ready to hire ""the most prominent architects in the country" for its plans. Ayres was commissioned to design the chapel at Meuse-Argonne, the largest and most important of the three sites. Ayres submitted two simple, classical designs and one French Romanesque design. Although both a classical and Romanesque design were approved for construction, the final chapel is Romanesque in style, shorter than proposed, and the colonnades on either side of it reduced in length. The chapel was dedicated on Memorial Day in 1937, the 20th anniversary of the American entry into World War I. Ayres' continued to serve the architectural profession in many important ways in the 1920s. He was one of three judges on a panel which in 1925 awarded the design for the proposed Theodore Roosevelt memorial to be built in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C. In 1926, Rutgers University presented him with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. He also was a member of the Prix de Rome scholarship and Rome Prize fellowship committees from 1926 to 1938. Federal Triangle In 1927, Ayres won a major commission to design the U.S. Department of Commerce building, an award which became one of his most important architectural designs. He also played a major role on a board which helped plan the Federal Triangle government office building complex. The U.S. federal government had struggled with the need to build a number of large governmental office buildings since the mid-1910s, but little had been done. In January 1924, the Public Buildings Commission recommended that a new series of federal office buildings be built near the White House. In 1926, the U.S. Congress enacted the Public Buildings Act, which, among other things, authorized the United States Department of the Treasury to begin construction on the Federal Triangle complex of buildings. However, disagreements among the three planning bodies overseeing the project (Commission on Fine Arts, Public Buildings Commission, and U.S. Treasury) proved so fundamental that a year-long delay ensued. To end the disagreement, a Board of Architectural Consultants was created on May 19, 1927, to advise the groups on the development of the project. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Charles S. Dewey recommended Ayres as one of the consultants, and his appointment was almost immediately approved. Design work on all buildings was postponed in May 1927 to allow the Board to conduct its work. The Board of Architectural Consultants first met on