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 |
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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. He also didn't hide his marriage from Newport and Boston and assured them it would not prevent his sacrificing his all in Africa. 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)
Of course, his sounding a fanfare to free the world and at the same time keeping it secret reflected on his character. But Thornton intuitively managed that. He employed not only the encyclopedic cant of the Enlightenment but also the becoming tears of the Romantic Era. His wife likely did not know about his crusade, She
did learn of his passionate hatred of slavery. Thomas Wilkinson sent
his long and his well received poem attacking the slave trade. As
Thornton wrote his reply extolling Wilkinson's poem, he commiserated
with the Tortola slaves for having to work on the mountain without
shade or water. Then he began crying. His wife asked why and he let
her read the letter. He finished the letter by extolling the
virtues of his wife, regretting the death of a mutual poet friend,
and intimating that he planned to return to America. He didn't
mention Africa. Wilkinson had joined other Quakers in an effort to expose the horrors of the slave trade. In 1791,
Thornton's cousin Robert Foster gave testimony against it before a parliamentary committee. Their efforts were the beginning of a long campaign that led to
the gradual emancipation of slaves on Britain's Caribbean Islands between 1834 and 1838.(7)
Instead of rallying to that cause, Thornton intimated that he planned to return to America. There is a cynical explanation for Thornton turning his back on Britain. America had the advantages of having a suitable level of anti-slavery sentiment and at the same time tolerated owning slaves. It mirrored Thornton's predicament. 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. Did his continuing inability to start a medical practice prompt him to prove that he knew how to make money in other ways? He did help his wife survive a bad fever.(10)
Since his mother-in-law didn't know about his plans to sacrifice his all in Africa, for two years she was able to lure the honeymooners back home without thinking that she might be jeopardizing the freedom of millions. She kept him abreast of the deaths of Philadelphia physicians and the steamboat company. Situated near the Delaware River, Mrs. Brodeau knew about the steamboat and the characters involved in making it. In a letter to Thornton, she described Fitch's old boat as "in very shattered condition, the new boat by its side without the least improvement."(2) Thornton had left orders to make no changes. The boat had been perfected, but it still had to be built.(3) She hinted that her son had to return to get results. Fitch wanted him back, too. Thornton shrugged that off. He admitted to Fitch that when suggesting positions for the paddles on the propelling wheel, he was "giving the undigested reason of the moment against actual experiment," but words would have to do. Congress did not give Fitch any Western land to compensate him for his work of genius. He did get a patent, but James Rumsey, a rival inventor, got one too. Thornton advised Fitch to get patents for every component of the steam engine. A copper boiler could be patented. The material made the difference. Then the board gave in to Voight,and authorized the use of a boiler made of wood. Using wood outraged Thornton and he gave up on the project.(4)
Mrs. Brodeau kept his mind on other opportunities in his adopted country, especially the development of the new nation's capital. She noted the disdain most in Philadelphia had for the project, but she also passed on the opinion that as long as George Washington lived, the capital would move to the Potomac River. Thornton exhibited more faith in the project and opined that since lots had been sold in the new federal district in October, the government would move there. He continued: “I must own if I purchase it will be in the 10 mile square, and I....” and that portion of the letter discussing that possible future is missing.(13)
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.
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. There is no evidence that while purifying the alphabet that he essayed a vocabulary of African languages that might be helpful in Sierra Leone.
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 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 because 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. More to the point, he was likely inspired by Wells' letter. 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 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 his 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 Philosophical Society 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. 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 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 |
There are two sketches on the back of his Tortola design. One sketch resembles 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 Third Architect of the Capitol, John Trumbull, who would hand Thornton's design to the president in January 1793, described what happened in two sentences: “...an English gentleman, Dr. Thornton, assisted by a Russian officer of engineers, and the Vitruvius Britannicus." Rivardi was a Swiss engineer but had served in the Russian army. 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.(25)
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| An elevation from Vitruvius Britannicus |
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, John Trumbull. He 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)
Unlike the letter the president wrote comparing Hallet's and Turner's plans, this letter said nothing in particular about the plans at hand. He also didn't say anything about Thornton except that he had not actually finished his plan. Jefferson wrote to Commissioner Daniel Carroll the next day and all but declared Thornton the winner: his design "has so captivated the eyes and judgment of all as to leave no doubt you will prefer it when it shall be exhibited to you; as no doubt exists here of it’s preference over all which have been produced, and among it’s admirers no one is more decided than him whose decision is most important. It is simple, noble, beautiful, excellently distributed, and moderate in size." He also didn't say anything in particular about the plan or Thornton. Then Jefferson remembered "Poor Hallet, whose merit and distresses interest every one for his tranquility and pecuniary relief." Jefferson assured Carroll that the commissioners could have their say. Indeed, "the interval of apparent doubt" afforded an opportunity to soothe Hallet's mind.
Before they adjourned their February meeting on the 7th, at the end of a letter listing their usual problems, principally with their surveyor Andrew Ellicott, the board responded to Jefferson's curious thoughts about Poor Hallet which suggested that before their March meeting and Thornton's triumph, Jefferson wanted them to find something else for Hallet to do. The best they could come up with is "we feel sensibly for poor Hallet, and shall do every thing in our power to sooth him. We hope he may be usefully employed notwithstanding." The board did not exactly celebrate the news about the Capitol, only restating what appeared to have been decided elsewhere: "we shall at length be furnished with the plan of a Capitol so highly satisfactory to the President, and all who have seen it." The future may have looked brighter in Philadelphia, but the commissioners who had to put up with L'Enfant and Ellicott, both favorites of the president and secretary of state, seemed to merely bide their time waiting for Thornton and his plan. No one used the word "eclat."
What Thornton did in February is not known. In March,
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
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."(33)
The president didn't reply to their letter but on his way from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon on April 2, just as the commissioners came to Georgetown for their April meeting, he gave them a one sentence letter approving Thornton's plan. On April 5 they wrote to Thornton with the good news. He was then back in Philadelphia. They asked him to arrange for how he wanted to receive "the acknowledgements your success entitles you" and "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."
It would seem that the commissioners let a month slip by without forwarding the project. Why didn't they accept the inevitable approval of the plan and promptly extract more details from Thornton? That he had no idea what his plan might cost to build might have given the commissioners pause. Both the president and the commissioners understood what an architect should be able to do. In February, while the president was flush with his enthusiasm for Thornton's plan, James Hoban gave him an estimated of cost of the President's house if it was bigger, 77,000 Pounds Sterling or around $300,000. That shocked the president enough that on March 3 he instructed the commissioners to have Hoban shrink the plan back to his original dimensions.(32)
However, lack of money might have given the commissioners pause. In their March 11 letter mostly in favor of Thornton's plan, they worried at length about that lack: "In our Idea the Capital ought in point of propriety to be on a grand Scale, and that a Republic especially ought not to be sparing of expences on an Edifice for such purposes, yet under the uncertain State of our funds depending altogether on opinion though the current Seems to be gaining Strength we cannot but feel a degree of anxiety for the Event of Expensive undertakings, when According to the Candor of the World our Charecters will be judged, not on present Circumstances but on efficiency or want of funds when the Fact is disclosed...." Then they alluded to loose talk, probably in Georgetown, that they should be replaced. To forestall that they suggested an audit of their books.
Thornton would write in an 1805 "letter to congress" that he was asked to superintend construction of his design and that he declined. 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."(36) A simpler explanation is that the commissioners did not ask since it would cost them at least $1500 a year and they could get all that they needed from Thornton at that moment once they gave him his $500 prize money.
Indeed, it seems one of their reactions to the man who foisted an expensive plan on them was to get him to endorse a preliminary money-saving step. While Thornton was in Georgetown, 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 levelled at great expense. Once L'Enfant walked away, 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.
The commissioners did not wait for Thornton's reply to their April 5 requesting more information on his design. On April 10, they sent Thornton's plan to Hallet and asked him to estimate how much it would cost to build. Hallet had not sat idly by waiting to know his fate once Thornton won the prize. His reaction was to draw another design. In a letter to Jefferson, he warned "these very feelings [of respect for the commissioners] impose on me perhaps the duty to observe that if the views of economy with which I have maintained are necessary for the success of the establishment, we have greatly deviated from them in the choice we have just made." Jefferson notified the president that Hallet was drawing a new plan and sent Hallet's one page "succinct description" of it, which concluded "all the rooms, without exception, are lighted and aired directly, because they have all windows in outer walls." Despite casting that shadow on Thornton's plan, the president and Jefferson did not react to Hallet's reaction to Thornton's design, yet. Nor did they mention it to the commissioners.
The adoptions 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 had his Cadmus printed and sent a copy 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 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)
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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