Customs House Nashville

Treasury architect William Appleton Potter designed the structure in a blend of Victorian Gothic and Richardsonian Romanesque styles, anchored by a deeply inset triple-arch entrance. First approved in 1856, the project faced more than two decades of delays through the Civil War before President Rutherford B. Hayes laid the cornerstone in 1877, an act that symbolized the end of Southern Reconstruction. Originally built to hold federal courts, customs, and a post office, the property was declared surplus in the 1990s; today, a private firm leases it from the city to rent renovated space to office tenants.