Telephone Exchange and Post Office Mural

A study in communication at GPO Liverpool.

This mural celebrates the golden days of (landline) telephones and the postal service. A somewhat bygone age that holds a romanticism of a simpler time.

GPO Liverpool is part of the MET Quarter mall. The GPO section of the mall holds the food court and bars within the shopping centre.

GPO stands for General Post Office. The MET Quarter mall is sited in a historic building which originally served as the main postal office and telephone exchange for Merseyside, England. This historic link made the obvious choice for the inspiration of the artwork.

The centre of the mural is how the building originally looked when constructed in 1899 and was known as Custom House. It was an amazing piece of gothic architecture. Sadly, in WW2, the Nazis bombed Liverpool extensively in the blitz and this building lost its 2 upper floors, which were never rebuilt. So it is nice that customers can now see how the building would have looked in its prime.

The background of the mural consists of an old-fashioned telephone exchange switchboard. If you are keen-eyed, there is a code hidden in the top line of the numbers which no one has noticed yet.

On either side of the central building, there is a nod to both the postal service and the telephone exchange. The postal service is represented by a sorting office and an old red post-box. The telephone exchange is represented by a telephone operator (who looks a little like the actress, Maxine Peake) and a bright red, analogue, candlestick phone.

The mural was completed in June 2021 by Paul Curtis.

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