Recently, the 1833 Robert Mills U.S. Customs House was discovered on New London's waterfront—and also on the federal auction block. This is the oldest operating Customs House in America, and the first designed by Mills—the nation's first federal architect. Designed in the Greek Revival style of many 19th century public buildings, the Customs House also exhibits French cathedral arch and vault ceilings, a flying staircase and massive front entrance doors fashioned from the oak planks of the U.S.S. Constitution. A centerpiece of the city's decades of whaling glory, the Customs House also stood witness to the first steps toward freedom taken by the kidnapped crew of Mendi Africans who were brought to the Customs House from the slave ship LA AMISTAD in 1839, and to the 1858 trial of a stowaway slave under Connecticut's Personal Liberty Law which contradicted the Fugitive Slave Act.