Lakeport P.O. offers rare convenience: Drive-up service

LACONIA — It’s been 91 years since a bank in Kansas City, Missouri, opened what is thought to be the nation’s first drive-up service. Nineteen years later, a restaurant in Springfield, Missouri, became the first eatery where customers had the convenience of being able to get their food order without leaving their cars.

In the ensuing years, as American’s love affair with the automobile grew, it became possible to remain in your car while you picked up a fast-food meal, a prescription, a cup of coffee, or your dry cleaning, as well as make a bank deposit or cash a check.

Those services are all available in the Lakes Region, along with one other not found in many places: Drive-up post office service.

Since the 1990s, limited postal services are available at a drive-up window the Laconia Post Office’s Lakeport Station.

But while drive-throughs have become commonplace in many businesses, they are rare for the Postal Service.

The Lakeport Station’s drive-through window is the only one in New Hampshire, according to David LeBlanc, manager of operations in New Hampshire and most of Vermont for the U.S. Postal Service.

While window service is limited to certain post office transactions, like buying stamps and getting change-of-address or stop-delivery forms, it gets steady use throughout the day, according to Laconia Postmaster Steven Legro.

The window accounts for about 10 percent of the Lakeport Station’s traffic, Jason Tanguay, lead sales and service associate at the facility, estimated. About 75 percent of the drive-up window customers are regulars, he said.

Window use picks up when the weather is bad.

“People would rather stay in their cars if it’s raining or snowing,” Tanguay said.

The window is also popular for patrons with kids in the car or for those who are handicapped.

Carrie Lennon of Laconia stopped at the window late Tuesday morning to purchase stamps, something she does several times a year.

Not surprisingly, what she likes is the convenience. “You don’t even have to get out of your car,” she said.

Because of the small size of the drawer at the drive-up, customers who are mailing packages have to go to the lobby window for that service.

Drive-up window hours are 10 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. and 2:30 to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. on Saturdays.

That the Lakeport Station has drive-up service is due to happenstance.

The Lakeport Station moved in the early 1990s from a much-smaller space in the old Opera House building in Lakeport Square across Clinton Street to a building that had recently been vacated by Indian Head Bank of Laconia. That building had housed the bank’s drive-up windows, and so all of the drive-up apparatus and infrastructure was already in place.