[2] His father was a master builder, and young Cluss set out as an itinerant carpenter when he left Heilbronn at age nineteen.

In his travels, he met and became a friend of Karl Marx and a supporter of communist principles at a time of political and revolutionary ferment in Germany.

The failure of the German revolutionary movement in 1848 led him to leave Germany when he was twenty-three, along with other Forty-Eighters who emigrated to the United States at that time.

He crossed the Atlantic on board the Zürich, a small sailing ship from Le Havre, France to New York City.

He attempted to become a brewer with a friend but the business soon failed and he was back to his old position in the Ordnance Department at the Washington Navy Yard working closely with Admiral John A.

While America was torn apart in the Civil War and while still working at the Navy Yard, Cluss started an architectural office with another German immigrant Josef Wildrich von Kammerhueber.

[8] Cluss maintained his solo private practice but became a Building Inspector for the Board of Public Works in Washington, DC.

[7] On October 18, 1872, he was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant as a member of the Board of Public Works and City Engineer.

[12] The Board had been working to improve the city by paving and grading roads, adding sewers and planting trees but there was a cost associated with this.

[13][14] Congress to pass legislation on June 30, 1874, abolishing the territorial government and replacing it with the three-member Board of Commissioners.

In 1880, he was hired to create what became Washington's first luxury apartment building, Portland Flats, an ornate, six-floor, 39-unit creation on the south side of Thomas Circle.

[18] In 1877, he was commissioned to oversee the reconstruction of the Old Patent Office Building (today the National Portrait Gallery) in Washington, D.C.[19] Adolf Cluss was an active member of the American Institute of Architects.

[31] He inspected the Ellis Island buildings in February 1892[32] and wrote a report on July 15, 1892, a few months after the first Immigration Station opened.

He testified in front of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization on how the humidity was a concern in the building only a few months after it was built.

[34] On September 1, 1894, a few months after the death of his wife and after the victory by the Democrats, he was asked for his resignation by Secretary of the Treasury John G.

Following the death of Robert, Carl and Rosa Schmidt, Flora and Anita moved to their sister Lillian's house.

[39] As published in the Evening Star on March 18, 1897, Cluss was on the Delinquent District of Columbia Real Estate Tax List owing $8.41 as of July 1, 1896.

[39][47] Today, several buildings designed and built by Adolf Cluss still stand in the Washington, D.C., area: In 2005, after a ceremonial resolution by the DC Council,[54] DC Mayor Anthony A. Williams made a proclamation that 2005 would be "Adolf Cluss Year" from July 2005 to June 2006.

Joint exhibitions would be presented in Washington, D.C., at the Charles Sumner School Museum and at the Stadtarchiv in his birthplace of Heilbronn, Germany.

[55] Both exhibits closed but a website remains: Adolf-Cluss.org A small street in Washington, D.C., was named in his honor: Adolf Cluss Court.