The Office of the Secretary

“To the President:
Office of the Secretary of the Treasury: Sixteen rooms, one of which to be at least
25 or 30 feet by 20.”

~Levi Woodbury

In 1833, history would repeat itself but with a different twist as the main Treasury building was again burned to the ground, but this time by two brothers trying to destroy certain documents that would have proven fraudulent within the Treasury Department. Almost all of the records of the Secretary of the Treasury were destroyed in the fire. In 1842, nine years after the fire, the newly built headquarters of the Department of the Treasury were completed (for the time being). Evidently, Secretary of the Treasury Levi Woodbury moved into his new office in the West End of the Center wing in 1838, a few years before the building’s completion in 1842. He would be the first Secretary of the Treasury to occupy not only this specific office, but also any Secretary of the Treasury office in the current Treasury building in Washington D.C.

Secretary Woodbury’s office was a suite at the western end of the center wing on the second floor (which would be known as the third floor after 1910) of the newly completed structure. The office rested behind an entrance of Ionic columns surmounted with a pediment. Coincidentally, this second floor office was in nearly exactly the same location as the offices in the previous Treasury buildings where Woodbury’s predecessors had sat during 1800 – 1833. Precise evidence for this phenomenon can be found in an interpretation of various photographs taken by L.E. Walker (the Treasury’s architectural photographer). In a photograph taken to document the progress in the construction process of the 1858 west wing, Walker accidentally captured the western two-thirds of the center wing. The picture reveals a pair of awnings on the third and fourth windows from the West End of the second floor. These were the only awnings on the whole façade of the wing. It has since been decided that awnings in that era shaded only the windows of senior officers and officials, thereby intimating that the rooms with the awnings were room 3217 (the office of Secretary Howell Cobb) and room 3221 (Secretary Cobb’s reception room).

While little is known about the interior design, furnishings, and decorative features that created the first Secretary’s office in Mills’ Treasury, there is some evidence that allows a glimpse into the office’s appearance and function relative to its design. According to an 1841 drawing by Robert Mills the exterior west entrance leading to the Secretary’s office would have been seven steps above a walkway that passed through the "President’s Garden" to the "President’s House" (The White House), thereby enabling conveniently quick communication between the President of the U.S. and the Secretary of the Treasury.

A fireplace mantel designed by German-born sculptor Ferdinand Pettrich (1798-1872) in 1838, is one of nine surviving mantelpieces that likely adorned the fireplace in the original office of the Secretary. The mantels were made of cast iron in three varying decorative schemes and finished in a black paint similar to the protective varnish used for cast iron stoves of the period. Conservators are presently cleaning these rare mantelpieces of many layers of paint and restoring them to their original black finish before they are reinstalled in the East Wing offices, including the first Secretary’s office. Further research will allow members of TBARR to gain a clearer picture of the physical space and the objects from the Secretary’s office during the early era of the Treasury.

Click here to learn more about the Treasury's collection of decorative arts.