History of the Custom House

The Newburyport Custom House is very closely linked with two prominent national figures: Andrew Jackson, War Hero and President and Robert Mills, the Architect of the Washington Monument. 

Under Andrew Jackson’s administration, Robert Mills became the official Architect and Engineer for the government.   Under this auspicious title, he designed the Department of Treasury building and several other federal buildings in Washington, D. C. including the U.S. Patent Office Building and the U.S. Post Office building.  

Mills was an early advocate of buildings designed to include fireproof materials. A fire in Kingstree, South Carolina destroyed much of the upper floor of a courthouse called the Fireproof Building which had been designed by Mills, but the county records on the first floor were protected due to his fireproofing measures. A fire also destroyed much of the Lancaster County, South Carolina Courthouse in August 2008. 

During the Jackson Administration, a scandal erupted over the exorbitant cost overrides from the building of the New York custom house.     At this time, the primary revenue for the federal government came from customs tariffs.      Each custom house was not only important in this measure but often, valuables and cash reserves were kept in the buildings.      Robert Mills was commissioned to design low-cost secure structures that would guarantee security but also prevent loss through fire.      He started with the now famous U.S. Treasury building making it as fireproof as possible.     He then designed custom houses that were fireproof in New England which at the time were bringing in great revenue from international trade.      He built one at the Middleton, CT location, New London & New Bedford, MA and in Newburyport.. 

Under the guidance of Robert Mills, the Custom House was built in 1835 to facilitate growing overseas trade and tax collection of imported goods on the waterfront. The vaulted ceilings and cantilevered staircases are hallmarks of Mills’ work.      Today, the building, done in a Greek Revival style, is one of the finest examples of a fire-proof building complete with bricking on the second-level flooring and marble on the first. 

As Newburyport declined as a commercial seaport, the Custom House, after closing in 1912, took on a number of new roles, from a manufacturing site for heels of women’s shoes, to a storage area for junk.      When the Newburyport Redevelopment Authority first took control of the building in 1968, it was the home of the Checkoway junk yard, which literally had submarine parts sticking out the windows.    Checkoway had bought a surplus Navy submarine and systematically dismantled it (the massive sections caused significant cracks in the marble floor!), selling off its parts.   They stored old material and steel and everything else and the roof had a hole in it the size you could put a truck through.      


 
The Newburyport Maritime Society was founded to restore the building to its nineteenth-century appearance.    The Custom House Maritime Museum is managed by the Newburyport Maritime Society, Inc. The Society was established in 1968 for the purpose of protecting, preserving, and communicating the maritime heritage of the Merrimack Valley and its role in American history.     Since opening as a museum in June of 1975, the Custom House worked to build up its collections, taking donations from local ship-owning families and others with a significant portion of the collection coming from the Historical Society of Old Newbury.    A 99-year lease was officially secured from the city in 2001. 

Today, the Custom House is an extraordinary maritime museum, an educational center, a research facility, and a meeting place for people seeking a unique venue for professional or social gatherings.      It is also one of the official visitor centers for the Essex National Heritage Area.   There are future plans for expansion as the Coast Guard has agreed to send some of their exhibits to Newburyport which was the birthplace of the Coast Guard. 

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