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[[underlined]]Tariff Commission Building[[/underlined]]

Mr. Ripley reported that the Institution has long expressed concern about the preservation and restoration of the old General Post Office building, located across F Street from the Fine Arts and Portrait Galleries, and currently occupied by the U.S. International Trade Commission and a branch of the U.S. Postal Service. In a letter dated April 15, 1968, to Lawson B. Knott, Administrator of the General Services Administration, Mr. Ripley included the following building description:

"The Tariff Commission Building is a very important structure, historically and architecturally. Its architect was the great Robert Mills whose other two well-known govern-mental buildings are the Treasury and our Fine Arts and Portrait Galleries Building (old Patent Office). The southern portion was constructed in 1839. The building was tripled in size after the Civil War, with a repetition of the same architectural treatment outside and inside, and finally completed in 1869.

"The site of the Tariff Commission Building is also historically important. On this site stood the early City Post Office, from 1812 onward, and later the Post Office Department and the old Patent Office. Here, after the burning of the Capitol, the Congress of the United States was con-vened in 1814! In 1845 Samuel F.B. Morse on this site opened and operated the first public telegraph office in the United States."
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