About This Stamp
With this Priority Mail® stamp, the U.S. Postal Service celebrates the oldest masonry fortification in the United States, the Castillo de San Marcos, in St. Augustine, Florida.
The stamp art features a digital illustration of the Castillo based on a contemporary photograph. With a view toward the northeast corner of the fortress, the artwork captures it in the golden glow of sunrise over Matanzas Bay.
The Castillo was constructed between 1672 and 1695, while Spain controlled “La Florida,” the east coast of today’s Florida. The Castillo’s building material helped ensure its effectiveness. Coquina, a soft and porous limestone conglomerate of small seashells, proved ideal for a fort because cannon balls did not shatter it but rather burrowed in and stuck there.
When Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, the fort’s name was changed to Fort Marion, and it served as barracks, a civilian jail, and a hospital. Preservation efforts began in the 1880s. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge declared Fort Marion a national monument, and the Department of the Interior took custody of it nine years later. Congress restored the Spanish name, Castillo de San Marcos, in 1942 to honor the fort’s early history.
The Castillo de San Marcos stamp is being issued in a pane of four stamps. Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamp with art created by Dan Cosgrove.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Greg Breeding
Greg Breeding is a graphic designer and principal of Journey Group, a design company he co-founded in 1992, located in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was creative director until 2013, at which time he began serving as president and continued in that role through 2023.
Breeding’s fascination with modernism began while studying design at Virginia Commonwealth University. His affinity with the movement continues and motivates his ongoing advanced studies at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland most every summer.
As an art director for postage stamp design since 2012, Breeding has designed more than 100 stamps covering a diverse array of subjects, from Star Wars droids and Batman to Harlem Renaissance writers and the transcontinental railroad.
His work has been recognized in annual design competitions held by Graphis, AIGA, PRINT magazine, and Communication Arts.
Breeding lives in North Garden, Virginia, with his wife and enjoys nothing so much as frolicking on the floor with his grandchildren.
Stamp Artist
Dan Cosgrove
A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Dan Cosgrove graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1978 with a major in graphic design. After briefly working for the National Park Service in Denver and as a designer at Cato Johnson in Cincinnati, Cosgrove moved to Chicago in 1980 and began a freelance career in digital and traditional illustration.
Cosgrove's designs have appeared in numerous ads, posters, covers, and on packaging. Recent clients include Cunard Line, Dunlop Tire, Fiat, J P Morgan Chase, Miller Brewing Company, Netflix, The New York Times, Shell Oil company, SohoPress, and The Wall Street Journal. In recognition of his work Cosgrove has received awards from Communications Arts and the Society of Illustrators (Gold Medal).
The 2008 Express Mail® and Priority Mail® stamps featuring Mount Rushmore and Hoover Dam were Cosgrove's first projects for the U.S. Postal Service. Since then, Cosgrove has illustrated 27 additional Express Mail and Priority Mail Express stamps. Recent designs include Florida Everglades (Priority Mail) (2023), Great Smoky Mountains (Priority Mail Express) (2023), Monument Valley (Priority Mail) (2022), and Palace of Fine Arts (Priority Mail Express) (2022). He also created the stamp art for USS Missouri (2019).
Cosgrove and his wife live in Clarendon Hills, Illinois.