Assay Office, pre-1916. In 1822 the Verplanck family sold the land on which their mid-18th century mansion sat for $40,000 (quite a sum for the time) to the Bank of the United States. On the site the institution constructed the Branch Bank of the United States, a two-story classical structure rendered in white marble. Designed by Martin E. Thompson, the bank building, completed in 1823, looked less like a bank and more like an English country estate. The bank lost its charter in 1836, got a new one, but closed the following year in the midst of a financial crash. Later used by the equally descriptively named Bank of the State of New York, the building was sold to the government in 1853 for use as an Assay Office. Here gold and other precious metals (including those coming out of the California Gold Rush) would be tested for purity before being sold. The building was also the location where the metals were melted down into bars and stamped with their weight and quality. The building operated as the United States Assay Office for more than 50 years, but the deterioration of the nearly 100 years old edifice was transparent at the start of the 20th century and the building was largely abandoned by 1911. Proposals to save the building included moving it elsewhere or attaching the new Assay Office to the old facade, while what actually occurred was a curious mix of both these ideas. In 1915, the government presented the facade to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After being deconstructed and catalogued, it was re-installed (seven years later) stone by stone in the new American Wing.

A walking tours through Lower Manhattan's skyscraper canyons and more than a century of high-rise construction. This walk focuses on the buildings on Wall Street.

A utilitarian 12-story addition was added onto the top of the restrained Italian Renaissance style former United States Assay Office in the 1950s. Note the very finely sculpted frieze running beneath the cornice of the first story, as well as the graceful iron-work.

The Assay Office Building was designed and built by Martin E. Thompson in 1824 as the New York branch of the Bank of the United States. The building functioned as the U.S. Assay Office from 1853 until 1912. In 1915, The facade of the building was saved from destruction by I. N. Phelps Stokes, who paid to have it dismantled and stored at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was re-erected in 1924 as part of the facade of the museum's American Wing.