Introduction
Doctor T. Examined, and the Case of the Ingenious A or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol
Introduction
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| 1. William Thornton in 1804 |
After Washington and L'Enfant, Dr. William Thornton is the most remembered man associated with the founding of the Nation's Capital. Of that trio, he is the only one who actually lived in the city. He was a fixture on F Street from 1797 until his death in 1828. Presidents and their cabinets came and left. Thornton remained and was arguably the most famous bureaucrat in the city. He accomplished that by being rather full of himself, a know-it-all prone to puns, badinage, and buffoonery. An anonymous admirer remembered that "his company was a complete antidote to dullness. "In an era when there was a degree of formality in marriage, after ten years, Mrs. Thornton began calling her husband "Dr. T." The community embraced it, although, judging from one 1814 letter to the editor, not always fondly: "Doctor T. has been living upon the Public Treasury for near twenty years, and I dare say he cannot point to a single service that entitles him to the patronage of the Government."
A week after he died, the National Intelligencer printed a remembrance. "C." hailed Thornton as a founder who had been "a commissioner for laying out this Metropolis" and Commissioner of the Patent Office "during four successive administrations." C also noted that Thornton published arguments that formed popular opinion in support of the Greek and Latin American revolutions. The American Society for the Colonization of Free Negroes remembered his revolutionary plans for Africa. In closing, C exalted the man, not his works: "His temperament was highly sensitive and, of course, his character was not exempt from those alloys that are blended with genius.... He was constant and warm in his friendship open and decided in his enmities. His love of knowledge was great; his love of liberty greater; but his greatest love was that of truth. Truth he incessantly sought in every avenue of science or literature, and fearlessly pursued through the whole course of his career with unabated ardor...."(1)
Today, his claim to fame is that he designed two buildings, one grand and the other precious: the Old Capitol and the Octagon house, the residence of John Tayloe III, still standing just southwest of the White House. An effort in the early 20th century to trumpet Thornton's claim that he invented the steamboat ran out of steam.(2)
Compared to other monumental buildings, the Old Capitol's fame was fleeting. Finished in 1829, it reigned just long enough to get its photo taken. Then it was swallowed and dwarfed between 1852 and 1865 by the current Capitol.
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| 2. The Old Capitol in 1846 |
The plans Thornton drew that won the Capitol design contest in 1793 were lost shortly after they were modified by another architect. Upon being appointed one of the three commissioners to oversee construction of the public buildings, Thornton tried to pass off the modified plan as his own. President Washington ignored his claim; Jefferson found flattering Thornton useful; and Madison didn't him seriously. Then the slow growth of New Capitol kindled curiosity about the old. When his wife died in 1865, Thornton was remembered as the designer of the original Capitol.(3)
That claim has been thrice challenged, in 1876, 1919, and 1998. In an 1876 speech before architects gathered in Philadelphia to celebrate the Centennial, Adolf Cluss, then Washington's leading architect who designed the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building, discussed all the Capitol's architects. He credited five for their good work. Stephen Hallet, an emigrant like Thornton but from France not England, drew the first design that roughly resembled what was finished in 1829. George Hadfield, who came directly from England in 1795, built the Senate Wing. James Hoban, from Ireland who also designed and built the President's house, put the roof on the North Wing in 1798. Benjamin Latrobe, another emigrant from England but with a mother born in Pennsylvania, built the House wing between 1804 and 1808, changed the interior of the Senate Wing in 1811 and then from 1815 to 1817 rebuilt both wings after they were burned by the British army in August 1814. From 1818 to 1829, Boston born Charles Bulfinch built the Rotunda and finished the building.
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| 4. Adolph Cluss strikes a pose |
Cluss 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.(4)
Then in the 1880s, a restoration architect discovered a neglected though not quite abandoned house called the Octagon that had an oval front that faced the angled intersection of New York Avenue and 18th Street NW. A California senator's wife asked Glenn Brown to procure a fabled chimney piece said to be in the house. Brown found the owners, the Tayloe family, loath to part with anything in the house despite having consigned it to a boarding school and then government offices. Nonetheless, Glenn Brown fell in love with the house, and with its original owner Col. John Tayloe III.
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| 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. Cluss had so thoroughly ridiculed Thornton's pretensions as an architect that his designing the Octagon did not cross any architect's mind. William Lovering who as the supervising architect directed the contractors who actually built the house had a short career in Washington, from 1794 to 1804. In 1798, he claimed a hand in building two-thirds of the houses in the City of Washington. Others began to appreciate him for his works both as a builder and designer. In the draft of a 1798 letter to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, Thornton mentioned Lovering and crossed out "an ingenious A." The case will be made that the "Ingenious A" designed the Octagon. (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 allowed that Thornton, "an accomplished and benevolent gentleman, is remembered more for his eccentricities and the anecdotes related of him than for his well-earned reputation for letters and taste." Then he filled a few pages with recollections of Thornton's fist fights, his rescuing the French ambassador's wife while she was being beaten the French ambassador, his pamphlet on the origins of the steamboat that killed Fulton, and the well attended Jockey Club race in 1811 when his horse was "distanced." Before the race "in spite of physicking his jockey, which he told me he had done most plentifully, found him too heavy on weighing, and the poor fellow was obliged to ride on a pad, as being lighter than a saddle. After a few paces, the pad slipped away and left the unfortunate jockey on the bare back of the horse, from which circumstance he was deprived of all command over him." 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)
However, in 1870, the third son, William Henry Tayloe, wrote several paragraphs for his son about life in the Octagon house. 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." It bears noting that after their mother died in 1855, the Tayloes had been trying to sell the house and that often inspires fabulous origins. 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.(8)
Tayloe's recollection did not gain 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)
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| 5. Glenn Brown |
The upcoming centennial of the 1800 opening of 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. Congress published Brown's two volume history of the building 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 Brown's exaggerations of Thornton's influence, but "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 examine Thornton's performance as a commissioner, and 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.
You be the judge, but first: who was William Thornton?
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. Dunlap vol. 1, p. 336; National Intelligencer 15 September 1814, letter from Dr. Blake; "The Late Doctor William Thornton," National Intelligencer 4 April 1828; Alexander, p. 256.
2. Hunt, "William Thornton and John Fitch" The Nation vol. 98 no. 2551, pp.602-3
3. National Intelligence 25 August 1865.
4. 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. Also see Townsend, George, Washington Outside and Inside, 1873, p. 58 Google Books
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. McCue, Octagon... p. 69.
6. see chapter 9.
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
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