An Italian Renaissance style based on Brunelleschi’s Foundling Hospital was widely used for post offices under Wetmore’s tenure as Acting Supervising Architect. An arcaded loggia is bracketed between solid end bays and topped with a shallow hipped roof in red clay tile. Instead of round columns to carry the arches as in the Brunelleschi model, here there are compound piers, composed of a rectangular core with engaged corner roll moldings, and capitals with spread-winged eagle and Ionic corner scrolls. This was one of the last such designs, as pared-down modernism and Colonial Revival became standard through the later 1930s under Louis A. Simon’s term as Supervising Architect.
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U.S. Post Office
1931, James A. Wetmore, Acting Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury. 600 E. Goliad Ave.
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