Mills' legacy in Washington

“Twenty years if my life have been spent in the Government service here, and my works there will prove my faithfulness to the interests of the Government.”

~ Robert Mills, letter to friend, 1853

Returning to Washington in 1830 with a renewed introduction by James Monroe, Mills began the final chapter of his career. Shortly after President Andrew Jackson appointed him as the “Draftsman of Public surveys,” fire consumed the Treasury on March 31, 1833, leaving only Mills’ current Treasury project and an earlier section designed by Latrobe and Mills in 1805 standing free of structural damage. In the aftermath of Treasury’s destruction, Mills hoped to assume the role of redesigning a new Treasury, even producing a preliminary design but he would have to wait three years before the project became his.

In 1836 Andrew Jackson decided to spend the government surplus on a new fireproof replacement to the burned Treasury. Mills pounced on the opportunity to design the new Treasury, steadfastly promoting his experience in fireproof construction siting the success of his Charleston County Records Office among many other projects using the fire-resistant method. His perseverance paid off with Jackson’s reward for the project.

The commission yielded immediate prosperity for Mills as Jackson named his fellow South Carolinian Architect of Public Buildings for the government. The impact of the Treasury assignment allowed Mills to quickly gain two additional commissions of significance: the Patent Office building design, followed by the project for the new Post Office building three years later. In a few short years, Mills was embroiled in the three most important projects in Washington at the time.

The Treasury project did not progress without delays, however, as midway through construction, Mills’ design became entangled in criticism. Congress sparked controversy by questioning Mills’ engineering practices as well as the overall design of the building and even proposed to demolish the halfway-constructed Treasury and replace Mills as architect. A Congressional vote to continue construction after two months of delay cleared Mills of the some of the accusations but the stigma of the inquisition cast a shroud over Mills’ career which never recovered with the energy that typified his previous years in Washington. Mills’ prosperity tapered off following these projects, with the exception of his most recognizable project, Washington National Monument, a much-modified commission that Mills won in a national competition. The plain, baseless obelisk that stands today is a simplified version of Mills’ original vision, but nonetheless rises as one of the most recognizable monuments in America.
While in Washington, Mills exercised his gift of problem-solving and technical design with acoustical, lighting, and heating and cooling designs for the Capitol as well as authoring several books on topics ranging from progressive social issues to plans for large urban planning projects. Mills’ legacy in Washington is one of a stark but powerful classical simplicity on a large scale that engaged a new order of monumental federal buildings, setting the precedent for governmental architecture onward.

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