Chapter Three (1777-1792): "What Is Become of L'Enfant" [Pages 43 to 57]
Table of Contents page 43 Index
Chapter Three (1777-1792): "What Is Become of L'Enfant"
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| 26. A 1757 map of Maryland before the Plan |
In March 1791, the president sent Peter Charles L'Enfant, who
signed his name “Charles” or "P. C." L'Enfant, to Georgetown, Maryland, to make a plan for the federal capital to be built just to the east. If
all had gone by plan, one issue examined by this book would be moot.
And there are reasons for still giving L'Enfant the honor of
being the First Architect of the Capitol. By the way, he never
used "Pierre" which was both his and his father's first
name.
He had effectively completed the city plan by August. In September, the commissioners appointed to take charge of the project discussed having a contest soliciting designs for the public buildings. The president vetoed that and waited for L'Enfant's building designs. In February 1792, L'Enfant reportedly showed them to one of the city's major landowners, but he never showed them to the president or commissioners. Then he left the project.
We do not know what his designs looked like, but it is likely that George Washington got some ideas about what the buildings should look like from L'Enfant. In an 1818 letter to Charles Bulfinch, the architect who took over the project from Benjamin Latrobe, the artist John Trumbull described L'Enfant's role in the design: “Permit me to add, that the great circular room and dome, made a part of the earliest idea of the Capitol, projected by Major L'Enfant, drawn by Dr. Thornton, and adopted by General Washington.”1 (Even when he was president, the preferred title for Washington was General.)
Trumbull had toured the site with L'Enfant in May 1791. In 1818, Trumbull had graphic evidence of L'Enfant's "projection" of the Capitol. He cited the outline of the building on the engraving of the L'Enfant Plan as proof, no matter that it was about a half inch wide. L'Enfant may have had more than that in mind. In a 1795 letter to L'Enfant, Trumbull rued the differences between L'Enfant and the commissioners, and wished "that the noble plans you formed then might not be entirely defaced by want of professional [page 44] knowledge in those to whom the buildings might be entrusted." In that letter, he was introducing a trained architect, George Hadfield, who was leaving England to work on the Capitol. Trumbull seemed to be suggesting to L'Enfant that Hadfield would rescue the building from Thornton's influence and restore L'Enfant's "noble plans."2
Thornton's rise depended on L'Enfant's fall. Tracing L'Enfant's trajectory shows the pretensions and behavior Washington would tolerate in the young men who wanted to serve him. He was lenient. L'Enfant came to America under false pretenses. He allowed himself to be passed off as a French military engineer even though his only training in France was at the Ecole des Beaux Arts as a painter. L'Enfant was the son of a government painter specializing in battle scenes and he learned his father's craft. However, in 1777, American agents in France recruiting officers for the America army were especially interested in French military engineers.
In a letter to George Washington, the head of the French engineers in America, General Louis Lebegue Duportail, gave a succinct description of what military engineers did, the qualifications of engineering corps officers, and the types of soldiers engineers needed to carry out their order. During military campaigns they concentrated on creating barriers for the enemy and undermining the enemy's barriers. The best soldiers to carry out their orders, called sappers and miners, were masons and carpenters in civilian life.
Duportail did not consider any American officer, resourceful though he may be, as a trained military engineer. However, he alerted Washington to a young French officer who was brought over under the pretense that he was an engineer. Duportail knew he “was not in that character in France.... but he studied with a view to become a Member of the Corps—he has studied Geometry, understands surveying and Drawing, and therefore might be very useful to us.” Duportail was not describing L'Enfant but Chevalier de Villefranche who subsequently rose to a higher rank than L'Enfant, but he was a chevalier, a quasi title of nobility, while L'Enfant was a commoner.3
Duportail extended his tolerance and L'Enfant became a member of a tightly knit group of military engineers, all French. After the war, Duportail, then Villefranche and then L'Enfant all wrote letters to the Confederation congress urging a program of coastal and frontier fortifications built by a peacetime army engineering corps. In his 1784 letter, L'Enfant even suggested that military engineers design and build public buildings. In listing the talents [page 45] engineers must have, he included architecture.4
However, the roles Engineer L'Enfant filled when Washington first met him in 1778 were as an artist and martinet. General Lafayette sent L'Enfant to Washington so that he could draw his portrait. General von Steuben used L'Enfant to illustrate his book on military discipline.
But in an odd way, L'Enfant showed his bona fides as an architect. In June 1778, a Tory newspaper in New York City published what it said was an English translation of a letter L'Enfant sent to France in November 1777 in which he trashed the American army. In a September 4, 1778, letter to Washington, L'Enfant explained that “They have most Villainously abused of the Liberty of a Translator, and have artfully altered the Words and Phrases of my Letter to a most horrid performance.”5 Since the letter promised that L'Enfant would return home in the spring and L'Enfant hadn't, it was easy to dismiss the translation as disinformation.
But L'Enfant did not deny sending the letter which raises an interesting point. The newspaper included the address: “To Mons. L’Ogett, at the Castle of Chaville, near Versailles, road to Paris.” Although his father was a court painter, the court sat at Versailles 9 miles away from where the L'Enfant family lived. L'Enfant was born, raised and educated in Paris. One biographer speculates that rather than being raised among the splendors of Versailles, young L'Enfant rarely escaped from the Gobelin District of Paris, the meanly appointed artists' ghetto of the day.6 However, the letter's address suggests that L'Enfant was familiar with the Chateau de Chaville, which was then and now a not modest imitation of the glory that is Versailles just down the road.
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| 28. Chateau de Chaville |
The student from the Ecole des Beaux Arts, did not impress Washington. He wrote to Lafayette that the artist Charles Wilson Peale had been in Valley Forge and he regretted not getting “the best Portrait of me he could.” He mistook the mission of “Monsr Lanfang.” He sat for him but he “thought it was only to obtain the outlines and a few shades of my features, to [page 46] have some Prints struck from.”7 What L'Enfant may have sketched has not been found.
Then General von Steuben took him under his wing. In Prussia he had never been a general, only a captain aide-de-camp. He understood ambitious pretenders.
Through von Steuben, L'Enfant met all the young officers in Washington's military family, as aides-de-camp were commonly called. L'Enfant became close friends with two of them, John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton. Both left the family for action. Laurens paid with his life, and Hamilton led a charge at Yorktown. By following their examples, L'Enfant ranks among the heroes who left safety for danger.
During the Battle of Savannah, he led a squad in a vain effort to set fire to some woods to shield an advance. L'Enfant alluded to those widely heralded heroics in a 1782 letter to Washington in which he sought promotion from captain to major.8
With the American surrender at Charleston, L'Enfant became a prisoner and due to his low rank, he had a long wait before he could be paroled. When Washington really relied on engineers during the Siege of Yorktown, L'Enfant wasn't there. But before the war ended, Duportail recommended that L'Enfant be promoted to major. Evidently, while he didn't build fortifications, he continued to study how to build them. The French took military engineering very seriously. (Read Sterne's Tristram Shandy.)
They also took putting on a show seriously and in that L'Enfant excelled. In July 1782, he made a temporary ballroom to celebrate the birth of the Dauphin, which was the title given to the heir to the French throne. Beside the French minister's rented house on Philadelphia's Chestnut Street, L'Enfant built a 40 by 60 feet ballroom with pillars supporting a ceiling decorated “with several pieces of neat painting emblematical of the design of the entertainment.” The garden beside the building “was cut into beautiful walks, and divided with cedar and pine branches into artificial groves.” Chairs were placed everywhere. There was also a stage from which to shoot off fireworks.9 General Washington was there.
A year later, L'Enfant came to Washington's attention again. In Newburgh, New York, while the American army waited for the British to evacuate New York City, Gen. Steuben and Col. Hamilton organized the Society of the Cincinnati The society was to be a hereditary fraternal society open to American and French officers above a certain rank. Those worthies and their sons would carry on the traditions of the victorious army's officers. Steuben asked L'Enfant to design a medal and diploma for members.
L'Enfant all but cut himself orders that electrified France and made a name in America for a lowly officer lucky to be made a major just as the war ended. The commanding general in New York was Major General Henry Knox, a rotund artillery office who once owned a bookstore in Boston and knew Latin and French. He made the Cincinnati – a Roman general after all – his own, and reintroduced L'Enfant to General Washington: “His zeal to serve the Cincinnati has been conspicuously displayed in the emblems of the bald eagle, designs of the medals, seal, and of that noble effort of genius, the diploma. He proposes to attend the execution of these several objects in France, where they will be performed by the first artists.”10
[page 47] Washington sent him to France and L'Enfant did what he said he would do, and much more. He was back in America in April, six months after he left Philadelphia, bearing not only gold medals and diplomas but a bundle of letters from grateful French officers. L'Enfant won a special dispensation from the king allowing French officers to wear a medal not awarded by France.
L'Enfant's medal became the talk of Franklin's Paris salon. Franklin mocked it, quipping that the eagle was so poorly rendered that many French thought it was a "dinde", a turkey. In a letter home about the medal, Franklin made his famous comment that he thought a turkey would better serve as a national symbol than the eagle, a notoriously lazy scavenger.
As L'Enfant attended court and distributed medals and diplomas to French members of the society, he acted like an ambassador rather than a mere courier. He ran out of money, didn't pay the goldsmith but returned with many medals that he expected American members to buy. Then the eagles began to smell fishy to some members. There was a flaw in the casting and a Philadelphia goldsmith offered a flawless medal at a lower price. There were insinuations that L'Enfant was out to make a killing selling the flawed medals.
L'Enfant decided that he must defend his honor. His reputation in France was also under attack. Lafayette complained about him to the new American minister in Paris, Thomas Jefferson. L'Enfant decided to wait until the next national meeting of the society in 1787 to be vindicated for all he did in France and be reimbursed for all of his own money that he spent.
Meanwhile, L'Enfant settled in New York City to be closer to Steuben and Hamilton who were ever looking out for his welfare. It was the city most damaged by British occupation so there was work to do for an engineer and architect. It was also closer to France thanks to the French Royal packets that after the war provided the best mail service to and from Europe. He met every packet expecting a letter that would either ruin his reputation or honor him with a position in France that would solve all his financial problems. While in France, he had made clear to the right people that he was not adverse to returning if offered the right position.11
[page 48] Prior to the society's 1787 national meeting, L'Enfant wrote a memorial fifty manuscript pages long to explain what happened in France. The gist of it was that he came home broke and he calculated that the society owed him $3,460. He even wrote to Washington and suggested that he pay the money the society owed because it would surely reimburse its president. Washington invited L'Enfant to visit him at Mount Vernon, but offered no money.12
In a letter he wrote to Knox about L'Enfant's affairs, Washington passed on what he knew and asked: “What is become of L'Enfant? I have not seen him since the [1784]general meeting of the society...”13 That gives the impression that the Great Man liked having L'Enfant around.
The 1787 general meeting agreed to pay L'Enfant $572 for the medals he had, plus $1548 that it would assess from all the state chapters. As it turned out, Lafayette paid the goldsmith, so the Society reimbursed him instead. The state chapters never sent money even though L'Enfant sent medals to the states. His honor, if not his purse, restored, L'Enfant refused to go away empty handed. Once again he asked Washington to pay him. What made the situation worse was that L'Enfant's father had died and thus could no longer send a portion of his royal pension to his son. Washington said as cordially as ever that he couldn't reimburse L'Enfant, and consoled him for the loss of his father.14
Not until Washington came to New York City to be inaugurated did he see L'Enfant's work as an architect. He had a prospering career there. Members of the Cincinnati became leaders in the city's government and institutions. There is documentation of L'Enfant's working on alterations to Trinity Church so it could better coexist with a monument to Richard Montgomery, the first fallen hero of the war.
In a 1787 letter, William Temple Franklin, that Great Man's grandson and secretary who L'Enfant likely met in Paris, asked L'Enfant for ideas for a building in Philadelphia. Nothing [page 49] came of it because after his grandfather died in 1790, William Franklin joined his father in London. He had been a Tory during the American Revolution.15
In 1788, New York's city fathers hired L'Enfant to turn a nondescript building into Federal Hall to house the new Federal government. He completed the job in time and to general satisfaction. It has been left to architectural historians to explain its features because it was soon devoured by a massive custom's house.
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| 30. Federal Hall |
Until 1789, George Washington achieved his world wide fame without the backdrop of any architecture much out of the ordinary. He gave up his command of the army at the small Senate chamber in the Maryland State House in Annapolis. He presided over the Constitutional Convention at the serviceable main room of the Pennsylvania State House.
A man who would turn out to be one of the first arbiters of taste in the new country, the painter and playwright William Dunlap, who was then 23 years old, captured the living moment on April 30, 1789, when thanks to L'Enfant, Washington's greatness was framed by architecture. He took the oath of office on a balcony that led into the senate chamber and over looked the street. Dunlap thought the balcony was “made sacred” by the inauguration.16
We will never know Washington's thoughts. There is a brief note suggesting that Washington and L'Enfant shared the Inaugural experience in a personal and not merely functional way. The president's secretary informed L'Enfant that Martha Washington had found time and wanted L'Enfant to give her a tour of Federal Hall.17
In 1789, congress began debating legislation to fulfill its Constitutional obligation to create a capital for the federal government. The debate over where to put the capital made no difference to L'Enfant. In September 1789, L'Enfant wrote to the president asking for the chance to draw a plan for the new capital “on such a Scale as to leave room for that aggrandisement & [page 50] embellishment which the increase of the wealth of the Nation will permit it to pursue at any period however remote....” Then he also asked for a career.18
The Confederation congress had created the office of Surveyor of the United States. L'Enfant asked to be appointed Engineer of the United States. He pointed out that he was the only member of the army's old engineering corps still in the United States. He offered to design and build fortifications to protect the coast. Then he pointed out “that the sciences of Military and civil architecture are so connected as to render an Engineer Equally serviceable in time of peace as in war by the employment of his abilities in the internal improvemen⟨ts⟩ of the Country.” All to say, he could design the public buildings in the new capital.
The president did not reply to the letter. L'Enfant bid his time by bickering over his fee for doing Federal Hall and playing the courtier to both the president and the French minister. In a letter he wrote to France in May 1790, he advised the minister's son, who had just left New York, to tell the minister's mistress that Mrs. Washington was worried that she had forgotten her promise to get a portrait of the president engraved.19
Then in July, congress passed the Residence Act of 1790 and empowered the president to put the ten mile square federal district somewhere along a 110 miles stretch of the Potomac River. The plan of a city inside the district as well as the designs of the Capitol and other public buildings were entirely up to the president.20 The State of Maryland put up $72,000 in seed money. Virginia promised to pitch in with $120,000. As long as he didn't ask congress to appropriate money, the president had complete control. He had to appoint three commissioners to procure the land but did not need the Senate's advice and consent. He decided on the site of the federal district before he appointed the commissioners. He decided on the site of the federal city before they had their first meeting.
L'Enfant had nothing to do with site selection, and just waited for orders. But L'Enfant was not the only man with thoughts about the project. In November 1790, Joseph Clark, an English born builder and architect who designed and was then working on the dome of Maryland State House, went to Mount Vernon and showed Washington plans for a capital city and public buildings21
Clark lived what future Americans would think the American dream was all about. Born in poverty in England, apprenticed to a joiner, he emigrated to Maryland and blossomed into an architect who attracted the attention of the Maryland elite. Clark had designed and began supervising construction of the main building of St. John's College in Annapolis. He was also a leading Freemason in Maryland, rising to “Worshipful Master.”22 He and the president were brother masons. L'Enfant had joined a New York chapter but had no rank. The state's most famous former governor, Thomas Johnson, gave Clark a letter of introduction to the president. Washington soon appointed Johnson to the federal city's board of commissioners.
Clark offered a plan for a city in an unspecified site roughly three-quarters the size of London. Washington took Clark's plan with him to Philadelphia. On January 22, 1791, the president announced the site of the federal district and appointed the three commissioners, Governor Johnson, Congressman Daniel Carroll of Rock Creek, another Marylander, and David Stuart, a Virginia doctor married to Martha Parke Custis, Martha Washington's widowed [page 51] daughter-in-law. Before the commissioners met, Washington sent Andrew Ellicott to survey and mark the boundaries of the new district, and sent L'Enfant to Georgetown which would be in the federal district and the nearest city to the Metropolis-to-be.
That winter, congress had its first short session. Members of the Confederation Congress were delegates from each state and each state determined when and how long their delegates served. The Constitution set a two year term for representatives. It also required that congress convene on the first Monday of December, unless “by Law” congress changed the date. The last Confederation congress set March 4, 1789, as the date when the new congress would convene. So the two year term of office for the first congressmen ended on March 3, 1791. Congress did not pass a law otherwise so the First Congress convened for its last of three sessions on December 6, 1790. That session lasted not quite three months. Then the Second Congress convened in late October 1791. The new members elected in 1790 finally took office and the re-elected members got back to work after seven and one half months vacation.
This is not an unimportant digression. By accepting this pattern which continued throughout the 19th century, the president and congress did much to retard the development of the nation's capital. For as long as nine months every odd year, the city's main attraction closed down and all congressmen and senators were back in their home states.
The short session allowed Washington to personally visit the site of the new capital in the spring. Instead of having to wait for congress to pass appropriations as he had the previous two springs, he set off from Philadelphia in late March for a tour of the South allowing two visits to the federal city going south and coming back. He gave L'Enfant a three week head start to get acquainted with the site and begin making a plan.
The president gave two plans to L'Enfant: Clark's and a “rough sketch" by Jefferson that didn't include Jenkin's Hill which would soon become Capitol Hill. Jefferson's sketch was premised on "the backwardness" of some landowners to offer their land to government. Otherwise, Jefferson hoped for a large capital city. He “examined” his papers “and found the plans of Frankfort on the Mayne, Carlsruhe, Amsterdam Strasburg, Paris, Orleans, Bordeaux, Lyons, Montpelier, Marseilles, Turin and Milan," which he sent to L'Enfant. He added his ideas for buildings: “Whenever it is proposed to prepare plans for the Capitol, I should prefer the adoption of some one of the models of antiquity which have had the approbation of thousands of years;
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| 31. The Louvre |
The first commissioner to arrive in Georgetown, Daniel Carroll of Rock Creek, who lived some eight miles from the city-to-be up said creek, cheered L'Enfant on. Like many rich Catholics, he had gone to school in France. On April 23, he wrote to James Madison that when the president returned from his Southern tour in late June, “it is probable some plans of the City and the public buildings may be then exhibited.”24
However, the president did not expect plans for the buildings by the time he returned from his Southern tour. He wrote to Jefferson that he would wait “until an accurate survey and sub-division of the whole ground is made,...”25 In a July 20 letter to a former member of his military [page 52] family, Washington wrote: “ the business of laying out the city, the grounds for public buildings, walks & c is progressing under the inspection of Major L’Enfant with pleasing prospects.”26
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| 32. The Plan |
The president may have been in no hurry to see the plans for the buildings but Jefferson and commissioners were. Jefferson offered to draw up a prospectus for a design contest. Washington overruled that and had the commissioners formally ask L'Enfant to design the buildings. L'Enfant bristled at getting orders from anybody but the president.27
To make a long story short, that bristling became just one in a series of actions and in-actions on L'Enfant's part that the commissioners and president thought were perverse.28 L'Enfant refused to show a copy of his plan during an October auction of lots. L'Enfant refused to hire a brick maker and dig clay for bricks. L'Enfant tore down the house being built by Commissioner Carroll's nephew because it was in a future street. The president insisted that he work under the commissioners, and at the same time told the commissioners that he thought L'Enfant was irreplaceable. After all, neither the commissioners nor Washington had any idea how to build a capital city.
There were other reasons that L'Enfant was hard to bear. He was not a family man and difficult to track down. He also stole the affections of the men who worked under him even turning them against their betters, the commissioners who were legally in charge. For example, Commissioner Stuart hired the son of General Roberdeau, but as second in command under L'Enfant, Isaac Roberdeau countermanded orders from the commissioners.
[page 53] What
frustrated L'Enfant was that the commissioners only met once a month.
The commissioner who lived nearby, Daniel Carroll, forwarded the
interests of his relatives. L'Enfant complained to the president that
the commissioners "oppose me merely to teize and torment."
The commissioners and president compensated for their own
inadequacies when it came to addressing the business at hand by
agreeing that the veil of secrecy, intrigue and expense that L'Enfant
cast over everything arose from his "artistic temperament."
In January 1792, L'Enfant went to Philadelphia where, he told the commissioners, he could have access to books when he worked on his designs for the public buildings. But first he drew up a comprehensive work plan estimating the number of stone workers, carpenters and laborers that would be needed. He also estimated the amount of "rough stone" needed, as well as lime, and the cost of lumber. He didn't estimate the number of bricks but noted the need for 23 brick makers. He estimated the total cost, $4 million dollars, and proposed a plan for a loan of that amount. But he never showed the president or the commissioners his designs for the Capitol and President's house, if he indeed made them. He clearly had some semblance of them. His assistant Roberdeau returned to the city in June 1793. He reported to L'Enfant that the foundation for the plan for the President's house then being built "not being so deep as yours" kept the building out of full view of the Capitol. As for the Congress House "the Bow of the house is carried 75 feet lower down the hill than you intended." That suggests that L'Enfant had a design with a circular room forming the West front just as Hallet and Thornton would plan.29
In a long March 1792 letter to Commissioner Stuart, the president dressed down L'Enfant in the harshest terms. Looking forward to the design contest for the public buildings, he fretted about what damage L'Enfant might still do to the city. He told the commissioner not to expect any "aid" from L'Enfant, "rather I apprehend opposition and a reprobation of every one designed by any other, however perfect."30
As it turned out L'Enfant, evidenced no curiosity about any designs submitted, approved or altered. After he left the project, L'Enfant remained busy until those who hired him ran out of money, At the time he was not faulted for bailing out. If anything it burnished his credentials. When they were challenged in October 1792, Alexander Hamilton retorted: "He is by Trade what is called in France a civil Engineer that is an Artist acquainted with Mechanics generally; particularly in reference to Architecture Aqueducts Canals &c &c including necessarily a knowlege of Hydraulicks. This is the mans profession, & from my knowlege of him I rely that he will undertake nothing which he is not able to execute solidly and well."31
Washington's fear of criticism helps explain why no design, not even Thornton's winning design, was made public. However, that he expressed such a fear of L'Enfant's criticism suggests that Washington could conceive of a perfect design beyond criticism. His naive view suggests that he had definite expectations of what the buildings should look like. L'Enfant helped inform those expectations. On August 19, 1791, he had written to the president: “the spots assigned for the Federal House & for the President palace in exibiting the most sumpteous aspect and claiming already the suffrage of a crowd of daily visitor both natives & foreigners will serve to give a grand Idea of the whole,..." He vividly implied the grandeur of both buildings.32
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| 33. Announcement of the Capitol Design Contest |
The prospectus for the design contest was written by Secretary of State Jefferson with input from the president and commissioners. It did not describe the site but provided the dimensions of three principal rooms and twelve committee rooms of "a Capitol." The "Senate-Room" and "Room for the Representatives" should have "a Lobby or Antechamber." The winner would get $500 or a medal "of that value" and a lot in the city. There would be a second prize of $250. The award would be "designated by impartial judges" given to "the most [page 54] approved PLAN." The prospectus ended with the proviso that "drawings will be expected of the Ground-plan, Elevations of each Front, and Sections through the Building, in such Directions as may be necessary to explain the Internal Structure; and an Estimate of the cubic Feet of Brick-Work composing the whole Mass of the Walls." All entrants took that to mean that if a ground plan and one elevation submitted won the prize, then they would provide the other required drawings.
Of the dozen or so Capitol designs submitted by July 15, the date they were due, only two were taken seriously. Both were drawn by men who likely knew what L'Enfant had in mind for the building. George Turner had been secretary of the Society of Cincinnati and had been zealous in defending L'Enfant's honor. He also tried to sell medals to raise money, presumably for L'Enfant. He had been born in England, remained well connected there, but had fought for winning the side during the revolution making his mark in the Southern theatre just as L'Enfant had done. The president had made him a judge in the Northwest Territory but he was slow to move west. Turner was likely in Philadelphia in 1791. No one has ever called them close friends but he was as talkative as L'Enfant and would likely have looked up his fellow officer and bachelor.
The other favored submission was from a man who not only knew L'Enfant but also knew Jefferson's ideas about what the Capitol should look like, which is to say, how to translate "one of the models of antiquity which have had the approbation of thousands of years" into an icon for the new republic. Etienne Hallet had recently arrived from Paris and even though he could hardly speak English, changed his first name to Stephen. He was a trained architect and a good draftsman. L'Enfant used him to copy the plan of the city so that it could be engraved. Jefferson also learned of Hallet's talents and gave him some work to do for the State Department. As L'Enfant's troubles mounted, Jefferson suggested that [page 55] Hallet draw a design for the Capitol.33
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| 34. Hallet's 1791 design |
What he drew looks more like the completed Old Capitol than the first design of the building that Thornton drew while he was in Tortola. He didn't submit that Tortola design, and the design he drew when he returned to Philadelphia bore a striking resemblance to Hallet's designs. That 1791 design is the first piece of evidence that, if not L'Enfant, then Hallet was the First Architect of the Capitol.
But the president liked Turner's design more than Hallet's. A July 23 letter Washington wrote to the commissioners about Turner's design provides our only insight as to how he reacted to the designs he saw:
Your favor of the 19th, accompanying Judge Turner’s plan for a Capitol, I have duly received; and have no hesitation in declaring that I am more agreeably struck with the appearance of it than with any that has been presented to you. I return it without delay, because (among other reasons for doing it) Mr Turner wishes to receive it, in any event, immediately.
There is the same defect, however, in this plan as there is in all the plans which have been presented to you—namely—the want of an Executive apartment: wch ought, if possible, to be obtained. The Dome, which is suggested as an addition to the center of the edifice, would, in my opinion, give beauty & granduer to the pile; and might be useful for the reception of a Clock—Bell, &ca. The Pilastrade too, in my Judgement, ought (if the plan is adopted) to be carried around the simicircular projections at the ends; but whether it is necessary to have the elevation of the upper Storey 41 feet is questionable; unless it be to preserve exactness in the proportion of the several parts of the building; in that case, the smaller Rooms in that Storey would be elivated sufficiently if cut in two, & would be the better for it in the interior provided they can be lighted. This would add to the number of Committee Rooms of which there appears to be a dificiency....
Could such a plan as Judge Turner’s be surrounded with Columns, and a colonade like that which was presented to you by Monsr Hallet (the Roof of Hallet’s I must confess does not hit my taste)—without departing from the principles of Architecture—and would not be too expensive for our means, it would, in my judgement, be a noble & desireable Structure. But, I would have it understood in this instance, and always, when I am hazarding a sentiment on these buildings, that I profess to have no knowledge in [page 56] Architecture, and think we should (to avoid criticisms) be governed by the established Rules which are laid down by the professors of this Art.(34)
Unfortunately, what Turner designed is no longer extant. Judging from what Washington wrote, it didn't have a dome or the roominess of the eventual Old Capitol. It also had semi-circular projections which, while a feature of L'Enfant's outline of the Capitol, weren't a feature of the Capitol as built. The commissioners almost jumped to the conclusion that given his design's striking appearance and roof, that Turner had won, but meanwhile they put Hallet to work. He was an architect and Judge Turner was overdue in Ohio.
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| 34A. 1831 painting of West Front of Capitol |
On September 21, the president was on his way to Mount Vernon and stopped in Georgetown to, among other things, look at Hallet's latest design. Afterwards, Hallet wrote to Jefferson, who remained in Philadelphia. Written in French, the letter shared the trepidation Hallet had while conferring with the president:
The President asked me a lot of questions about my theoretical and practical studies and seemed to want proof of this he gave me the opportunity to answer him. I had not taken any precautions with regard to this Subject when leaving Paris because I was known to several people interested in the establishment for which I was intended. But I hope Sir that you will have a proof in my favor and which cannot be Suspect, it is the Royal Almanac, edition of 1786 and Following. You will find there the proof that I was received Architect Jure-Expert of the 1st Column in 1785. But the National Assembly having included these offices in the Suppressions I found myself stateless, I came to seek one in America, and If I could find one in this business it would be more beautiful than I dared to promise myself.(35)
Meanwhile, the commissioners did work with him and gave him, but not future historians, the impression that he was the First Architect of the Capitol. His letter to Jefferson continued:
The Commissioners called me here to make some improvements to my plan; and in order not to change its form, it was necessary to increase its proportions considerably. The columns of the outer order were five feet in diameter and therefore fifty feet in elevation. It was wonderful but there appeared to be concern that the execution would be too expensive.... This new plan Will be accepted or rejected after being exposed to the judgment of the Public, which will undoubtedly be numerous here on October 8th because of the Land Sale which will take place at that time.
The president's indecision boded well for Thornton. On September 4, 1792, the commissioners received a letter from Tortola signed “Fellow Citizen.” In the letter dated July 12, 1792, he reported that as soon as he had heard about the design competition, “I have been constantly engaged since endeavoring to accomplish what you propose.”A phrase that he used might of have struck home. He was keeping “strictly to the rules of architecture.” He said he didn't send the designs because he meant to “depart hence in a few days for America.”36 Over three months after Thornton wrote his letter, he had still not departed.
Meanwhile, Hallet's happy expectations did not come to pass despite seeming like a reasonable course of events: amend the plan to accommodate the wishes of the president and commissioners, unveil it to an interested public and build a consensus in its favor. But the powers-that-be who damned L'Enfant for not showing his plan for the city at the October 1791 auction of building lots, refused to show Hallet's plan for the Capitol at the October 1792 auction.
[page 57] It was a trying winter for Hallet. Jefferson received a letter from Hallet's wife in Philadelphia complaining that she and her three children had no money and were about to be thrown out on the street for failure to pay rent. He arranged for them to join Hallet. She would later write, this time to the president: “...M. Hallet’s Circumstances in Philadelphia were comfortable, were even agreeable. His abilities had given him Some renown. He had a constant occupation, and could maintain his family. No debt would throw him behind hand, or disturb his quiet. Such was our Situation; when my husband began to think of the Capitol....” 37
Go to Chapter Four
Footnotes for Chapter Three
1 On L'Enfant p. 166, Trumbull to Bullfinch, 28 Jan 1818 p 271, Letters of John Trumbull
2Donald Hawkins, "Origins of the Rotunda" USCHS Capitol Dome, Summer 2013 (pdf); Trumbull to L'Enfant 9 March 1795
4 Walker, Paul, Engineers of Independence, pp353ff
6 Berg, Scott, Grand Avenue: the story of Pierre Charles L’Enfant... Vintage Books, pp. 19ff
9 Letters B. Rush, vot 1, 16 July 1782 to Ferguson, p. 277;
11 Driskel, Michael Paul. "By the Light of Providence "JSTOR, p. 720; Bowling, Kenneth L'Enfant..., pp. 8 & 9.
15 Bowling, L'Enfant, pp. 18ff.
16 Dunlap, William,
History
of the Rise of Arts and Design of the Arts of Design in
America, vol. 1, 1834, p. 338.
17 Humphries to L'Enfant 11 June 1789, in Morgan. J. D., "Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant," Journal of Columbia Historical Society, vol 2. p119.
20 The law authorized the commissioners “to purchase or accept” land needed and “according to such Plans, as the President shall approve the said Commissioners, or any two of them shall prior to the first Monday in December in the year one thousand eight hundred, provide suitable buildings for the accommodation of Congress, and of the President, and for the public Offices of the government of the United States.” The law allowed Washington to accept “Plans,” not just a plan so it was assumed that meant he would decide on the plan for the city and plans for the public buildings; for background of the agreement see Arnebeck page 33ff. Also see Seat of Empire: the General and the Plan.
21 Clark to GW, 5 Dec 1790; drawing of Clark's State House dome
28 Washington to Stuart, 20 Nov 1791; Stuart to Washington, 26 February 1792: In "To Tease and Torment" Two Presidents Confront Suspicions of Sodomy, I explore sexual dimensions of the troubles with L'Enfant. In Fiery Trial pp 62-110, I narrate L'Enfant's predicament. In "Give L'Enfant a Break", I do just that. I establish that he didn't employ slaves in Slave Labor in the Capital
29
L'Enfant to Jefferson, 26 February 1792; L'Enfant to GW 17 January 1792 ; L'Enfant to GW 17 January 1792 Enclosure; Roberdeau to L'Enfant 18 June 1793 L'Enfant Papers LOC
30GW to Stuart, March 8, 1792
36 Papers of William Thornton, Fellow Citizen to Commrs. 12 July 1792.
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