Treasury Cash Room
The Cash Room opened
in June 1869 in the United States Treasury
Department for the transaction of the
government's financial business. The need for
a bank in the arose
indirectly from a reform of the country's
monetary system in 1846 and from subsequent
developments during the Civil War.
The architect of the Cash Room, ,
designed it as a roofed version of an Italian
palazzo, a traditional bank design throughout
Europe.
Mullett had admired the rich marble work
he saw in European palaces and cathedrals
during an architectural tour of the continent
in 1865, and these impressions may have also
influenced his design of the Cash Room.
Prior to it completion as a bank, the Cash
Room was chosen as the site for the
for President Ulysses S. Grant on March
4, 1869. Two thousand invitations were
sold, each admitting one gentleman and two
ladies. Unfortunately, lack of planning to
control the crowd of six thousand turned the
event into a disaster.
According to a report the next
day in the Evening Star there was a "wild
hunt for overcoats," as hats and overcoats
had been jumbled together in the fourth-floor
cloakroom without regard for a number system.
Gentlemen had to wait in the corridors for
hours to retrieve their garments. Others were
forced to leave without wraps, only to return
the next day to try again.
When the Cash Room opened officially in
June it functioned principally as a "banker's
bank," supplying area commercial banks with
coins and currency f rom Treasury vaults and
handling the government accounts of the
District of Columbia. Services were also
offered to the public, including cashing of
government checks, exchanging new money for
old, redeeming and
, and selling U.S. .
Up until the early 1900s, gold, silver,
and paper currency were delivered to the
Treasury Building in horse-drawn vans and
unloaded at the sidewalk entrance on
Fifteenth Street, then hauled through
corridors on hand-carts and deposited on a
cargo lift, the first elevator in the
building, which carried them to the Cash Room
vaults. Several million dollars might be
contained in the vaults at any given time;
bags of notes, coins, and bullion were
stacked floor to ceiling.
Changes made to modernize and meet the
demands posed by the great numbers of patrons
were not always attractive, and they
contributed to a general deterioration in the
appearance of the room that occurred over
years of wear and tear. By the 1970s, the
costs of operating the Cash Room and
maintaining its staff and security could no
longer be justified. The Cash Room closed on
June
30, 1976.
In 1985 a renewed
appreciation of the Cash Room's historic
significance enabled the Treasury Department
to begin restoration. With a combination of
federal support and private funds raised by
the Committee for the Preservation of the
Treasury Building, the room was slowly
returned to its former splendor. The bronze
gaslight chandeliers, which had apparently
been scrapped around 1890 at the time
electricity was introduced into the building
were replicated from numerous historic
photographs, including photographs taken by
the Matthew Brady Studio around 1870.
Original wooden doors, transoms, and
radiator-grill covers were replicated to
replace stylistically inappropriate modern
substitutes. Due to excessive wear, the
remains of the original floor could not be
restored, so a new floor was laid in the
original pattern and materials, red Lisbon
and Italian Carrara marble.
We
appreciate the help of the Office of the
Curator is providing and maintaining this
information.
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