Chapter Five: Design by Committee and an Epidemic
The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol
Chapter Five: Design by Committee and an Epidemic
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| 46. Jefferson in 1791 |
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. As he tried to nail down the particulars of his design, many ideas still floated in the air. 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.
It seemed he didn't hear the commissioners' worries about too many committee room. He put some on the west side of the building which, thanks to the sloping hill, would never be a convenient entrance:
E.E.E.E. Offices of clerks or committee rooms. These are under the grand conference room. If it should be thought proper to land company from carriages under cover, at this side of the building, the divisions may be made according to the yellow lines without regarding the red ones, except the blocks a, a, a, a, intended to support the columns upon which the gallery of the grand Conference Room rests; the blocks b,b,b,b, may be substituted by arches or strong iron work....
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."
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."(1)
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| 48. The Farnese Hercules |
Judging from a letter he wrote to his step-father on April 24, imagining the Capitol provided an escape from troubling reality. He didn't brag about his Capitol design, perhaps because he was asking for money. He claimed that he was forced to live off a "dowager.” He blamed his step-father for not dividing the Tortola plantation and asked for an immediate loan of 1500 Pounds Sterling, about $6,000. He needed the money because he was negotiating to buy a farm along the Susquehanna River in Maryland where he might be able to catch enough shad to profitably sell in Tortola. In the meantime, he quickly gave up on practicing medicine. He later said the fees did not reward the amount of time and effort expended. Instead, he rented a farm just outside of Philadelphia, and began raising pigs.(2)
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.(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."(4) 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."In the late 20th century, C. M. Harris fingered Jefferson. He insisted on Hallet's simpler design because he included grand public buildings in the trappings of royalty that he blamed the president for favoring. His revulsion to those trappings in part prompted Jefferson to announce at the end of July that he would resign his office at the end of year. 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. 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.(5)
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."(6)
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,..." He assured them 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, even though his character was at stake "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...."(7)
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.(8)
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.(9)
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.(10)
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....(11)
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.
Since Jefferson had echoed the president's praise of Thornton's design, the meeting was not stacked against Thornton. In June, he had asked Thornton to design a mace for the Virginia legislature. Jefferson did not know Williams but knew Carstairs 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.”
On July 17, Jefferson sent his report to the president and listed what the meeting decided:
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.(12)
What were they talking about? Most of the issues discussed criticized the floor plan. Based on all that was written about it at the time, Don Hawkins recreated it for his 2013 essay on the history of the Capitol's Rotunda. In his April explanation to the commissioners, Thornton had placed the "Representants" in the North Wing. He deduced the shapes of the two legislative chambers because Thornton described them as being lighted from three windows to north and south respectively. He had the Library sharing the principal floor with the Senate. Thornton had also described the relationship of the Executive apartment with the Conference room and its colonnade as well as with the Rotunda.(13)
The first three objections dealt with columns flanking passageways, peristyles, or serving in an uplifting pattern as a colonnade. Since Hallet, halved the cost of the building, his solution to objection one was to simplify Thornton's rather crowded central axis by eliminating the President's room, making the Conference room a perfect oval. In his March 1793 design, Hallet had the conference room with its inside "an exact sphere in imitation of the Pantheon," on the second floor above the vestibule. His cost cutting July plan likely did the same. Hawkins' "Rotunda" which Thornton would eventually call the "Vestibule" would thus be tucked under Conference room which would be topped with the dome. By squaring the two wings, two more of Thornton's problematic features would be eliminated.
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. That left it up to Jefferson to report to the president and, "good or bad", decide the issue.
If, as Jefferson would later claim and Thornton would tacitly admit, Jefferson persuaded Thornton to model the House chamber on the Halles au Bles, then unlike the president, he had a prior understanding with Thornton. It seems likely he did. From Janurary to the July meeting, both men were in Philadelphia where they had a venue for meeting, the American Philosophical Society. Not until Jefferson moved to the federal city in November 1800 would the two men be near each other. However, by 1796, Thornton would claim the large oval chamber planned for the House as his own. Men with a hobby-horse typically play their hand sooner than later so likely before the attack on Thornton's design, Jefferson got Thornton to appreciate the Halle au Bles. Men like that had to be rewarded in some way. In his own mind, Jefferson often wed geometry with architecture and that's what the central axis of Thornton's design did, and in a way complementing a Halle au Bles on at least one side. Jefferson also knew that the president expected a center dome. Thus, smaller domes on the wings would not work for the president without a larger dome in the center. Actually, in Jefferson's mind, Hallet's court yard probably smacked of royalty. Americans thought of a court as judge and jury. In making his case that Jefferson supported Hallet, C. M. Harris cites a tracing of Hallet's floor plan found in Jefferson's papers. However, that floor plan has the best representation of Jefferson's own idea: the House chamber cum Halle au Bles. As for the rest of Hallet design, in his report, Jefferson made much of the need to bring Hallet's east front of the center building forward and made even with the wings.
In his letter to the president, 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's sophistry forgave his own and the president's initial enthusiasm for Thornton's design and took any notion of raking back $500 from Thornton off the table. He did not congratulate Hallet for his work. It became the "reformed plan" and Jefferson made it seem to be as much the committee's as it was Hallet's. He also faulted the court yard in the East Front, a major element of Hallet's design. However, Hallet still had a job. At the same time, Jefferson saved the major element of Thornton's plan, the Rotunda, and saved the reputation of a fellow amateur architect, who was somewhat of a walking encyclopedia and who he liked. However, a yellow fever epidemic sent them out of the city and Jefferson's leaving office a week or so after Thornton returned to Philadelphia kept them apart until late 1800. There is no evidence that after his meeting with the president on August 6, 1793, Jefferson had anything to do with the development of the city or designing and building the Capitol and President's house until April 1800. Then, in his capacity as vice president, he gave Thornton suggestions about seating arrangement in the Senate chamber.
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.(17)
Thornton's plan was not given back to Thornton. Hallet and Hoban took it back to Georgetown and the East elevation was soon lost. 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."(17)
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. It obviously wasn't his original design as it doesn't have the semi-circular projections at the north and south ends which in 1793 Thornton had insisted were "a grand and striking part of the composition which I should be very sorry to part with." In 1798, Latrobe saw what Thornton had in his parlor and described it in his diary as "one of the first designs of modern times," but he added "it is faulty in external details." When he has hired to build it, as Adolph Cluss put in it 1876, Latrobe saw that "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 now judged to be Thornton's original design. However, since Hallet had ridiculed Thornton's "semi circular projections at the ends" of the building, presumably they were in Thornton's original plan and eliminated by Hallet in his revision of it. On the other hand, since the 1818 engraving has the portico Hallet eliminated, it is obviously an engraving of a Thornton design,with the naked Hercules at the peak of the pediment. |
Another way to look at it is to compare Thornton 1798 elevation, which he might have drawn after half of the North Wing had been raised, 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 architecture gem now known as the Octagon house. 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 design could have been built and he would prove that when he became a commissioner.
However, contemporaries never really focused on Thornton's battle to redeem his reputation. Ironically, in August 1793, as he nursed his wounds, 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 Octagon. However, the accepted narrative for Thornton's fame as architect depends on proving that Lovering did not have genius enough to design what he built.
James Greenleaf, a New Englander by birth, had joined with a politically well connected partner 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. On September 18, they were both at the cornerstone laying ceremony for the Capitol and attendant auction where the President bought four lots in Square 667 along the waterfront near where a proposed canal through the city that short circuited the upper tidal reaches of the Potomac reached the Eastern Branch. 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 resident 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 Hagerstown, Maryland.(21)
Meanwhile Thornton applied in vain for two jobs: chemistry professor at the Philadelphia medical school and as the president's private secretary. He may have gone prospecting for a third after the president informed him that he had already taken on a new secretary. On December 9 he and his wife went to Georgetown and returned 11 days later. The only evidence for that is a note Mrs. Thornton made in an almanac and a letter Thornton posted from the city to Lettsom. In the generous excerpts of that letter, he didn't mention why he came to the federal city. He likely didn't go to check on the Capitol. Work stopped in the winter and laying foundation wouldn't begin in earnest until the late spring. Even the hired slaves were sent home in the weeks before Christmas. Greenleaf planned to be there to complete negotiations with the commissioners and Thornton could have become privy to Greenleaf's plans through Blodget who had become Thornton's close friend. The federal city's Superintendent spent much of his time in Philadelphia trying to pay off lottery tickets. On December 5, Blodget wrote to 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 likely also knew that Greenleaf was shopping for someone to oversee his architectural operations in the federal city. By his partnering with two Philadelphia speculators Robert Morris and John Nicholson, had grown into a scheme to buy 6000 building lots with annual payments of $70,000 a year for seven years, build 20 brick houses a year for seven years, and win the commissioners a million dollar loan from Dutch banks. But there is no evidence that Thornton saw Greenleaf or even the commissioners. Greenleaf found his man in Philadelphia. In January, James Simmons signed a contract for $2600 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.(25)
Apart from seeing Greenleaf, Thornton may have also been interested in moving to Georgetown. He, his wife, his mother-in-law and 18 girls at the boarding school fled Philadelphia to escape a yellow fever epidemic that killed several thousand included Mrs. Brodeau's sister. The Thorntons first went to the their farm just outside the city. By mid-October, they were in Wilmington, Delaware, and stayed there until late November. The president, who left the city a few days before he had to leave to attend the cornerstone ceremony for the Capitol, was back at work three weeks before they returned. The epidemic did affect the development of the federal city. It ended any prospects that Philadelphia's efforts to remain the capital after 1800 would succeed.
In 1800, what Thornton would write about yellow fever found a Baltimore editor who published it. In December 1793, what he wrote never found an audience. However, it is relevant to his Capitol design. Over the years, when he defended his design, Thornton exaggerated, even lied, about what he did. He did not have to lie about yellow fever. Thanks to the widespread perception that man's medicines were impotent when faced with an epidemic, doctors did not lose face if they too fled. His boast that his experience with tropical diseases was a qualification for leading a republic of free blacks in Sierra Leone had never been made public. But evidently, he sensed an opportunity to make a name for himself. Needless to say, he had his opinions about the disease.(22)
He couched the letter to Lettsom in a way to make it publishable in a British newspaper or medical journal. It began 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.
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| 55. Area first infected by yellow fever in 1793; painting by Birch, 1800 |
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.
For Thornton, all the epidemic and eclat of Greenleaf amounted to was glory lost which became fodder to feed his depression. 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 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, Blodget likely told him that there was revolution in making in the federal city. Commissioners Johnson and Stuart were finally retiring. 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, Commissioners Johnson and Stuart decided not to retire quietly. They and Commissioner Carroll fired Hallet. There is no evidence that at the that time, Thornton made any comment on a development that must have pleased him. However, just as they would eye what Lovering built on the Point, they would see in Hallet's fall a key link in the chain of evidence proving that Thornton's genius informed all that is good about the Capitol's design.
Go to Chapter Six
Footnotes for Chapter Five:
1. WT to Commrs. April 1793, Papers of William Thornton.
2. WT to Thomas Thomason 24 April 1793, Harris pp, 249-51. AMT notebooks
3. Holland Land Company papers.
4. Roberdeau to L'Enfant 18 June 1793, L'Enfant Papers.
5. Commrs to GW, 23 June, 1793; Brown 1896 p. 68, Brown 1800, p. 60;
6. GW to Jefferson, 30 June 1793,
7. GW to Hallet and Hoban, 1 July 1793,
8. Jefferson to WT 8 July 1793.
9. Hoban to Jefferson, 10 July 1793; Hoban memo, 10 July 1793
10. Jefferson to GW 12 July 1793; Lear to WT 13 July 1793.
11. WT to Jefferson, 12 July 1793.
12. Brown, US Capitol p.63; Jefferson to GW, 17 July 1793
13. Hawkins, "Capitol Dome" p.14.
14. Latrobe to Jefferson 4 April 1803, Latrobe Correspondence p. 278.
15. Jefferson to Latrobe 14 April 1811.
16. Harris p. 257.
17. GW to Commrs., 25 July & 29 August 1793.
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. AMT notebooks; Harris p. 280; WT to GW, 29 November 1793.
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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