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 Robert Peter. The next day, he ducked out of 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.(1)
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. 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 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, one decision he didn't make blew up in his face. He approved the design Hadfield drew for the two Executive Offices which would house the Treasury and War Departments, but he told the commissioners that his successor should pick the sites for the two buildings. Then in January, Hadfield told Thomas Law where the commissioners wanted the offices and that lit the firestorm. 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 put the executive offices near the Capitol 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."(4)
How the Bashaw persuaded Tayloe, who had all the makings of a great courtier, to buy a lot just southwest of the president's house is not known. Orlando Ridout V who wrote Building the Octagon, published in 1989, thinks Thornton was the catalyst. Establishing that 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 infers much from the letter Thornton wrote to the president on where to put embassies. Thanks to Thornton's proposal that embassies grace Square 170 and neighboring Squares south of the President's house, Tayloe was joining potentially "the most exclusive residential company in the city...." That Thornton witnessed the sale all but proves the point.
But Thornton had another reason to be there: hero worship. The New York Jockey Club's history of racing in America would seem like the bible for doings on the turf, but its source, an 1829 sporting magazine, used a list provided by one of Tayloe's sons that listed 114 victories of his late father's horses. There was at least one error. Lamplighter did not beat Cincinnatus in the City of Washington on November 6, 1798. There is no doubt about the actual date of the race. It was the first race in the city, widely anticipated and followed by two more days of racing. In his History of the National Capital, Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, citing the April 4, 1797, edition of the Centinel of Liberty, noted the race. An advertisement in the Washington Gazette announced the appearance of the Learned Dog at Mr. Turtle's house at the "starting pole" of the race.(7)In the context of the war between East and West, the race may have been a ploy by the East. In February, 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."(5) That square was just southeast of the Capitol. What likely brought those three gentlemen together "last year" were the Annapolis Jockey Club races held in November. Both Tayloe and Ringgold raised thoroughbreds. Ringgold had already bought a lot from Law at the foot of New Jersey Avenue. Then, as spring approached, WilliamTunnicliff, an Englishman who ran Nicholson's small Capitol Hill hotel, came up with an idea to increase his business. He wrote to Nicholson that he was fashioning a race track not far from Pennsylvania Avenue and 6th Streets SE. Nicholson sharply disapproved. He wanted a church built instead. Tunniciff wrote no more about it until a rather spectacular match race was over.
A match race required two breeders to put up an equal sum of money and the winner took it all which in this case was 500 Guineas. The site of the race was commonly equidistant between two breeders. Tayloe lived north of Richmond, Charles Carnan Ridgely lived north of Baltimore. Tunnicliff sent Nicholson a monthly log of daily occurrences. 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." Tayloe's Lamplighter beat Ridgely's Cincinnatus. The best horse breeder of Virginia beat the best breeder of Maryland, and won the equivalent of $2,500.
Thornton
must have been fascinated. As a lad, he had likely avoided such
un-Quakerly entertainments as horse races, but there is evidence that
Thornton was 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.
The day after the race, Tayloe bought a lot in the city, but it was not on Square 688. Tayloe family legend suggested that he was influenced by Benjamin Stoddert a relation of Anne Ogle Tayloe, John's Maryland born wife. He bought Lot 8 in Square 170 from Scott for $1868.25, with a down payment of $1,000. Thornton, the witness, basked in the glow of the victorious young breeder. There is also evidence that Thornton was not the only award winning architect who was smitten. 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 Lamplighter.(8)
Of course, while Hoban and Thornton gravitated to the nation's top breeder, Tayloe may have been overwhelmed by the local architectural talent. Getting a look at Thornton's design was not easy but by then, the oval room in the President's house could be inspected. Oval rooms would solve the problem of fitting a house into acutely angled lot lines. City regulations required that house walls parallel the nearby street. However, young Tayloe, only 26 years old, had another mission far more congenial at that time.
In his They Will Have Their Game: The Sporting Life and the Making of the American Republic,
Kenneth Cohen credits Tayloe for trying to better the breed in the young republic. His father died when he was 8
years old. He was the youngest of ten siblings and the only male. His
eldest brother-in-law arranged for young John's education in England
while, back in Virginia, eleven trustees managed the empire John III
would control when he came of age. That empire included plantations, an
iron furnace and ship building as well as the largest stable of
thoroughbred horses in America. While he didn't study bloodlines and
racing traditions at Eton and Cambridge, he gained entree to the great
families who curated those bloodlines and carried on those traditions.
When he returned to America in 1790, he understood that to create an
American racing tradition to rival Britain's, he had to help other
American breeders as much as he dominated them. Obviously, he married
her for other reasons, but his wife's father, Benjamin Ogle, was a
prominent Maryland breeder who lived in Annapolis.
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. In 1799, Thornton would import two horses from England. In 1800, he would send one of them to be trained by Tayloe. Cohen's cynicism is probably warranted. Tayloe liked to raise money from that to pay for this. In 1792, likely to pay for his racing campaigns, he advertised the sale of "Two hundred likely Virginia born slaves, consisting of men, women and children of all ages."(9)
Riding the crest of such an empire, Tayloe clearly wasn't a man with a one track mind, and it is insulting to suggest that he came to the city looking for pigeons, but it seems he soon got a stud fee out of Hoban and eventually a training fee from Thornton. After the race, he showed no interest in the city. In May 1797, David Burnes, the original proprietor of the area, offered lots for sale including in the Square 171 across New York Avenue from Tayloe's Lot 8 in Square 170. Tayloe did not take the opportunity to cheaply expand his footprint south of the President's house.It is more likely that when Latrobe lived in the city in 1816, Tayloe reacted to Dolley Madison's complaint that the Octagon, which had briefly housed the First Family, 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, Tayloe contemplated moving his family to higher ground and asked Latrobe for his design. Instead, he built what became the nucleus of the Willard Hotel in Square 225 on Pennsylvania Avenue. He hired George Hadfield to design six row houses.(11)
There is no evidence that Tayloe wanted a design for a house in 1797. Nor is there evidence that Thornton was interested in designing houses at that time. Ridout suggests that a house design was a catalyst for Thornton's and Tayloe's long friendship. Lamplighter's victory likely inspired or fueled Thornton's dream to breed prize winning horses and that shared interest, not a house design, was the catalyst of his long friendship with Tayloe.
However, if Thornton had a genius for architectural design, it is likely that he would have been challenged by solving the problem whoever built Tayloe's house would face. But was he a genius at architectural design?
Just after his Inauguration in 1797, thanks to his nephew having lived in the federal city since 1794, President John Adams received a report on the commissioners. William Cranch allowed that all three commissioners 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." By "little genius at everything," Cranch was probably reacting to the patchwork of Thornton's know-it-all patter, not to his being in anyway adept at solving problems. One might shy away from asking a "little genius at everything" to design one's house. After all, he would be busy with other little matters. 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, as he informed a correspondent, "the multifarious business I have on hand prevents me from finishing several pages."(17)
Thornton's seeming retreat from architectural projects continued. The board decided it needed an estimate of the cost of Hadfield's Executive office design. It could not ask Hoban because of his rivalry with Hadfield. Thornton did not step up and, as he had done in March 1795, investigate figures of others and offer his own estimate. Then Lovering returned from Philadelphia. He parlayed making an estimate of Hadfield's design into making a simpler design that would save $6,300 on each office building.(19)
However, while there is no evidence that his colleagues deferred to Thornton on architectural matters, that did not diminish his own high estimation of his talents. He had designed a building for the ages. That would be plain to see once his Capitol was finished. In the meanwhile, among his multifarious tasks was framing the brilliance of his Capitol so that in the meanwhile, the world could understand his genius.
In letters to Dr. Fell and to Dr. Anthony Fothergill, the rising Quaker physician in London and Bath, Thornton explained why he wasn't practicing medicine and bragged on his accomplishments. 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?(20) He also alluded to the president's "flattering letter letter of approbation of the individual conduct of the commissioners." Thornton also claimed that perhaps only the secretaries of the treasury and war had more power and that commissioners spend $120,000 annually.
Even though he wrote to both doctors in the same month, he varied how he described his work of genius. To Fell, he wrote that as a commissioner "I am seeing among many other works a building erected which I was the author of: I mean the Capitol of the United States. 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."
To Fothergill, he wrote only about the grandest room:
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.
He didn't mention a dome to Fothergill. As usual, he didn't reveal exactly what he was drawing: an elevation? a section? views of the interior?
In 1796, he 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 was not exactly the author of what Volney copied. The
Senate chamber
was not in the South Wing and not lit by grand windows in the
semicircular protrusion along the south wall. But largest room in the plan distinguished his 1793 plan from Hallet's. His Grand Vestibule was where Hallet wanted a court yard.
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.(21) 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. Another reason why there was
no mention of an East elevation of the Capitol in their correspondence was
Thornton did not have one.
There is no evidence that the General had seen or ever approved the Alternative design of the West Front. It was also an eccentric design that was clearly not on the conference table when Hallet's changes to Thornton prize winning design were approved. Maybe for those reasons, Thornton did not send it to Volney.
Thornton never noted or alluded to drawing another East elevation. In the draft of a letter in 1798, he would claim that he drew a section of the Capitol and drawings to instruct Hadfield how to build the North Wing. In 1796, when Commissioner White showed a congressional committee Hadfield's East elevation, Thornton fretted, decided it wasn't important and sent up a "roll of papers." Obviously, a roll of the East elevation would have been the better antidote to the false impression given by Hadfield's elevation.
Thornton had reasons for not making a reprise of the East elevation of his winning design and purporting that it was the design approved by the president. Once he became a commissioner, he could read what the commissioners and the president had written about his design. He learned that in August 1793, the president had left it to Hallet to offer a design for the East Front for the president's approval. Thornton likely preferred to wait for the president to ask for an East Front design. The General declined to ask Thornton for anything.
Once the General retired to Mount Vernon, everyone understood that his opinion on anything to do with the city remained definitive, but two commissioners could do what they wished. President Adams could interpose but, the president expressed no interest in anything about the city. Thornton's colleagues disclaimed any interest in the design of the central section of building. Thornton could bide his time. No decision meant that his Alternative design remained in the running. But getting one of his colleagues to endorse his original elevation as the adopted plan was more likely. Or, President Adams could see his East Front and be impressed with it in the same way that the General had been.
Thornton's major frustration was that no one else seemed to care who was the author of the Capitol. Getting the North Wing built by December 1800 was all that mattered. But the nagging frustration for Thornton was that drawing the minutiae, as he liked to put it, in a way that made the right impression was no easy matter. In a draft of a letter to White in 1796, Thornton boasted that he was "making correct drawings for the Superintendent of the Capitol in which it will be impossible to make any mistake. In this I have paid great attention even to the minutiae, lest difficulties might be made where in reality none ever existed." But there is no evidence that he did make drawings. There is one drawing in his papers that showed the frustration he faced when his ideas bumped into reality. It is an unfinished drawing of exterior of the North Wing. It resembled the actual building in every particular save one: his drawing has fluted pilasters. In the actual building, they are plain. To make an impression, to show the eclat of his original design, it behooved him to draw the East elevation again.
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."
 |
| 108. Likely an unfinished drawing for Thornton's never published book celebrating his Capitol design. The actual North Wing does not have fluted pilasters. |
In January 1798, he 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."(24)
His acting out as an author wronged did not prompt his colleagues to bow to his wishes and needs. However, his posturing resonated in a way that he probably didn't intend. His dissent made his dissatisfaction with Hadfield public knowledge. Once again, Hadfield began to have trouble with the men who worked for 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.
 |
| 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 hire 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."(25)
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 Thornton since there was no elevation showing the brilliance of his design. White had to show Hadfield's design and then a "roll of papers" Thornton sent up giving an idea of the "plan adopted by the president. In the spring of 1798, Thornton finally replicated a semblance of the award winning design. In his
journal, Benjamin Latrobe noted seeing Thornton's it during a visit to Thornton's parlor in April 1798. Latrobe was quite impressed which suggest that he saw the East elevation not see the Alternative design.
White might have seen it and been impressed too. 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.(26)
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.(27)
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." He increased the liquor ration and got the job done.(28)
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.
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." In his November 1795 letter to Thornton the president cautioned him to fire Hadfield if he was incompetent. Thornton did not recall that in his draft, but explained that the board did not dismiss Hadfield immediately because the workers ignored him and did the work properly.
Thornton ridiculed Hadfield's pretensions as a designer. He complained that he "could do nothing without sections being made of the whole building, although one wing only was to be executed." While denigrating Hadfield, Thornton narrated a story revealing his own genius. He knew sections "to be unnecessary," and Hadfield's request "only intended by him to fatigue me by throwing difficulties in my way. These I stated, but by the Board attending to his representations I was under the necessity of complying with their wish to satisfy him. I drew the section of the whole accordingly." Actually, in his November 17, 1795, letter written when the board and president were trying to reconcile Hadfield and Hoban, Thornton volunteered to make all drawings needed, and there is no evidence that he did.
Indeed, according to Thornton, Hadfield made his design because he saw that Thornton and Hoban were undoing Hallet's mistakes and restoring Thornton's original design. Hadfield mistook that as an invitation to suggest design changes. Thornton added the otherwise uncorroborated 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. Thornton did not make a fair copy of his draft and send it to the secretary of state.(29)
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?"(30)
Meanwhile, as the drama with Hadfield reached its climax in the late spring of 1798, somebody was designing a house for Thomas Law. In the late 20th century, C. M. Harris decided it must have been Thornton. In October 1797, Lovering published a notice in Washington, Georgetown and Alexandria newspapers advertising his skills as “Architect, Surveyor and Builder and c." including "to design and make drawings, plans and estimates..." In his Alexandria notice, he added to the headline "(From London)." For the first houses he built on New Jersey Avenue, Thomas Law had imported bricks from London.(18)
Footnotes for Chapter Ten:
1. GW's diary 15 March 1797; Harris p. 584
2. WT to Lettsom, 9 Oct 1797, Pettigrew 2: 555-58; GW to Commrs. 3 March 1797.
3. Commrs. to GW 1 October 1796 ; WT to GW, 1 October 1796;
4. Walker to GW, 24 January 1797; Law to GW 4 February 1797,
5. Law to Commissioners, Feb. 6, 1797;
6. For cost of lot Ridout fn. 6 p. 130 & p. 152; 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.
7. Ridout, pp. 36-37, 39, 40 ;Am. Turf, vol. 1, March 1830, p.325 (click link for download); Tunnicliff diary April 1797, John Nicholson reels; Bryan, History of National Capital, vol. 1.
p. 304 (Google books); Baltimore Advertiser 19 April 1797
8. WT to J.B. Thomason, 29 November 1792, Chapter Four footnote #19; 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. Latrobe Journal p. 22;
11. Dolley Madison to Hannah Gallatin 29 December 1814; Daily National Intelligencer 22 April 1816.
12. Washington Federalist, 28 February 1807 p. 3.
13. 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; Notice for a Marshal's sale in National Intelligence 4 July 1820.
14. Washington Gazette 21 October 1797; Commrs. to Tunnicliff 8 November 1797. Proceedings.
15. Ridout ; Brown .
16. Cranch, William to John Adam 17 March 1797; Abigail Adams to ------, 1799.
17. Thornton's published papers brought together Thornton's thoughts written between 1795 and 1797. Harris, pp. 346ff; the WT-Volney correspondence is in Harris, Papers of William Thornton; On Talleyrand and WT see Harris pp. 389, 394; WT to Fell, 5 Oct. 1797, Harris, pp. 418 to 420.
18. Tunnnicliff to Nicholson entry for 11 June 1797; ad in 16 December 1797 Washington Gazette; 14 November 1797, Alexandria Advertiser.
19. Commrs to Hadfield, 18 November 1797; Lovering to Commrs 26 November 1797; Commrs to Adams, 25 November 1797.Commrs. records.
20. WT to Fell 5 October 1797, Harris pp. 418-20; for more on Provini see Smith, Morris's Folly, p. 116;
21. Volney to Jefferson 19 July 1797
22. GW to Commrs. 3 March 1797, Founders online; GW to WT, 10 October 1797,
23. Op. Cit.; WT to Fothergill, 10 October 1797, Harris pp. 424-27.
24. Hadfield to Commrs, 2 November 1797, Commrs. records; Hadfield to Commrs, 3 January 1798, Commrs. records; WT to Commrs. 9 January 1798, Harris, pp.430-1.
25. 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
26. White to GW 20 February 1798; Commrs to Adams 8 June 1798, commrs. records; Commrs to Pickering, 25 June 1798, Harris, Papers of William Thornton, pp. 462-4; Annals of Congress, 5th congress, 2nd session, appendix p. 3722; For more on White in Philadelphia see White to GW, 10 March 1798; Scott and Thornton to Forrest, 30 January 1798, Commrs records. White had a point. The letter asked Forrest to hurry to the city and expedite White's mission "by every means in your power."; White to Commrs., 11 March 1798, Harris p. 443, in American State Papers, Misc. II, p. 482; Commrs to White, 16 and 27 March 1798 Commrs. records; White to WT, 17 March 1798, Papers of William Thornton Harris pp. 448-50; American State Papers pp. 482-3; White to GW 18 April 1798;
27. White to GW 20 February 1798.
28. Hoban letter to editor, Washington Federalist 27 October 1808.
29. Commrs to Adams 8 June 1798, commrs. records; Commrs to Pickering 25 June 1798, Harris, Papers of William Thornton, pp. 462-4.
30. Niemcewicz, Julian U., Under Their Vine and Fig Tree: Travels in America, 1797-99, pp. 77-8.
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