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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House/archive2

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Hog Farm via FACBot (talk) 11 August 2022 [1].

Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House

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Nominator(s): Epicgenius (talk) 16:18, 5 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a building that once contained the United States' most profitable custom house. The magnificent design includes a plethora of sculptures and statues on the exterior. The second floor contains a sprawling rotunda with ceiling murals, as well as other rooms embellished with carved details. It was first proposed in 1889 to replace 55 Wall Street, though various delays and disputes pushed back the opening to 1907. It was to be more expensive than every other public building in New York City except for the notorious Tweed Courthouse. The U.S. Customs Service left the building in 1974, and it fell into disuse for several years. Luckily, the building was restored in the 1980s and the building now contains the George Gustav Heye Center as well as U.S. government offices.

This page was promoted as a Good Article two years ago after a Good Article review by CaroleHenson, for which I am very grateful. In addition, the page received a GOCE copyedit a few months ago from Rublov, whose efforts I also appreciate. I think it's up to FA quality now, and I look forward to all comments and feedback. I nominated this article for FA status back in May, but that nomination was archived due to a lack of feedback. I hope this is more successful the second time around. Epicgenius (talk) 16:18, 5 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Wehwalt

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  • "offices for the National Archives" I might say "of" rather than "for".
  • "Gilbert was selected as an architect following a competition." Since no one else is credited, I would strike "an". Which leads to the question, should French be credited as an architect in the infobox?
  • Can anything more in the "site" section be said about the history of the location? I see some scattered info later in the article.
  • "Unlike most custom houses, which face the waterfront, the Alexander Hamilton Custom House faces inland toward Bowling Green.[11][16]" I wonder if it could be stated more clearly that it faces the one direction (north) where there is no nearby water.
  • "Near the building's south end is space formerly used by the United States Postal Service, " if I recall correctly, this was for the Bowling Green Station of the New York post office, which might be worth mentioning.
  • "The new New York Custom House was only the fourth building to be built under the Tarsney Act.[82]" Didn't the competition take place, not under the Tarsney Act, but under Section 3 of the 1899 act? Admittedly, they seem to be more or less the same.
    • Technically yes, you are correct. Would it be better if I said that the Custom House was "only the fourth building to be built following the passage of the Tarsney Act"? Epicgenius (talk) 17:51, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Doubt it, from what I saw of the Congressional Record, they were passing several new building bills at a time. Maybe "only the fourth building to be built following competitions such as that authorized by the Tarsney Act"?--Wehwalt (talk) 19:19, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "I'd capitalize Platt's and Quigg's titles.
  • " The next February, during the 55th Congress, Platt and Quigg proposed bills to acquire the Bowling Green site, providing $5 million (about $136 million in 2020[a]) for land acquisition and construction." According to Congressional ProQuest, H.R. 9077, which became the authorizing act, was introduced by Rep. Philip Low (R-NY) on 2/14/1898. It came out of the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds on 2/6/1899, entirely rewritten, along with a report by a Congressman Mercer of that committee.
  • The bill passed both houses on February 28, 1899, not during March. McKinley seems to have signed it on March 2.
  • "The selection of Gilbert was controversial, drawing opposition from Platt and several other groups" Platt was not a group. Also, it's worth a mention (see here that Platt's opposition was based in part on Gilbert not being a Republican, that being typical of Platt if you look him up.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:55, 5 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "that Gilbert was a "westerner" who had newly arrived to New York City," I'd change "to" to "in". And if he had moved to NYC, should he be referred to, as you do, as "Minnesota architect"?
  • "A branch of the United States Postal Service" the United States Post Office Department, as we are pre-1971. And it was a station. Stations were usually within city limits, branches outside.
  • "From 1974 on, the Custom House was vacant," Wasn't the post office still open?
That's it.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:55, 5 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Wehwalt: Thanks for your feedback. I have responded to all of your comments now. Epicgenius (talk) 17:51, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support--Wehwalt (talk) 19:19, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

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Coordinator comment

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More than three weeks in and just the single general support. Unless this nomination attracts further interest over the next two or three days I am afraid that it is liable to be archived. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:39, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Mike Christie

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Epicgenius, I am reviewing this and will post comments shortly, but you might take a look at the citations. I have a script installed to show citation errors and it's showing several hundred Lua errors; every single citation has an error message attached to it. The first one, for Note [a], is " Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1 at line 1392: bad argument #1 to 'pairs' (table expected, got nil). United States Gross Domestic Product deflator figures follow the Measuring Worth series. Cite error: The named reference "inflation-USGDP" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).", if that helps. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:20, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That is weird. The article doesn't show any visible errors for me - I checked this both on my account and as a logged-out user in another browser. I also don't see any hidden categories, specifically any subcategory of Category:Pages with citation errors, that may indicate a citation error in this article. It may be because Template:Inflation/fn uses unconventional syntax, since the entire citation is copied every time it is used (rather than using <ref name="inflation-USGDP" /> after the first use of this citation). Epicgenius (talk) 15:34, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • You have both "Beaux Arts" and "Beaux-Arts"; I don't know which is correct but it should be consistent.
  • What is a "membrane arch"? and a "timbrel arch"? I had a quick look and couldn't find suitable links.
  • "about the "old, damp, ill-lighted, badly ventilated" quarters there": we haven't mentioned 55 Wall Street for several sentences, so I think it would be worth making "there" more explicit -- perhaps "current quarters".
  • "As such, no progress was made until 1897, when a further appropriation was proposed": I don't think "As such" adds anything; I suspect you could just cut it.
  • "Republican Party officials wished to have the exclusive privilege of spending immense amounts on the new custom house building": I looked at the source to see what this was trying to say, and it's annoying because it's clearly referring to the desire for patronage, but it doesn't come out and say that. I think it could be clearer than it is, though. How about "Republican Party officials wished to have complete control of the spending for the new custom house building"? I think "control", more than "privilege", is the key here.
  • "The government stipulated that any plan consist of": suggest "The government stipulated that the plans should include".

That's everything I can see to complain about. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:24, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Christie: Thank you for your comments. I have fixed all of those issues now, except for the reference issue, which I was unable to confirm. Epicgenius (talk) 15:34, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Looks like the Lua errors were nothing to do with the article; see here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:40, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

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Footnote numbers refer to this version.

  • You're inconsistent about the use of publisher locations in the book citations. Stern et al has a location; none of the others in the bibliography do. I think that's because you're using the {{cite New York 1900}} template; can that be tweaked to remove the publisher location?
  • Can you check for consistency in use of the publisher vs. website/work parameter? When I did the source review for 55 Wall Street, you removed some publisher parameters for consistency; does the same thing need to be done here? Examples of inconsistency for cite web:
    • [8] & [40] both have publisher and website (and in each the website is given as a domain name, which we should try to avoid). There are others like this.
    • [102] has publisher but no website
    • [149] has website but no publisher
  • You also have a couple of publishers given in cite magazine, but not in all of them.
  • You have "via columbia.edu"; again I would use the organization name rather than the domain name in these cases. For newspapers.com, their brand includes the ".com" so I think those are fine.

I'll take another look when you've responded to these. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:04, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Christie: Thanks for the source review. I have addressed these issues now. Epicgenius (talk) 17:24, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Looking through again, with footnote numbers now referring to this version:

  • Can we get a publisher for Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York?
  • There are still some inconsistencies in the web citations. In one cases (e.g. [35] I would guess it's because it's news citation formatted as a web citation; perhaps this should use cite news? They display identically so this is optional. For the rest, I'm still not clear on the rule you're using for publisher and website/work. There are twelve cite web citations, not counting [35]. All have a publisher except [155], [51], and [149]. All have a website or work parameter except [160], [159], [150], [40], [8], and [13]. Compare [40] to [51]; they are from the same website but formatted differently.
  • ISSN is not required, but just so you're aware, you are missing it for a handful of cite news citations, for the New York Tribune, the Brooklyn Standard Union, the New York World, and the New York Daily News. Again this is up to you; it won't hold up a source review pass.

I'll start checking links and reliability next and post here, probably later tonight. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:52, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for these comments @Mike Christie. I have reformatted the Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York cite and added some ISSNs. Regarding Template:Cite web, I have made some changes to the cite templates. However, according to the documentation for that template, we leave out the publisher's name if it's the same as the work, which is what I have done in this case. I've only added |publisher= if the |work= parameter did not seem appropriate and vice versa. – Epicgenius (talk) 19:25, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you? It now looks like it's the other way round -- all the cite web citations have publishers, and only four have website/work? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:46, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yeah, my bad. What I mean to say is that I only added one parameter or the other in most cases. Right now, this means the cite web citations have publisher parameters but, for the most part, not work parameters. – Epicgenius (talk) 15:47, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK, that looks good then. No issues with formatting. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:35, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Links, with footnote numbers referring to this version:

  • The archive link for [7], [80], & [87] don't work. I thought it might be a problem with the Columbia links, but [111] does work.
  • The archive link for [150] is giving me a blank archived page.

Those are the only problems. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:35, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Christie, thanks again. I fixed the archive links for the Columbia refs. I also removed the archive link for 150, since it's an interactive map and couldn't be archived. – Epicgenius (talk) 20:13, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Pass. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:19, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments and support from Gerda

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I'll comment as I read, leaving the lead for last. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:00, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TOC and infobox are fine. I read through Transverse lobby without problems and need a break. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:20, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Offices and rotunda

  • "Each painting is surrounded by a gold frame" - I had to look at the pics to understand what that means, but that may be just me.
  • ref numbers are not always in numeric order, - intentionally?
  • "... hang from the ceiling. It is normally closed to ..." - The ceiling is closed?
  • general question: we are in the description but from time to time have sentences about the present use vs. the original purpose. Can they be clearly marked as such. (Possibly that's what I get for missing the lead.)
  • captions: I'd probably leave Explorer out of the link to the person.

Other stories

  • "Near the building's south end is the United States Postal Service's former Bowling Green post office" - I had to read that twice.

Competition

  • "Architectural writer Donald Reynolds wrote" - writer wrote?

Got to Customs use, need a break, probably until tomorrow. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:21, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Gerda Arendt, thanks for these comments. I've fixed all the comments you mentioned above (except for the "Explorer" bit, which is part of the proper name of the artwork). I haven't gotten to your comments about the lead yet, but I will fix them soon. – Epicgenius (talk) 17:41, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I read now all of the prose with no more questions. Lead tomorrow. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:19, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

  • I'd like in the lead more clarity about the names and functions. The prominent name of A.H. was added only in 1990, that is not clear. That new name is missing in the infobox. The museum mentioning reads as if it was simultaneously with the customs collection. Sources name it also New York Costum House which would show the location more prominently. Perhaps the very first sentence could say first custom then government and museum?
  • same: "The Custom House is a ..." - no, "The Custom House was a ...", for present tense it should be the current name, no?
  • I don't know if rotunda is a common word or should be linked.
  • "The ground floor contains ..." - perhaps offer a "now" or better a year when this happened, unless - probably better - that year comes up in the first para. I'd move that sentence to later, because the next is the history.
  • To make things harder: I could imagine to first cover history and then description, in the article. But I think the current order would work if the different uses and their times would show more clearly. That's all, the article is a diligent work of art. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:28, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks Gerda. Here are my responses to these points:
  • I have reworded the lead to include the former name and to describe it as a "former custom house, government building, and museum".
  • The sentence is now present tense.
  • I have added a link to rotunda (architecture).
  • I clarified when the museum opened, but I think putting the architecture paragraph before the history paragraph is consistent with the section order of the article. Thus, I've moved the opening date of the museum to the history paragraph.
– Epicgenius (talk) 19:29, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, and support --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:14, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@FAC coordinators: In the two weeks since Gog's last comment, this nomination has now received several prose supports, as well as a source review and an image review. Is anything else required for this nomination? Thanks. – Epicgenius (talk) 21:02, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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