in Washington, D.C., until then, and was to continue following the completion of the Pension Building. Meigs based his design on Italian Renaissance precedents, notably Rome's Palazzo Farnese and Palazzo della Cancelleria. Included in his design was a long sculptured frieze executed by Caspar Buberl. Since creating a work of sculpture of that size was well out of Meigs's budget, he had Buberl create 28 different scenes (totaling in length), which were then mixed and slightly modified to create the continuous long parade that includes over 1,300 figures. Because of the way the 28 sections are modified and mixed up, only somewhat careful examination reveals the frieze to be the same figures repeated over and over. The sculpture includes infantry, navy, artillery, cavalry, and medical components, as well as a good deal of the supply and quartermaster functions. Meigs's correspondence with Buberl reveals that Meigs insisted that one teamster, "must be a negro, a plantation slave, freed by war," be included in the quartermaster panel. This figure was ultimately to assume a position in the center, over the west entrance to the building. When Philip Sheridan was asked to comment on the building, his reply echoed the sentiment of many of the Washington establishment of the day, that the only thing that he could find wrong with the building was that it was fireproof. (A similar quote is also attributed to William T. Sherman, so the story might well be apocryphal.) The completed building, sometimes referred to as "Meigs's Old Red Barn", was created by using more than 15,000,000 bricks, which, according to the wits of the day, were all counted by the parsimonious Meigs. Death Meigs contracted a cold on December 27, 1891. Within a few days, it turned into pneumonia. Meigs died at home at 5:00 pm on January 2, 1892. His body was interred with high military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. General orders issued at the time of his death declared, "the Army has rarely possessed an officer ... who was entrusted by the government with a great variety of weighty responsibilities, or who proved himself more worthy of confidence." Family In 1841, Meigs married Louisa Rodgers (1816–1879), the daughter of Commodore John Rodgers. Their children included: John Rodgers Meigs (1842–1864), a West Point graduate and Army officer who was killed in action during the Civil War Mary Montgomery Meigs (1843–1930), the wife of Army officer