Louis A. Simon was an American architect.

Simon was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

. Following a tour of Europe, he opened an architectural office in Baltimore, Maryland in 1894.

Simon served as Supervising Architect in the Office of the Supervising Architect

Office of the Supervising Architect

The Office of the Supervising Architect was an agency of the United States Treasury Department that designed federal government buildings from 1852 to 1939....

, U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1933 until 1939, when the office was moved to the Public Works Administration

Public Works Administration

The Public Works Administration , part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression...

 / Works Progress Administration

Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...

. He had been associated with the office from 1896; Edward A. Crane originally brought him to the office. He was Superintendent of Architects in the office between 1905 and 1933. From 1915 to 1933, during the tenure of Acting Supervising Architect James A. Wetmore

James A. Wetmore

James A. Wetmore was an American lawyer and administrator, best known as the Acting Supervising Architect of the U.S. Office of the Supervising Architect from 1915 through 1933. Wetmore is frequently and incorrectly described as the "architect" of the many federal buildings that bear his...

, a lawyer and a political appointee, Simon was responsible for the direction of much of the design work. Most of Simon's buildings, notably post office

Post office

A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...

 buildings, were designed in the Colonial Revival

Colonial Revival architecture

The Colonial Revival was a nationalistic architectural style, garden design, and interior design movement in the United States which sought to revive elements of Georgian architecture, part of a broader Colonial Revival Movement in the arts. In the early 1890s Americans began to value their own...

 style. Occasionally, buildings were designed in a restrained or more stylized classically derived

Neoclassical architecture

Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...

style.