The post office is located on Poštova Street, one of the oldest streets in the city. It was originally called Mehlgasse, which was renamed Postgasse after the main post office was built. In the inter-war period, it was called Bucharest Street, after which it was renamed Postgasse and in 1969 it was named after the Russian revolutionary Chudjakov. During the so-called de-communisation laws in Ukraine in 2014-2016, the street returned to its Austrian name. The vul. Poštova is one of the few streets in Chernivtsi where buildings were destroyed during the Second World War, such as the building of the Bukovina Stock Exchange, opened in 1877.
The history of the postal service in Chernivtsi begins with the annexation of Bukovina to Austria-Hungary in 1774/75, the development of this new region and the slow creation of the necessary infrastructure. The head of the military administration, General Gabriel Freiherr Splény von Miháldy, proposed the establishment of a postal station between Bukovina and Transylvania as early as 1774. Until then, postal services had only been available to civil servants and administrators. The first postal station in Bukovina was opened in Chernivtsi in 1782 (Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung, 23 January 1907, p. 3), but postal traffic was still limited. Until the beginning of the 19th century, only three towns in the region were connected to Chernivtsi by post: Snjatyn and Zališčyky in Galicia and Seret in Bukovina. In 1787 the Chernivtsi -Jassy route was established. The first postal connection with Lviv was established in 1819. Initially, mail was sent by courier and from the 1830s by stagecoach. There was a tariff for sending letters and parcels, which was repeatedly adjusted by the government.
The postal system developed rapidly in Bukovina and became one of the most important factors of modernisation in the 19th century. Optical telegraphy was introduced in Chernivtsi in 1854 and electric telegraphy in 1863, which greatly accelerated communication channels. On 1 September 1866, the first train with a mail coach arrived at Chernivtsi's main station (Marija Nykyrsa, Černivci. Dokumetalʾni narysy z istoriï vulycʾ i ploščč. Černivci 2008. p. 219).
The 'Czernowitzer Presse' reported that in 1887 the post and telegraph office in Chernivtsi carried 2,800,000 items of postage-paid letter post and 131,000 items of passenger post, with a total revenue of 85,365 forints. In 1887, '37 state telegrams and 1158 official telegrams, as well as 27,671 chargeable domestic telegrams and 5,232 international telegrams, a total of 34,098 telegrams were carried'. (Czernowitzer Presse, 15 June 1889, p. 2). A telephone network had existed in the city since 1884. In 1887 there were 107 telephone exchanges and 77,148 telephone connections (ibid.).
Text: Kateryna Stetsevych
