Alfred B. Mullett

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Alfred Bult Mullett (1834—1890) was a British-born American architect. His family emigrated to Glendale, Ohio near Cincinnati when Alfred was 11. He began working a few years later in the Cincinnati architectural office of Isaiah Rogers.

Mullett later relocated to Washington, DC and in 1863 began working under Rogers in the Office of the Supervising Architect. When Rogers resigned in 1865, Mullett succeeded him as Supervising Architect for the United States federal government from 1866 to 1874. Some of his best known designs were the State, War, and Navy Building and the San Francisco and Carson City Mints. In private practice, he also designed The Sun Building (1887) for the publisher of the Baltimore Sun newspaper; it is one of the oldest multistory steel-frame buildings in Washington, DC. Others include the Old Post Office (1884) in St. Louis, Missouri and the Pioneer Courthouse (1875) in Portland, Oregon. Mullett also designed the US Assay Office in Boise, Idaho. (Of these, at least the Pioneer Courthouse and the Assay Office both still stand and both are National Historic Landmarks).

Dogged by five separate corruption investigations and ill health, Mullett killed himself.

[edit] Books

Mullett, A. B. Diaries & C Annotated Documents, Research and Reminiscence Regarding a Federal Architect Engineer Architect (1834-1890). Mullett Smith Printers, 1985.
Smith, D. Mullett. A. B. Mullett: His Relevance in American Architecture and Historic Preservation. Mullett Smith Printers, 1990.
Craig, Lois A., and the staff of the Federal Architecture Project, The Federal Presence: Architecture, Politics and National Design, 1972