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It was in 1920 that the first steps were taken to grant "postal independence" to little Tel Aviv. On January 6, 1920 the Director of the Jaffa Post Office approached the Tel Aviv Council for help. On January 15, 1920, the district Post Office Director informed Mayor Dizengoff of the employment of a special postman whose function would be to distribute mail in Tel Aviv twice a day. Nonetheless, the demand to open a post office in the suburb itself continued to be heard. On March 25, 1920, the Mayor attended a meeting at the office of Major Hudson, the Post Office Director, and it was decided to establish a Tel Aviv Post Office. The newspapers rushed into print with this information, and before long letters began to arrive at the Tel Aviv Council from individuals interested in managing the branch.
On June 11, 1920 a telegram announcing the official opening of the branch was sent. The branch was housed temporarily in the Council building, at that time at the corner of Rothschild Boulevard and Nachlat Benyamin Street. Post office date stamps bearing the name "Tel Aviv-Jaffa" were prepared.
That the authorities in Tel Aviv made great efforts to increase the local sale of stamps is indicated by a letter from "Kupat Am" dated August 4, 1920, in which the institution agrees to comply with Mr. Dizengoff's request to purchase all its stamp requirements at the Tel Aviv Post Office. A look at the first telephone directory, issued on October 4, 1920, shows that there were two subscribers in Tel Aviv, Mr. M. Tolkovsky and Mr. M. Dizengoff.
In the middle of 1921, there began a correspondence between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem about broadening postal activities, or to be more accurate, about the construction of a special building for postal services in Tel Aviv. As a result, the first post office building in Tel Aviv was erected, at the corner of Nachlat Binyamin and Lilienblum Streets (where the Bank of Israel is today).
No one in the "romantic" era of the 1920s could have imagined the rate of development during the next fifty years. Though the Tel Aviv Post Office has not always managed to keep pace with the growth of the city as a whole, it has noteworthy achievements to its credit, in view of the many and complicated problems for which solutions had to be found at every stage. Despite all the problems of the past and of the present, the city is today the telecommunications center of the country. National headquarters for radio-telephone, telegrams, and telex, as well as the terminus of the undersea telephone cable, are all in Tel Aviv, as is the largest mail distribution point in Israel.
We are living in a period of unprecedented advances in the field of communications. The most modern developments in technology and science, in fields such as physics and space research, inevitably have an effect on telecommunications and postal services, even though this may be gradual rather than immediately visible.
The special conditions we live in make extraordinary demands on public services, and the Tel Aviv Post Office is now faced with many difficulties in providing adequate service and increasing efficiency. There is no doubt, however, that it will pass this test, as it has passed all the others.
