Treasury Building on Wall Street

North side of Wall Street, with the neoclassic Sub-Treasury building (former Custom House) on the northeast corner of Nassau Street. Illustration published in the New York Illustrated, 1869, by D. Appleton & Co. Original title: Treasury Building, and Wall Street looking West.

In 1883, the statue of George Washington, by the sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward, was unveiled on the Sub-Treasury steps. In 1939, the building was designated the Federal Hall Memorial National Historic Site.

The old Assay Office Building, erected in 1824, is on the right. It was designed and built by Martin E. Thompson (1786–1877), one of the founding members of the National Academy of Design, who also designed the original Merchants' Exchange, completed in 1827.

Here some text from the magazine: «...Moving through the numerous handsome edifices which occupy the greater portion of the block, our attention is first attracted by the building of the United States Treasury and Assay Office, which lifts its lofty and columnar front of white marble at the corner of Nassau and Wall Streets. It was constructed for, and long used as, the custom-house of the port of New York, now removed to more commodious quarters in the neighboring premises, formerly known as the Merchants' Exchange. The building is a handsome and imposing one, and would be a fine specimen of the Doric order of architecture, had it not been disfigured by unseemly accessories that mar the simplicity of the design. It is two hundred feet long, eighty feet wide, and eighty feet high. The main entrance on Wall Street is made by a flight of eighteen marble steps, while on Pine Street, in the rear, the acclivity of the ground brings the entrance almost on a level with the street. The old Federal Hall used to stand on this same site, and the spot is rendered classic from its being that whereon Washington delivered his inaugural address. The Treasury Building forms the nucleus of as fine a group of buildings— on Wall, Nassau, and Broad Streets —as can be found in almost any city of the world. Glancing, first down the declivity of Broad Street — aptly named from the suddenness with which it widens as the continuation of Nassau below Wall — we have a view of a series of elegant buildings on either side of the way, for a block and a half.»