Since 1845, the city's main post office was located in the Middle Dutch Church on Nassau Street, a dark 18th-century building that by the 1860s was stretched past its capacity. Congress eventually approved funds for a new central post office,[2] and a competition was held for design proposals. Fifty-two designs were submitted, but none were judged acceptable. Five firms—Richard Morris Hunt, Renwick and Sands, Napoleon LeBrun, Schulze and Schoen, and John Perret—were selected to collaborate on a single design.
Together, the firms produced a Second Empire concept that borrowed from Renwick's Corcoran Gallery of Art and the New York State Capitol. Feeling the proposed design was too expensive, Mullett took over the project, which nonetheless cost $8.5 million.[3] This coup may have influenced opinions on his final product.[4] The iron framing was clad with a pale granite quarried in Dix Island, Knox County, Maine.[5]
Regarding the building's lack of popularity, The New York Times wrote in 1912:
The Mullett Post Office has always been an architectural eyesore, and has, from the first, been unsatisfactory to the Postal Service and the Federal Courts beneath its roof.[6]
The City Hall Post Office and Courthouse, ca. 1906
Built in five stories (the fifth in its mansard roof) with a basement for sorting mail and a subbasement for machinery, the building housed the main New York Post Office, as well as courtrooms and federal offices on its third and fourth floors. It had pneumatic tubes for efficient mail transfer to other post offices. Unfortunately, the cramped trapezoidal site required the post office's loading docks to be on the side facing City Hall and the park.[1] The building's French Second Empire style and architectural vocabulary were similar to its surviving siblings, the Old Post Office in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Old Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C.[7]
On May 1, 1877, during the building's construction, three workers were killed when a concrete slab collapsed, prompting an investigation by the city and a public rebuttal of accusations of misconduct from Mullett.[8]
The building's former site is directly across Broadway from the Woolworth Building. With the passage of time and changing tastes, architectural criticism now regards the City Hall Post Office as one of Mullett's best works, providing a now-missing defining element at the bottom of City Hall Park.[1]
New York City Hall is the seat of New York City government, located at the center of City Hall Park in the Civic Center area of Lower Manhattan, between Broadway, Park Row, and Chambers Street. Constructed from 1803 to 1812, the building is the oldest city hall in the United States that still houses its original governmental functions. The building houses the office of the Mayor of New York City and the chambers of the New York City Council. While the Mayor's Office is in the building, the staff of thirteen municipal agencies under mayoral control are located in the nearby Manhattan Municipal Building, one of the largest government buildings in the world, with many others housed in various buildings in the immediate vicinity.
George Browne Post, professionally known as George B. Post, was an American architect trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition. Active from 1869 almost until his death, he was recognized as a master of several prominent contemporary American architectural genres, and instrumental in the birth of the skyscraper.
James Renwick Jr. was an American architect in the 19th century, noted especially for designing churches and museums. The Encyclopedia of American Architecture calls him "one of the most successful American architects of his time".
The Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB), formerly known as the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB), and originally known as the State, War, and Navy Building, is a United States government building that is now part of the White House compound in the U.S. capital of Washington, D.C. Maintained by the General Services Administration, the building currently houses the Executive Office of the President, including the Office of the Vice President of the United States. Opened in 1888, the building was renamed in 1999 in honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th U.S. president and a five-star U.S. Army general who was Allied forces commander during World War II.
The Office of the Supervising Architect was an agency of the United States Treasury Department that designed federal government buildings from 1852 to 1939.
Alfred Bult Mullett was a British-American architect who served from 1866 to 1874 as Supervising Architect, head of the agency of the United States Treasury Department that designed federal government buildings. His work followed trends in Victorian style, evolving from the Greek Revival to Second Empire to Richardsonian Romanesque.
Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon, founded as Shreve & Lamb, was an architectural firm best known for designing the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world at the time of its completion in 1931. The firm was prominent in the proliferation of Art Deco architecture in New York City.
The Civic Center is an area and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, Manhattan, New York City, that encompasses New York City Hall, One Police Plaza, the courthouses in Foley Square, the Metropolitan Correctional Center, and the surrounding area. The district is bound on the west by Tribeca at Broadway, on the north by Chinatown at Worth Street or Bayard Street, on the east by the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge at South Street, and on the south by the Financial District at Ann Street.
City Hall Park is a public park surrounding New York City Hall in the Civic Center of Manhattan. It was the town commons of the nascent city of New York.
Chambers Street is a two-way street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs from River Terrace, Battery Park City in the west, past PS 234, The Borough of Manhattan Community College, and Stuyvesant High School, to the Manhattan Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street in the east. Between Broadway and Centre Street, Chambers Street forms the northern boundary of the grounds surrounding New York City Hall and the Tweed Courthouse. Opposite the Tweed Courthouse sits the Surrogate's Courthouse for Manhattan. 280 Broadway the Marble Palace, lies west of there, on the north side of Chambers.
The U.S. Custom House and Post Office is a court house at 815 Olive Street in downtown St. Louis.
The Appleton Building occupied the front of a small block which was bounded by Broadway, Leonard Street, and Catharine Alley in New York City. It stood on the site of what is now 346 Broadway, was four stories tall, and was constructed entirely of brown stone. It was a familiar landmark in a quickly changing Broadway of the mid-19th century. It was one of Broadway's oldest buildings.
The United States Custom House is a historic custom house at 312 Fore Street in downtown Portland, Maine. It was built from 1867–1872 to house offices of the United States Customs Service, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
The United States Post Office and Sub-Treasury Building was a public building on Post Office Square in Boston, Massachusetts. Built in the late nineteenth century, it was the first post office building in the city to be owned by the United States federal government. The John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse now stands on its former site.
The Art Deco style, which originated in France just before World War I, had an important impact on architecture and design in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. The most notable examples are the skyscrapers of New York City, including the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and Rockefeller Center. It combined modern aesthetics, fine craftsmanship, and expensive materials, and became the symbol of luxury and modernity. While rarely used in residences, it was frequently used for office buildings, government buildings, train stations, movie theaters, diners and department stores. It also was frequently used in furniture, and in the design of automobiles, ocean liners, and everyday objects such as toasters and radio sets.
Second Empire architecure in the United States and Canada is an architectural style that was popular in both nations in the late 19th century between 1865 and 1900. Second Empire architecture was influenced by the redevelopment of Paris under Napoleon III's Second French Empire, and was influenced partly by the architectural styles of the French Renaissance.
The Ted Weiss Federal Building, also known as the Foley Square Federal Building, is a 34-story United States Federal Building at 290 Broadway in the Civic Center neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1994, the building was developed by Linpro New York Realty and designed by Hellmuth Obata & Kassabaum (HOK), with Raquel Ramati Associates as the design consultant and Tishman Construction as the general contractor. The building is named for Ted Weiss (1927–1992), a U.S. representative from New York.
The Racine County Courthouse is the seat of justice and county courthouse of Racine County, Wisconsin. The building is located at 730 Wisconsin Avenue, near downtown in the county's seat of Racine, Wisconsin. Built in 1930 and 1931 by the Chicago firm Holabird & Root, the Art Deco-styled building stands eleven stories tall and dominates the city's skyline. In addition to the county's judicial system, the building also houses the County Executive, whose office is on the tenth floor, and most of the offices for the county government. The courthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 28, 1980.
Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, has a unique and diverse architectural history. Encompassing government, monumental, commercial, and residential buildings, D.C. is home to some of the country's most famous and popular structures designed by some of the leading architects of their time. The popularity of the city's buildings is reflected in the findings of a 2007 poll of Americans by the American Institute of Architects, which found that six of the top 10 most popular U.S. structures were located in Washington, D.C. Overall, the poll found, 17 of the top 150 most popular structures were located in the capital.
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