From The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition Charles Beaumont, an orthopedic surgeon in Woodbury, Conn., likes to show he's a nonconformist. Not everybody has the time or the money to become their own architect or renovate their entire home into a personal design statement. So some homeowners are going postal, literally. This attitude has created a cottage industry for custom-mailbox builders.
Some homeowners say a unique mailbox can lead to a certain cachet in the community.
The mayor says there's nothing like living on the edge. But even here, size matters. For instance, Verna Harrah, of the Las Vegas casino family, recently bought a solid brass mailbox for her Beverly Hills, Calif., home that was a foot tall, a foot wide, and 2-feet long. And there aren't any rules about how strange they can be. Sometimes, people need to resort to drastic measures.