U.S. Custom House

555 Battery Street
Financial District

The first United States Congress established the U.S. Customs Service in 1789 to collect duties and taxes on imported goods, control carriers of imports and exports, and combat smuggling and revenue fraud. Until the federal income tax was created in 1913, customs funded virtually the entire government.

Possessing an extraordinary natural harbor and one of the country’s finest ports, San Francisco rapidly expanded during the nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century, construction of the Panama Canal, which would dramatically shorten trade routes between the Atlantic and Pacific, had begun. City officials likely anticipated increased commerce and determined that a larger custom house was needed.

In 1905, Eames & Young, a St. Louis architectural firm, won a national design competition for a new custom house. The firm was chosen under the auspices of the Tarsney Act, which allowed the Treasury Department to hire private architects rather than use only government designers. William S. Eames and Thomas Crane Young were the principals of the prominent firm. They designed the building in the Beaux Arts Classicism style, which was popular as part of the City Beautiful movement that sought to create more appealing urban centers.

An earlier, more modest custom house, located on Battery Street between Jackson and Washington Streets, was demolished to make way for the present building. Ground was broken for the new custom house on January 28, 1906. The 1906 Fire and Earthquake occurred on April 18th, as a result, construction of the custom house was not completed until 1911.

The U.S. Custom House was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. After the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, seismic and other upgrades were made from 1993 to 1997. While the building continues to serve many of its original purposes, the U.S. Customs Service is now the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Eames and Young consisted of  Thomas Crane Young, FAIA (1858-1934) and William Sylvester Eames, FAIA (1857-1915). Young was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and went to St. Louis to attend Washington University, then spent two years at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1880, and briefly worked for the Boston firm of Van Brunt & Howe. Eames had gone to St. Louis as a child, attended the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, and served as Deputy Commissioner of Public Buildings for the city.

They formed a partnership in 1885. Their first works were elaborate mansions for Vandeventer Place and other private places in St. Louis, which led to an important series of landmark downtown warehouses, later collectively known as Cupples Station. Eames was elected President of the American Institute of Architects in 1904-1905. Through the 1900s and 1910s the firm designed several St. Louis skyscrapers and built a reputation for offices, schools, and institutional buildings constructed nationwide.

Eames died in 1915. Young’s last building was the 1926 immense St. Louis Masonic Temple, he stopped practicing in 1927.

Eames was the uncle of American designer Charles Eames.

 

The smaller granite sculptures was sculpted in-situ by unknown artists.

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You can read an excellent complete article with amazing photographs on the U.S. Customs house here.

 

Original Customs House, Photograph courtesy of San Francisco Public Library