Chapter Four (1790-1793): The Tortola Design
The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol
by Bob Arnebeck
Chapter Four: The Tortola Design
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| 35. Honeymoon Portrait |
Since it is missing, it is hard to judge how seriously Mrs. Brodeau got him hooked on land speculation. She owned property herself and likely had intimated to him that it would serve as her daughter's dowry. In another letter, he offered ideas for a lot she owned in Philadelphia: "...the lot upon which your house stands is so centrical and so large that if a good house were built at the bottom of the garden fronting the tavern, and reaching as far as the corner I have no doubt it would pay a very high interest for money expended on it, and I could lay such a plan as would render both houses very conveniently for cow houses and a necessary. I might be able to soon assist you in the expense as well as laying out the plan."(14) A structure large enough for more than one cow and a detached place where servants could dispose of fecal matter were status symbols in Philadelphia. In the same letter, he vowed that he would invest no more money in the steamboat.
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| 37. 1809 drawing of Virgin Islands |
Knowing that the Newport blacks and Hopkins had doubts about his character, Thornton submitted a novel petition to the legislature of the Virgin Islands, which met on another island. He asked them for “a certificate of my moral character,” as well as to his education, “his acquaintance with diseases of hot countries having practiced for some time in the West Indies” and his knowledge of natural history. He explained that he would use their certification to prove his ability to lead blacks back to Africa. He also listed wife, family, and possessions which he would gladly sacrifice. That didn't mean his family knew about the petition. As Thornton wrote to one legislator, he didn't want to raise the hopes of blacks or the ire of whites in the islands.(6)
Thanks to Lettsom vouching for his character, Thornton wrote to and received long letters from Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, leaders of the British anti-slave trade movement. That didn't translate into any anti-slave activity by Thornton on Tortola. He wrote to Sharp ridiculing the government's efforts to investigate slavery in the islands: "Pitt wrote queries to the different islands, but he wrote them to the planters to enquire if the Negroes were well treated!!!" Then a month later, Thornton applied for a mortgage on his share of the plantation offering his slaves as security boasting that "There are above a hundred and seventy Negroes upon it, and I believe none more valuable or healthy in the country." He even told his brother how to increase the value of that security. Send slaves to St. Croix and rate them as carpenters in the ship's manifest. He also intimated to his brother and step-father that he wanted to buy another slave plantation. His seeming eagerness to own more slaves may have been prompted by his failure to get his parents to definitively say what he was worth.(10)
Once again, he had troubled making money as he tried to practice medicine on the island. He did help his wife survive a bad fever, but he had too many other distractions. On May 5, 1792, he informed Sharp that he'd gladly become a member of a company formed to settle Sierra Leone with freed blacks if it promised to serve the cause of "annihilating the slave trade and finally slavery." Presumably, that would have necessitated his going to England if not Africa.(8)
On the same day, he sent a letter to Lettsom with a bold announcement: "I have completed a piece, which I mentioned in my last, on the elements of written language, and I prove clearly that there are thirty letters in the English language, twenty-one of which are vowels and the remaining nine are aspirates. There is no language that I cannot write perfectly (with regard to sound I mean), nor indeed is there a dialect that I cannot reduce to writing, provided I can pronounce it. Upon this plan I can shew clearly that there is not a sentence in all the books ever published in English of ten words properly spelt!"(11)
His essay Cadmus, or a Treatise on the Elements of Written Languages rakes Samuel Johnson over the coals and conjures a new alphabet out of the ashes to save school children if not the world. If that new alphabet were universally adopted, “a child would be able to read perfectly, in a few weeks provided the language were correctly spelled.” The bulk of the essay describes each of the thirty letters in the new alphabet. He also created symbols to express emotions in writing: use +___+ for irony.(12) Publishing his opus in London would have enhanced its impact, but that thought did not cross his mind. He planned to present it to the American Philosophical Society, and win its annual prize.
Likely toward the end of June, Thornton had an advertisement and a letter in hand that changed his life. The letter was from fellow steamboat director Richard Wells, who confessed that he had given up on the steamboat after watchmaker Voight who was supposed to make the engine got a patent for a boat powered by horses circling in tandem to activate two lines of paddles. He added that another scheme hatched by Thornton and Wells for a whetstone factory also didn't pan out. But he was pleased to report that on his return to Philadelphia from an obligation elsewhere, he was delighted to see the finished Library: “my friend Doctor Thornton has contributed largely to ornament our city."(15)
Thornton likely was moved by the compliment for two reason. Wells was a 58 year old, highly respected Friend. By marrying Anna Maria Bordeau in Christ Church, Thornton lost his standing in the Philadelphia Meeting. There was a sentence in Wells' letter that might have displeased. When noting the demise of the steamboat company, Wells allowed "the Fitchites deserve to be commemorated for their Perseverance." By 1802 Thornton would fancy that he was the author of the unbuilt boat not "the Fitchites." But he drew a lesson from what Wells wrote. While his steamboat ideas were obscured by the men he had to work with, he had gained a measure of fame for his Library design. The advertisement that he saw at about the same time as Wells' letter, announced another design contest. So given his fame for ornamenting a city, why not
design a building to ornament the nation? Thornton got to work.
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| 39. Design Contest Prospectus |
Jefferson's prospectus for the design did not make much of the symbolism of the Capitol. It presented a math problem. Fit a Senate chamber of 1200 square feet into the same building with a room for representatives and the conference room that could each seat 300 people. Surround those rooms with 12 committee rooms each of them 600 square feet.
Thornton seemed struck with the need to have easy passage between the three principal rooms and only sixty feet separated the Senate from the House. He took a hint from the prospectus that the conference room and representatives room should be the same size. He made both rooms rectangular but with dais of the conference along the back wall and the other room with it along the interior wall. He had the Senate sitting in a rectangle but half as big as the other rooms. Their smaller room afforded senators the convenience of having two committee rooms next door. Other committee rooms would be distributed on other floors or in two smaller buildings flanking the main building.
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| 41: Floor plan for the Tortola design. |
The exterior of the building seemed to merge a traditional Georgian government house with a chaste expression of classical forms. The pediment above the entrance could barely contain an eagle trying to fly away from the six Corinthian columns below. The sloped roof that also united all the rooms was topped with a chaste colonnade and cupola. Thornton seemed to assume that the Capitol would contain all the operational functions of the government and his design lent no distinction to any. It was at once republican, bureaucratic and boring.
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| 40. The Tortola Design |
To better celebrate Thornton's subsequent Capitol design as a work of genius, Glenn Brown speculated that his Tortola design was actually Thornton's design for the President's house. C. M. Harris, editor of Thornton’s published papers, wonders if it is actually George Turner’s design for the Capitol. However, in both his Tortola and winning design, Thornton labeled the members of the House of Representatives by their French equivalent. They were "Representants.”(16)
Thornton had sent his “Fellow Citizen” letter to the commissioners in July and he promised that he would soon return to America. He had another reason to get there sooner than later. The American gave an annual prize for the best submitted dissertation. He needed to get Cadmus there in time for the Philosophical Society's annual prize. Then in August, he "was seized with a very violent fever," took to bed, had an "intermission," thought himself out of danger but was too weak to work. He wasn't too weak to think up more schemes.
He hit on an
idea to use the many drawings he had made of tropical plants in
Tortola to illustrate a natural history of Puerto Rico, a much larger
island just to the west of Tortola. Since he had never been to Puerto
Rico, he tried to enlist someone who had been there to write the
book. He also tried to procure another rifle from the "Gunmaker to his Majesty - Fleet Street - London. The first didn't work. He was curious to see what improvements Mortimer might have made because he had his own ideas. Finally, he sent a letter to William Herschel inquiring about a telescope and reporting on a hurricane that struck Tortola.(17)
He also had breeding livestock on his mind. Sugar plantations had something that gentlemen farmers in America coveted. Caribbean jackasses and jennies had a good reputation. He planned to take some with him to Philadelphia, but they couldn't be accommodated on the ship just slated to leave St. Croix. So he sent them back to Tortola to be cared for by Quash who he also trusted to catch "curious fish," put them in a barrel with a lamb's head and send the barrel to Philadelphia. He told his brother to whom he wrote those instructions that Quash would be rewarded.
He wrote that letter a few weeks after he landed in Philadelphia where Mrs. Brodeau had found a first house for the couple two years after their marriage. Thornton had ordered good furniture sent from London but his mother-in-law furnished the house for a little over $2,000. The Thorntons participated in the intense social scene that accompanied a brief session of congress. He met Alexander Hamilton, another son of the Virgin Islands.
It's not likely Thornton talked about his Capitol design in such company, but evidently he talked about jackasses. In his long letter to his brother in which he pondered buying what was called the King's estate on St. Croix for 300,000 pieces of eight, he advised his brother to make sure Quash kept some foals virgin. Thornton wanted them shipped to Philadelphia "as I wish to put them to Genl. Washington's and I find I can sell the breed very well."(18)
Once in Philadelphia, Thornton wrote to the commissioners, using his real name, and explained that a serious illness had detained him in Tortola. However, he had learned from his friend George Turner, who had been a witness to Thornton steam-cannon demonstration, that a decision had not been made. Commissioner Carroll, who Thornton had met in Philadelphia in 1787, wrote back on November 15 welcoming his design and looking forward to seeing it on December 1 when the commissioners had their monthly meeting. Then at the December meeting, Carroll and Commissioner Stuart officially said they would welcome a design from Thornton and said that since Hallet would not finish his revised design until January, Thornton could submit his then. Since Hallet's design would go directly to Philadelphia then Thornton might as well submit his design to the secretary of state who would show it to the president.(19)
In his December 10 letter to the president, Commissioner Stuart framed the final act in the design contest as a decision between Hallet and Thornton with the expectation that Hallet would win: "Mr Hallet informs us, his plan will be ready by our next meeting, when we propose to send it up to you. From the judgement I could form of it, in it’s unfinished state, I entertain very sanguine hopes that it will meet with approbation. You will have I expect by this time, a plan of Doctor Thornton’s sent to you."
But for George Turner, Stuart would have been right. When Turner told Thornton that the president had not chosen a design, he also told him that his Tortola design would not do. But Cadmus came first. Thornton was anxious to have it recognized with an award even though, just as with his Capitol design, it missed the deadline for the Philosophical Society's annual medal. Thornton submitted a rough copy, and promised a fair copy soon. On December 21, the awards committee gave Thornton one of two prizes they awarded that year citing his dissertation as an “ingenious and learned performance” with a “tendency to introduce gradually, greater perfection in speaking and writing the English language.”
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| 38. Title Page of Cadmus |
Then Thornton had the 110 page book printed with an introduction inviting the new Republic to be the marvel of the world by having a rational orthography. He had facing pages of the introduction written in the new alphabet. Years later, after Cadmus got a bad review in a British magazine, Turner reminded him that while sitting around a table, he and Mrs. Thornton had told him not to make his introduction too revolutionary.(22)
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| 41B. Snip of Cadmus's introduction |
In a December 14, 1792, letter to the commissioners, Thornton announced his decision to make a new design. He said that his original design was for a building 500 feet long so he had to start anew with a design to fit the designated site for the building. Once again, Thornton got to work. Although over due in Ohio where he was a judge, Turner didn't leave Philadelphia until late in the summer of 1793.(23) It is not certain how much advice he gave Thornton. Turner likely told him about the president's obsession with an executive apartment in the middle section of the building. That feature was not required by the prospectus. In his Tortola design, Thornton had a dull looking and low portico. Turner likely advised him to raise it and thus score a point with the president who, thanks to L'Enfant, took his oath of office on a balcony overlooking the multitudes. He likely also shared what he knew about the president’s obsession with oval rooms. Hoban’s winning design of the President’s house had them. Hallet's designs had them. Thornton's Tortola design didn't.
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| Hallet's floor plan |
The design Thornton submitted is no longer extant, but he or Turner made two sketches on the back of his Tortola design. The sketches resemble one of Hallet's designs. As architect and historian Don Hawkins, who discovered the sketches, put it, "The similarities and differences between the sketch and Hallet's designs are of the sort that might have been the result of being drawn by someone who had seen all his drawings and was attempting to give a sense from memory of how things stood in the Capitol design process."(24)
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| 42. A sketch on back of Thornton's Tortola design |
There are no recollections by Thornton or anyone else who might have been involved during those creative four or five weeks. Narrating the nativity of the Capitol around Christmas 1792 is impossible. However, in an 1818 letter to Charles Bulfinch, the architect who oversaw the completion of the Old Capitol, John Trumbull described what happened in two sentences: “...an English gentleman, Dr. Thornton, assisted by a Russian officer of engineers, and the Vitruvius Britannicus, had made a drawing and plan for the Capitol or house of government. The doctor requested me to show these drawings to the President, and commend them to his attention, which I did."(25)
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| An elevation from Vitruvius Britannicus |
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a first century BC Roman who wrote a book on architecture. Then in 1715, the Scottish architect Colen Campbell published Vitruvius Britannicus about British architecture. Its 200 plates are mostly elevations but there are many floor plans. Trumbull was likely right about the book. In 1795, Thornton would refer to it in a letter to the president defending the necessity of a basement story in the Capitol.(26) Trumbull's memory was obviously hazy. In his letter, he had Thornton making his design at the same time L'Enfant was making his plan. He also made Rivardi a Russian and not a Swiss engineer. However, simply put, after being cued by Turner, Thornton drew a tripartite classical design much like Hallet's and also based on designs he saw in a book. He accentuated the central part that most interested the president with a dome to cover a much larger oval room than Hoban drew for the President’s house.
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| Hoban's President's house floor plan |
That Turner and Rivardi never attested to their role in helping Thornton does not prove that they didn't help. Within four months of his design winning the $500 prize, the president and Jefferson lost confidence in it and in Thornton. Turner and Rivardi were dependent on further patronage from the federal government. Why would they claim a role in perpetrating such an embarrassment?
The commissioners had instructed Thornton to give his plan to the secretary of state who would then give it to the president. Thornton came up with a better go-between. Perhaps, Turner told him that Jefferson supported Hallet. Because he was an artist, John Trumbull took an abiding interest in the design of public buildings. He needed walls to hang what he wanted to be a lifelong artistic project, paintings of the men and scenes of the Revolution. He began collecting subscriptions to finance his masterpieces. Thornton was one of many who subscribed, and he was one of few Americans who, thanks to his few months in London showing off his paintings, understood the world of art. He and Trumbull became friends. Trumbull had briefly been an aide-de-camp to Washington during the war which ever after gave him easy access to the president.
Does it make sense that Thornton did not present his work to the president himself? Keeping away when he submitted his design might have been a stroke of genius. Alone with Trumbull, the president could concentrate on Thornton's design. He could not turn to Thornton and ask him about his qualifications as an architect. However, in the president's letter to the commissioners extolling Thornton's design, we can almost see the design itself and the beaming architect standing next to it:
I have had under consideration Mr Hallet’s plans for the Capitol, which undoubtedly have a great deal of merit. Doctor Thornton has also given me a view of his. These last come forward under some very advantageous circumstances. The Grandeur, Simplicity and Beauty of the exterior—the propriety with which the apartments are distributed—and the œconomy in the mass of the whole structure, will, I doubt not, give it a preference, in your eyes, as it has done in mine, and those of several others whom I have consulted, and who are deemed men of skill and taste in Architecture. I have therefore thought it better to give the Doctor time to finish his plan, and for this purpose to delay ’till your next meeting a final decision.(27)
Accompanied by Rivardi, Thornton went to the commissioners' March meeting in Georgetown, gave them his design and hand delivered 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.”(28)
The president's
letter of introduction to the commissioners extolled Thornton's design: "I have no doubt of
its meeting with that approbation from you, which I have given it
upon an attentive inspection, and which it has received from all
those who have seen it and are considered as judges of such things." It bears remembering, that the president had delayed making a decision since July, none of his advisors or friends were likely to turn thumbs down without great cause. The process had to be brought to an end.
The design Thornton took to Georgetown was soon lost so it is impossible to see why the president thought it was so attractive. In his 1876 lecture to the American Institute of Architects convention, Adolph Cluss speculated on why the amateur Thornton "carried the day" over the professional architect: When Thornton copied architectural drawings he found in books, he must have used the line and wash technique popular with landscape artists of the day. The pen gave an outline of a structure not its true dimensions, and a wash of color filled the space in a way to please the eye rather than to relate precisely to the interior structure of the building. Thornton made, as Cluss put it, "a neatly washed elevation." Thornton had enough talent as a painter to give a striking impression of a Classic facade. Cluss found confirmation of his characterization of the elevation in Latrobe's critique of it in 1804. By that time Thornton had drawn another elevation that copied his original design. Latrobe argued that "being simply pictorial, [it] could not claim dignity and consideration as an architectural composition."(29)
From what the president wrote about Thornton's design and how Thornton behaved in Georgetown, it seems they never discussed the design. Because someone hand delivers a letter does not necessarily mean that one has read the contents of the letter. In his letter, the president worried about the cost of the building. Once in Georgetown, Thornton extolled its grandeur. Hallet heard him say it would not be finished in thirty years.(30) The president evidently didn't understand that according to the contest's rules, the designer had to estimate how much the building would cost. Instead the president left that to the commissioners: "How far the expense of such a building, as is exhibited by the plan, will comport with the funds of the City, you will be the best judges, after having made an estimate of the quantity of materials and labour to be employed in executing it." The commissioners, who hosted Thornton in Georgetown, grumbled back to the president: "We have no estimate Accompanying the Plan, nor can one be formed soon which could give much satisfaction."(31)
Both the president and the commissioners understood what an architect could do. In February, while the president was flush with his enthusiasm for Thornton's plan, James Hoban gave him an estimate of cost of the President's house if it was bigger, 77,000 Pounds Sterling or around $300,000. That shocked Washington enough that he instructed the commissioners to have Hoban shrink the plan back to his original dimensions.(32)
The commissioners were the first to question Thornton about his design. In a letter to the president, the board was emboldened to express the first criticism of Thornton's design, but only after echoing all the president had written: "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—."(33)
In 1793,
congress once again had a short session, and the president was at
Mount Vernon by April 3. He met the commissioners on the 2nd and officially approved Thornton's design with a letter one sentence long. Evidently, he made the decision without anyone answering his questions about what the building would cost. Thornton was back in Philadelphia and had evidently not give the board any information in that regard, On the 5th, the board informed Thornton of the president's approval and, so to speak, asked his banker talk to
their banker. Thornton wanted the $500 in cash, not the medal
of that value. He didn't ask for a lot, obviously because many squares
had not been surveyed. In
their letter, the commissioners also asked "As soon as the nature of
the work and your convenience will permit, we
wish to be in possession of your explanations and remarks with the plan
for we wish to mark out the ground, make preparations and even begin to
lay the foundation this fall." Then on April 10, they sent
Thornton's plan to Hallet and asked him to estimate how much it would
cost to build.
They didn't ask Thornton for any price tags or even specifications such as "cubic Feet of Brick-Work." The design contest advertisement required that but upon meeting the gentleman, they realized that Thornton wasn't an architect. That easily explains why Thornton did not stay in Georgetown and become engaged in building his design. The commissioners did have an eye out for men to make the project. Witness their hiring Blodget and keeping Hallet in the city. While they didn't see any role for Thornton, they wanted Rivardi. In Janaury 1794, the would write to the president: "when he came as a Companion to Dr Thornton, he made a strong impression on each of us, in the two or three Days he staid with us; we should not presume to lead his expectations farther, than to the levelling part, and a general view of the Surveying Department.... Mr Rivardi is not a Shewy man, but he seems to us one of those Characters, who maintains the Ground he has gained; we wish him to be introduced to you—."
But his biographers put a shine on why the commissioners were content to let Thornton return to Philadelphia with no arrangements for his returning. He only had to send more information about his design at his convenience. In his 1896 article, Glenn Brown explained that "Thornton would not agree to spend his whole time supervising the work....." In his 1914 history of the city, Wilhelmus. B. Bryan put it this way: "...he had declined the offer tendered by the commissioners of superintendent of the capitol." Bryan's book is almost entirely based on primary documents, especially the records of the commissioners. In this instance, he cited Brown's history of the Capitol.
Evidently, 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 puts it this way: "...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." Which is to say, he had lost his sensitivity to living off slave labor.(36)
Indeed, when he was back in Philadelphia, he wrote to his step father that he had no money and was forced to live off a "dowager.” He blamed him for not dividing the Tortola plantation and asked for an immediate loan of 1500 Pounds Sterling, about $6,000. He did not mention his good luck in the design contest which won him $500.
He did explain why he needed the money, and that did reveal his yearning to be of the gentry. He said that 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. Maryland was a slave state but he didn't appeal to his step-father by claiming he needed to buy slaves. 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. However, he still had a mind for fame. He sent out copies of Cadmus to the president, the commissioners and many other worthies.
Given the fame that would accrue to him because of it, that his winning the design contest didn't immediately change his life is hard to believe. But the president's attitude toward the federal city project was changing. Thanks to problems associated with it which were many, bruiting about eclat was out of the question. Since the troubles with L'Enfant, the General worried that the project would be ridiculed or damned for being extravagant. Therefore, the less said about the Capitol design the better. There was no news about it in the newspapers.
That might also have been Blodget's fault. After being appointed Superintendent, and graciously offering to be paid in building lots, Blodget had persuaded the president and commissioners to hold a "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 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.(39)
In 1792, the L'Enfant plan offering some 6,000 lots for sale became
the public symbol of the city in newspapers and magazines. In 1793, the Plan was superseded first by the "List of Prizes" and then by the list of winning tickets. The Thorntons, mother-in-law too, bought 49 tickets, won $250, and thus lost $113 in the adventure. Thornton had the comfort of knowing that he won $500 for his design, but very few of his fellow citizens yet knew of that claim to fame.(XX)
Go to Chapter Five
2 Brodeau to WT, 29 October 1790, Harris p. 122; Clark, "Doctor and Mrs. William Thornton pp. 151-4; on Mrs. Brodeau's sister see Harris p. 275
3 Papers of William Thornton, WT to Fell, 21 June 1802.
4. Papers of William Thornton, WT to Fitch 21 June 1791, complete letter in Harris, pp. 141-7; WT to Madison, 9 December 1808
5. WT to Taylor. 19 January 1791, Proceedings of the Free African Union Society, p 37, also WT to Hopkins, 29 September 1790 pp. 32ff.
6. Papers of William Thornton., WT to VI Council 25 February 1791 pp. 129 ff; J. Doty to WT 25 February 1791, in Thornton and Negro Colonization, p. 42 misdated.
7. Papers of William Thornton, WT to Wilkinson 31 July 1791; Beck, Ben, Foster Family Webpage.
8. Papers of William Thornton, WT to Sharp 5 May 1792;
9. Papers of William Thornton, Brodeau to WT 25 Sept 1791; Clark's "Dr. and Mrs. Thornton" has several letters from Brodeau beginning on pp 151ff.
10. Papers of William Thornton, WT to Quentin Dick, 2 June 1792, to J. B. Thomason, 29 November 1792.
11. WT to Lettsom 5 May 1792 Harris p. 181 Pettigrew vol 2; 542-3.
12. Cadmus, pp.25, 26, 79, 92.
13. Papers of William Thornton,WT to Brodeau, 3 Nov. 1791.
14. Papers of William Thornton,WT to Brodeau 2 Nov 1791, Harris 165-6.
15. Papers of William Thornton,Wells to WT 11 May 1792, Harris 185-7.
16. Harris, pp. 212-3.
17. Ibid., pp. 212-13; WT to Stevens, 2 September 1792, Harris p. 207.
18. Papers of William Thornton,WT to J.B. Thomason, 29 November 1792.
19. Commrs. to WT 4 December 1792, Harris p. 229.
20. Stuart to Washington, 10 December 1792,
21. Turner to WT 2 June 1799; Pettigrew 2 pp. 544-45, 21 February 1794; WT to Lettsom, 26 November 1795; Pettigrew 2: 549-55;
22. WT to Rittenhouse, 16 November 1792, Harris p. 216; Papers of William Thornton,Turner to WT 2 June 1799.
23. WT to Commrs. 14 December 1792;GW to Jefferson, 10 March 1793 .
24. Hawkins, "Graphic Origins of the Capitol Rotunda" The Capitol Dome, Vol. 50 Number 3, Summer 2013, p. 11.
25. Trumbull to Bullfinch, 28 Jan 1818 p 271, Life of John Trumbull.
26. WT to GW, 2 November 1795, Harris, p. 330.
27. GW to Commrs, 31 January 1793
28. WT to GW, 29 November 1793.
29. Cluss, Adolph, "Architecture and Architects at the Capital of the United States from its Foundation until 1875", Address Before the American Institute of Architects, October 12, 1876.
31. GW to Commrs, 3 March 1793
32. GW to Commrs, second 3 March 1793 letter.
35. Commrs to GW, 9 April 1793,
36 Brown, 1896 p. 68; Bryan, W.B. History of the Nation's Capital Vol.1, p. 201; Harris, Papers of William Thornton, p. ; Amer. Phil. Soc. Minutes.
37. Commrs. to WT, 5 April 1793, William Thornton Papers.
38. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1859. p. 6.
XX. Gazette of the United States 20 April 1793 p. 3; also see Arnebeck on Blodget's Lottery.;AMT notebooks vol. 1 image 17
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