Introduction

Table of Contents                                                                           

Doctor T. Examined, and the Case of the Ingenious A or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol

by Bob Arnebeck

Introduction

 

1. William Thornton in 1804

In November 1792, William Thornton, M. D, returned to Philadelphia after a two year sojourn in Tortola, British Virgin Islands. After he married a 16 year old bride in October 1790, he took her to meet his mother and see his birthplace, a sugar plantation worked by slaves that would support him for the rest of his life. Born a Quaker, and raised by Quakers in Lancashire, England, he did oppose the slave trade and first went to America in 1785 to lead a crusade to return freed slaves back to Africa. There he would found a free republic where, under his leadership, they could flourish. Nothing came of that and he became a director in a nascent steam boat company, but, after he left Philadelphia, it failed. In response to being elected to the American Philosophical Society, he spent most of his Tortola honeymoon developing a new alphabet with 30 phonetically based letters. Then it came to his attention that in March 1792, President George Washington had authorized a design contest for the Capitol in the new federal city with entries due July 15. Thornton had become an American citizen in 1788 and in 1789 won a design contest for the new library in Philadelphia. It had taken him a "few days" to come up with a design. He did finish his design for the Capitol around the official deadline, but a bad fever kept him Tortola.

 

Only two of the dozen or so serious entries pleased the president, but even those two were not complete in his view. They, and all the other entries, lacked an Executive Apartment for the convenience of the president. He thought an entry submitted by Major George Turner who he had made a judge in the Northwest Territory was better than an entry submitted by Stephen Hallet, an architect trained in Paris. However, the Judge was due in Ohio and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson thought Hallet was a very good draftsmen. Jefferson had shared some of his ideas about the Capitol with Hallet. So, the three commissioners charged with readying the federal city for the government in 1800, put Hallet to work on another design. Just before Thornton returned, Hallet's new design failed to please, and he got to work on another. The commissioners told Thornton to submit his design.

 

He already knew about their predicament because George Turner was more than a friend. Rather then essay a career, they both took a large view of the world and aimed to make it a better place. In a word, they were schemers. Turner told Thornton that the design he drew in Tortola would not do. It did not have an Executive Apartment nor grand oval rooms. Turner coached him on how to draw a design that would please the president. He even sketched one of Hallet designs on the back of Thornton's Tortola design. The M. D. had one advantage over the Judge. He was a practiced landscape painter and adept draftsman. He could easily copy what he needed for his design from books with engravings of elevations and floor plans of Neo-classical British country houses. Thornton drew a new design with the Executive Apartment between two grand oval rooms.

 

In January 1793, when presented with Thornton's designs as well as Hallet's, the president chose Thornton's. Despite having inspired Hallet to tackle the problem of designing such a complex building, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson quickly fed his boss's enthusiasm. Thornton's simple and elegant design won him over. Then, not five months later, Hallet convinced Jefferson that they had been fooled by an amateur. What Thornton had designed could not be built. Every architect and  builder who saw Thornton's design agreed. Want of headroom and light led the long list of problems. Thornton's sole professional credential was an M. D. from a Scottish medical school making him no match for the committee of architects and builders that Jefferson convened. They endorsed a new design drawn by Hallet. But for the rest of their lives, the first and third presidents could not quite admit that awarding Thornton the prize for the best design was a mistake. Jefferson saved faced by assuring the president that Hallet's new design preserved the ideas of Dr. Thornton. 

None of its troubling beginnings is writ large in the Capitol today, which in this context is better called the New Capitol. Thornton made a design for the Old Capitol. How much of what was built actually followed his design is problematical. Work on it began in 1793 and it wasn't finished until 1829, a year after Thornton died. Contemporaries gave more credit to Benjamin Latrobe who worked on the project from 1803 to 1811 and then from 1815 to 1817, and Charles Bulfinch who carried on until a wooden Dome covered a stone Rotunda. It reigned on Capitol Hill long enough to be immortalized in an 1846 photograph. Five years later work began on the New Capitol which, by 1865, swallowed the Old.

2. The Old Capitol in 1846

As the New Capitol grew around and eventually above the Old Capitol, Thornton's name re-entered the conversation about the Capitol. He was credited for the design of the "original" Capitol, or as his wife's obituary put it. He was "the original architect of the Capitol."(1) Then in 1871, based on drawings given by Benjamin Latrobe's son to the Library of Congress, the then Architect of the Capitol Edward Clark opined that "Hallet was the real architect, that what he called his 'fanciful plan' had been borrowed by Thornton...."(2) Indeed, Turner had shared particulars of that plan with Thornton. Other architects inspected those drawings including Adolf Cluss, then the city's leading architect who designed the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building. At the annual meeting of the American Institute of Architects in 1876, he delivered a paper on the Capitol's architects.

4. Adolph Cluss strikes a pose

He noted that the government began paying Hallet to work on a Capitol design before Thornton's submitted his design. That alone made him the first architect of the building. Then “Dr. William Thornton, an English amateur of versatile manners, who had come from the West Indies, succeeded in having Hallet’s plans superseded by what he claimed as his own plans.....Thornton had, it appears, carried the day by a neatly washed elevation; and when his ground-plans were corrected according to sound principles of construction, they looked so remarkably like Hallet’s that this gentleman formally protested against the award....” In response, the commissioners in charge fired Hallet. Cluss continued:

Hallet’s name disappears from history after this time; but Thornton's claims were ridiculed before long. In the year 1804, Architect Latrobe denounced his plan in an official report to Congress, and animadverted upon the mode of carrying on the competition for plans of this great public building. He intimated that Thornton's work in the premises, being simply pictorial, could not claim dignity and consideration as an architectural composition. Hallet’s original designs were restored to the archives of the Capitol after the lapse of many years, in 1871; and his memory stands vindicated at this day.(3)

But by 1900, Hallet's day ended. In 1793, despite having other irons in the fire as well as a personal fortune, Thornton caught Potomac Fever. He had come too close to orbiting with the Great Men around the Greatest of All Men. In 1787 he and James Madison had rooms in the same boarding house. Both were small in size and leavened their high ideals with antic senses of humor. Then in 1794, probably thanks to Madison, the president made things worse for figuring out the early history of the Capitol. Exasperated by at least three worthies shunning the appointment, he replaced a retiring member of the three man board overseeing construction of the Capitol with Thornton.

The board of commissioners oversaw construction of the Senate wing which was completed in 1800. All that time, Thornton plotted to undo Hallet's "wilful errors." Then he frustrated and helped fire George Hadfield a trained English architect who built all but the foundation and roof of the North Wing. Finally, he tried to fire James Hoban, a trained Irish architect who designed and built the President's house and finished the roof of the Capitol's North Wing. In 1795, George Washington described the plan as "no body's, but a compound of every body's....”(4) Thornton got rid of other bodies, but there is no evidence that changed Washington's opinion. In 1798, Thornton claimed that he restored his design and made all working drawings necessary for its completion. He tried in vain to get the then former president and his fellow commissioners to endorse his claims.

By 1797, Thornton once again draw the East Elevation and claimed that it and a floor plan were his original designs. After resigning from Washington's cabinet at the end of 1793, Jefferson had little contact with Thornton and no official power over the federal city and its public buildings. Upon becoming president in 1801, he accepted Thornton elevation and floor plan as the operative design of the Capitol. In the summer of 1801, Commissioner Thornton organized the design and construction of a temporary chamber for the House of Representatives that was also to serve as the permanent basement of the South Wing. Within a year, it needed buttressing to prevent its collapse. Then Jefferson hired Benjamin Latrobe to build the South Wing. He agreed to build Thornton's design but soon convinced the president that it could not be done. Then Latrobe's critique of Thornton's design in letters to congressional committees prompted Thornton to publicly attack yet another trained architect. Jefferson and Madison supported Latrobe, and that effectively ended any power Thornton had over the design of the Capitol. 

He seemed to take that setback in stride. Thanks to his friend Madison hiring him in 1802 to process patent applications, Thornton used his position to try to prove that he invented the steamboat in 1789. He also startled other inventors by claiming prior invention of what they claimed was their original idea. He remained Commissioner of Patents until he died in 1828 and was famed by many but a terror to most inventors. This re-examination of Thornton dwells only on his pretensions as an architect. However, as he rivaled other men in other pursuits, the same methods to undermine them as he used to battle architects will be highlighted. He boasted that his published attack on Robert Fulton led to his death in 1815. Even on the turf where his thoroughbreds raced, Thornton rivaled and raged. Col. Tayloe, very much Grand Master of the American turf, seemed in awe of his upstart enthusiasm. Another colonel went neck and neck all the way to the Supreme Court. But for all his trying, few credited him for the steamboat and his horses never won a big race and managed to lose as the crowd laughed. Yet, James Monroe excepted, he also made president's laugh which was his saving grace. Writing in his diary the morning after, John Quincy Adams recalled the "surfeit of buffoonery" he enjoyed at the Thorntons. Jefferson and Madison remained friends. The last favor Thornton asked of them was to persuade Monroe to send him on a diplomatic mission to the revolutionary governments in South America.

Then in the 1880s, a restoration architect discovered the house called the Octagon that had an oval front room that faced the angled intersection of New York Avenue and 18th Street NW. At that time, it served as a boarding school, but Glenn Brown fell in love with the house, and with its original owner Col. John Tayloe III. 

Circa 1872

Brown's father had been a physician who had served in the Confederate army for four years. Brown's grandfather had been a senator from North Carolina. Brown was raised to admire men like Tayloe, a Virginia grandee who had inherited his father's land, slaves and tastes. In the January 7, 1888, American Architect and Building News, Brown wrote that Tayloe, "was unrivaled for the splendor of his household and equipages, and his establishment was renowned throughout the country for its entertainments, which were given in a most generous manner to all persons of distinction who visited Washington in those days...."

As for the "establishment" itself, Brown found that the interior was "elaborately finished, the door and shutters being of mahogany and all still in an excellent state of preservation." He described and drew the house's mantels, its roof trusses and floor plan. At the end of his short article, Brown said Thornton was the architect and "was a very interesting character and is deserving of a separate article."(5)

Thornton never claimed credit for designing the house. No contemporary in the generations of Washington, Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, who enjoyed being Thornton's next door neighbor for five years, credited Thornton for designing the house. Col. John Tayloe III, died in 1828, four week before Thornton. He did not leave any letter or document crediting Thornton or anyone else for designing the house. Neither did William Lovering who as the supervising architect directed the contractors who actually built the house. But while the house was being built, Lovering did advertise that "specimens of buildings suitable for the obtuse or acute angles of the streets of the City of Washington, may be seen at his home." However, beyond that, he never claimed that he designed the Octagon and no one credited him for designing it.(6) 

As the source for attributing the design of the Octagon to Thornton, Brown cited the book of writings by Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, Tayloe's second son, but he actually didn't credit Thornton for the design. He remembered Thornton vividly and included him in a memoir written in 1863 that recalled his father's friends. He did not credit him with designing the Octagon. Of Thornton the architect, he wrote: "He was the architect of the first Capitol at Washington, and laid out some of the public grounds, and arranged the public buildings accordingly."(7) In 1870 Col. John Tayloe III's third son, William Henry Tayloe, wrote several paragraphs for his son about life in the Octagon, which still stands at the northeast corner of the intersection of New York Avenue and 18th Street NW.  Three short sentences traced its origins: “The Octagon was built by your grand father in the administration of President Washington who took much interest and frequently walked to examine the progress. He had much to do with its location. Dr. William Thornton drew the plan.”(8) William Henry Tayloe's recollection erred in several respects. For example, work on the house began during the Adams administration and ended after Jefferson took office. While it was built, Washington lived at Mount Vernon. He died in late 1799 and never lived or worked within walking distance of the house.

Tayloe's recollection had not gained wide currency even after Brown's article. "Historic Houses of Washington," an 1893 article in the widely read Scribner's Magazine, extolled the Octagon and Tayloe with his "five hundred slaves" and "his guests the most eminent men of his times" but made no mention of Thornton. The article also gave Thornton no credit for the Capitol. It described Latrobe, not Thornton, as "the mastermind of our unequaled Capitol."(9)  

In 1896, Brown kept his promise and his article appeared in the July issue of the Architectural Record. In "Dr. William Thornton, Architect," Brown placed Thornton in the forefront of American design. Brown provided a concise biography and also rewrote the history of the Capitol, painting Thornton as its guiding genius who defended his original design from efforts by trained architects to change it. To better quash Cluss's dismissal of Thornton's talents, Brown highlighted Thornton's design of the Octagon. That was an attribution unknown to Cluss. Brown brought up another achievement that Cluss overlooked. President Washington had made Thornton one of the three commissioners overseeing construction of the public buildings. As Brown put it: "when Thornton was appointed commissioner, Washington requested him to see that everything was rectified so the building would conform to the original plan." According to Brown, Thornton undid all the changes Hallet made to the design and building. As long as he was a commissioner, he prevented other changes. However, Brown's proof was based solely on Thornton's say so. In his letters, Washington made clear that he had no such intention.(10)

 

5. Glenn Brown

The upcoming centennial of the December 1800 opening the North Wing of the Capitol to receive the Senate and House called for a history of the national icon. Given his lively interest in the topic, a congressional committee asked Brown to write it. In the meanwhile, he had persuaded the American Institute of Architecture to abandon its Manhattan headquarters and move into the Octagon. He also became the Institute's executive secretary. Brown used his discovery of Thornton to advance his own career. He even began to lobby to become the Architect of the Capitol replacing Edward Clark who suffered a debilitating illness in 1898. Congress published Brown's two volume history of the building, with over 322 plates of illustrations, in 1900 and 1903 respectively.

Brown gave Thornton a reputation that would have astounded those who had known the man. In the January 1919 Proceedings of the American Institute of Architects, Fiske Kimball and Wells Bennett reaffirmed the credit due to Hallet. At the same time, they noted that Brown's exaggerations of Thornton's influence, "with the weight of their official sanction, have naturally become universally accepted, and even to question them has been felt to be disputatious and malignant." Their effort to right the record proved in vain.(11)

In 1998, the Architect of the Capitol had Brown's history of the Capitol reprinted, relegating corrections curbing Brown's enthusiasm for Thornton to footnotes. As the author of the footnotes put it: Brown's "history reflects an unswerving bias toward Thornton in his interpretations of the numerous conflicts and controversies that surrounded the early design and building of the Capitol." Along with his footnotes, William Bushong added an essay, “Glenn Brown and the United States Capitol,” that explored Brown's background, career and ambitions. Bushong showed how Brown's work on Thornton helped him rise in the AIA:

Brown’s zealous promotion of Thornton as the “outstanding architect of his time” was related to his plan to have the AIA acquire and preserve Thornton’s Octagon as its headquarters, an action which has since linked the public’s recognition of the professional organization to this architectural landmark. If Thornton had been portrayed simply as an opportunistic gentleman architect with little practical knowledge of the field, Brown could hardly have convinced his colleagues to lease and later purchase the building. His promotion of Thornton’s genius as a designer and the first Architect of the Capitol was motivated in part by a determination to preserve and adapt the Octagon as the AIA head-quarters....(12) 

That damning assessment did not diminish Thornton's reputation in the least. To promote himself, Thornton shaded the truth and glorified his relationship with Washington. To promote himself, Brown shaded the truth and glorified Thornton. Both have warped not a few histories of the Capitol and the city. Why didn't Bushong's footnotes and trenchant essay put Thornton in his proper place? He didn't challenge Brown's claim that Thornton designed the Octagon. Designing such a gem proved that despite the howls of Hallet, Hadfield, Latrobe and Cluss, Thornton was an architect. Bushong was likely constrained by an 1989 book, Building the Octagon, published by the AIA, that drew inferences from letters and unsigned and undated floor plans that to all but prove that Thornton designed the Octagon. This book takes another look at that evidence, and all but proves that William Lovering designed the Octagon. That, in turn, takes the air out of Thornton's and Brown's fabulous claims about the design of the Capitol and the characters Thornton and Brown tried to assassinate.

You be the judge, and to begin, who was William Thornton? 

Go to Chapter One

In these footnotes I try to direct the reader to the on-line sources, if not the pages in question then to a resource that has a search or find function making finding references to Thornton easy. For important footnotes to sources without an on-line presence, I hope to eventually provide links to another post in this blog with snapshots of the pages quoted.

1. National Intelligence 25 August 1865.

2.  Townsend, George, Washington Outside and Inside, 1873, p. 58 Google Books

3.  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.

4. WT to Trumbull, 6 January 1795, Harris pp. 291ff; GW to Commrs. 9 November 1795.  

5. Glenn Brown, AIA: An Alexandria Architect's Monumental Vision, (2007 exhibition catalog pdf); Brown, Glenn,  1888, "The Tayloe Mansion..." American Architect and Building News, vol. XXIII, p. 6. 

6. National Intelligencer, ad dated 1 May 1800; Ridout Building the Octagon p. 123 

7. Tayloe, Benjamin Ogle, In Memoriam, Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, compiled by Winslow Watson. Privately Printed, 1872. pp. 97-101, 149.

8. Harris, C. M. editor, Papers of William Thornton, volume one, 1781-1802. University of Virginia Press,  1995. p. 584.

9. Hamlin, Teunis, "Historic Houses of Washington", Scribner's Magazine, October 1893, vol. 14, p. 475.

10.   Brown, Glenn 1896, "Dr. William Thornton, Architect." Architectural Record, 1896 , Vol. VI, July-September (page 53ff) pdf. 

11. Brown, Glenn,  History of the United States Capitol, vol. 1, GPO, 1900, Google Books; Kimball, Fiske, and Bennett, Wells, "The Competition for the Federal Buildings, 1792-1793" Journal of the American Institute of Architect, January 1919, p.11.

12. Bushong, William B., "Glenn Brown and the United States Capitol"  pp. 9, 10; The AIA had leased the building in 1898 and "found the room on right was heaped six feet high with piles of rags and rubbish, the rest of the house was in dilapidated condition." Proceedings of 32nd AIA Convention, p. 31