Brigadier General William George Steinmetz AIA ( – 27 April 1898) was a German-American architect who practiced in New York City as a founding associate of A.B. Mullet & Company with

Alfred Bult Mullett Alfred Bult Mullett (April 7, 1834 – October 20, 1890) was a British-American architect who served from 1866 to 1874 as Supervising Architect, head of the agency of the United States Treasury Department that designed federal government build ...

(–1890) and

Hugo Kafka Hugo Kafka, AIA, (May, 1843–April 1915)Obituaries
'NY Times.'' April 30, 1915.

(1843–1913) before the former founded Alfred B. Mullet & Sons, and the later formed William Schickel & Company Steinmetz was born in Prussia and emigrated with his family when he was young. He enlisted in the Union Army when the Civil War broke out, rising through the ranks of the cavalry to become a brigadier general. He lost a leg at the Battle of Bull Run. Steinmetz worked with noted Boston architect Paul Schulze (1827/28-1897) from 1875 to 1876. In Mullet's firm, Steinmetz was the superintendent of construction of Mullet's famous

Second Empire-style Second Empire architecture in Europe is an architectural style rooted in the 16th-century Renaissance, which grew to its greatest popularity in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century. As the st ...

New York City Central Post Office (near City Hall, demolished 1939) but was dismissed in early 1877 a few months before a section of the

mansard roof A mansard or mansard roof (also called a French roof or curb roof) is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterised by two slopes on each of its sides, with the lower slope, punctured by dormer windows, at a steeper angle than the upper. The ...

collapsed and killed four workers. Steinmetz had been replaced by Thomas A. Oakshott and "Mullet seized the opportunity to ascribe the accident to the dismissal of Steinmetz. A grand jury investigation into the accident revealed the roof truss had not been property bolted to the framing. Oakshott, neither an architect nor an engineer, was apparently uninformed to the construction or placement of the roof truss." Oakshott was dismissed and replaced by Thomas J. Jackson, an older architect. William G. Steinmetz served on the board of trustees for the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. He also served as the comptroller for the City of Brooklyn.The Great Bridge, by David McCullough, p. 468

References

1830s births 19th-century American architects Architects from New York City Date of birth missing 1898 deaths Prussian emigrants to the United States American amputees {{US-architect-stub