archie
Sign in Get the app

General Post Office (General Land Office)

Architect
Robert Mills
Style
Greek Revival
City
Washington, DC
General Post Office (General Land Office)
Photo: Difference engine, CC BY-SA 4.0
See it on the map

The General Post Office was built in 1839 to a design by Robert Mills and enlarged in 1866 by Thomas U. Walter, making it one of Washington's earliest and largest surviving Greek Revival civic buildings. It housed federal offices before serving as the Tariff Commission Building, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971 for its architecture. Since 2002 the building has operated as the Hotel Monaco.

the building

Two U-shaped wings. The building occupies an entire city block bounded by 7th and 8th Streets NW and E and F Streets NW, built in two major stages as two U-shaped marble structures wrapped around a shared central courtyard.

Corinthian bay rhythm. The southern facade is three marble stories on a raised basement and nineteen bays wide, organized with banded piers at the ground floor and Corinthian pilasters above, its central entrance recessed in an enlarged bay and second-floor windows topped with peaked lintels.

F Street entrance. The northern section, added later, carries a more elaborate facade facing F Street that now serves as the main entrance to the Hotel Monaco.

the style

Mills designed the building in the Greek Revival idiom common to major federal buildings of the era, using marble cladding, a strict nineteen-bay rhythm, and Corinthian pilasters to give a government office block the gravity of a classical temple.

More on Greek Revival

the architect

Robert Mills designed the original 1839 building; it was later enlarged in 1866 by Thomas U. Walter, working within Mills's Greek Revival scheme.

significance

Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it is also DC Historic Landmark #L_0264. Its conversion into the Hotel Monaco in 2002 is a notable adaptive reuse of a former federal office building.

nearby

All 315 buildings in Washington, DC