The following text was prepared as part of an upgrade project and was completed 28 February 2003. Completed in 1904, the Collingwood Post Office is a fine example of the Government post offices erected throughout New Zealand in the early twentieth century. The earliest post office in Golden Bay was one of the first to be established under the Local Posts Act 1856, which gave provinces power to establish post offices and mail services for the first time. Despite the Act, post offices were sentinels of government authority in New Zealand's frontier communities and the general government reserved the right to authorise the establishment of new post offices, appoint postmasters, and manage major mail routes. In 1904 the small town of Collingwood was devastated by fire. Twenty buildings, including the post office, were destroyed in the blaze. By August the following year, all business and public buildings had been reinstated with the sole exception of the post office, which was the responsibility of the Public Works Department. Post offices were crucial to small communities and the delay provoked considerable protest. One newspaper reported that if the Government would only supply the necessary funds, the local County Council would be 'only too glad to give the Department a lesson in expediency'. The Department invited tenders for the building in October that year, and by mid 1906 the Collingwood Post Office had been erected by Messrs McNabb and Johnston for £1106. The Collingwood Post Office was built to a design created by John Campbell [1857-1942], the Public Works Department's 'Draughtsman in Charge of Public Buildings'. Campbell had trained in Glasgow and had joined the Department seven years after his arrival in New Zealand in 1882. Due to a heavy workload, Campbell created standardised post office plans that used the same range of forms repeatedly, although in differing combinations rather like, as one Member of Parliament commented, 'a cook with one gravy'. The Collingwood Post Office is a simple example of Imperial Baroque, a style favoured by the Department, and is typical of post offices Campbell designed for New Zealand's smaller towns and suburban areas. The substantial, two-storey structure was built using native timbers. In keeping with nineteenth and early twentieth-century business practice, it consists of both a public office and a private residence. Post office facilities were located on the ground floor at the front of the building and included private boxes, a mail room, a public office and a money order counter. A small lean-to on the rear of the ground floor accommodated the postmaster's kitchen and dining room, and the upper floor contained four bedrooms and a sitting room. When the Acting Postmaster-General and Attorney General Albert Pitt officially opened the building in 1906, it was described as 'one of the best fitted up sub offices in the colony'. Despite two serious fires, in which the building was severely scorched, the Collingwood Post Office served the town until 1988. In that year the government relinquished its traditional control over postal services and privatised the New Zealand Post Office. It has since served a variety of purposes and is currently used as an art gallery. The Collingwood Post Office is nationally significant as an important, representative, and relatively unmodified example of the small post offices created at the turn of the twentieth century by Government Architect John Campbell. The building is historically significant as an illustration of the control the government traditionally maintained over mail services and facilities. The building has potential as an educational resource as the relatively unaltered arrangement of space in the building provides insight into the relationship between public and private life in early twentieth century New Zealand. Highly valued by the local community, the Collingwood Post Office has aesthetic value and serves as an important landmark in the main street of Collingwood.