The Mailbox

The Mailbox

The Mailbox from Suffolk Street Queensway
Location	Birmingham, England
Opening date	December 2000
Developer	Birmingham Development Company
Owner	Brocton Capital
No. of anchor tenants	1 (Harvey Nichols)
No. of floors	6
Parking	3,100
Website	http://www.mailboxlife.com/

The Mailbox is an upmarket shopping and office development in the city centre of Birmingham, England. It serves as the base for BBC Birmingham and houses one of six Harvey Nichols department stores.

The Mailbox is about 300 metres (980 ft) long from front to back including The Cube. Above the front shops it has an additional 6 floors which includes a Malmaison hotel and residential apartments. The Worcester and Birmingham Canal passes along the back with a number of restaurants overlooking.

Previously the location of a railway goods yard with canal wharves off the Worcester and Birmingham Canal leading to Gas Street Basin, the site was the location of the Royal Mail's main sorting office building for Birmingham (hence its current name) which was completed in 1970, replacing the Victorian head post office (now Victoria Square House), in Victoria Square. The new building was designed by R. H. Ousman of the Ministry of Public Building and Works, who collaborated with project architect H. A. E. Giddings and with Hubbard Ford & Partners, who supplied E. Winters and R. Lee as architects. When completed, it was the largest mechanised letters and parcels sorting office in the country with a floor area of 20 acres (81,000 m²) and the largest building in Birmingham. A tunnel was constructed between the site and New Street railway station allowing electric tractors hauling carts carrying sacks of mail to be driven directly to the office. The structure housed the largest electronic sorting equipment in the West Midlands to handle the post. It also housed the administrative teams moved from Victoria Square, including those for other Post Office functions, such as counter services.