Location: 845 5th Ave, Huntington, WV 25701
The United States Post Office and Courthouse is located near the center of downtown Huntington, West Virginia, at the southwest corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. This three-story building, also known as the Sidney L. Christie Federal Building, was originally constructed from 1905-1910 with additions completed in 1919 and 1937 that approximately quadrupled its original size. The building still houses federal courtrooms and offices, but is no longer used as a postal facility. The building was renamed in 1974 for Judge Sidney L. Christie, a prominent regional figure in the 1920s and 30s who served as district judge in Huntington from 1964 until his death in 1973. A second federal building, known as the Huntington Federal Building, is located next door to the west and was constructed in 1960 with an extensive facade renovation completed approximately 2014. The two buildings are connected at the basement level and share aspects of their mechanical systems.
The Christie Federal Building is a representative example of the high quality of civic architecture which resulted from the Tarsney Act of 1893, a law that allowed the architects of federal buildings to be chosen by holding competitions and selecting among the entries submitted by private architectural firms. While smaller and less ornate than some of the federal buildings built contemporary with it, the Huntington building has the monumentality, urbanity, and solidity associated with public architecture of the early twentieth-century academic tradition. It also exemplifies carefully integrated additions which significantly increased the size of the original building while maintaining its style, materials, and decorative features.
The building generally retains a high level of integrity. Recent alterations have been carefully integrated into the historic fabric to minimize intrusion to the extent possible and some recent small contextual changes such as adding floor coverings in the first floor corridors consistent with the historic floor materials elsewhere have made for a more cohesive whole while remaining compatible with the building’s historic character.
The city of Huntington is located at the western tip of the state of West Virginia on the border with Ohio and only a few miles east of the border with Kentucky. The city is named for C.P. Huntington, who was the president of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. In 1869, he traveled to the area to select a site for the new terminus of his railroad. He assembled property in the area on the bank of the Ohio River and laid out the town in 1871. He then transferred the land to a new company, the Central Land Company of West Virginia. This company had financial difficulties and by 1890 was in receivership. Nevertheless, the nascent city experienced rapid growth. With its combination of railroad and river access, it became an important railroad center and a distribution point for consumer goods. Manufacturing interests prospered due to cheap and efficient transportation and the availability of inexpensive energy.
The building is an important part of a cluster of government and civic architecture in downtown Huntington. Near it and also fronting on Fifth Avenue are three public buildings erected between 1899 and 1902. They are the Cabell County Courthouse (a Renaissance Revival style building), the Huntington City Hall (Neo-Classical Revival style), and the former Carnegie Public Library (now Huntington Junior College, in the Beaux-Arts style). This assemblage of monumental public architecture produces an immediate impression of the wealth and rapid growth of Huntington at the turn of the 20th century.
The Tarsney Act, mentioned above, was signed February 20, 1893, and allowed the Secretary of the Treasury to obtain designs for federal buildings by holding design competitions and selecting from among the entries submitted by private architectural firms. It was a permissive rather than a compulsive act and at first was not applied. During the administrations of Presidents McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Taft, it was used for buildings with large appropriations. The act was repealed on August 24, 1912. The Tarsney Act was an important piece of legislation in the history of American architecture since “by this law the federal government gave architecture official representation as an art essential to the community.” It resulted in government buildings designed by leading architects in the most up-to-date styles of the day.
At the time they entered the competition for the Huntington federal building, J. Harleston Parker and Douglas H. Thomas, Jr., had only been practicing architecture together for three years, yet they were already showing promise of becoming a prominent firm. They maintained offices in both Boston, Parker’s hometown, and Baltimore, Thomas’s hometown. Parker, an 1893 graduate of Harvard, studied architecture at MIT for a year. Following a year in the office of Winslow & Wetherall, a Boston architectural firm, he spent four years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Thomas followed his 1893 graduation from Johns Hopkins with two years of architectural study at MIT. Next he spent a year studying in Paris.
Several of the designs of Parker & Thomas prior to 1903 were published in “American Architect and Building News”, an important professional journal of the day. In 1907, Arthur W. Rice joined the firm and it was renamed Parker, Thomas and Rice. Thomas was killed in an automobile accident in 1915. When Parker died in 1930, “Architectural Forum” cited him as “head of one of the foremost firms of architects in the East.”
Buildings designed by Parker & Thomas include the Hotel Belvedere and the Savings Bank of Baltimore in Baltimore; Commonwealth Trust Building, Harvard Club Building, R.H. Sterns Department Store, and the John Hancock Building (c. 1921) in Boston; and the US Post Office and Courthouse in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Like many architects of the day, the firm was very eclectic in the styles it used, varying the historic precedents it employed depending on building type and client. In 1913 an architectural critic praised the firm for “persistent good taste.”
Eight firms were invited to submit plans for the Post Office and Courthouse at Huntington: Arthur B. Heaton and Paul J. Pelz, both of Washington, DC; Parker and Thomas and Baldwin and Pennington, both of Baltimore; Noland and Baskerville of Richmond, VA; Field and Medary of Philadelphia; J. Hannaford and Sons of Cincinnati; and Overall and Wade of Huntington. The latter declined to enter but J. B. Stewart of Huntington and J.R. Geiskie of nearby Ceredo both accepted invitations to submit in their place. Records of the other designs are not known to exist.
Supervising Architect of the Treasury Henry Knox Taylor had prefaced the 1901 Report of the Supervising Architect by announcing that “the Department, after mature consideration of the subject, finally adopted the classic style of architecture for all buildings, as far as it was practicable to do so, as it is believed that this style is best suited for Government buildings.” Based on this stated position, it is not a surprise that a Classically-based design such as the one submitted by Parker & Thomas was chosen for the Huntington federal building.
Facts
- Architect: Parker & Thomas
- Construction Dates: 1905-1910
- GSA Building Number: WV0016FP
- Landmark Status: Listed in the National Register of Historic Places
U.S. General Services Administration