Posted on Monday, June 9th, 2014
Written by Ralph J. Benko
One of the most impressive, if (appropriately) reserved federal buildings in the national capital is that of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters located on Constitution Avenue. For its classical architectural elements — and perhaps for the somewhat hermetic rituals therein performed — it has been called a “temple.”
According to the Fed’s own historical account:
From 1913 to 1937, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System met in the United States Treasury building at 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., and the employees were scattered across three locations throughout the city. With the implementation of the Banking Act of 1935, which centralized control of the Federal Reserve System and placed it in the hands of the Board, it became necessary for the staff to be united in one building.
In the spring of 1935, the Federal Reserve Board made the decision to use a national competition to select an architect for its new building. … Ultimately, Paul Philippe Cret (1876-1945) submitted drawings that impressed the members of the Board of Governors. Born in France, Cret trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyons and Paris before moving to Philadelphia in 1903 to teach architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Soon, Cret started his own practice and won many important commissions for buildings across the country. In Washington, D.C., Cret is also known for his design for the Organization of American States building (1908), the Folger Shakespeare Library (1929), and the Calvert Street Bridge (1935, now known as the Duke Ellington Bridge).
Cret’s training focused on the study of Greek and Roman architecture and encouraged the interrelationship of all the arts. His design for the new Board building managed to combine a number of classic elements by skilled craftsmen who were highly regarded in their fields, while also exercising restraint.
One could perhaps wish, in this era of QEs, Twists, and Tapers, that the Federal Reserve would be inspired in its conduct of monetary affairs by the restraint — or, at least, becoming reserve — showed by Cret.
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