Chapter Nine: John Tayloe III Comes to Town
The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol
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| Sir Archy, an engraving of Tayloe's most famous horse |
In mid-March 1797, the General left Philadelphia. By
the way, once out of office the former president was universally called
the General. He made his slow way home to Mount Vernon receiving the
heartfelt plaudits of his countrymen. After acknowledging a volley from Captain Hoban's artillery militia at the unfinished Capitol, he dined at the Laws. There he gave the commissioners the signed orders transferring ownership of the streets and public lots to the government. They noticed that the documents did not have the seal of the United States, and the General sent them back to Philadelphia. Then he rode on past the President's house, where he received another volley, and spent the night along Rock Creek with Patsy and Thomas Peter. The next day, he sent his regrets to public dinners in Georgetown and Alexandria and had dinner at Mount Vernon. There, as he
would write to the secretary of war, he was surrounded
by joiners, carpenters and masons waiting for orders for the work to do
at Mount Vernon.
Tayloe family legend has the General having "much to do" with the location of the Octagon. If so, he would have to have put his mind to that during his March visit.(1) The newspaper report of his passing through was closer to the truth. He was in a hurry to get to Mount Vernon. Plus, picking out the site for a rich man's house southwest of the President's house would have fueled a war that had begun between the East and West sides of the city.
The General could fairly blame the war on the commissioners. Thanks to them, decisions he didn't make blew up in his face. He didn't want embassies on the Mall, but didn't say where they should be and thought foreign countries should choose where to put them. He approved the design Hadfield drew for the two Executive Offices which would house the Treasury and War Departments, but he had left it to his successor to pick the sites for the two buildings. Then in late January, George Walker, who owned most of the lots well east of the Capitol, wrote to the president and raged that Commissioner Scott "would sacrifice everything to promote his own interest, and having large property above Geo. Town, besides, having purchased considerably in and about that place, he has laid a deep Scheme to keep back the Capitol, in order that Congress may be forced to hold their Sessions in the Presidents House, and to lodge in and about Geo. Town." Walker begged the president to act or "Scott will reign an absolute Bashaw in the city." Law wrote too and recounted that Scott "amused" him and other land owners on Capitol Hill by shewing the President's House on the Map and by pointing out where the [Executive] Offices should be and by anticipating "the future splendor of that part of the City by the residence of Ambassadors and by the Assemblage of Americans who were great Courtiers."(2)
On February 6, 1797, two days after complaining to the president, Law taunted Scott and his two colleagues with news that "Mr. Cook of Annapolis, Samuel Ringold of Hagerstown and Mr. Tayloe of Virginia resolved last year to build on Square 688."(3) The square was just southeast of the Capitol. Then on April 19, John Tayloe III, who had all the makings of a great courtier, bought Lot 8 in Square 170 from Scott for $1,000.(4) The square was just southwest of the President's house. The lot faced the intersection of NewYork Avenue and 18th Street NW. How the Bashaw lured Tayloe to East side is not known.
In Building the Octagon, Orlando Ridout argues that Thornton was the catalyst and eventually designed the house. Establishing his role as a catalyst for the purchase is important because very little is known about the design process for the house. There are two floor plans similar to the Octagon's floor plan in Thornton's papers at the Library of Congress, but they are unsigned and undated. Ridout notes that there is no contemporary documentary evidence extant explicitly associating Thornton with the design. As Ridout puts it: "his correspondence is almost entirely devoid of clues to his involvement in the project, but much can be inferred."
Ridout's inferences run on two tracks. The first allows him preface his chapter on Thornton with a chapter on a more productive architect. He infers that sometime in 1796, Tayloe asked Benjamin Latrobe to design a house for the federal city. That is significant because it all but proves that Tayloe came to the city eager to build. His second track harps on the implication of Thornton's November 1, 1796, letter to the president. In it, Thornton urged that embassies be sited around the public square south of the President's house. Ridout writes: "Tayloe's lot choice might seem unrelated to this proposal if his deed of purchase had not been witnessed by Thornton." However, the seller, Scott, also knew of Thornton's proposal. According to Law, Scott was pointing out where ambassadors would live near the President's house at least two months before Thornton signed the deed of sale. At about the same time, the president encouraged Thornton to do all he could to make sure anyone he could influence lived between the President's house and Capitol. That suggests he might have advised Tayloe to buy a lot elsewhere.
There is also a problem with Ridout's inference about Latrobe. It is based on eight drawings being placed in the wrong folder. One drawing is labeled, not in Latrobe's hand, "ground plan for Mr. Tayloe's house in Federal city" and all the drawings were placed in a folder in Latrobe's paper labeled "Designs of Buildings Erected or Proposed to be Built in Virginia from1795 to 1799." In the journal he kept while in Virginia, Latrobe mentions other projects but not Tayloe's. In 1795, Latrobe had left his American mother in England and emigrated to Virginia, then the most populous state in the union. He soon moved to Richmond, designed several houses and the state prison and did engineering work on the Great Dismal Swamp canal in southeast Virginia. His journal focused on natural history, and in it he mentioned as well that he saw one of Tayloe's horses win a race, and saw Tayloe's iron works in northern Virginia, but he didn't mention meeting Tayloe. Latrobe did not venture north of Virginia until 1798 and didn't begin working in the federal city until 1802 just after construction ended on the Octagon. In a private letter written in 1804, Latrobe described Tayloe's house as the best in the city. At the same time he was publicly demeaning Thornton's pretensions as a designer. Thornton responded in kind but never defended his reputation by revealing that he had designed the Octagon.
Whether or not Latrobe drew plans for Tayloe in 1796 would be immaterial to the design of the Octagon except that Ridout's inferences are accepted by the editors of Latrobe's published papers. Thus when Ridout infers that Thornton recognized the opportunity to "match his skills against the trained and successful professional architect Latrobe..." someone has to defend Latrobe. A more likely inference is that Tayloe reacted to Dolley Madison's complaint that the Octagon, which had briefly housed the First Family from September 1814 to March 1815, was unhealthy. At the end of December 1814, she wrote to a friend "We shall remove in March to the 7 buildings, where we shall be better accomodated, in a more healthy region. Mr. M has not been well since we came to this house, & our servants are constantly sick, oweing to the damp cellar in which they are confined." The Seven Buildings were a row of townhouses on nearby Pennsylvania Avenue. Perhaps, after that snub of his house, Tayloe contemplated moving his family to higher ground and asked Latrobe for his design. He was then restoring the Capitol, but needed private work to support his family. Perhaps because Latrobe's design was too elaborate and offered less potential for income, Tayloe hired George Hadfield to design a row of six town houses which became the nucleus of the Willard Hotel in Square 225 on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Of course, because it likely didn't exist in 1797, Thornton did not see any design by Latrobe. Ridout infers another reason beyond rivalry for Thornton to want to design a house for Lot 8. Ridout thinks Thornton "saw architecture as an intellectual challenge, another arena which he could periodically and voluntarily enter to demonstrate the breadth and superiority of his skills." He that Thornton disdain taking a fee and his not caring "to commit himself to the tedious work of a full-time architect directly engaged in the construction project." The challenge any buyer of Lot 8 faced was that the lot faced an angled intersection and house walls had to be parallel to the neighboring street. Thornton's coming to the sale and signing the deed can fairly be taken that Thornton might have been looking for that intellectual challenge that he thought an oval room could solve.
Finally, Ridout infers that Thornton simply wanted to befriend Tayloe. The doctor relished "the opportunity the project provided to solidify his position in Tayloe's social circle. Already active in Washington society, the Thorntons became close acquaintances of the Tayloes in the years following the completion of the Octagon, an occurance that would have been impossible for George Blagden or a master craftsman. Certainly a shared interest in fine horses, Thornton's prior friendship with upper-class Washingtonians, and his participation in many civic affairs would have inevitably brought him into close contact with the Tayloes. As it happened, however, the Octagon served as the catalyst for a friendship that endured for years."
However, there was another reason for Thornton to be of service to Tayloe on April 19. On April 18,1797, the city hosted a match race between thoroughbreds for a 500 Guinea, or $2600 purse. The commissioner had nothing to do with it. By tradition, match races were held at a spot equidistant between the opponents. Charles Conan Ridgely estate was just north of Baltimore and Tayloe's estate was just north of Richmond. Nicholson's hotelier Tunnicliff, late from England, prepared a race course near the Capitol which satisfied the traditions of the turf. Tayloe's Lamplight beat Charles Conan Ridgely's Cincinnatus and won the purse. Tayloe had put up half but the $1,300 he won from Ridegely covered the $1,000 he paid Scott the next day. Ridout notes the race but thanks to a mistake in an 1829 magazine for sportsmen, he has the race run in November 1798. He made no inferences from Tayloe's triumph on the turf that Thornton witnessed.
Cohen takes a somewhat cynical view of his mission. "Tayloe offset [his own breeding] costs by training lesser owners' horses. These clients paid a small daily fee that rarely covered Tayloe's stable expenses. But when one of his clients horses proved promising, Tayloe negotiated for rights to organize its breeding and racing schedule, and took a share of any profits" Cohen notes that Tayloe also sponsored races at his own track near the family seat, Mount Airy, just north of Richmond. Horses sent to be trained would race Tayloe's own horses. Any man who dreamed of laurels on the turf knew they had best build a relationship with Tayloe. In 1799 Thornton imported two English thoroughbreds, Clifden to stud and Driver to race. In 1800, he ran his first race against Tayloe's horses on Tayloe's course.(9)
There is evidence that before 1797 Thornton interested in breeding. In 1793, he had written to his half-brother that he hoped to cover General Washington's jennies with one of his Tortola jacks. In 1795, he bought a horse in Philadelphia and bought a farm in nearby Maryland where he could breed livestock. He was doing what other gentlemen in the area did and their excitement for racing was palpable. An entry in a journal Tunnicliff sent to Nicholson captured the moment. For April 18, 1797, he wrote: "Washington City Races began this day, some of your men at the point have taken a few Barrls Beer of me to sell on there own acct. Taylors Horse of Virga. won to 500 Guin. Genl. Lee, Col. Foreman & his Bro. called and slept here for the Races." There is documentation allowing the inference that another architect was impressed by Tayloe's achievement on the turf. At the December 1802 Washington Jockey Club races, James Hoban's Potatoes, a four year old, won the first heat on the third day of races then had to withdraw. Potatoes was sired by Tayloe's Lamplighter.As for Thornton, he simply wanted to meet the owner of the best horse in Virginia that had just beat the best horse in Maryland. And, thanks to their mutual admiration of Tayloe and his stable of horses, Thornton widened his friendship with the upper-class sportsmen and not a few in the lower classes. However, while he sent Driver, to be trained by Tayloe, Thornton seemed to plan his campaign to win purses his own way. He used his rich cousin in England, Isaac Pickering, to help import Clifden and Driver. Thornton expected Driver to beat Tayloe's horses. Then for the rest of life, Thornton would try to beat Tayloe on the turf and as a breeder.1 Tayloe did not mind. As Kenneth Cohen pointed out, Tayloe invited rivals in order to improve the breed. But for Thornton, the rivalry went well beyond "a shared interest in fine horses." In 1821, Thornton bought a horse for $3,000 that the Supreme Court in Thornton v. Wynn 25 US 183 noted was touted by the seller as "capable of beating any horse in the United States" and capable of a match with Eclipse. In 1821, Eclipse's victory over a Virginia horse bred by Tayloe made him the most talked about horse in the nation's history. While Col. Tayloe bred Rattler and Col. Wynn trained him, if Rattler won the featured Washington Jockey Club race, Thornton might have easily received the backing of Southern sportsmen to arrange a match race with Eclipse. On race day in Washington, Thornton not Tayloe was the contender vying for a place in the history of the American turf. Rattler pulled a tendon and lost. Then while the courts adjudicated if Thornton still had to pay for the horse, he offered him as stud. At that time, until Eclipse rule, Tayloe's Sir Archy was the most famous horse in America and its prized stud. In a long broadside, Thornton proved that Rattler was the better stud. The broadside described the horse "as the best on the continent," equaling Tayloe's Sir Archy. Not only was Rattler gotten by Sir Archy but Rattler's dam Robin Red-Breast traced her pedigree back to old Highflyer just as Sir Archy did. Ergo, Rattler's pedigree was better that Sir Archy's because of a "double cross... Rattler is doubly descended from old Highflyer."
A month after that letter and a month before Thornton witnessed Tayloe's deed of sale, Cranch wrote to his uncle, the new president, about the commissioners. All three were polite, but Scott "appears hasty and overbearing." Thornton was also hasty, not firm, "a little genius at everything," and little respected. White was "more mild" than Scott, "more firm" than Thornton, "and more respectable than either." Cranch amplified his take on the "little genius." In his letter, Cranch damned Thornton by adding that for a good board, men of science had best give way to men of business. Evidently, Thornton, a man of science with for taste in architecture, did not simplify the problem faced by Cranch as he tried to fit a house into an angled lot. Thornton probably added the stricture about perpendicular walls. He had no sympathy for developers. If he had, Cranch would have accorded a man of science with a place on the board.
A month after Tayloe's purchase, Thornton bought a lot similar to Lot 8 in Square 170. Lot 17 in Square 171 faced the angled intersection of New York Avenue and 17th Street NW. David Burnes, the original proprietor of the area, offered lots for sale in several squares below Pennsylvania Avenue. Thornton bought lots both east and west of the president's house. He had recommended that embassies be below the President's house along 15th as well as 17th Street. However, most of the lots he bought were in Square 171. Burnes probably reserved the four lots directly across New York Avenue from Tayloe and hoped for a better price once Tayloe woke up.3 While Thornton had suggested Square 171 as a site for foreign embassies, it was largely an uneven eroded slope cheap to buy not easily built upon. Lot 17, the largest in the square was most amenable and a house on the lot would face the President's house. According to the diary his wife kept in 1800, Thornton finished a plan for a house on that square. One can infer that he designed a house for Lot 17. What is significant, is that he drew it eight months after work began on the Octagon. Evidence suggests that he modeled his design on the design someone else had drawn for the Octagon.4
The case will be made that the death of the General in 1799 inspired Thornton to design houses. But in the spring of 1797, he was dealing with more important projects. In an October 1797 letter to Dr. Fell, his master when he was an apprentice in Lancashire, Thornton claimed that General Washington asked him for a plan "on a general system of education." He had done much writing but intimated to Fell that "the multifarious business I have on hand prevents me from finishing several pages."(15)
In his letter to Dr. Fell, Thornton bragged that he had "worked day and night at the Capitol. I finished, and obtained the prize against a world of competition; some regularly bred architects. I went at once to the highest order - viz, the Corinthian. I was attacked by Italian, French and English - I came off however victorious. President Washington's determination joined by the Commissioners, after long and patient attention to all, was final, and in my favor." The Italian who attacked him may have been a model maker named Provini who was briefly on the scene in 1794-5, and had refused to show Thornton how to work in stucco. Or, was it Hadfield who was born in Italy?
Then he described the Capitol and gave Fell a promise: "This building will be 353 feet in length, and will contain some of the grandest rooms in the world: - one, the grand vestibule, will be about 114 feet in diameter. It is circular, and to be cover'd with a dome. I am making drawings now for publication; and if published, thou my dear friend will not be forgotten."
Five days later, he wrote at length to Dr. Anthony Fothergill, the rising Quaker physician in London and Bath. He described the Capitol's grandest room, with promises of drawings to come:
The
grand vestibule will be circular and about 114 feet in diameter. I am
making drawings for publication. I have deviated in some particulars
from the rules, which, from antiquity, custom had established. First I
thought that the amazing extent of our country, and of the apartments
that the representatives of a very numerous people would one day
require. Secondly I consulted the dignity of appearance, and made
minutiae give way to a grand outline, full of broad prominent lights and
broad deep shadows. Thirdly, I sought for all the variety of
architecture that could be embraced in the forms I had lain down,
without mixing small parts and large of the same kind, and keeping the
whole regular in range, throughout the building. Finally, I attended to
the minute parts, that we might not be deemed deficient in those touches
which a painter would require in the finishing.
As usual, he didn't reveal exactly what he was drawing: an elevation? a section? views of the interior? And could a mere drawing match the "grand outline" of his prose?(17)
In 1796, Thornton had hosted the French savant Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney, who wanted to meet the author of Cadmus. In July 1797, Volney returned to the city and pressed Thornton to share his drawings of the city and its buildings so that he could use them to illustrate his future book on America. Volney's book on Syria and Egypt had sparked interest in ancient empires. He relished the chance to illustrate a book on the rising empire in embryo. He even told Jefferson, his principal host in the country, about his project. Thornton gave him an engraving of the L'Enfant Plan, and allowed him to copy the floor plan of the Capitol.
Thornton promised to soon send an elevation of the Capitol to Volney. Judging from a letter Volney later wrote to Thornton, he expected to get a drawing of the West Front. While Glenn Brown would draw what that elevation must have looked like, Thornton probably showed the Frenchman his so-called "Alternative design" with a Roman temple-like colonnade vaulting the "small dome." It is in his papers in the Library of Congress. If Thornton and Volney didn't boast of being the world's leading experts on language, one could speculate that the difference between "est" and "ouest" was lost in translation. A reason why there was no mention of an East elevation of the Capitol in their correspondence was Thornton may not have had one.(18)
In 1796, when Commissioner White showed a congressional committee Hadfield's East elevation, Thornton sent up a "roll of papers" to show the true design. Obviously, a roll of the East elevation would have been the better antidote to the false impression given by Hadfield's elevation. During the winter of 1797-1798, Thornton exhibited an uncharacteristically peevish regard for what Hadfield was doing. In October 1797, he had the board write a note to Hadfield designed to put him in his place. It asked Hadfield to stipulate in writing that the roof of the Capitol would not be higher than the balustrades. Such a worry was beyond the ken of Commissioners Scott and White. Hadfield bowed to that idea of Thornton's, but added that if the board decided the roof could be one or two feet higher, it "would make no difference, and some advantage would be gained in the interior of the building."(19)
In January 1798, Thornton accused Hadfield of having given workers the wrong width for the pilasters. As a result, those on the north wall were asymmetrical. Hadfield denied giving the orders that led to the supposed error and added that "some of the best examples of the Corinthian order show that it is not necessary" to have strict symmetry. Blagden calculated that the cost of correcting the mistake would be $1100.
In analyzing a problem, Thornton usually pinpointed a mistake made well before the problem was recognized. But fury at an error that could have been corrected when it was first made left Thornton himself at fault. After promising to keep an eye on everything at the Capitol, why didn't he correct it sooner? So the focus of his attack on Hadfield was how the inept young architect had marred work just completed and not yet installed. Thornton pointed out to his colleagues that the figure of a rose in a modallion "is too small by at least 1 3/4 inch and which, when viewed at the height intended [around 50 feet], will appear as an indistinct spot. It is not in the proportion recommended by Sir Wm. Chambers in his work on architecture...."
After reviewing the opinions of Blagden and another mason, Thornton's colleagues voted not to make the changes Thornton wanted. He could no longer force the board to let the president decide. President Adams had told the board that he would always defer to their judgment. Thornton wrote a dissent to be placed in the board's proceedings. He didn't challenge Hadfield's take on the Corinthian order. Instead he warned that the mistake "can never be renewed or corrected after it is put up, but will remain, forever, a laughing stock to architects."(20)
It seems that during the winter of 1797-98, Thornton set out to draw an East elevation which showed the North Wing as built and which showed the central part of building as Thornton had drawn and described in 1793 with the statue of the Farnese Hercules atop the pediment. In his journal, Benjamin Latrobe noted seeing Thornton's design during a visit to Thornton's parlor in April 1798. Latrobe was quite impressed. He thought it "one of the first designs of modern times," which suggest that he saw the East elevation not the Alternative design. Given that during the ensuing controversy between the two, Latrobe assumed that the operative design of the exterior of the North Wing had been Thornton's original design. That means the elevation he saw in 1798 did not have two columns along the north wall. In 1811, a newly arrived engraver from Bavaria copied Thornton's drawing. Then in 1818, Robert King printed a map with the engraved elevation design in the lower right had corner. Since then, that engraving has been hailed as Thornton's work, and since 1900, hailed as a work of genius.
That he redrew what he represented as his winning design after the outer walls of the North Wing were raised to their intended height meant that what he drew matched what had been built so far. Of course, Hoban and even Hadfield could note features that could not have been in his original design. In January 1798, his acting out as an author wronged by Hadfield's misdeeds did not prompt his colleagues to restore his design. If his project in January 1795 was to undo "wilful errors," his project in January 1798 was to convince all those involved that he had done just that. More importantly, he had to convince his colleagues and the president, if not the General himself, that his elevation and floor plans were the operative design for the parts of the Capitol yet built.
In late May, the board would dismiss Hadfield. It would seem that Thornton had to have been the moving force in effecting that, but he likely wasn't.
 |
| 108.
Likely an unfinished drawing for Thornton's never published book
celebrating his Capitol design. The actual North Wing does not have
fluted pilasters. |
Once again, Hadfield began to have trouble with the men who worked under him. Redmond Purcell, the foreman of the carpenters at the Capitol, demanded that Hadfield make drawings for each element of the roof. When a drawing didn't come in time, Purcell told the board that the slave sawyers had to stop work. Idle slaves were an anathema, and those working as sawyers were paid a dime a day extra that they not their masters could keep.
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| 139. Payroll for slave sawyers |
Purcell's charges soon spiraled into an accusation that the roof Hadfield designed would not serve and that he ordered men to do what was not needed which wasted time and building materials. Hadfield responded that Purcell was insubordinate and didn't need drawings of everything. The carpenters showed a "great deficiency in the work.... The hips are improperly placed, the rafters are improperly notched to receive the purlines, the trimmers are wrong , &c & c.. All which is contrary to drawings and directions."
Purcell fired back that at the pace Hadfield was going, the roof would not be finished in three months. "The expense to the public is at least 7 as to 1, and part of the work I am certain will not answer to the purpose." With the coming of spring, and the prospect of raising another monumental roof, the carpenters asked for a higher wage because "it required great attention to keep all the laborers at work." That is, they had the added duty of bossing the slaves doing the heavy lifting.
Purcell had been Hoban's partner in South Carolian and likely Ireland too. That doesn't prove that his motive for attacking Hadfield was to prod the board to have Hoban to finish the Capitol. However, after workers covered the President's house in the summer of 1797, Hoban was expendable since there would little work to do there.
Judging from one of Purcell's letters to the board, Thornton did not prod Purcell to attack Hadfield. When he didn't get drawings from Hadfield, he asked what to do: "Mr. Scott made answer, if Mr. Hadfield did not give me directions to keep the men employed to the best advantage until the next board which was to be on the Wednesday following; Dr. Thornton at the same time told me to have my work well done. When Mr. Hadfield came into the yard instead of giving me directions, he began his abusive language." What Thornton did next is not known but in a March 13 letter to Commissioner White, he claimed that he "settled matters with Hadfield and Purcell."(22)
White was once again in Philadelphia trying to get money from congress. That was the board's most pressing problem. Thanks to figures presented by Hadfield and Hoban, it seemed clear that the board would run out of money in July, the peak of the building season. White's 1796 lobbying campaign in Philadelphia had unnerved Thorntonand so did this one. In a letter his colleagues he referred to the South Wing as "that superb and elegant building," but worried that it wouldn't be finished "during the present age" unless it housed the Executive offices. The House of Representatives could one day be put in the west end of the "main body," i.e. the Conference room. White had worked with Thornton for almost three years yet his letters suggest that he knew very little about "the original ideas of Doctor Thornton." At the same time, White reported a rumor that Hoban estimated that for $12,000, he could put congress in the President's house and blamed the idea on Scott's friends. But in May, White came back with good news, $50,000 a year for at least two and likely three years, with no strings attached. Finishing the Capitol would have the highest priority.(23)
However, White also assured a congressional committee that work would begin on one of the Executive offices. A strike by masons over at attempt by the board to lower their wages and a rebellion by carpenters over Hadfield's orders brought work at the Capitol to a stand still. But the crisis reached a climax because the lawyers on the board, Scott and White, worried that the only explicit authorization they had for building the Executive offices was President Washington's signature on Hadfield's elevation of his design. However, Hadfield had taken back his elevation when asked to make sections so Lovering could estimate the cost of the building. Hadfield had never returned his elevation. The board did not want to reauthorize the project by asking erratic President Adams to sign anything. In a fit of anger, he had startled White by vowing to return the capital to New York if unruly members of the opposition in congress were not punished. In a moment of whimsy, he had also told White that he wanted the Executive offices next to the Capitol and that being over a mile away from both congress and the executive officers would suit him.(24)
Contractors had to see the design before they could submit bids. The board asked Hadfield to return the signed elevation. In response, he demanded that he superintend its construction. For his insubordination, the board gave Hadfield three months notice. As if on cue, the carpenters complained that Hadfield gave them more orders that wasted their time. The board fired Hadfield and put Hoban in charge at the Capitol. He found that "the principal rafters and girders of the roof were raised on the east and west fronts, and the north end of the building." That suggests that the job was on schedule. He increased the liquor ration and got the job done.(25)
The board offered to pay Hadfield until August if he returned the Executive office elevation. He didn't, so they used Lovering's design. They wrote to the president announcing their unanimous decision to begin building the Executive office next to the President's house. He raised no objections.
While his stubborn refusal to placate Scott and White spelled his doom, Hadfield clearly blamed Hoban and Thornton. He threatened to appeal to President Adams, and told the board that he would teach them about the rights of architects: "I have long since learnt that it is possible to be deprived of ones own, for the advantage and reputation of others." Since he had just learned that his loss of the Executive office was Lovering's gain, the deprivation he referred to must have been his work on the North Wing.
The board promptly presented their case to the administration. In a letter to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, likely written by Thornton, the board welcomed an investigation and assured him that it would embarrass Hadfield. He was a young man of taste, but "extremely deficient in practical knowledge as an architect." The bulk of the long letter detailed his insubordinate refusal to give the board his elevation of the Executive office that President Washington had signed.(26)
Thornton also drafted a personal letter to Pickering that focused on his professional relationship with Hadfield. In it, he described how he introduced Hadfield to the Capitol and had to assure him that the walls then built were big enough. Thornton soon gathered that Hadfield didn't know anything about architecture or building. He didn't know what a projector was and had to ask Blagden how to write "$100,000." Thornton explained that the board did not dismiss Hadfield immediately because the workers ignored him and did the work properly.
Although it was not an issue in the board's current dispute with Hadfield, Thornton ridiculed his pretensions as a designer. That allowed Thornton to not only explain that he had drawn sections of the building that Hadfield couldn't, he also claimed that, with Hoban's help, he had corrected Hallet's mistakes. He also fabricated the story that after quitting in late June 1796, Hadfield got his job back only after apologizing for attacking Thornton's plan, admitting his envy and vicious motives and promising to follow Thornton’s orders. However, Thornton did not make a fair copy of his draft and send it to the secretary of state.(27)
Thornton was comfortable making broad claims in drafts of never sent letters and to correspondents in England about his architectural genius. However, face to face, he celebrated his amateur status. At the end of May 1798, a young Polish poet, Count Julian Niemcewicz, came to celebrate America. He toured the federal city and met its leading men. Law told him to see Hadfield who showed him the Capitol. Then Niemcewicz met Thornton. He left this impression in a diary style memoir: Thornton "told me himself that it is not long since he had begun to study architecture and it was while he was taking lessons that he made his plan of the Capitol. Should one be surprised that it is bad? In building an edifice so costly and so important could they not have brought over one of the more celebrated architects of Europe, or at least asked them for a plan?"(28)
While in the city, the Polish count had gravitated toward Law and the General both in the city and at Mount Vernon. It seemed that neither of them vouched for Thornton's genius as an architect. Thornton likely didn't sense that because upon their moving to the city, the Thorntons were accepted in the highest society. The General paid them visits and invited them to Mount Vernon where they were esteemed by the General's family, especially the Thomas Laws and Thomas Peters. The General and Law would both build houses on Capitol Hill. Throughout the 20th and into the next century, the consensus grew that Thornton must have designed them.Footnotes for Chapter Ten:
1. GW's diary 15 March 1797; Harris p. 584;
2. Walker to GW, 24 January 1797; Law to GW 4 February 1797,
3. Law to Commissioners, Feb. 6, 1797;
4. For cost of lot see Ridout fn. 4 p. 130;
4. Ridout pp. 35ff; Latrobe Journal p. 22;
6. Dolley Madison to Hannah Gallatin 29 December 1814; Daily National Intelligencer 22 April 1816.
7. Tunnicliff diary April 1797, John Nicholson reels; Bryan, History of National Capital, vol. 1. p. 304 (Google books); Baltimore Advertiser 19 April 1797; Am. Turf, vol. 1, March 1830, p.325 (click link for download); John Hervey, History of Racing America 1665-1865, vol. 2 (1944); Tayloe family legend credits the Georgetown merchant Benjamin Stoddert for selling the lot to Tayloe. He was not in the chain of ownership of Lot 8 in Square 170, In Memoriam p. 150;.
8. for Potatoes see Washington Federalist 8 December 1802, p. 1.
9. Kamoie, Laura, Irons in the Fire; Cohen pp. 114-6; American Turf Register, vol. 2, pp. 323ff, 376; Maryland Gazette 18 October 1792.
10. WT to J.B. Thomason, 29 November 1792, Chapter Four footnote #19; Commrs. to Tunnicliff 8 November 1797;
11. Burnes Papers 15 May 1797, Burnes to Commrs. re dividing lots. The Commissioners assigned all the lots in the square to Burnes, see Surdocs record book; For WT's lots see Notice for a Marshal's sale in National Intelligence 4 July 1820; for warrant see Morris v. Morris, p. .
12. Mrs. Thornton's diary, p. 102;
13. Cranch to Morris, February 1797, HSP. SurDoc image Record Book Square 74
14. Cranch, William to John Adam 17 March 1797;
15. WT to Fell 5 October 1797, Harris p. 418.
16. Commrs to Hadfield, 18 November 1797; Lovering to Commrs 26 November 1797; Commrs to Adams, 25 November 1797.Commrs. records.
17.WT to Fell 5 October 1797, Harris pp. 418-20; for more on
Provini see Smith, Morris's Folly, p. 116; WT to Fothergill, 10 October
1797, Harris pp. 424-27;
18. Volney to Jefferson 19 July 1797; Volney to WT 13 aout 1797, Harris p. 416.
19. Hadfield to Commrs, 2 November 1797, Commrs. records;
20. Hadfield to Commrs, 3 January 1798, Commrs. records; WT to Commrs. 9 January 1798, Harris, pp.430-1.
21.Latrobe Journal p.189; PP. Glover Park History "Conrad Schwarz" . King map, LOC.
22. GW to Commrs. 29 January 1797;
1790 Federal Census for Charleston;Purcell to Commrs. 7, 12, and 20 March 1798; Commrs Proceedings 13
March 1799; Hadfield to Commrs., 10 March 1798, Commrs. records; White to WT, 17 March 1798, Papers of William Thornton
23. White to Commissioners 8 & 20 March 1798, Harris pp. 440ff.
24. Commrs. to White 27 March 1798; Petition from stone cutters 17 April 1798, commrs. records; Commrs to Pickering 25 June 1798, Harris, Papers of William Thornton, pp. 462-4; White to GW 20 February 1798;
25.Hoban letter to editor,
Washington Federalist 27 October 1808.
26. Commrs to Adams 8 June 1798, commrs. records; Commrs to Pickering, 25 June 1798, Harris, Papers of William Thornton, pp. 462-4.
27. WT to Pickering 23-25 June 1798 draft;
28. Niemcewicz, Julian U., Under Their Vine and Fig Tree: Travels in America, 1797-99, pp. 77-8.
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