a brick parapet wall topped by terra cotta coping. The incised lettering on the center of the frieze reads "United States Post Office." A loading platform on the rear of the structure was expanded in the mid-1960s with similar but not identical red brick.

The bronze statue of Henry Lunt is the work of Jerry Anderson, a local sculptor, and rests directly on the sidewalk. Lunt led a group of Mormon pioneers to the area in 1851 and founded Cedar City. He was a prosperous farmer and merchant. The Post Office location formerly contained the 1885 Mormon Tabernacle. Anderson is an artist in residence at the town's college, Southern Utah University.

Hunter, Jennifer. Cedar City. Images of America. Charleston, SC. Arcadia Publishing, 2012.

Kolva, H. J.. Franks, Steve. NRHP Nomination of Cedar City Main Post Office. National Register. Washington, DC. National Park Service, 1988.

Rjmcdonough1. Henry Lunt - Cedar City, Utah, Waymarking, Statues of Historic Figures. September 1st 2019. Accessed August 25th 2020. https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM117Q5_Henry_Lunt_Cedar_City_Ut.