National Museum of the American Indian – New York (New York City, New York)

 building, museum, place with historical importance, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, movie / film / TV location, historic landmark, 1907_construction, Beaux-Arts (architecture), New Deal Depression Relief Project [1933-1945]

The Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House (originally U.S. Custom House) was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Cass Gilbert and built in 1902–1907 by the federal government to house the duty collection operations for the port of New York. It is located near the southern tip of Manhattan, next to Battery Park, at 1 Bowling Green. The building is now the home of the New York branch of the National Museum of the American Indian as well as the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

The 7-story building occupies the entire trapezoidal block south of Bowling Green. Each facade is divided into bays on the classical model - seven wide bays on the main, north, and 13 narrower bays of the east, west and south. The main facade wall of ashlar masonry is divided by massive, semi-engaged 3-story tall columns with Corinthian capitals. The central bay of that facade is occupied by the grand entrance, approached by a giant set of stone steps, closed by massive bronze gates, leading into a barrel-vaulted porch. The sets of three bays to either side are framed by paired columns, with individual bays separated by single columns. The columns stand on a full-story rusticated base, and support an entablature with dentils and modillions - occupying the full 5th floor - and a sixth, attic story topped with balustrades, crowned in turn by a slate-covered mansard roof with segmental-arched dormer windows and copper cresting.

The west, south and east facades are only slightly less grand in design - with regularly spaced columns and no grand entrance, but otherwise similarly organized as rusticated base supporting massive columns, entablature, attic story and mansard roof. The building's ornamental program includes sculpture symbolizing international trade: twelve freestanding statues, surmounting the entablature on the north facade, representing the twelve commercial centers of the ancient and modern worlds; a head of Mercury - Roman god of commerce - on the capital of each of the building's 44 columns; a gigantic cartouche at the mansard roof level, centered above the main entrance, bearing the arms of the United States, and four freestanding limestone sculptural groups, by Daniel Chester French, representing Asia, North America, Europe and Africa. The 2nd-floor bays on each facade have triangular pediments with scrolled brackets and carved heads.

The interior public spaces were largely decorated by Elmer E. Garnsey who painted the lobby's murals on vaults made with tiles from the Guastavino Fireproof Tile Co. Reginald Marsh was later contracted to fabricate a series of murals in the rotunda as part of a WPA project. The metalwork was designed by the Winslow Bros. Company.

The building currently houses the National Museum of American Indian, run by the Smithsonian Institute. It was also used as the "Manhattan Museum of Art" in the movie Ghostbusters II.

americanindian.si.edu/visit/newyork
s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/0020.pdf
s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/1022.pdf
hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951000969824v?urlappend=%3Bse...
www.aaa.si.edu/collections/reginald-marsh-papers-9072/s...
archive.org/details/forgingmetropoli00dolk/page/39/mode...
archive.org/details/WinslowBrothersCompany/page/n148/mo...


www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_8s8VECqU4&embeds_referrin...