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Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House

Architects
Cass Gilbert Daniel Chester French
Year
1907
Style
Beaux-Arts
City
Manhattan, NY
Collection
cass gilbert’s downtown
Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House
Photo: ajay_suresh, Public domain
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The Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House at 1 Bowling Green was built from 1902 to 1907 by the federal government as the headquarters for the Port of New York's duty collection operations, and designed by Cass Gilbert in the Beaux-Arts style. It is a seven-story steel-framed structure with a stone facade covered in nautical motifs and sculptural work by twelve artists, including Daniel Chester French. Today the building holds the George Gustav Heye Center museum, a federal bankruptcy court, and National Archives offices.

the building

Sculptural facade. The exterior is decorated with nautical motifs and sculptures contributed by twelve different artists, a scale of collaborative ornament suited to a building meant to project the authority of federal commerce.

Colonnaded stories. The second through fourth stories are wrapped in colonnades, giving the customs building the layered, columned reading typical of Beaux-Arts civic architecture.

the style

Cass Gilbert designed the Custom House in the Beaux-Arts style, the grand classical idiom favored for major American civic buildings of the era, using an elaborate stone facade and sculptural program to give the government's duty-collection headquarters suitable monumentality.

More on Beaux-Arts

the architect

Cass Gilbert designed the Custom House with sculptural contributions overseen alongside Daniel Chester French, a major American sculptor; Gilbert went on to design other landmark New York towers in the following years.

significance

The Custom House is a National Historic Landmark, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the New York State Register of Historic Places, and designated a New York City Landmark for both its facade and part of its interior. It is also a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District.

nearby

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