The Customs House Museum and Cultural Center is Tennessee's second largest general interest museum. It features fine art, history, and children's exhibits. It is located in

Clarksville, TN Clarksville is the county seat of Montgomery County, Tennessee, United States. It is the fifth-largest city in the state behind Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. The city had a population of 166,722 as of the 2020 United States ce ...

's Downtown District on 200 South 2nd Street. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 as Clarksville Federal Building. It was established in 1984 as the Clarksville Montgomery County Museum.

1898 building

The 1898 portion of the Museum was originally designed for use as a Federal post office and

custom house A custom house or customs house was traditionally a building housing the offices for a jurisdictional government whose officials oversaw the functions associated with importing and exporting goods into and out of a country, such as collecting c ...

to handle the large volume of foreign mail created by the city's international tobacco business. It is built on the site of a former boarding house. The structure was designed by the

Supervising Architect of the Treasury The Office of the Supervising Architect was an agency of the United States Treasury Department that designed federal government buildings from 1852 to 1939. The office handled some of the most important architectural commissions of the nineteenth ...

William Martin Aiken William Martin Aiken (April 1, 1855 – December 7, 1908) was an American architect who served as Supervising Architect of the United States Treasury and oversaw and participated in the design and construction of numerous federal buildings during ...

, in the eclectic style popular to Victorian America. Aiken incorporated many architectural styles including

Stick Stick or the stick may refer to: Thin elongated objects * Twig * The weapon used in stick fighting * Walking stick, a device to facilitate balancing while walking * Shepherd's crook * Swagger stick * Digging stick * Swizzle stick, used to stir d ...

, Queen Anne, Italianate, Romanesque, Flemish and Gothic. Its highly pitched roof with large eagles on the four corners, steep gabled windows and elaborate terra cotta ornamentation combine to give importance to a relatively small building. Contrary to popular myth, the design was not inspired by the architect's visit to China. The building was constructed by Charles A. Moses of Chicago.

References

External links

* Federal buildings in the United States Culture of Clarksville, Tennessee Museums in Montgomery County, Tennessee History museums in Tennessee Custom houses in the United States Buildings and structures in Clarksville, Tennessee Government buildings completed in 1898 {{Tennessee-museum-stub