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This construction was part of the federal effort to improve the public image and scale of government facilities in midsized cities in the early twentieth century. Sitting in one of Kinney's civic squares that originally included the city hall and market, the brick and plaster Italian Renaissance building housed the city's post office until 1939. Like the Nueces County Courthouse ( CC9), its neighbor to the north, the building's higher elevation closer to the bluff enabled it to serve as a place of refuge for those fleeing the tidal surge that devastated the lower portion of downtown during the Storm of 1919.