[5] With the advice of the then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and consent of the Senate, President Washington commissioned Joy to that office on 21 November 1792.

[9] The trade between the United States and the city involved cotton, tea, spices, and leather from South India and "blocks of ice hewn from the frozen lakes of Massachusetts.

[11] In December 1908, with the recommendation by the U.S. Department of State, Nathaniel B. Stewart was appointed as the first representative of the American government with the title of Consul in Madras, who served the next two years.

[5] An office was established with the official status as a consulate on the third floor of a building owned by Parrys and Company, located on No.

[5] With India gaining independence, the American diplomatic post in Madras was officially raised to a Consulate General on 15 August 1947, marking a milestone in the bilateral relationship between the two countries.

[10] Five years later, in the 1950s, the Consulate General moved to a building on Mount Road (the present-day Anna Salai), currently occupied by the Bank of America.

On 3 January 1969, the Consulate General moved to its present location at the Gemini Circle,[13] which was inaugurated by Ambassador Chester Bowles.

The American architect hired to design the building traveled around South India in search of inspiration before zeroing in on the final theme.

[3] As quoted by S. Krishnan, who accompanied Lamantia on his architectural quest in Tamil Nadu and parts of Andhra Pradesh, Lamantia, whose roots were in Don Quixote's village, chose the architecture of the traditional houses of Thanjavur and Chettinad to blend with the American style in his design plan.

Thus, the rectangular Consulate General building was built around a roofless central courtyard, with verandahs running around it and rooms opening out of them.

In addition, inspired by the South Indian temple architecture, the four exterior walls were studded with chips of Pallavaram granite.

[17] The Chennai consular district, covering three states and three union territories of the country, serves a population of about 160 million and includes seven official languages used daily in the post's visa operations.

In response, the post added staff and interview windows and improved its training, fraud prevention, and workload management, making the wait times for non-immigrant visas stable at less than a week.

This enabled people seeking visa appointments in New Delhi and Calcutta even if they traditionally live in the Chennai consular district.

[16] From 1 December 2011, the Chennai Consulate General became the only center in the country to receive and process blanket L category visas meant for managers, executives, or specialized knowledge professionals transferring within their company.

[26] The Chennai Consulate is one of America's biggest adjudication posts in the world and the number one globally in processing employment-based visas.

[9] With more than 300 employees,[32] the Chennai Consulate processes 900 applications a day of which around 500 to 600 are 'B1' and 'B2' visas for temporary stay in the United States.

[13] Till 2005, the fraud prevention unit (FPU) of the Chennai Consulate General was home base for the India country coordinator for consular fraud-prevention programs, a position later transferred to the embassy in New Delhi.

Ambassador Chester Bowles, who formally opened the new building, called it the 'highest point in the deep friendship and close relations between India and the U.S.' In 2000s, the library began taking materials to people by organizing road shows and traveling exhibitions in several South Indian cities.

[50][51] In 2001, the Global AIDS Program (GAP) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, opened its office in Chennai to prevent the HIV epidemic in India in partnership with National AIDS Control Program.