Old Post Office opens as event venue

Haley Yost, the events manager at the Havre Historic Post Office, presented the new sign and name of the building for Festival Days Saturday.

The new name of the old post office is Havre Historic Post Office, and it is Havre’s newest event venue.

At noon, building manager David McGee pulled away the cover of the new sign to reveal the new name and symbol for the old post office.

“Welcome to Havre Historic Post Office, a premier event space for one of Montana’s finest treasures,” Yost said to the crowd of spectators at noon.

Erica Farmer and Mark Whitacre purchased the building in 2011 and began the extensive task of renovating it.

In 2013, they had their first customer come to them and ask them if they could use the building as an event space.

“They decided that maybe that’s what the community needed — an event space,” Yost said.

Though they are still doing work on the building, the main floor is mostly finished and Yost is currently scheduling people who want to use the space.

McGee said the work he and his crew have done at the old post office is fairly extensive.

Remodeling the old post office has proved difficult because of the historic building preservation laws McGee had to watch for in his work.

All of the changes made to the building must be logged in order to prove what is original and what has been replaced.

“People think about history with a historic building is just preserving the past, but the thing about it is the building is still there. The history is still being written,” McGee said. “Today was another piece of history that is part of the building.”

McGee gave tours of the old post office Saturday, along with Farmer and Whitacre. He said that the work is not finished just yet, but the major portions of the remodeling is completed.

The building has already hosted a few events — weddings, the “Winter in the Blood” meet and greet, and others.

During the grand reveal Saturday, Yost began scheduling parties to interested in using the space.