The City Hall Post Office and Courthouse is a no longer existing building which was designed by architect Alfred B. Mullett

Alfred B. Mullett

Alfred Bult Mullett was an American architect who served from 1866 to 1874 as Supervising Architect, head of the agency of the United States Treasury Department that designed federal government buildings...

 for a triangular site in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 along Broadway

Broadway (New York City)

Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to...

 in Lower Manhattan

Lower Manhattan

Lower Manhattan is the southernmost part of the island of Manhattan, the main island and center of business and government of the City of New York...

, across City Hall Park from New York City Hall

New York City Hall

New York City Hall is located at the center of City Hall Park in the Civic Center area of Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA, between Broadway, Park Row, and Chambers Street. The building is the oldest City Hall in the United States that still houses its original governmental functions, such as...

. The Second Empire style building, built between 1869 and 1880, was not well-received. Commonly called "Mullett's Monstrosity", it was demolished in 1939 and the site was used to extend City Hall Park to the south.

History

Since 1845, the city's main post office had been located in the Middle Dutch Church on Nassau Street

Nassau Street (Manhattan)

Nassau Street is a street in the Financial District of the New York City borough of Manhattan, located near Pace University and New York City Hall. It starts at Wall Street and runs north to Frankfort Street at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, lying one block east of Broadway and east of Park Row...

, a dark 17th century building which by the 1860s was stretched past its capacity. Congress eventually agreed and funds were allocated for a new central post office. The initial planning for the project was carried out through a design competition for the site. Fifty-two designs were submitted, but none were judged acceptable. After the failure of the competition, five firms were selected to collaborate on a single design. Richard Morris Hunt

Richard Morris Hunt

Richard Morris Hunt was an American architect of the nineteenth century and a preeminent figure in the history of American architecture...

, Renwick

James Renwick, Jr.

James Renwick, Jr. , was a prominent American architect in the 19th-century. The Encyclopedia of American Architecture calls him "one of the most successful American architects of his time".-Life and work:Renwick was born into a wealthy and well-educated family...

 and Sands, Napoleon LeBrun

Napoleon LeBrun

Napoleon Eugene Charles Henry LeBrun was an American architect. LeBrun is best known as the architect of several notable Philadelphia churches, including St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Twentieth Street ; the Seventh Presbyterian Church , the Scots Presbyterian Church , the Church of St...

, Schulze and Schoen and John Perret together produced a Second Empire concept that borrowed from Renwick's Corcoran Gallery of Art

Corcoran Gallery of Art

The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...

 and the New York State Capitol

New York State Capitol

The New York State Capitol is the capitol building of the U.S. state of New York. Housing the New York State Legislature, it is located in the state capital city Albany, on State Street in Capitol Park. The building, completed in 1899 at a cost of $25 million , was the most expensive government...

. Following complaints by Mullett that the proposed design was too expensive, Mullett took over the project, which nonetheless cost $8.5 million. This coup may have influenced opinions on Mullett's final product. The iron framing was clad with a pale granite quarried in Dix Island, Knox County, Maine.

With respect to the building's lack of popularity, the New York Times wrote in 1912:

The Mullett Post Office has always been an architectural eyesore, and has, from the first, been unsatisfactory to the Postal Service and the Federal Courts beneath its roof.

Built in five storeys (the fifth in its mansard roof

Mansard roof

A mansard or mansard roof is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterized by two slopes on each of its sides with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper that is punctured by dormer windows. The roof creates an additional floor of habitable space, such as a garret...

) with a basement for sorting mail and a sub-basement for machinery, the building housed the main New York post office as well as courtrooms and federal offices on its third and fourth floors. The building was provided with pneumatic tube

Pneumatic tube

Pneumatic tubes are systems in which cylindrical containers are propelled through a network of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum...

s for efficient mail transfer to other post offices. Unfortunately, given the cramped trapezoidal site, the only suitable location for the post office's loading docks was on the side facing City Hall and the park. The building used a French Second Empire style and vocabulary similar to its surviving siblings, the Old Post Office

United States Customhouse and Post Office (St. Louis, Missouri)

The U.S. Custom House and Post Office is a court house in St. Louis, Missouri.It was designed by architects Alfred B. Mullett, William Appleton Potter, and James G. Hill, and was constructed between 1873 and 1884. Located at the intersection of Eighth and Olive Streets, it is one of three surviving...

 in St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

 and the Old Executive Office Building

Old Executive Office Building

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building , formerly known as the Old Executive Office Building and as the State, War, and Navy Building, is an office building in Washington, D.C., just west of the White House...

 in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

An accident during the building's construction on May 1, 1877 killed three workers when a concrete slab collapsed, prompting an investigation by the city and a public rebuttal of accusations of misconduct from Mullett.

The site where the building stood is directly across Broadway from the Woolworth Building

Woolworth Building

The Woolworth Building is one of the oldest skyscrapers in New York City. More than a century after the start of its construction, it remains, at 57 stories, one of the fifty tallest buildings in the United States as well as one of the twenty tallest buildings in New York City...

. With the passage of time and changing tastes, architectural criticism now regards the City Hall Post Office as one of Mullett's best works, providing a now-missing defining element at the bottom of City Hall Park.