"A cross between a cathedral and a cotton mill"..............like............just what is that supposed to mean...............exactly?  That it is a church based on slavery?????????

The structure was designed in the Romanesque Revival style^[7][8] (some classify it as Richardsonian Romanesque)^[9] by Willoughby J. Edbrooke, Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department.^[7] Construction began in 1892, and the building was complete in 1899.^[10][11] The total cost of construction was $3 million.^[12]

At the time of its completion, the Post Office Building contained the largest uninterrupted enclosed space in the city.^[10] Its clock tower reached 315 feet (96 m) into the air.^[7] It was also the city's first building to have a steel frame structure,^[7] and the first to be built with electrical wiring incorporated into its design.^[6] The structure featured elevators with cages of highly intricate wrought iron,^[13] a glass covered atrium and mezzanine level, and floors, moldings, railings, and wainscoting made of marble.^[12] The atrium was 196 feet (60 m) high, and 10 floors of balconies looked out onto the space (which provided interior light in an era when indoor lighting was not common).^[13] It boasted more than 39,000 interior electric lights, and its own electrical generator.^[8] Girders and catwalks spanned the atrium at the third floor level to allow post office supervisors to look down on the workers.^[5] The fifth floor housed executive offices in the corners. Each office had a turret, ornately carved wooden moldings, and red oak paneling.^[13] But there were problems with the structure. The Washington Star newspaper reported that the skylights and windows leaked air and water, the marble floors were poorly laid, and much of the construction was shoddy.^[12] The ninth floor was to have served as a file room, but a post-construction inspection showed it could not accommodate the weight.^[14] Technological advances in electricity and electrical wiring, mechanical engineering, movement of air, heating, and more made the building out of date as soon as it opened.^[13]

Unfortunately, the anticipated economic development never occurred.^[6] At the 1898 meeting of the American Institute of Architects, the structure was criticized as supremely ugly during a plenary address by New York City architect George B. Post.^[15] That same year, Senator Joseph Roswell Hawley called it "a cross between a cathedral and a cotton mill"