The two-storeyed Edwardian Baroque style Post Office (Former) at 47-49 Talbot Street, Geraldine, is a notable historic feature within the town centre and a reminder of New Zealand’s history of government post and telegraph services.

It has aesthetic, architectural, historical and social significance or value. The Waihī River flows southeast from its sources in the Four Peaks Range, and meanders through the South Canterbury town of Geraldine to reach the Ōpihi River near Te Umukaha (Temuka). During the 1879 Smith-Nairn Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Ngāi Tahu land claims, Ngāi Tahu kaumātua
recorded Waihī as a kāinga mahinga kai (food-gathering place). Te Rūnanga o Arowhenua is the papatipu Rūnanga holding mana whenua in the area.

Geraldine’s first purpose-built post and telegraph office, a timber structure, was erected in 1875 at a site immediately to the north-west of the current building. By 1906 this timber post office was deemed too small and the following year, 1907, designs were well under way for a replacement building. Government Architect, John Campbell, was responsible for its design and the contractor was Charles Calvert. The design provided for mail room, public office, postmaster’s room, telephone room and private boxes lobby on the ground floor and accommodation for the postmaster on the first floor. The new Geraldine Post Office was opened for business in early 1908 and officially opened by the Premier and Postmaster-General, Sir Joseph Ward, on 31 October 1908.

The Post Office (Former) is in a prominent location within Geraldine’s central business district, on Talbot Street, directly opposite the eastern terminus of Cox Street. Constructed of brick, finished externally with coloured cement plaster and roughcast, it is a two-storeyed building with an irregular L- shaped footprint and hipped roof forms. The principal façade faces west and has a central recessed entry framed by a segmental pediment. A round double-faced clock projects from decorative metal brackets above the
entry, at first-floor level. Principal windows are double-hung sash or casement windows and have rusticated surrounds with keystone arches. On the ground floor the windows have segmental arches, while the first-floor windows are crowned by triangular pediments, the central one projecting above the roof line. There is a lean-to along the rear (eastern) elevation as well as a hipped roofed single-storeyed extension. Other decorative features include string courses, relief work within the pediments and a solid parapet. The interior has pressed metal ceilings on both the ground and first floors and, on the ground floor the main open space has classical-style columns and acanthus leaf cornicing and a strong room.

The community has had a long and close association with the Post Office (Former). Funds were raised for the post office clock by public subscription, and it was installed on the façade in July 1909. The post office mail service and telephone exchange provided crucial communication services and employment. Operators worked switchboards to manually connect telephone calls. A new single-storeyed reinforced concrete telephone exchange building, around 10 by six metres, with a hipped roof, was constructed at the northern corner in 1938, replacing the original exchange provided within the 1908 building. Further alterations, additions and renovations were made to the Post Office (Former) building in 1962.
The telephone exchange became automatic in 1984.10 A ramp was added at the front entrance in around 1989. The building functioned as Geraldine’s main post office from 1908 until it closed in 1997, despite petitioning within the community for its retention as a post office. Since 1998, the building has been in private ownership and is variously used for retail and as an art space.