Post office may have sold off valuable art, properties

If you’re in the market for a historic property, the Postal Service has some to spare. Just don’t ask them how many.

Facing financial troubles, the United States Postal Service (USPS) has begun selling a number of its post offices and other properties around the nation, which include recognized historic buildings. But the mail delivery service isn’t tracking much information, a report by the agency’s inspector general found in a new report.

“The Postal Service did not know how many historic properties it owned or what it cost to preserve them,” investigators said.

USPS also sold 10 historic post offices with artwork from the New Deal era of the 1930s, but didn’t tell the National Museum of American Art and didn’t take steps to ensure the artwork would be preserved.

Postal Service officials said they always work to maintain historic properties, and did not believe any had slipped through the cracks.

“The Postal Service has a process in place to examine and identify which of those 9,000 properties are historic,” a response from the agency said.  “The Postal Service is not aware of any failure to identify a property as historic prior to its disposal.”