work at the site began on that date even though final plans for the project were still unclear. But the May 1927 work moratorium put all decisions regarding the Commerce building design on hold. In September 1927, the Commission of Fine Arts met to discuss proposed plans for both the Commerce and Internal Revenue buildings. Even though he was designing the Commerce building, Ayres continued to participate in the work of the Board of Architectural Consultants. He and the other Board members reviewed all designs for the Federal Triangle project in the fall of 1927, and demolition work began on the Commerce site in September 1927. By mid-1927, Ayres was proposing a grandiose building to anchor the western end of Federal Triangle. The proposed building had of interior space (more than 60 percent larger than originally planned). The structure was essentially rectangular, with seven wings and six interior courtyards that was one city block wide and three blocks long. There were 15 entrances and 16 interior stairways. Its seven stories were clad in granite and limestone. More than of corridors accessed of office space designed to house 10,000 workers, accommodate 8 million patents in a publicly accessible manner, include a public aquarium with 40 tanks and 2,000 fish, and house a 200,000-item library. Ayres asked James Earle Fraser (sculptor), a sculptor and colleague on the Commission of Fine Arts, to design and sculpt the various external features of the building. At first Fraser said he had far too many other commissions and could not work on the Commerce building, but Ayres and Fraser developed a cooperative work style that eventually was adopted for most of the buildings in the Federal Triangle: Fraser consulted with Ayres and other architects to develop appropriate themes and content and then built or fashioned models of his designs. Then his assistants enlarged the models into full-scale sculptures and did the physical work of actually carving the art. Ayres designed four massive pediments for the building, which Fraser filled with sculptures with the themes "Aviation," "Mining," "Fisheries," and "Foreign and Domestic Commerce." Ayres contracted with interior designer Barnet Phillips to design and implement the interior elements of the building. Ayres had planned a main lobby that was Neoclassical in design. Phillips designed rusticated walls, placed arches over every doorway, placed Doric columns throughout the lobby, added a painted and coffered ceiling, and laid terrazzo and marble