THE ROAD TO 46394

John Hmurovic
June 2023

In 1896, a letter came to the Whiting Post Office. The sender didn’t know the name of the person he was sending it to, so, on the envelope he wrote: “ For a young man looking for work whose name I have forgot, stopping with a brother or friend over a store facing street car line one or two blocks to the left of the street car line going toward South Chicago on a street one block from the joining of the loop at Whiting. This store is on the right hand of the street going from said street car track south on left hand, Whiting, Indiana.” No one at the Whiting Post Office was able to solve the puzzle, and the letter was returned to its sender in Berea, Ohio.  

Addressing letters has been almost as puzzling in the many years since for some people who live on the northern side of Hammond, Indiana. Some of them think that they live in Whiting, Indiana. They are usually newcomers. The rest of us understand the confusion. We have long known what newcomers eventually learn: We are two people, united under one zip code.

But the question many of us can’t answer, is how did that happen? The northern part of Hammond is a neighborhood called Robertsdale. Why, then, don’t the people who live in Robertsdale get their mail from Hammond? Why are all letters they receive addressed “Whiting, Indiana,” instead of “Hammond, Indiana?” Why do many of them say that they are from Whiting? Has it always been that way? Lots of questions.

The best way to answer is to see what history tells us, but in some ways that is also confusing. There was a time, not all that long ago, for instance, when there was a post office on the northern end of Hammond that didn’t serve most Robertsdale residents. In fact, letters it received were not addressed to Whiting, to Robertsdale, or to Hammond. They were addressed to Roby. For those who don’t know, Roby is in the extreme northwest corner of Hammond, an area where the local Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Taco Bell are located today, the part of northwest Indiana that is right on the border of Chicago.    

But let’s try to sort this out by going back to the beginning, which in this case is 1871. That’s the year Whiting got its first post office. It was located inside the general store of Henry Schrage, at the far eastern end of today’s 119th Street, close to what is now Front Street and the Mascot Hall of Fame. Two years later, in 1873, the Hammond, Indiana, post office opened with Marcus Towle as the postmaster. And in 1880, a post office opened in Roby.

At that time, all three (Whiting, Roby, and Hammond) were separate communities. There were very few people living in Roby, and very few in Robertsdale, another independent community. Located south and east of Roby, west of Whiting, and north of Hammond, Robertsdale was a target of attempts by Hammond to annex it. In many ways, annexation didn’t make sense. To get from Robertsdale to Marcus Towle’s post office in Hammond you had to travel five miles, while Henry Schrage’s store in Whiting was just a mile away. But after a long battle in the courts, Hammond officially annexed Robertsdale and Roby in 1897. The annexation did make sense for Hammond, because it was five miles from Lake Michigan. Annexing Robertsdale and Roby would extend its city limits to the lakefront and give it access to the lake’s water.   

The distance to the nearest post office was important in those days, because home delivery of mail didn’t exist in Whiting and Hammond. You had to go to the post office to claim your mail. For Robertsdale residents, Sheffield Avenue was the only route to Hammond (Calumet Avenue did not connect Robertsdale with Hammond, yet), and it was in poor condition. Traveling five miles in those days was a long journey.

In 1897, the Whiting Post Office was moved west to 119th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, even closer to Robertsdale. It was a controversial decision. Many opposed the move because they felt that 119th and Pennsylvania was on the outskirts of Whiting.  In 1899, a petition was circulated to move it back, near Front Street, closer to the railway station where all the in-coming mail was dropped off and out-going mail was picked up by mail trains. The other side, though, said “In Whiting, as elsewhere, the march of empire has been westward,” and claimed that three-quarters of the city’s residents now lived west of the railroad tracks which used to cross 119th near today’s Oil City Stadium. Furthermore, they argued, if it was moved back toward Front Street the post office would be “surrounded chiefly by foreigners and their drinking saloons.” The petition drive failed.

At that same time, there was a big development in Hammond. Residents in some parts of the city were now receiving free delivery of the mail to their homes. In 1899, it was announced that that the service would be extended to Robertsdale. J.J. Waskom was assigned to make one trip a day to Robertsdale to deliver all the mail.

Whiting’s post office wasn’t bringing in enough revenue yet to qualify for free delivery, and the city struggled to find a permanent location for its post office. In 1903, it was moved to its third home. This time it was moved to the southeast corner of 119th and New York Avenue, in a building owned by Henry Schrage. The government paid $21.66 a month for rent. It stayed there until Schrage decided to build a new, modern building at the corner of 119th and New York. To make room for the new building, he moved the old building a short distance down New York Avenue. Once the new building was done, the post office was moved there. It was in the back of the building, while up front was Schrage’s bank. The building is still the home of the Schrage family’s bank, Centier. When the post office opened, in June 1910, the newspaper reported that “the whole population of the town made it their business to go get their mail or go and see what the new post office looks like.”

The new post office stirred up more talk of free delivery to Whiting homes. Hammond, Gary, Indiana Harbor, and East Chicago all had home delivery underway, but Whiting’s post office still didn’t have enough revenue to qualify under the Post Office Department rules. People still had to walk to the post office to pick up their mail. “Local businesses don’t want it,” one prominent citizen told a reporter, because if mail is delivered to homes, the people won’t walk to the business district as frequently and their stores will suffer.

It wasn’t until 1913 that free home delivery began in Whiting. The post office announced they would deliver mail three times a day to the business district, and twice a day in residential areas. Ned Naef, Arnold Odell, and Johnston Knight would be the three mail carriers in Whiting. For Whiting residents, it was a big deal, and was accompanied by major changes. Homeowners had to install a mailbox or add a slot in the door of their homes to receive the mail. They also had to ask senders to add house numbers to their letters. Up until this time, letters only needed to be addressed to a name and “Whiting, Indiana.”

There was also a big change for Robertsdale residents in 1913. With home delivery now provided in Whiting, it was decided that Whiting, not Hammond, should handle delivery to Robertsdale homes and businesses. So, Robertsdale residents were encouraged to have their mail addressed to “Whiting,” not “Hammond,” to avoid delays.

The 1920s brought new challenges to the Whiting Post Office. At the top of that list was the rapid growth of Robertsdale. Land had become scarce inside Whiting city limits yet demand for new homes continued to grow as the refinery expanded and added more jobs. With no land available in Whiting, land developers built one residential area after another in Robertsdale to meet that demand.

The post office struggled to add home delivery to new neighborhoods as soon as streets and sidewalks were added or improved, including the Water Gardens, Lake View, Stieglitz Park, and the Goose Island areas. The Whiting Post Office, inside the bank building at 119th and New York, had become too small. In 1926, a new building was built at the corner of Fischrupp Avenue and Clark Street, across from the Community Center. The left side of the building, which still stands at that location, became the fourth home of the Whiting Post Office.

Just a year later, however, a movement began to build a post office in Robertsdale. “Why should legal residents of Hammond depend on another city for its mail?” That was a question raised by the Fourth Ward Improvement Association, a Robertsdale organization. Robertsdale was a thriving community, and a Hammond newspaper editorial agreed that a Hammond branch post office should be built there, “Even if it does cost the government more than what it would if they used the Whiting Post Office.”

That movement got nowhere, and at the same time another movement stirred in Whiting. The Whiting-Robertsdale Chamber of Commerce began a campaign for a new post office. All of Whiting’s early post offices were in spaces that were rented. Whiting was big enough, the Chamber argued, that the post office should be in a federal building, owned by the government.

The numbers backed up the argument. The amount of money brought in by the post office had doubled in the ten years from 1920 to 1930, just as the population of Whiting-Robertsdale had grown to 25,000. With the construction of the Lever Brothers building underway at Five Points in Robertsdale in 1930, more growth was expected. Whiting was in a congressional district that stretched all the way to Lafayette at the time. William Wood, a Republican from that area, was the congressman. He agreed, and promised to do what he could to make it happen.

In 1931, Congress approved a budget of $130,000 for a new post office in Whiting. Four sites for the new building were considered: the northwest corner of 119th and Central; the south side of 119th at Central; a strip of property on Indianapolis Boulevard between Cleveland and Atchison; and a property at the corner of New York and Fischrupp. The winner, however, was none of those. The new post office would be built on the northeast corner of New York and 119th Street. An empty house stood there. It had been the home of Al Gondon, who also planted cherry trees on the lot. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, the house served as a day nursery for infants, while the cherry trees continued to serve as a source of snacks for passers-by. The house was torn down, the trees uprooted, and a new post office went up. In August 1932, there was a parade and a public celebration when the cornerstone was dedicated. Inside the cornerstone they placed a brief history of Whiting, written by Librarian Hazel Long.

The new post office put to rest any talk of a post office to serve just Robertsdale...at least for a few years. It surfaced again in 1963. The conversation started up at the same time as discussions were underway to build a new post office building in Hammond and to close the post office in Roby.  

By the 1960s, the small population of Roby had dwindled to almost nothing. The main thing keeping the small Roby Post Office alive was Amaizo, the corn processing plant now called Cargill. The Roby Post Office was located on Indianapolis Boulevard, next to the main entrance into the plant. All of Amaizo’s mail went there, but almost nothing else. Most of the time, the post office consisted of just one employee. By 1963, the U.S. Post Office Department was looking at shutting it down. They also looked at whether it should be replaced with a larger, new facility located in Robertsdale. Under the proposal, the Whiting Post Office would remain open, but Robertsdale residents would be served by the new Robertsdale Post Office, which would be a branch of the Hammond Post Office.

 The response from residents of Robertsdale and Whiting was immediate, and ferocious. “The Whiting Post Office is doing the job satisfactorily,” said Whiting Mayor Mary Bercik. “The Whiting patrons are satisfied and it would be a waste of federal funds to build another post office to service the area.” The Chamber of Commerce filed a protest with the U.S. Postmaster General and organized a letter-writing campaign. Congressman Ray Madden, who represented Whiting and Robertsdale in Congress, got the message loud and clear. His office was deluged with mail on the issue. There were letters in favor of the change, “here and there,” he said, but the vast majority were opposed. Based on the response, Madden said, “My judgment is that the chances of a change are remote.” In early 1964, U.S. Senator Vance Hartke of Indiana said that any attempt to create a Robertsdale Post Office was dead.

Not quite.

In 1965, Hammond City Councilman-At-Large Paul Duncanson proposed a resolution that would have the Hammond City Council ask the federal government to build a branch of the Hammond Post Office in Robertsdale. It passed unanimously. “The good people of Robertsdale should not be treated like a step child,” Duncanson said. “An individual who resides with a Hammond street address and a Whiting, Indiana, postal address can find this both confusing and embarrassing.”

Duncanson received some support, most of it from Hammond, including the Hammond Times. “Robertsdale residents pay their taxes through the…city treasurer in the Hammond City Hall. They are residents of the Crossroads City, rather than the Oil City,” the paper said in an editorial, arguing that sending Robertsdale-bound mail through Whiting was confusing. Hammond Postmaster Leo Christensen added that his office could do a better job of serving Robertsdale than the Whiting Post Office could.

“Ridiculous,” was the reply of Whiting Postmaster Levern Fortin. He argued that the only one causing confusion was Councilman Duncanson, who suggested the new post office could serve Robertsdale-North Hammond. “There is no such entity as Robertsdale-North Hammond,” Fortin argued. He said those two communities are miles apart, but there is, he emphasized, a Whiting-Robertsdale community that is one economic and social unit.   

Duncanson’s proposal came just two years after zip codes were introduced. All mail addressed to Whiting now included a zip code of 46394. Robertsdale was physically, politically, legally a part of Hammond, but socially and economically it was united with Whiting. Young people often went to the same schools, families from both communities worshipped in the same churches, they played in each other’s parks. And, when new telephone exchanges were created in the early 1960s, Robertsdale didn’t share one with Hammond; it shared the 659 exchange with Whiting. The partnership was strong, and the 46394 zip code sealed the relationship.

Duncanson’s proposal failed to advance. The Roby Post Office closed in 1971, and all of its mail was routed to the Hammond Post Office, so even today all mail to Horseshoe Casino, Unilever, Cargill, Wal Mart, and other locations in the old Roby area are served by the Hammond Post Office and the 46320 zip code. The rest of Robertsdale remains united with Whiting in the 46394 zip code.  

But what if it had changed? What difference would it have made if Robertsdale residents received mail addressed to Hammond rather than Whiting? It’s possible that it would have changed the way Robertsdale residents think about Whiting and Hammond. East Chicago and Indiana Harbor went through a similar situation. Legally and politically they were always one city, the city of East Chicago, but the two areas were physically separated and many residents identified as either from Indiana Harbor, or from East Chicago. The name differences caused the two sections of town to form rivalries and develop animosities. Over the years, some suggested that they ought to choose an entirely different name in an effort to bring them closer together.

In 1965, the Hammond Times used similar thinking in its support of a Hammond Post Office branch in Robertsdale. The paper felt by just changing Robertsdale addresses from Whiting to Hammond, it would “further the cohesion of Hammond, which is a good aim.” The reverse of that, of course, is that it also might have weakened the cohesion of Robertsdale and Whiting. Many in Robertsdale, when asked where they are from, naturally answer by stating what their address says: Whiting. They think of themselves as from Whiting, not Hammond.

Addresses make a difference. For further proof, ask anyone under a certain age where Roby is. Those over a certain age remember the post office that was there. Once it vanished in 1971, Roby lost its identity. Today, few young people, even those born and raised here, know where Roby was. Those of us who live in Robertsdale are not really a part of Whiting. We don’t vote in their elections, don’t have their police officers patrol our streets, don’t pay our property taxes there, but we’re still one. We are all 46394.