Palacio Libertad, Domingo F. Sarmiento

This guide to Palacio Libertad in Buenos Aires walks through nearly eighty years when this grand building was Argentina's central post office, complete with its own barbershop, pharmacy and school for employees' children. It follows the long, troubled construction from 1888, through an economic collapse and a change of architects, to the building's opening four decades later. Five thousand private mailboxes once lined its halls, tended by clerks, sorters and telegraph operators, with Juan Perón keeping an office on the fourth floor.