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Table of Contents: Case of the Ingenious A

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"Dr. T-" Examined and the Case of the "Ingenious A" "Saturday, Feby 1st a fine day. The ground covered with the deepest snow we have ever seen here (in 5 yrs.) - river frozen over. Dr. T- engaged in drawing at his plan for a House to build one day or another on Sq. 171."     Or Why William Thornton Didn't Design the Octagon House and Isn't the "First Architect of the Capitol"    By Bob Arnebeck author of Through a Fiery Trial: Building Washington 1790-1800 and Slave Labor in Capitol: Building Washington's Iconic Federal Landmarks Introduction:  How Glenn Brown, an architect of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, helped his own career by making William Thornton the most famous American architect of the 18th century.  Chapter One:   A Tale of Two Properties (1755 to 1786) Lancaster, Tortola and a Scientific Education - The roots of Thornton's wealth, his Quaker education, medical degree and mentors  Chapter Two:   Going ...
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Chapter Nine: The Case of the Ingenious A

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  Chapter Nine: The Case of the Ingenious A 116. Law's 1800 house became the fulcrum of the New Varnum Hotel Historians credit Thornton for designing the houses built by Thomas Law, General Washington and John Tayloe for which ground was broken in 1799. Thornton never claimed that he designed those houses. No contemporary credited him for designing those houses. But no one else claimed credit or was credited for designing those houses. Attributing them to Thornton serves the agenda of posterity. Legendary houses have a way have getting attached to legendary architects. Schools of architecture form around the great personalities and that shapes the future. But, so the story goes, a presidential call to another duty stunted Thornton’s career as an architect. Save for drawing a plan for Tudor Place in Georgetown in 1808 and for the university of Virginia in 1817, from 1802 to 1828 Thornton headed the Patent Office and supposedly fostered the mechanical genius of his countrymen. Thorn...
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Chapter Eleven: On Those Healthy Hills Near Panama

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  The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol by Bob Arnebeck Table of Contents Chapter Eleven: On Those Healthy Hills Near Panama Capitol in 1800 In a brief memoir about her husband written just after his death in 1828, Mrs. Thornton regretted his embracing "a greater variety of sciences" because it prevented him from attaining what he truly wanted. She credited him for genius in many fields - "philosophy, politics, Finance, astronomy, medicine, Botany, Poetry, painting, religion, agriculture, in short all subjects by turns occupied his active and indefatigable mind." She concluded that "had his genius been confined to fewer subjects, had he concentrated his study in some particular science, he would have attained Celebrity."(1)   Beginning in 1802, Thornton's genius was confined by bureaucracy, and he attained celebrity. He vexed patent applicants by claiming a free speech right to attack thei...
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