 While the building is quite monumental for a small city in upstate New York, its front entrance and lobby are more modestly scaled than that monumentality would suggest.At the time of its completion the building was two stories tall, with a parapet on the edge of its flat roof.In 1938, under the direction of Louis Simon, Supervising Architect of the Treasury, the building was expanded to allow sessions of the United States District Court for the Western District of New York to be held in the city, as authorized by the law that had created the district in 1900.