Robert Mills: Architect of the New London Custom House
John M. Bryan
ROBERT MILLS - AMERICA'S FIRST ARCHITECT
New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 2001
The jacket illustration depicts Robert Mills's original conception of the "National Monument to George Washington", ultimately built as a simple Egyptian obelisk. Mills grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, was attracted early on to the design of buildings and eventually went to Washington where he found employment with James Hoban, then overseeing the design and construction of the presidential "palace" now known as the White House. Mills was mentored from time to time by none other than Thomas Jefferson, whose library he had access to, and became a strong advocate for the classical style in the buildings of the fast growing capital city. One of his official assignments was to design custom houses for four New England ports: New London and Middletown, Connecticut, and New Bedford and Newburyport, Massachusetts.
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Rhodri Windsor Liscombe
ALTOGETHER AMERICAN
Robert Mills - Architect and Engineer, 1781-1855
New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994
Another biography of Mills was featured one summer in connection with a controversy over historic preservation brewing just two doors away from the Custom House, the home of the Maritime Society's museum and library. In a city which has suffered the loss of too many valuable old buildings the campaign by New London Landmarks, Inc., to save two Bank Street structures had been gaining momentum after the threat of demolition was publicized. Preservation will boost the social and economic revival of downtown New London and spur ongoing regeneration of the historic streetscape in which Robert Mills’s temple of trade and commerce so proudly stands.
Postscript 2021: The threatened buildings are still standing and up for sale. It is hoped that when economic conditions improve the revitalization of Bank Street will resume and these buildings will find a preservation-minded owner.
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Our online exhibition on Robert Mills may be viewed by clicking on Browse Exhibits (above) and scrolling to the end.
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Lois Craig and the Staff of the Federal Architecture Project
THE FEDERAL PRESENCE
Architecture, Design and National Policy
Cambridge, MIT Press, 1984
Robert Mills is well represented in this magisterial survey of government architecture from the colonial period to 1977. From the early 1830s until 1851, Mills "served more or less officially in the position he described as 'architect of the public buildings." In 1836, the year after the Custom House was finished, President Andrew Jackson asked Mills to design a new Treasury building, famously telling him in a fit of pique to "build it here" at a location adjacent to the White House, forever interrupting the long view along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol as envisioned by Pierre L'Enfant in his plan for the new capital city.
While Mills is best known as the architect of the Washington Monument, he also designed the U.S. Patent Office (now the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American Art), the Treasury and the first headquarters for the post office department.
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Charles J. Robertson
TEMPLE OF INVENTION - HISTORY OF A NATIONAL LANDMARK
New York, Scala Arts, 2006
This wonderful photo from the back of the dustjacket shows Mills's Greek Revival U.S. Patent Office rising above the humble Washington buildings around it at 7th and G Streets N.W. Built in 1836-1867 (and greatly enlarged during those years) by Mills, Thomas U. Walter (architect of the Capitol dome) and others, it is now the home of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. It was spared demolition in the 1950s even though the historic preservation movement had not yet gained the critical mass required to prevent the shocking destruction of New York City's Pennsylvania Station in 1963. Temple of Invention was published on the occasion of the re-opening of the building after major renovation for the Smithsonian galleries.
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