Before a federal income tax was imposed in 1916, a primary source of revenue for the federal government was custom duty. New York City, as the country's most active port, has had a Custom House since the country's founding in in 1781. In 1899, the United States Department of the Treasury acquired the Bowling Green property and sponsored a competition to build a new U.S. Custom House. Minnesotan Cass Gilbert, who later designed the Woolworth Building, won the competition by designing a building that was not just a functional building for commerce, but exuded a palatial grandeur. Construction began in 1900 and completed in 1907.
The interior of the building is dominated by the huge rotunda, which survives as one of the largest public spaces in New York. Commissioned In 1936 as part of the Treasury Relief Art Project, Reginald Marsh was commissioned to paint the elliptical space around the 140-ton skylight with sixteen frescoes. The larger sections portray eight successive stages of the arrival of an ocean liner in the harbor. Eight smaller panels, painted in grisaille to simulate statuary, depict famous explorers like Amerigo Vespucci, Christopher Columbus, Giovanni da Verrazano and Henry Hudson.
Above the main cornice on the sixth story are standing sculptures representing the great commercial sea-faring nations, from the Phoenicians to the Americans.
Central to Gilbert's design of the Custom House were four separate sculptures to be placed at the front entrance of the Custom House, representing four continents (from left to right) - Asia, America, Europe and Africa.
