Cornerstone Man

One day last week a bald paunchy septuagenarian marched briskly out of the Treasury Department and into a banquet spread for him by his friends at Washington's Hotel Carlton. That march and meal ended the 49-year-long government career of the man whose name is carved on the cornerstones of more post offices, customs houses, federal court houses and office buildings than that of any other U. S. citizen.

All architects and builders know James Alphonso Wetmore even if the general public never heard of him. From 1915 to 1934 he was Acting Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department. Since that title was abolished last February, he has held the same job as chairman of the Treasury's Board of Awards. Through his offices, which occupy nearly the entire top floor of the Treasury Building, have passed all the plans for all the buildings in the greatest building program in which the U. S. Government has ever indulged.

Acting Supervising Architect Wetmore is not and never was an architect. Born 71 years ago in Bath, N. Y., he became a court reporter in nearby Hornell. In 1883 he was a cattle buyer in Holland and Scotland. Two years later he was a stenographer in the Treasury at Washington, gradually becoming a more & more important cog in that Department's machinery, When Supervising Architect Oscar Wenderoth resigned in 1915, Cog Wetmore agreed to take over his job "temporarily." Through Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover and the first hectic year of Roosevelt II he continued to function "temporarily." Because he was not an architect, he would not allow his title to be other than Acting Supervising Architect and, as such, his name appears on some 2,000 Federal cornerstones.

Graduate architects he employed by the carload. With the great building program of the New Deal well under way, there were nearly 1,700 of them hunched over draughting boards in the Supervising Architect's office. That fact has been the latest plaint of private architects against the Administration. It was a New Deal promise in April of 1934 that all Public Works projects costing over $60,000 would be awarded to private architects. Last month President Ralph Thomas Walker of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects charged that this was not being done, sent official protest to every Congressional candidate from New York State listing 38 separate Federal building projects costing over $60,000 that were being designed in the Supervising Architect's office.

As Acting Supervising Architect, Mr. Wetmore exerted practically no influence in the design of Federal buildings. He boasts that he never accepted so much as a cigar (and he is passionately addicted to them) from a contractor or competing architect. "Recently," he rumbled, "I had to send back a gallon can of New Orleans molasses that was a gift from a builder. Good molasses, too."

Of all the cornerstones that bear the name of James A. Wetmore, Acting Supervising Architect, he is proudest of the one under the new post office in his native Bath. He laid that one himself, in 1931. The trowel, suitably engraved, hangs over his mantel. He will take it with him to Coral Gables, Fla., where he plans to pass the rest of his days.

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