National Register Listing

Bristol Customshouse and Post Office

a.k.a. YMCA

420--448 Hope St., Bristol, RI

The Bristol Customs House and Post Office of 1858 stand as an example of the rediscovery of the Italian palazzo mode of architecture after the long proliferation of the Greek Revival. Also, though small, it quite exemplifies the period in which dozens of such buildings were erected by the Department of the Treasury--virtually all of them designed by Ammi B. Young. Young earlier was a master of the Greek Revival style, and through his career, one can view the popularization of subsequent styles and the emergence of new materials and methods of construction. Talbot F. Hamlin writes in his Greek Revival Architecture in America:

Engaged as architect for the Treasury Department in 1852 ... [he] continued as Supervising Architect until 1860. 0f practically all of these post offices and customs houses) during this period, Ammi. B. Young was the architect. [They show] the rapid development ... toward more Italianate and baroque forms.

The Greek Revival style, however, continued to serve as a discipline for design in other styles during Young's period, and one can see in the Bristol building elements of the Greek Revival's clarity of elevation and simplicity of ornament: the massive, deliberate façade; the heavy cornice; the severe, almost anti-picturesque, feeling the building achieves. The building contains obvious and interesting differences from the Customs House in Providence, designed by Young in the previous year in a more Tuscan style. The Providence building has a more consciously classical, academic theme, but shares with the Bristol edifice a severely plain wall treatment with sharply-cut openings, a pronounced verticality, and numerous structural innovations.

The Bristol work serves as an excellent example of a style that is little represented in a town that has fine buildings of other styles and periods and is a reminder of what was once one of the most active seaports in the northeast. Fortunately, the building has found a new use and will be of continued value to the town practically as well as historically. It is hoped (and expected) that the planned interior renovations will be handled with due regard to the existing architecture.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1972.