My uncle swears the Rochester post office basement had a tunnel, and his 1983 letter proves nothing
My uncle has been telling anyone who will listen since 1983 that there's a sealed tunnel under the old post office on Main Street in Rochester, and he says a letter he mailed that spring came back with a stamp from a building three blocks away. Last weekend I finally went down there with him and a flashlight, and all we found was a flooded crawl space and about 40 old mailbags. He's still convinced the city is hiding something, and honestly I can't fully rule it out. Does anyone know who you'd even call to get old building blueprints around here?
The part about the 1983 letter coming back with a stamp from three blocks away really got me, because that is the kind of small detail that sticks with a person for 40 years. I feel for your uncle. He held onto that letter as proof for that long and then watched a flashlight beam land on nothing but old mailbags, and that has to sting. The flooded crawl space does not really settle anything either, because water can hide a filled-in passage better than open air ever could. For blueprints, start with the city clerk or the county records office and ask for the building's original plan set, and the local historical society may have old Sanborn fire maps that show basement lines and any tunnels. Those maps are often more telling than the blueprints, since they were drawn for insurance and tended to mark every opening they knew about.