Where is the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department???

Young Architects and Clerks in the Treasury Department’s Office of the Supervising Architect…We especially love the marble statue of Diana the Huntress without her bow at the top of the cabinet…another marble figure lingers on the other side of the rafter…

The erection of Federal buildings was without a nucleus until 1853 when the Construction Branch was established under the Treasury Department. In this former period, not only did Treasury fund projects, but the Department, as it was often referred to, was also responsible for overseeing the construction process.  Having designed the Treasury building in Washington, D.C., Robert Mills (1781-1855), the eminent early American architect, became the first Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department and Ammi B. Young (1798-1874) was his successor.  With the establishment of the Construction Branch came the standardization of architecture for Federal buildings.  For example, upon assuming the architectural leadership of the Treasury Department, Ammi B. Young began developing design templates for various public buildings—including court houses, custom houses, and post offices—some of which he combined into one building.  This set the standard for Federal buildings that were to be produced by his successors, ranging from standardized post office buildings of grandeur to temporary bunkers built for the Department of Defense.  The Construction Branch became the Office of the Supervising Architect in 1865.  This lasted until Executive Order 6166 on June 10, 1933 created the Public Buildings Service established under the Procurement Division of the Treasury Department at which time the Office of the Supervising Architect was reorganized to that specific jurisdiction.  During the Reorganization of 1939, effective as of July 1, 1939, the Public Buildings Administration (PBA) succeeded the architectural bureaucracy from the Treasury Department to the Federal Works Administration.  This was short lived, however, as the PBA was superseded by the reestablishment of the Public Buildings Service under the jurisdiction of a new agency—the General Services Administration (GSA)—on July 1, 1949 by President Harry S. Truman .

Typical Ammi B. Young Custom House and Post Office Combo…

Again, with the establishment of the Construction Branch of the Treasury Department and the cultivation of an official Federal architect—the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department—standard Federal buildings, outside of the Federal city, began to spring up in an effort to address the specific local need for a Federal presence.

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