| General Post Office, Zagreb | |
|---|---|
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 Interactive map of General Post Office, Zagreb | |
| General information | |
| Architectural style | Hungarian Secession[1] |
| Location | 13 Jurišićeva Street,Zagreb,Croatia |
| Coordinates | 45°48′45″N15°58′52″E / 45.81250°N 15.98111°E /45.81250; 15.98111 |
| Construction started | 1903 |
| Inaugurated | 12 September 1904[1] |
| Owner | Croatian Post |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 3 (1904–1930) 4 (1930–present)[1] |
| Design and construction | |
| Architects | Ernő Foerk and Gyula Sándy[1] |
TheGeneral Post Office in Jurišićeva Street,Zagreb, was the headquarters of theCroatian Post, the national postal service ofCroatia. Built in 1904 in the Hungarian Secession style, the Post Office housed mail, parcel, telegraph and telephone services and equipment. Today, it is a protected cultural monument.
The first government post office in Zagreb was established in 1831.[2] The rise of mail volume, as well as the introduction oftelegraph in 1850 and apublic telephone system in 1887,[3] created a pressing need for a new post office building.[2]
The project, created by the Hungarian architectsErnő Foerk and Gyula Sándy in the Hungarian Secession style, envisioned an 82-metre (269 ft) long two-story building made of weather-resistant red brick and stone, with three entrances.[1]
The construction in a 3,950-square-metre (42,500 sq ft) building site in Jurišićeva Street began in 1903, and the new General Post Office started its work on 12 September 1904. The ground floor was dedicated to mail and parcel services, with atelephone booth section, while the first floor housed telegraph andtelephone switchboards. The telephone switchboard had a capacity of 1200 subscribers and 2000 connections, and was opened later in the same year.[1]
By 1925, the preparations for installing a new automatic switchboard for 10,000 subscribers were already underway. In 1926, an additional three-story courtyard wing was completed. The newSiemens-made automatic switchboard became operational in 1928.[4] In 1930, the third story was added to the building, and the original roofturrets were permanently removed in the process.[1]
On 14 September 1941, the telephone switchboard was destroyed in a sabotage organized byRade Končar of theCommunist Party of Croatia as an act of resistance against theAxis-aligned regime of theIndependent State of Croatia. The sabotage was executed by three postal employees who managed to smuggleexplosives into the strictly guarded building, and plant them in the switchboard during the night shift. After they left the city in the morning, an associate remotely detonated the charges by dialing a preselected phone number.[5] The blast broke all the windows in the building and killed one police agent, injuring several more. The resulting damage caused significant disruption of international telephone service and required an extensive repair.
The building saw its second major adaptation in 1958, in which two side entrances were walled up, leaving only the main entrance from Jurišićeva Street. The 2001 adaptation undid some of the interior changes made in 1958, when luxurious details, such asmajolica-decorated arches, were covered and thus hidden from view. Today, the General Post Office is a protected cultural monument.[1]
The General Post Office building hosts the Museum of Post and Telecommunications, founded in 1953 and opened to the public since 1997. It is owned and operated byT-Hrvatski Telekom.[6]
The General Post Office was featured on aHRK 2.30 postage stamp issued by theCroatian Post in 2004,[1] as well as on a€0.70 postage stamp issued by theÖsterreichische Post in 2012.[7]
The building has been closed due to damage it sustained in the2020 earthquake.[8] On 8 September 2023, the Croatian Post moved their headquarters to Velika Gorica, as part of the giant package sorting complex.[9]
