LANDMARKS / COUNTY HISTORICAL SITES : Ojai Post Office Bell Tower

* HISTORY: San Diego architect Richard S. Requa designed the domed, four-story Spanish tower after the campanile over Christopher Columbus’ tomb in Havana. It was built in 1917.

* LOCATION: 201 E. Ojai Avenue in Ojai.

* HOURS: The tower is closed for viewing, but the post office lobby is open 24-hours a day.

The 65-foot bell tower of the Ojai post office tolls every hour between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. and peels out patriotic tunes at noon on amplified Westminster chimes.

The tiny door to the spiral staircase is locked to all except volunteer bellkeeper Billie Powers, a local contractor, who has kept the chimes tolling over Ojai for 21 years.

The local Altrusa Club raised funds to donate the chimes in 1969. The effort began after city officials decided that a city employee might not be able to ring the old fire bell promptly every day at noon.

Historian Patricia L. Fry says that after the post office was built in 1917, the town’s fewer than 500 residents changed its name to Ojai from Nordhoff, fearing their mail would go to Norwalk by mistake.

On June 30, 1975, the Ojai Post Office tower and sidewalk portico became Ventura County Historical Landmark No. 26, along with an old sycamore tree in Libbey Park nearby.

Edward Drummond Libbey, Ohio glass magnate who spent winters in Ojai, donated the civic park. He hired Requa in 1914 to design a series of other prominent Spanish-style buildings for the city.

Although Ojai has never had its own postmark, with its current daily average of 55,000 pieces of mail routed through Oxnard, its fiesty community spirit has often reached officials in Washington. In 1893, Nordhoff set two national precedents by staging an independent selection of its postmaster and by allowing women to vote in his election, 27 years before the 19th Amendment granted women’s suffrage.

In 1959, a petition signed by 1,005 Ojai Valley residents urged postal officials to reconsider their plans to move out of the small building. A dozen citizens lent money to expand it.

Twenty-eight years later, Ojai Postmaster John Wolfard said he feared he would be lynched for supporting renewed efforts by postal officials to build another building with more mail-room space and employee parking.

Armed with a petition of 2,447 signatures demanding the post office be kept under the tower, the Ojai City Council persuaded state and federal lawmakers to leave the downtown office with 1,530 rental boxes where it remains..

“They run into a lot of their old friends and socialize while collecting their mail,” Wolfard said of his patron’s passion for the

This summer, the building’s trustees, the Ojai Civic Assn., is negotiating a long-term lease with the U.S. Postal Service to keep the lobby open at least another 10 years. The association uses the current $55,000 annual rent for improvements to Libbey Park.

The post office tower and portico, built of unreinforced masonry, are also on the city’s list for mandatory earthquake reinforcement.