Chapter Four: Design by Committee and an Epidemic
The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol
Chapter Four: Design by Committee and an Epidemic
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| 46. Jefferson in 1791 |
In March, accompanied by Rivardi, who was on his way to Norfolk to sail to Tortola and marry a Viennese socialite who had left her husband, Thornton went to the commissioners' meeting in Georgetown and gave them his design. Despite hand delivering a letter from the president, it is doubtful that the president himself handed the letter to Thornton. Throughout this whole process of submission and approval, Thornton had little contact, if any, with the president. Ten months after he submitted his design, Thornton solicited a job as the president's secretary. In that letter, he wrote: “My Situation in Life has precluded me from the honor of being but very partially known to you.”(1)
However, the president's letter extolled Thornton's design and seemed to excuse its expense, whatever that might be. As long as the building could be used in December 1800, the internal and ornamental parts could be finished later:Although made fully aware that Thornton's design had to be the winning design, in their reply to the president, the commissioners equivocated: "the rooms for the different Branches of Congress and the Conference Room, are much to our satisfaction and its outward appearance we expect will be Striking, & pleasing On the whole it gains our preference tho. we cannot but fear that several of the Small Rooms, of which there seems to us there are more than necessary, will want Light, perhaps by lessening the number of them the Objection may in some Measure be obviated—We have no estimate Accompanying the Plan, nor can one be formed soon which could give much satisfaction."(2)
Presumably the commissioners waved the requirement for "an Estimate of the Cubic Feet of Brick-Work." They knew an architect was capable of doing that. Upon seeing Hoban's plan for the President's house, the president asked him to make it bigger. Then Hoban estimated the cost of doing that: 77,000 Pounds Sterling or around $300,000. That shocked the president enough that he instructed the commissioners to have Hoban shrink the plan back to his original dimensions.(5)
Thornton would write in an 1805 "letter to congress" that he was asked to superintend construction of his design and that he declined. Given his inability to estimate costs of construction that was very unlikely. C. M. Harris, editor of Thornton's published papers, found no documentary evidence that he was offered the job as superintendent or that he had any interest in it. Harris makes the most of Thornton's tacit admission that he knew little about building: "...Thornton made no attempts to oversee the execution of his own design or to pursue a career in architecture. He was sensitive to the bias against professional men shared by most of the American gentry, the class of substantial land holders to which one part of him belonged, but he also preferred and was best suited for a broader field of endeavor."(6)
While he proved to the commissioners that he wasn't a real architect, in his short stay with them, he proved to be a font of advice. The commissioners clued him in to what they thought was the immediate problem with the Capitol. Its site was too low on the slope of the hill requiring that the hill behind would have to be leveled at great expense. Once L'Enfant walked away, the surveyor Ellicott had offered to redraw the plan to correct that but the president said no. Faced with finally getting the foundation dug, the commissioners secured Thornton's endorsement for having the site higher on the hill. In their report to the president on their April meeting, the commissioners noted: "Doct. Thornton threw out an idea that the Capitol might be thrown back to the desirable spot and the center ornamented with a Figure of Columbus—The idea seems not to be disapproved by Mr Blodget, and Ellicot thinks there’s room enough—it does not seem to us that there’s any Sticking impropriety and with that you could consider it on the spot where you could have the most perfect idea of it." The president didn't react.(8)
The commissioners did not wait for Thornton's reply to their April 5 requesting more information on his design. On April 10, they found something for poor Hallet to do. They sent Thornton's plan and asked him to estimate how much it would cost to build.(9)
Meanwhile, the adoption of Thornton's plan did not become the news of the day. There is no known public mention of it, let alone a description or image, rude though a published image must have been in that day. There evidently remained only the original in Georgetown then in Hallet's possessions. Thornton did not retain a copy, nor did the president or secretary of state have one made for future reference. Since the troubles with L'Enfant, the president worried that the whole project would be ridiculed or damned for being extravagant. Therefore, the less said about the Capitol design the better.
The arts of public relations were not unknown. Thornton sent copies of Cadmus to the president, the commissioners and many other worthies. Promotion of architectural projects before they were actually built was not taboo. After being appointed Superintendent, and graciously offering to be paid in building lots, Blodget had persuaded the president and commissioners to hold a nationwide "Lottery for the Improvement of the Federal City" with 50,000 tickets to be sold nationwide at $7 a ticket. The money raised would finance building the jackpot, a "Superb Hotel" on 8th Street NW just above Pennsylvania Avenue, at a cost of $50,000. There would also be many cash prizes, including one for $10,000. To find a design for the hotel, the commissioners solicited entries to a contest. Newspapers from Massachusetts to South Carolina reported that on April 9 "ten [designs] were presented so varied in their beauties as to astonish the collection of gentlemen who were present at the pleasing exhibition." The commissioners chose Hoban's design.(30)(10)
In Philadelphia, Thornton did his homework. He had left his elevation in Georgetown and now drew three ground plans with rooms and other features labeled with letters. He elaborated his ideas on a separate page. What he sent to the board is no longer extant but a draft of what he sent is in his papers at the Library of Congress. He began with the basement story and described "the great repository," so called because in due time the General's body would repose there. Straight away, he distinguished his work from the "architects":
A. The great repository under the floor of the dome. The walls are made very thick to support an arcade with imposts instead of double columns, if it may be deemed hereafter to make a dome of stone, however, the architects may be consulted on this subject as well as on the requisite thickness of the other foundation and basement walls, but the Commissioners will, I am confident, conclude it proper to make very strong walls for the support of so massive a building.
In this description, what would be called the rotunda, he simply called the dome. When he addressed the "Plan of the Grand Story," he placed the long talked of equestrian statue of the General in "the center of dome." He surrounded the statue with Corinthian columns of white marble, and offered to get marble from Italy. He marked the site of the statue with A, and marked the Executive Apartment with C. He seemed to assume that the president would read what he wrote. Of course, only the cost conscious commissioners did. Thornton was exact about some essentials and equivocated about others: "M.M.M. Water-closets, or other conveniences that may have communicating flues to the roof of the building to vent." But on the whole, Thornton's writing seemed like a search for a striking way to describe a building, with the ABC's of details leavened with piquant discourse on beauty and style. Sir William Chambers A Treatise on Civil Architecture... provided a model but Chambers, who studied architecture in Paris and Italy and was a builder in London, knew what he was writing about. Thornton rambled:
The attic windows of the East Front should be made square like those of the West Front, not only on the account of their superior beauty in this form, but on their accomodating better the galleries, the rooms above. The circular windows will then be made larger over the stairs, and in the middle of the north and south wings; the arches or brackets raised higher as in the West Front without pannels over them, but the ornaments between the middle windows of the wings of the East Front should remain, and I would recommend foliage over the arched windows in the wings of the West Front, as they appear too naked at present, but these ornaments may be determined upon some time hence.
I request you will inform me when you propose to lay the foundation of the east arcade, as I would rather it should occupy a space of eighty-six feet, which would add a little to the width of the arches, but I am afraid of adding much, because it would too much increase the intercolumniations, which are now in the lightest stile that so large a building will admit
The doors of the antichamber of the Representants as well as those of the vestibule should have lights over them.
The dome is intended to be of wood (well seasoned for some years) and covered with copper. The columns to be of stone or white marble which support it.
After the commissioners received his explanations, no one ask for any clarification, and when work on the foundation began, no one thought of informing Thornton of anything. His offer to arrange to get marble in Italy went unheeded. The commissioners and their men knew he wasn't an architect. It would take posterity to make him one. Thornton also discussed the major sculptures he planned for the Capitol: an equestrian statue of General Washington, Atlas holding the world, and "on the pediment of the East Front I have placed a Farnese Hercules (who has obtained the fruit of his labour) alluding to the happiness which America enjoys…" The fruits of his labor did not include clothes to cover his naked body. The motto of the East Front was to be "Justitiae fidei sacrum... The Temple of Justice and Faith."(11)
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| 48. The Farnese Hercules |
Since he didn't write about it, his expectations after winning the design contest are difficult to gauge. He wrote a long letter to his step-brother in late November and a long letter to his step-father in late April. The gist of the former was that he was on the rise. On the way to Philadelphia, he got tip on a plantation to buy in Saint Croix. He met Alexander Hamilton another son of the islands, and if some of his jennies remained virgins in the islands, he might be able to breed them with General Washington's jacks. The gist of the latter was that he was being cheated out of his patrimony, had to live off a dowager, and needed money to buy a farm on Susquehanna River which would allow him to ship shad to the islands.(12)
Then on April 30, he attended an American Philosophical Society committee meeting with only nine attending including Secretary of State Jefferson. Judging from what he would write to Jefferson in early June, they talked about the proper symbology for maces to be wielded when American legislatures met. Thornton sent drawings and explained that he eschewed the eagle since it had been adopted by European courts imitating the Romans who were imitating the Persians. Instead he coiled his mace with a rattlesnake. Plus, he sent Jefferson a copy of his revolutionary Cadmus. That is all that is known about their conversation. But more is known about Jefferson in committee and in conversation. In 1791, Senator William Maclay described Jefferson as he briefed a Senate committee: "He had a rambling, vacant look, and nothing of that firm, collected deportment which I expected would dignify the presence of a secretary or a minister.... He spoke almost without ceasing. But even his discourse partook of his personal demeanor. It was loose and rambling, yet he scattered information wherever he went, and some even brilliant sentiments sparkled from him." Maclay also saw Jefferson one on one just before the Senate had its last chance abort a capital on the Potomac. Jefferson talked of other matters "politicks mostly, the French difference and the Whale Fishery, but he touched the Potowmac too, as much as to say there Oh there."
It is likely that on April 30, Jefferson talked to Thornton about his Capitol design. Neither gentlemen ever alluded to doing that, and for good reason. Hitherto, in all that he drew, Thornton adhered to the rules of architecture. The secretary of state persuaded him to break one. In April 1803, Thornton explained to Latrobe, who President Jefferson had just hired to build the South Wing, why the legislative chambers in the Capitol were in the basement. Latrobe raised the issue because as a rule, the main rooms of a building were not in the basement. Latrobe reported to the president that Thornton said "his first idea was that of a grand single story raised upon a basement sufficiently elevated to contain conveniently all the offices attached to the legislative bodies." Then, "reasons afterwards occurred" which led to the "the principal story" no longer fitting "the high proportions of the Halls of the legislature, [and] they were, without altering the features of the original ground plot, let down to the level of the basement story." In 1803, Thornton offered one reason. The columns inside the chambers had to be smaller. Then in 1811, Jefferson revealed to Latrobe that he "thought first of placing the floor of the Representatives Chamber on the level of the basement of the building, and of throwing into it’s height the cavity of [a] dome, in the manner of the Halle aux bles at Paris, I deemed it due to Dr Thornton, author of the plan of the Capitol, to consult him on the change. he not only consented, but appeared heartily to approve of the alteration..."
Meanwhile, Hallet was studying what Thornton had left in Georgetown and, in time, what he sent down from Philadelphia. Hallet had been hired to come to America because he was able to estimate the cost of houses already built or about to be built. His employer was the Philadelphia agent of the Holland Land Company who looked for good investments for European clients. Hallet also knew how to make and read elevations and floor plans. With plans in hand, he could visualize whether the building could be lighted and heated and whether every part of it was easily accessible.1(3)
The commissioners still only met once a month and didn't pressure Hallet to report. But he didn't keep his findings secret. In a June 18 letter to L'Enfant, Roberdeau put it this way: the Capitol "is upon a Plan agreed on all hands that can never be built."(14) In a June 23 letter to the president, the commissioners broke the bad news:
We had desired Mr Hallet to study Doct. Thornton’s plan of a Capitol, we thought it prudent that the whole together and every part seperately should be in the mind of some person who was to see to the execution, perhaps it may be Hallet, perhaps not, he has been industrious and reports rather unfavourable on the great points of practacability time and expence he has simplified and abridged the plan, we have had not great time to consider it Mr Blodget and Mr Hoben seem to be in favour of it and so does Williamson, we wish for your Instructions, as it would be a lengthy work to go into particulars in writing if our Ideas were the most perfect, we begg leave to refer you to Mr Blodget Hoben and Hallet whose verbal information will be better than any we can give you.
In the late 19th century as he tried to make Thornton the greatest American architect of the late 18th century, Glenn Brown agreed with Thornton's own assessment of his critics' motives. They were envious of Thornton's genius, and they conspired to destroy confidence in his design. Brown fingered Hallet as the ring leader: "We can easily imagine the avidity with which Thornton's principal competitor studied the drawings...." Brown claimed that Hallet "endeavored to engraft upon the work his own ideas." However, that the commissioners were thinking of hiring Hallet to build the Capitol was likely not a secret. With wife and children living with him in a small stone house near the Capitol, one can easily imagine the avidity with which Hallet went over what the commissioners gave him intent to prove to himself that he could build what would assure not so much everlasting fame as a long and successful career as an architect. The latter, of course, was of no interest to Thornton.
The president, who knew the principals well enough save for Thornton, didn't sense a conspiracy. On his way to Mount Vernon from Philadelphia, he conferred briefly with Blodget in Baltimore and with Hoban in Georgetown. They both approved the "alterations... proposed by Mr. Hallet." The President did not respond to the commissioners. Instead, he wrote to Jefferson and asked him to set up a meeting in Philadelphia with Thornton, Hallet, Hoban, and a "scientific character" to evaluate the competing plans. He excused himself for assuming Thornton's plan was executable. He had "no knowledge in the rules or principles of Architecture—and was equally unable to count the cost. He again lauded its exterior and distribution of "apartments." He allowed that it was unlucky that "this investigation of Doctor Thornton’s plan, and estimate of the cost had not preceded the adoption of it; but knowing the impatience of the Carrollsburg interest and the anxiety of the Public to see both buildings progressing—and supposing the plan to be correct, it was adjudged best to avoid delay....But if there be such material defects as are represented—and such immense time and cost to complete the building—it would be folly in the extreme to proceed on the plan which has been adopted." That said, a decision must be made and fast. He closed by leaving it up to Jefferson: "Your own knowledge of this, and judgment will decide. The case is important. A Plan must be adopted—and good or bad it must be entered upon."(16)
The next day the president wrote to Hallet and Hoban jointly and asked them go to Philadelphia at government expense and bring "Doctr Thornton’s Plan, & Mr Hallett’s last one, together with the sections of the first—the observations—calculations—& in short every paper relative to both,..." Evidently, the president had read the rules of design contest which required the winner to provide "Sections through the Building, in such Directions as may be necessary to explain the Internal Structure." However, in what remains in the draft of his April letter to the commissioners, Thornton did not refer to any section that he had drawn. He later would claim that even though he did not think a section necessary, he drew one in late 1795.
The president assured Hallet and Hoban that if Thornton's plan was faulty "it ought to be relinquished for one more practicable—more simple—less expensive—and which can be executed in the time allowed by Law." As for Thornton, "if he cannot obviate [the problems] I persuade myself he will have candour enough to acknowledge it...." In conclusion, he all but said it was Jefferson's decision: " I have written to the Secretary of State to have the matter fully investigated before him & to report the result that a plan being fixed upon the foundation may be begun...."(17)
The president's bald conclusion in his June 30 letter to Jefferson - "good or bad it must be entered upon" - had to have shaken the sensibilities of a man who unlike the president knew something about and loved architecture. The president didn't ask Jefferson to explain his rave reviews of Thornton's plan. He gave him a chance to redeem himself in that regard and, by the way, elevate Hallet and his plan. Once Jefferson had Hallet's objection in hand, he acted quickly and stunned Thornton with the bad news:
Th: Jefferson presents his compliments to Dr. Thornton and incloses him a letter he has received from the President, with some observations of Mr. Hallet, the object of which the papers themselves will explain to Dr. Thornton. Th: J. has not yet seen any of the persons mentioned in the letter. He will be happy to receive Dr. Thornton’s observations in any way which shall be least troublesome to himself. The President seems to wish as quick a procedure on the subject as possible. He prays him to return the President’s letter.(18)
Hallet's observations consisted of “five Manuscript Volumes in folio,” 20 pages, which have been lost. Hoban sent a one page critique of Thornton's plan from Hoban. His short list of problems which included bearing the ceiling, intercolumniations, entrances, staircases, "darkness and irregularity," but he did not go into detail. Jefferson shared the list with the president but not with Thornton. Since he was acting in his official capacity following the orders of the president, Jefferson did not intimate anything to Thornton. He also carefully reserved his own judgment.(19)
On July 12, Thornton replied with a defense of his plan. Jefferson did not read it and sent it immediately to the president: "Th: Jefferson has the honor to send to the President Dr. Thornton’s answer to Mr. Hallet’s objections this moment received, and which he has not had time to read. Perhaps the President may think it worth while to communicate them to Mr. Hobens and see what he thinks of them, for which reason he sends them to the President in the instant of recieving them."
On July 13, the president had his secretary Tobias Lear write to Thornton. "Upon the best consideration the pressure of public business will allow him to give the subject," the president wanted Thornton to meet with Hoban "in the presence of the best and most skilful architect that can be obtained in this city" to discuss "the impracticability of execution" of his plan. The meeting would be in Jefferson's office.(20)
Lear's note suggests that the president didn't read Thornton's rejoinder to Hallet's attack on his plan. That rejoinder is also missing. A rough draft of what he sent remains in his papers and makes clear that he did not "have candour enough to acknowledge his mistakes." His draft has no sketches, no cost estimates, but shows Thornton's cursory command of architectural history. He assured that his plan could be built on time, after all the Escurial in Spain with its 14,000 windows was built it six years. He dismissed his obvious errors by arguing that if they were obvious even he would have recognized them before too late.
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| 49. The Escurial, a monastery and regal residence to which the Capitol could not compare |
He doubted Hallet's qualifications to criticize the essence of his design. He set out to prove that he knew more about architecture than the French architect.
The want of unity between the Ornaments and the Order, forms another objection in Mr. Hallet’s report. I trust he will permit me in this instance to prefer the authorities of the best books.... The Intercolumniation of the portico is objected. The Ancients had five proportions, (viz) the Picnostyle containing 1½ Diameter; the Sistyle 2 Diameters; the Eustyle 2¼ Dia:; the Diastyle 3 Diam:; and the Aræostyle 4 Diameters. The Eustyle is reasoned the most elegant in general, but deviations are allowed according to circumstances....(21)
Then there were the semi-circular projections at the north and south ends of the building. Thornton coined his own principal: "...in an insular building every front should exhibit the same or similar elegance of stile." The president had approved the same feature in Turner's design and wanted to unite the columns of the projections with those along the east and west front to pilasters. Thornton didn't allude to that and give away how much he depended on Turner's design. He did note the "happy manner" in which such style on each front produced "a grand and striking part of the composition which I should be very sorry to part with."
On July 15, at the President's house at 6th and Market Streets, Jefferson convened Thornton, Hallet, Hoban, Thomas Carstairs and William Williams. In Brown's history of the Capitol, dark forces were at work: "Hallet, Blodget, Williamson, and Carstairs, all competitors, seemed to have combined and, being on the spot, urged the rejection of Thornton's plan." Blodget and Williamson were not at the meeting. Brown evidently mistook Williams for the Scottish mason. Carstairs had come in second in the Library Company competition, but Jefferson had asked Thornton to pick two local scientific characters, i.e. builders, and he chose Carstairs and Williams who built Thornton's library design as amended. Thornton's engineer friend Rivardi was in Tortola meeting a woman he fell in love with in Vienna and who left her husband and child to join him in America.
In the late 20th century, C. M. Harris expanded the list of Thornton's enemies to include Jefferson. In letters to Madison, Jefferson sometimes accused the president of craving the trappings of royalty. Given the power to choose between Thornton's design and Hallet's, Harris claims Jefferson favored Hallet's because it was simpler. Harris suggests that the architecture of the Capitol was at the heart of the split in the president's cabinet that gave rise to political parties. At the end of July, Jefferson informed the president that he would resign his office at the end of year. Actually, a crisis with France that summer divided the cabinet that had already fractured over Hamilton's fiscal policy. On August 6, the president rode out to Jefferson's home along the Schuylkill River and discussed his resignation. Jefferson wrote a memorandum about what they had discussed. Neither man mentioned the Capitol.(22)
As for Thornton's design, Jefferson was primarily interested in Carstair's opinion. He knew him well. The Scottish carpenter had designed and built the house Jefferson was renting and had remodeled it to suit Jefferson's needs. Carstairs support for Hallet's plan was decisive, even Williams endorsed. Then the day after the meeting, Williams called on Jefferson and explained that after conferring with Thornton, he changed his mind. All objections “could be removed but the want of light and air in some cases.” That didn't help Thornton's cause. Jefferson was very skeptical. When he wrote a report on the meeting for the president, he mocked Williams. His “method of spanning the intercolonnations with secret arches of brick, and supporting the floors by an interlocked framing appeared to me totally inadequate;... and a conjectural expression how head-room might be gained in the Stairways shewed he had not studied them.” He reminded the president that when he was briefly at the meeting, Williams said that "on the whole that the reformed plan was the best."
On July 17, Jefferson sent his report to the president and listed what the meeting decided. A colonnade is simply a row of columns. A peristyle is a colonnade that surrounds space and in Thornton's design were the principle feature on each side of the building:
These objections were proposed and discussed on a view of the plans: the most material were the following.
1. The intercolonnations of the western and central peristyles are too wide for the support of their architraves of Stone: so are those of the doors on the wings.
2. The colonnade passing through the middle of the Conference room has an ill effect to the eye, and will obstruct the view of the members: and if taken away, the ceiling is too wide to support itself.
3. The floor of the central peristyle is too wide to support itself.
4. The stairways on each side of the Conference room want head-room.
5. The windows are in some important instances masked by the Galleries.
6. Many parts of the building want
light and air in a degree which renders them unfit for their
purposes. This is remarkably the case with some of the most important
apartments, to wit, the chambers of the Executive and the Senate, the
anti-chambers of the Senate and Representatives, the Stair-ways &c.
Other objections were made which were surmountable, but those
preceding were thought not so, without an alteration of the plan.(23)
A comparison of Hawkin's reconstruction of Thornton's original floor plan, based on what Thornton and others wrote about it, with Hallet's floor plan and the floor plan Thornton drew three or four years later that he claimed was his original design somewhat clarifies what the committee addressed. In 1803, Jefferson embraced Thornton's remake as the adopted plan which complicates the discussion. Simply put, since Hallet, halved the cost of the building, his solution to objection one was to simplify Thornton's rather crowded central axis by making the Conference room a perfect oval, eliminating the President's room, and the rotunda. In his March 1793 design, Hallet had the conference room with its inside "an exact sphere in imitation of the Pantheon." His cost cutting July plan likely did the same.
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| Hawkins' rendering of Thornton's winning design |
As for objections five and six, which addressed want of "light and air," Jefferson seemed dumbfounded by Thornton's ineptitude. Even Col. William Williams had no cure for that. Hallet pushed the East front portico back leaving a court yard to give more light to the wings. In that process, Thornton's charming and chaste pediment, despite a naked Hercules on top, was eliminated. Hallet naively thought a clearer view of the dome a la the Pantheon would satisfy. The builders opined that Hallet's new plan by and large corrected the defects. But they thought that in one respect, Hallet went too far. His portico on the East front was set back forming a court yard between the North and South wings of the building. If not brought ahead, as in Thornton's plan, everyone thought it at least had to be brought forward and made even with the wings.
In what he wrote about the meeting, Jefferson did not suggest that Thornton's rotunda be preserved. However, in 1803, he viewed the rotunda as an integral part of the plan. By the way, Thornton would describe his rotunda as having a diameter of 114. Today's Rotunda has a diameter of 96 feet and is not paired with an oval Conference Room. However, in 1803 and obviously in 1793, Jefferson viewed the design of the center of the building as conjectural. The two wings had to be built or congress would leave the city. In April, he had settled the design of the House chamber with Thornton which in turn dictated semicircular design of the smaller Senate chamber. To be sure, Hallet was agreeable to the Halle au Ble chamber but it kept disappearing in some of his designs. He also had a knack going Baroque in the center of building. Jefferson married Euclidian geometry with Neo-classical architecture and that's what the central axis of Thornton's design did. In making his case that Jefferson supported Hallet, C. M. Harris cites a tracing of Hallet's floor plan found in Jefferson's papers. Jefferson likely saved a copy because it was the best representation of Jefferson's own idea: the House chamber cum Halle au Ble. As for the rest of Hallet's design, Jefferson made much of the need to bring Hallet's East front of the center building forward and made even with the wings. He also cast doubt on the calculations of cost that Hallet made. He asked Carstairs to estimate the cost of the masonry for the walls.
Jefferson concluded that Hallet's plan "has preserved the most valuable ideas of the original and rendered them susceptible of execution; so that it is considered as Dr Thornton’s plan reduced into practicable form. The persons consulted agreed that in this reformed plan the objections before stated were entirely remedied; and that it is on the whole a work of great merit.... It was further their opinion that the reformed plan would not cost more than half what the original one would." Jefferson saved the reputation of a fellow amateur architect, who was somewhat of a walking encyclopedia and whom he liked. Since retiring at the end of the year was likely on his mind, Jefferson knew that upon leaving office, he would have nothing more to do with the Capitol. He saved his own reputation by saving Thornton's. Thornton did not see it that way. In 1798, he recalled that he did not ask for the other prize for winning the design contest. He thought that asking for a lot in the federal city would be indelicate. As for Thornton's plan, after the meeting it was not given back to Thornton. Hallet and Hoban took it back to Georgetown and it was soon lost.(25)
In a July 25 letter to the commissioners, the president enclosed Jefferson's letter, gave his own version of the meeting and his decision about the plan to be used. He noted that both builders brought by Thornton thought Hallet's objections valid. Carstairs "who appeared to have studied the matter with most attention, pronounced them irremidiable without an alteration in some parts of the plan...." But the president also opined that the plan decided upon preserved “the original ideas of Doctor Thornton." He put it this way: "The plan produced by Mr Hallett, altho’ preserving the original ideas of Doctor Thornton, and such as might upon the whole, be considered as his plan, was free from these objections." It was the plan the two builders "as practical Architects, would chuse to execute." Hallet's plan had an added advantage: "Besides which, you will see, that, in the opinion of those Gentlemen, the plan executed according to Mr Hallett’s ideas would not cost more than one half of what it would if executed according to Doctr Thornton’s."
He then addressed the East front and one can't help get the impression that rather than Thornton, who had presented a design that could not be built, the president didn't trust Hallet: "It seems to be the wish that the Portico of the East front, which was in Doctor Thornton’s original plan, should be preserved in this of Mr Hallett’s. The recess which Mr Hallett proposes in that front, strikes every one who has viewed the plan unpleasantly, as the space between the wings or projections is too contracted to give it the noble appearance of the buildings of which it is an imitation; and it has been intimated that the reason of his proposing the recess instead of a portico, is to make it in one essential feature different from Doctr Thornton’s plan."
The president concluded: "After these opinions, there
could remain no hesitation how to decide; and Mr Hoben was
accordingly informed that the foundation would be begun upon the plan
as exhibited by Mr Hallett, leaving the recess in the East front open
for further consideration." Before laying the foundation of that part building, Hallet had to draw and get approval for his solution to the problem. The services of Dr. Thornton were not needed. The president's dislike of Hallet boded well for Thornton, but did not save Thornton's plan. In August, the
President sent the commissioners the cost estimates Carstairs made
for the stone work on what the President called “Mr. Halletts
plan." And that was the plan that directed the work that began immediately. The president would never call it Thornton's plan.(26)
On September 18, 1793, a month and a half after the president wrote the letter adopting Hallet’s revision of Thornton’s design, he tapped in the ceremonial cornerstone of the Capitol. The attached plaque listed Hallet and Hoban as its architects. Thornton did not attend the ceremony and there is no evidence that he was invited. The commissioners grudgingly realized that Hallet and his family could not continue to live off his $250 second prize from the design contest. At their November meeting, they decided to pay Hallet 400 Maryland Pounds or about $650 a year. Hoban was making $1,500."(27)
The crisis and its resolution did not get to the bottom of why the president and secretary of state were fooled by Thornton's design. While the setback seemed to stun Thornton enough to keep him from drawing another design for two years, by 1798 he hung an East elevation in his parlor and passed it off as his award winning design. In 1876, when Adolph Cluss saw it in the Library of Congress, he dismissed it as "being simply pictorial, [it] could not claim dignity and consideration as an architectural composition." Thornton drew an exterior proportioned to please the eye, and not related precisely to the interior structure of the building.(19)
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| This etching on an 1818 map of city is usually exhibited as Thornton's original design. |
Another way to look at it is to compare Thornton 1798 elevation with an 1846 photo of the Capitol. The wings of the actual building are taller which suggests that the impression Thornton's design gave of "œconomy in the mass of the whole structure" was a painterly touch not based on architectural realities.
Just as Thornton's rise in the spring attracted no public notice, neither did his fall in the summer. Posterity's doubts about Thornton's design would be relieved once Glenn Brown credited him for the design of a relatively complicated architectural gem now known as the Octagon house which like the Capitol, also had oval rooms. That proved that Thornton was indeed an architect, and made it easier for Brown to convince others that in 1793 he didn't make a false start as an architect. His Capitol design could be built and, according to Brown, Thornton would prove that when he became a commissioner.
Ironically, in August 1793, as Thornton nursed his wounds, James Greenleaf came to Philadelphia, and the sequence of events began that brought the architect to the city who oversaw construction of the Octagon. To Thornton, William Lovering was never a rival because Thornton never claimed he designed the house that Lovering built. However, Thornton's fame as architect depends on proving that Lovering did not have the genius to design what he built.
In 1787, Greenleaf left Boston and joined a politically well connected speculator in New York City. Then he went to Amsterdam to speculate in American currency and thanks to Hamilton's financial plan that funded the American debt at par, Greenleaf returned with $1.3 million in credit with Dutch banks. Greenleaf assumed that European investors would want to secure their new found wealth and eventually get even richer by investing in American real estate. He had met Blodget in London and his fellow New Englander had told him about the potential of the federal city.(20)
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| 54. James
Greenleaf by Gilbert Stuart |
In August 1793, Greenleaf met with the president who had just appointed him US Consul in Amsterdam. Despite his New England background Greenleaf knew the right chords to strike with the founder of the Potomac Company. He showed him how baskets could carry boats over the falls of the Potomac. Then he unveiled his interest in investing heavily in the federal city. He also bank rolled the merchant house that Tobias Lear, the president's secretary, wanted to establish in the federal city. Lear wrote the glowing letter of introduction to the commissioners that the president would soon regret signing.
On September 18, 1793, a month and a half after the president wrote the letter adopting Hallet’s revision of Thornton’s design, he tapped in the ceremonial cornerstone of the Capitol. The attached plaque listed Hallet and Hoban as its architects. The commissioners asked the Hoban to lay the foundation and Hallet to perfect the design approved by the committee. Hoban was making $1,500. Hallet and his family could not continue to live off his $250 second prize from the design contest. At their November meeting, they decided to pay Hallet 400 Maryland Pounds or about $650 a year 1 There is no evidence that Thornton was invited and he did not attend the ceremony even though he had a reason to do so. By then Thornton, his wife, his mother-in-law and 18 girls at her boarding school had fled Philadelphia to escape a yellow fever epidemic.
Greenleaf was at the cornerstone laying ceremony for the Capitol and attendant auction where the President bought four lots in Square 667 along the Eastern Branch near where L'Enfant planned a canal through the city to short circuit the upper tidal reaches of the Potomac. He later informed the commissioners that his purchase "was more the result of incident than premeditation." That incident may have been Greenleaf contracting to buy hundreds of privately held lots south and southwest of the Capitol which he envisioned as the commercial center of the city. After sleeping on his purchase, the president took Blodget aside and arranged to buy four lots in Square 21 on Peter's Hill overlooking the Potomac which he fancied as a good site for his private residence in the city. Greenleaf had also offered to buy his Western lands which promised funds for a suitable mansion. After sleeping on his purchases, Greenleaf opened negotiations with the commissioners to buy 3000 public lots and also offered to buy Commissioner Johnson's real estate near Frederick, Maryland.(21)
Greenleaf headquartered in New York City, but he induced two Philadelphia speculators, Robert Morris and John Nicholson, to join in his schemes. That included his federal city developements and a plan to buy enough cheap Western land to monopolize the vision of European investors as they pondered maps of America. Both Morris and Nicholson were at that moment short of funds, but with their endorsement Greenleaf reopened negotiations with the commissioners to raise his and his new partner's stake. They contracted to buy 6000 building lots to be paid for with annual payments of $70,000 for seven years. Greenleaf would also build 20 brick houses a year for seven years, and win the commissioners a million dollar loan from Dutch banks. Plus, there would be enough credit remaining to buy 6 million acres of Western land. Greenleaf concentrated on the federal city. In November, he bought brick-making machines from a New York City inventor, and hired James Simmons to supervise the architects Greenleaf would hire. He had married the daughter of Jacob Bringhurst who built carriages for the likes of George Washington. The young man started his own shop and had pretensions as a carriage designer of elegance. His brother William clerked in the Treasury department that had issued the bonds that formed the basis of Greenleaf's wealth. Young James would make $2600 a year.
On December 5, Blodget wrote to the commissioners from Philadelphia alerting them that "Mr. Greenleaf I am informed intends to make great exertions in the spring in a new elegant stile of building." Blodget also knew that Greenleaf planned to be in the city in December to close his negotiations with the commissioners. Well before the epidemic, Thornton had sold bottles of rum tapped from a Tortola cask to Blodget and their friendship blossomed while the Superintendent spent much of his time in Philadelphia trying to pay off lottery tickets. According to a note that Mrs. Thornton made in a 1793 almanac, on December 9 the Thornton's went to the federal city. The trip lasted 11 days and cost them ***
Thornton had been looking for a job. On September 11, after escaping the epidemic he asked Benjamin Rush who had remained in the city to fight the epidemic to help him win appointment to the chemistry chair at the medical school vacated by a doctor who had just died from yellow fever. Rush never replied. On November 29, citing Madison as reference, he applied to the president to replace Tobias Lear. The president replied promptly but only to inform Thornton that he had already chosen someone else.
While in the City of Washington, Thornton posted and presumably wrote a letter to Lettsom. In it, he didn't explain why he was in the federal city but he did write about the epidemic. The for just over three months newspapers had published preventatives, remedies, testimonies, resolutions and exhortations, but nothing from Thornton. In a sense, he had a job to do. Dr. Lettsom could easily have his letter published in Britain. The death toll included Mrs. Brodeau's sister, but Thornton missed the epidemic. By mid-October, the Thorntons were in Wilmington, Delaware, with Mrs. Brodeau and her charges. A simple story about their flight to safety and how they cared for and reassured the school girls would have resonated then and now. Finally, on December 11, a month after the city reopened, he began his version well enough: "This has been a long night of silence and death...." Then it flagged as Thornton indulged his penchant to criticize. He described an instant best seller written by Philadelphia bookseller as "ill written" and thought it under counted the dead by 2,000. He highlighted the city's awful "necessaries" as a cause of the epidemic. He deprecated the depleting remedies used by some doctors, not mentioning Rush by name, and then briefly described his own experience doctoring himself.(22)
Thornton claimed he was “taken with every symptom of the fever and saw, from my sick bed, many dying in different rooms opposite, but I pursued a more moderate mode, and got well in about a week, though I was reduced, in one day, to a very low state, by the violence of the fever, vomiting and head-ache.” What Thornton wrote is not plausible. The city established a hospital outside of the city for the incapacitated and unattended poor. It was staffed by nurses and doctors who didn't let patients self medicate. None of the several doctors or many gentlemen who got the fever wound up as a patient there. Two months later, Thornton's story changed. He wrote to John Fitch “I had it but by going in the country and submitting only to my own rules I got better.” In his subsequent letters referring to yellow fever, he didn't mention getting sick at all.(24) The letter didn't wind up in a British medical journal.
Thornton likely didn't go to check on the Capitol. Work stopped in the winter and laying foundation stones wouldn't begin in earnest until the late spring. Even the hired slaves were sent home in the weeks before Christmas. But if Thornton went to the city to get a job working for Greenleaf, there is no evidence that Thornton saw Greenleaf or even the commissioners in the federal city.
In February, he wrote to Lettsom again and didn't seem excited about anything. In the first part of his letter he complimented Lettsom on the progress of his son toward an M.D. in Leyden. Then Thornton lamented: "....he will be ripe before I begin to take root. He will be urged by thy incessantly working soul to become active like thee. I languish here amongst merchants, and talents here are in a measure useless. I must work in politics, and exert myself in a way suited, not to myself, but to those about me. I am ashamed of my idleness; I have done nothing; I promise Heaven to do much. If a man wills to do, he does."(26)
On the "12th of the 6th Month," Thornton wrote to Robespierre offering what he called “HINTS for devices of war” including two that he invented, harpoons with spring barbs for grappling and grenades of basalt. How to heat iron balls in an oven before being shot was secret but not his original idea. If summoned, he would come to France to help build those decisive weapons. He enclosed a copy of Cadmus and invited France to reform the world's languages. He didn't offer to design France's new public buildings. The 12th of the 6th on the new French calendar translates as March 2, 1794. On April 3, Thornton took his seat as a member of the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania. Presumably, he endorsed the Society's April 10 resolves opposing the Washington administration's negotiations with Britain. Whether he participated in the Society's May 1 march to the minister of France's garden is unknown. But it seems, Thornton was not destined for the rough and tumble of politics. In June, he learned, likely from Blodget, that there was revolution in making in the federal city. After closing the books on the lottery, the commissioners fired Blodget. Johnson and Stuart announced that with financing of the Capitol assured by the deal with Greenleaf, they would have to be replaced before the board's September meeting. Sometime shortly after attending the meeting of the Philosophical Society on June 20, Thornton rode off to Georgetown.(27)
Two roads diverged as Thornton headed once again headed south. The proprietors and speculators who thought they knew the pulse of city-to-be across Rock Creek congregated in Georgetown as always. Greenleaf's "new elegant stile of building" unfolded almost five miles away over a mile south of the Capitol in what everyone began calling Greenleaf's Point. Thornton gravitated to Georgetown. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, where the foundation stones of the Capitol peaked here and there above ground, the commissioners tried to fire Hallet for insubordination.
Footnotes for Chapter Four:
1. Harris p. 280; WT to GW, 29 November 1793.
2. GW to Commrs, second letter 3 March 1793, Commrs to GW, 12 March 1793,
3. Hallet to Jefferson 15 March 1793; Jefferson to GW 26 March 1793.
4. GW to Commrs. 2 April 1793; Commrs. to WT 5 April 1793, Harris p. 238.
5. GW to Commrs. 3 March 1793.
6. Brown, 1896 p. 68; Bryan, W.B. History of the Nation's Capital Vol.1, p. 201; Harris, p. xlix.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11. WT to Commrs. April 1793, Papers of William Thornton.
12. WT to Thomas Thomason 24 April 1793, Harris pp, 249-51. AMT notebooks; APS proceeding 30 April 1793.
13. Holland Land Company papers.
14. Roberdeau to L'Enfant 18 June 1793, L'Enfant Papers.
15. Commrs to GW, 23 June, 1793; Brown 1896 p. 68, Brown 1800, p. 60;
16. GW to Jefferson, 30 June 1793,
17. GW to Hallet and Hoban, 1 July 1793,
18. Jefferson to WT 8 July 1793.
19. Hoban to Jefferson, 10 July 1793; Hoban memo, 10 July 1793
20. Jefferson to GW 12 July 1793; Lear to WT 13 July 1793.
21. WT to Jefferson, 12 July 1793.
22. Harris p. ; Jefferson to Madison ; Jefferson memo .
22. Brown, US Capitol p.63; Jefferson to GW, 17 July 1793
23. Jefferson to GW July 1793.
24. Hawkins, "Capitol Dome" p.14.
25. Harris p. 257;WT to Commrs. 21 September 1798.
26. GW to Commrs., 25 July & 29 August 1793.
27.
14. Latrobe to Jefferson 4 April 1803, Latrobe Correspondence p. 278.
15. Jefferson to Latrobe 14 April 1811.
16. Harris p. 257.
18. Architect of the Capitol, "First Cornerstone;" Commrs. proceedings 1 November 1793.
19. Latrobe Journal p. 206; Cluss Address before 10th Annual Convention of American Institute of Architects, 12 October 1876.
20. Clark, Greenleaf and Law in the Federal City; Greenleaf to Webster 18 August 1789, Ford p. 205; Blodget to Jefferson?
21. GW to Commrs. 20 August, 1793; GW to Commrs. 14 March 1794 Arnebeck, "The Bubble and the Nest Egg"; Johnson to Greenleaf 25 September 1793, Greenleaf Papers.
22. WT to Rush, 11 September 1793; Harris, p. 275.
23.
24. WT to Lettsom, 11 December 1793, Pettigrew 3, 224-6; WT to Fitch, 21 March 1794, Harris p. 277. Thornton eventually grew accustomed to Rush's remedies. According to his wife's notebook, on New Year's Day 1812, he woke with an alarming palsy. The doctor bled him and dosed him with calomel and jalap, a mercurial medicine and herbal laxative, which along with bleeding, were the same depleting remedies Rush had used. Lettsom, Recollections of Benjamin Rush, 1815, Google Books; The best short history of the late 18th century yellow fever epidemics is my own: : A Short History.... My book on Rush and yellow is on-line at Benjamin Rush, Yellow Fever and the Birth of Modern Medicine.
25. Blodget to Commrs. 5 December 1793; General Advertiser 16 March 1792 p. 1; Jonathan Singerton, "The United States as an Abode of Misery: Maria von Borns Life in the Early Republic" (In Tortola, Rivardi met Maria von Born, a Viennese socialite who had fallen in love with Rivardi and left her husband.) Clark, Greenleaf and Law, pp. : GW to Morris, 26 May 1794 ; on GW's negotiations to sell his Western lands.
26. Pettigrew volume 2, pp 544-45, WT to Lettsom 21 February 1794.
27. WT to the Citizen President of France, 12 June 1794, Papers of William Thornton; Minutes of Philosophical Society 20 April 1794.
28. Dalton to Greenleaf 20 May 1794; Stoddert to Greenleaf 12 May 1794 in Greenleaf Papers, Stoddert looks forward to "getting supplied with bricks from your machines...."; Appleton to Greenleaf, June 23, 1794; on Appleton see Greenleaf and Law in Fed. City, and Ford's Noah Webster; agreement with Kinsley 16 November 1793, HSP; See Kinsley to Jefferson 22 November 1793. Excerpts from Through a Fiery Trial on Greenleaf's speculation;
29. contracts with architects in Greenleaf Papers, HSP; Clark and dome Maryland State House and Dome; and St. John's College
30. Thanks to the marriage of Lovering's daughter to Dr. John Brereton, some attempts at describing Lovering's life are found in genealogies of the Brereton Family; Fitzroy Square ; on hangings sashes see Lovering to Commissioners, January 9, 1798;
30.
18. Cluss
3: L'Enfant to GW 17 January 1792 Enclosure
4. Hallet's and Hoban's bona fides as architects were self-professed. On Williamson see Williamson to GW 11 July 1796
5.
6. Cluss 1876.
8. Arnebeck, Through a Fiery Trial, p. 164.
9. ; Jefferson to WT ---------
10.
12.
14. ; McBride, Elyse Gundersen, "The Changing Role of the Architect in the American Construction Industry, 1870-1913." Contruction History Vol. 20 no. 1, (2013) p. 125, 131ff.
15. Trumbull to WT 9 March 1795, Papers of William Thornton.
16. Commrs. records, proceedings 18 -21 November1793.
18. Commrs. to Fenwick 5 January 1793.
24. WT to Fitch 21 February 1794;
28. . Commrs to GW, 28 January 1794 Harris, p. 251; Rivardi to GW, 6 May 1794; ; Commrs. to GW, 23 March 1794; Commrs. to GW, 10 July 1794.
30. on piecework, Carroll to Williamson 7 May 1794, Commrs. to Williamson 17 & 19 May 1794; WT to the Citizen President of France, 12 June 1794, Papers of William Thornton
Pratt v. Law, No. 659, , US Supreme Court, 9 Cranch pp. 779ff.
WT to Thomason, 24 April 1793, Papers of William Thornton, Harris, pp. 249-51.
Clark, p 159: WT to Jefferson, 8 June 1793, Founders online 269-71; Fitch to WT, 11 August 1793, Papers of William Thornton.
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