Biographical Note
Alfred Bult Mullett was one of the most prolific, influential, and controversial architects working for the U.S. Government during the second half of the 19th century.
Mullett was born in England in 1834 and immigrated with his family to Ohio in 1842. He studied engineering and drafting at the Farmers College in Cincinnati and worked with Isaiah Rogers in that city. Mullett moved to Washington, D.C., with his Civil War regiment and, after its disbandment, began working for the Treasury Department. He was appointed Supervising Architect of the Treasury in 1866 and designed post offices, customhouses, court houses, and other federal government buildings for cities throughout the United States until his resignation in 1874. Also during this time, Mullett designed the State, War, and Navy Building, a commission that he claimed was outside the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department, for which he was not compensated. Mullett's architectural firm, established in 1875, was responsible for a major local advance in commercial architecture, the design of the Sun Building. While not large by New York or Chicago standards, at eight stories it was the tallest building in the city when it was completed in 1887. When sons Thomas A. Mullett and Frederick W. Mullett as well as James F. Denson, who worked as draftsmen in Mullett's architectural firm, were made partners in 1889 the name of the firm became A.B. Mullett & Co. The firm continued after A.B. Mullett's death in 1890, doing general work in the Washington, D.C., area and some in Charlestown, West Virginia. After Frederick Mullett's death in 1924, Thomas Mullett became associated with Russell O. Kluge. Kluge inherited the firm after Thomas Mullett's death in 1935 and operated it until he was drafted in the Second World War.