This four-story PWA Moderne post office is reminiscent of the work of Paul P. Cret in the late 1920s (e.g., the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., 1928–1932). The central four-story pavilion, dominated by smooth masonry surfaces and sculptured eagles which “grow” out of the parapet corners of the building, looks back to the mid-twenties designs of Bertram G. Goodhue. Within, one will find two Grant Wood-inspired murals of the 1930s: Bertram Adam's Early Settlers of Dubuque (1936–1937) and William E. L. Bunn's Early Mississippi Steamboats (1936–1937). Of the three buildings that John Noland projected in his 1932 civic center design, the post office was the only one realized. The post office was to have been connected by an arcade to a new city hall to the south, and to the other side of the city hall was to be the courthouse.