[4] From 1913 to 1937, the Federal Reserve Board met in the United States Treasury building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., while employees were scattered across three locations throughout the city.

The principal officials overseeing the competition were Charles Moore, chairman of the United States Commission of Fine Arts, and Adolph C. Miller, a member of the Board since 1914.

It is thought desirable that its aesthetic appeal should be through dignity of conception, proportion, scale and purity of line rather than through stressing of purely decorative or monumental features.

Designed with Albert Kelsey, it was a building in quintessential Beaux-Arts style, with a classical façade, rich ornamentation, and allegorical references to the goals of the organization.

Its pragmatic classicism captured the spirit of Depression-era and wartime Washington, a city determined to remain grand but with nothing to spare on the non-essential.

Samuel Yellin, a noted wrought-iron craftsman from Philadelphia, designed and executed numerous railings, gates, and fixtures throughout the building.

[8] Mural artist Ezra Winter painted a large map of the United States for the Board Room, and sculptor Herbert Adams created memorials to President Woodrow Wilson and Senator Carter Glass to occupy niches in the main lobby.