Old Post Office

A full-block government building in the French Second Empire manner, faced in gray granite above a base of red Iron Mountain granite, its four monumental fronts articulated by paired Corinthian columns and pilasters beneath a boldly bracketed cornice. Pedimented central pavilions project on each face, and above rises a curved mansard dome of dark slate pierced by oval dormers. At the dome's base a sculptural group by Daniel Chester French — a reclining figure with an eagle — crowns the pediment. Arched and pedimented windows, rusticated piers, and a low iron areaway fence complete the composition.

Designed by Alfred B. Mullett, Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury, the Custom House and Post Office was begun in 1872 and finished in 1884 at a cost exceeding $6 million; quicksand met during excavation forced the builders to drive pine piles to bedrock and pack them with cotton bales beneath concrete slabs. Its first story was cut from red Iron Mountain granite quarried in Missouri, the upper floors from gray Maine granite shipped by sea and river. General William Tecumseh Sherman presided at the dedication on March 15, 1884. For half a century the building held the federal courts of the Eighth Circuit — among their cases the 1909 Standard Oil decision and the 1926 Teapot Dome affair — a post office, and a vault that stored government gold. The courts left in the 1930s, and the building was later threatened with demolition before a federal restoration saved it. A redevelopment by the DESCO and DFC groups, completed in 2006, brought in the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, along with university and state offices.