The Hyde Park site was chosen and purchased in April 1940 for a cost of $15,000 ($ in contemporary dollars). Three houses were removed and demolished to clear a site for the new building. The President personally chose the 1772 clapboard house built (but by then demolished) for early settler John Bard as the model for the structure; the President insisted on stone even though Bard's house had been frame. Stones, larger and more regular in size and shape than those used on the previous four stone post offices in the county, were procured from old stone walls on a farm once owned by Bard's son Samuel.