This last Tuesday evening, the U.S. General Services Administration held a 100th birthday bash for the building that was once the United States Custom House and is now a federal office building called the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House as well as home to the George Gustav Heye Center of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. One of Manhattan’s most sumptuous buildings, the Custom House opened in 1907.

Among federal government buildings, only the Capitol in Washington held a greater importance at the time. Before the introduction of the federal income tax in 1913, the bulk of the national government’s revenue came from customs duties collected at the country’s international seaports. As much as 75% of government revenue came from such duties, and the New York Custom House collected as much as half the government’s funds. Three Manhattan buildings still standing once served as the Custom House. The building known as Federal Hall National Memorial at Wall and Nassau streets opened as the Custom House in 1842, while the onetime Merchants’ Exchange at 55 Wall St., now a Cipriani catering hall, became the Custom House in the 1860s.

Both those buildings were in their day grand edifices. But by the turn of the century both New York and the nation had grown in global stature, and the new Custom House, facing the south side of Bowling Green, reflected America’s new imperial majesty. The architect, Cass Gilbert, had worked in New York for McKim, Mead & White but had practiced for several years in St. Paul, Minn., when he won a competition for the new building’s design. This great architect had already designed the Minnesota Capitol, and would go on to design the Woolworth Building, the U.S. Supreme Court Building, and more.

There’s never been a better time to visit the Custom House. To commemorate the centennial, the General Services Administration hired Osman Sylvania to develop a nighttime illumination scheme for the building’s exterior. The new lighting, inaugurated Tuesday night, emphasizes the building’s sculpture, as well it should. The Custom House represents that moment in our building history when architecture, sculpture, and painting formed an indissoluble unity. In front of the building stand four great marble sculptured pieces, “The Four Continents,” by Daniel Chester French. Lighted from behind, they now glow gloriously in the night. From left to right they represent Asia, America, Europe, and Africa. A central seated female figure personifies each continent, amid a whirl of symbolic imagery. Asia is a closed-eyed woman in a meditative trance, with a Buddha figure on her lap. Africa is asleep — evoking the “sleeping continent,” as Africa was known at the beginning of the century. Europe is regal and self-possessed — perhaps too regal and self-possessed. America leans forward from her chair, the strong, athletic woman who symbolized this country to the world in 1900.

The new lighting also picks out the attic sculptured works, representing great trading civilizations through history. From left to right we see Greece, Rome, Phoenicia, Genoa, Venice, Spain, Holland, Portugal, Denmark, Belgium, France, and England. Belgium? We know her by the name inscribed on the shield at her side. But in 1907, that shield said “Kiel,” not “Belgium.” Sculptor Albert Jaegers’s statue symbolized Germany (whose famous seaport was Kiel). In 1917, when America entered World War I, the Customs Service felt it patriotic to change the name on the shield.

The building’s interior, entered via a grand staircase, is even more exciting than its exterior. The rotunda is a vast oval covered by a high Guastavino vault that is plastered over. In the 1930s, the WPA sponsored Reginald Marsh’s outstanding fresco cycle, “An Ocean Liner Entering New York Harbor,” as well as his portraits of great world explorers. In a city notably lacking in fine murals, these alone are reason to visit the Custom House. The old Collector’s Office, on the west side of the entrance lobby, is the building’s most beautiful room, bisected by an exquisite, carved wooden screen made by Tiffany Studios and adorned with paintings, of historic seaports, by the great Elmer Ellsworth Garnsey.

Nighttime lighting is an excellent way for us to focus attention on our important buildings. And the Custom House, joining the historic harbor to Broadway, the city’s via triumphalis, is the most perfectly sited grand building in New York.

fmorrone@nysun.com