William Alfred (Will. A.) Freret (1833-1911), a native of New Orleans, served as Supervising Architect of the Treasury from 1887 to 1889. He was the son of William Freret, a mayor of the city, and cousin to New Orleans architect James Freret. During his brief tenure as supervising architect, his office (which included some fifty draftsmen) planned numerous Federal buildings, most of which were imposing masonry edifices in Romanesque or Gothic Revival style.

Freret’s known projects in North Carolina were the United States Post Office in Charlotte, a red brick edifice, and the brownstone United States Post Office and Courthouse in Wilmington. Both were powerfully composed masonry buildings in Romanesque Revival style with corner towers. The Wilmington “public building” was especially imposing, with a tall corner tower, dramatic roofline, and robust brick and stonework. It was one of the largest buildings in the city in its day. The brownstone came from a quarry near Wadesboro, North Carolina. The contract went to W. H. Smith of Michigan, and the work was supervised by experienced local architect-builder James F. Post. Although both post offices were well-built and substantial edifices, neither lasted long, for within a short time changing tastes had rejected such buildings in favor of neoclassical designs in 1915 (Charlotte) and 1936 (Wilmington). Like others of the major edifices of the late 19^th century, Freret’s once-admired works in North Carolina are long gone and all but forgotten.

• Susan Taylor Block, Cape Fear Lost (1999).
• Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, http://www.lahistory.org/site16.php.
• Mary Norton Kratt and Mary Manning Boyer, Remembering Charlotte: Postcards from a New South City, 1905-1950 (2000).
• Antoinette Josephine Lee, Architects to the Nation (2000).
• William Reaves Files, New Hanover County Public Library, Wilmington, North Carolina.
• Beverly Tetterton, Wilmington: Lost But Not Forgotten (2005).