CUSTOM
HOUSE STATUES AND NEW YORK PRODUCE EXCHANGE, July 23, 1936
Bowling Green, Foot of Broadway
Abbott File 152
On the same day she photographed the DePeyster Statue at Bowling Green, Abbott photographed the sculpture in front of the nearby U.S. Custom House, architect Cass Gilbert's Beaux-Arts masterpiece (1907). The four allegorical groups, designed by Daniel Chester French, represented Asia, America, Europe, and Africa, denoting the Custom House's function as the nation's leading point of entry for the world's goods. Rather than retain the stylistic and iconographic unity of facade and sculptural ensemble, Abbott stood on the Custom House steps and juxtaposed two of the sculptures--America and Asia--with George B. Post's Victorian Produce Exchange (1884) beyond.
Needing more space, the Exchange demolished its old building and replaced it in 1959 with a routine office tower designed by Emery Roth & Sons. Although the U.S. Customs Service moved to the World Trade Center in 1971, Gilbert's granite extravaganza achieved landmark status and reopened in 1992 as the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian.