Chapter Ten: 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 the volley from Captain Hoban's artillery militia at the unifinished Capitol and as he rode over the largely empty and eroding terrain to the President's house, he likely had some sense of accomplishment. One grand daughter lived just on the other
side of Rock Creek and other on Capitol Hill. He would have familiar
beds to sleep in when he visited the city. Otherwise, he had done
nothing with the lots he had bought and still had no time to do anything. As he
would write to the secretary of war, at Mount Vernon he was surrounded
by joiners, carpenters and masons waiting for orders for the work to do
at Mount Vernon.(1)
The city was no longer his problem child. Burnes and Davidson, landowners who gave up land for the President's house, sued and prevented the trustees from transferring land to the government. The East and West sides of the city were in a virtual state of war and only united in their cries that Commissioner Scott be sacked.
The General could fairly blame 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 others 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." The president had already become practiced at promoting Capitol Hill. He had suggested that the commissioners move their office from 14th Street NW to the hill, but they didn't.(4)
In January, to placate Walker, the president signaled that he would open an investigation of the commissioners if warranted. A month later he thought better of that and at the close of a letter updating the board on things done and to do before he left office, he thanked the commissioners for all that they had done, even Scott, especially if he would finally live in the city. For the rest of his life, Thornton recalled the letter. As he put it to Dr. Lettsom in October 1797, the president "wrote a very flattering letter of approbation to the commissioners, testifying his satisfaction and pleasure in their conduct, observing, too, that if any of us retired from office, the country would experience a great loss." The president didn't write that. He put it this way: "I think the United States are interested in the continuance of you in their service, and therefore I should regret, if either of you by resignation, should deprive them of the assistance which I believe you are able to give in the business committed to your care."(2)
In one of the salvos in the war between East and West, Law sent a comeuppance to the commissioners: "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. Another seed to promote the East side of the federal city was likely planted at those races.
As spring approached, WilliamTunnicliff, the 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 race was over. He 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." John Tayloe's thoroughbred Lamplighter beat Charles Carnan 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 next day, Tayloe bought a lot in the city, but it was not on Square 688. Instead, he bought Lot 8 in Square 170 from Scott for $1868.25, with a down payment of $1,000. Thornton witnessed the sale.(6) Given that opportunity, Thornton 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, found a mission in
bettering 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.
In his They Will Have Their Game: The Sporting Life and the Making of the American Republic, Kenneth Cohen takes a somewhat cynical view of that 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, 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 beneath contempt 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. For example, Tayloe did not take the opportunity to cheaply expand his footprint south of the President's house. 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. Thornton bought all the lots in Square 171 except 9, 10, 11 and 12, which were across the avenue from Tayloe's lots. Burnes probably reserved those hoping for a better price once Tayloe woke up.(13) Thornton probably didn't mind. He also bought lots that Burnes offered south of Pennsylvania Avenue and just east of 15th Street. He had recommended that embassies be below the President's house along 15th and 17th Streets. The lots he bought were also not far from his F Street house. Also, New York Avenue went directly down to where the river it met the future site of the National University. His lots in Square 33 were also nearby. Plus, just off shore, he spied the emergence of a mud flat. He even filed a warrant giving him priority for purchasing any viable land in the future. As for the present, after May 1797, there is no evidence that he paid any attention to all that potential until early 1800. Nor is there evidence Tayloe paid any attention to his lot until early 1799.Ridout infers much from the letter Thornton wrote to the president on October 1, 1796: "Tayloe's lot choice might seem unrelated to [Thornton's] proposal, if his deed of purchase had not been witnessed by Thornton...." Thus, thanks to Thornton's idea that embassies grace Square 170 and neighboring lots, Tayloe was joining potentially "the most exclusive residential company in the city...."
Thus, Ridout infers that Thornton witnessed the deed of sale because the purchased lot was in a square he had destined for greatness. But Ridout didn't know of Tayloe's racing windfall the day before. In his book, Ridout notes the race but had it occurring in 1798. His source is the New York Jockey Club's history of racing in America. That would seem like the bible for doings on the turf, but its source, an 1829 sporting magazine, using 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 on November 6, 1798 at the race course on the west side of the city. 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)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. 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 townhouses 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. 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)
One architectural project that might have interested Thornton was finalizing the design for the Executive offices, especially after deciding on a design became a problem. The board asked Hadfield and Hoban for designs, but were stymied on who to ask to estimate the cost of building them. Then Lovering returned from Philadelphia at the end of April. He parlayed making an estimate into making a simple design that would save $6,300 on each office building.(19) In October 1797, he 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..." For Alexandria, he added to the headline "(From London)."(18)
In a 1797 letter to a Quaker doctor in England, he did write a description of the grand vestibule:
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.(23)
With rhetorical precision, he more or less said nothing. His precocious display of Romantic sensibility was confined to his imagination. His talent for drawing landscapes and painting flowers was no help. He can't draw "a grand outline, full of broad prominent lights and broad deep shadows."
Thornton also seemed conflicted in regards to the outer appearance of the Capitol. He had hosted the French savant Volney who wanted to meet the author of Cadmus. In August 1797, he 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 the L'Enfant Plan, allowed him to draw a copy of his Capitol floor plan and promised to soon send an elevation of the Capitol. Judging from a letter Volney 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)
There is no evidence that the General had seen or ever approved it, which may be the reason Thornton didn't send it to Volney. Ironically, as he burnished his own fame by associating with icons like George Washington and Volney, he missed an opportunity to frame them with the icon he hoped would assure his fame. While Volney was in the federal city, the General gave him a tour of the Capitol. Why Thornton didn't tag along is unknown. The most embarrassing reason would be that Thornton wasn't that familiar with the Capitol as it had been built. He would have been loath of defer to Hadfield on any matter.
As the walls of the North Wing rose on the hill with the freestone of the outer wall standing 57 feet high, Thornton trumpeted his rise, not the Capitols. In letters he wrote in October 1797 to two Quaker physicians in England, Thornton sounded his fanfare. He "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)
There is one drawing of the Capitol in his papers perhaps symbolic of the frustration he faced as he tried to prove his boast that his design triumphed over all rivals. 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. As is the case for every visionary, reality cramps their style. In 1797, by being built, the design of the North Wings exterior was set.
By April 1798, Thornton had a drawing of his East elevation. In his memoir, Benjamin Latrobe recalled seeing it then. If Thornton drew it after the January 1796 embarrassment of Commissioner White showing Hadfield's design to a congressional committee, and before Hadfield began building the North Wing's walls, that would suggest that Hadfield used it to guide his working drawings. However, while the exterior of the North Wing was built, there was no reference to Thornton's elevation. By waiting until after the fall of 1797, Thornton could copy what had been built, and get the pilasters right. The South Wing had to mirror the North Wing, and then he could recreate his ideas for the East portico, pedestal and dome. In that respect, he did indeed restore his design. But it remained in his parlor. He never mentioned showing it to the General for approval.
 |
| 108. Likely an unfinished drawing for Thornton's never published book celebrating his Capitol design. The actual North Wing does not have fluted pilasters. |
Thornton probably didn't publish or otherwise promote his elevation because he did did not want to again face criticism. He also found that other than Hoban no one else in the city or Georgetown knew what his original design looked like. As long as Thornton used their shared knowledge to attack Hadfield, Hoban would not challenge Thornton's recollection of his design. That and his position on the board entitled him to criticize Hadfield's every move.
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."
Unfortunately for Thornton, putting Hadfield on the spot revealed what Thornton had not been doing. 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." There is no evidence that he did make drawings and the stipulation about the roof that he forced Hadfield to sign off on confirms that.
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."(24)
While Thornton's dissent made his dissatisfaction with Hadfield public knowledge, there is no evidence that he made his dissent to serve any particular faction in the city. The work force split along ethnic lines. Thornton and Hadfield were both English, but the Irish faction was not about to simply laugh at Thornton's worrying about 1 3/4 inches. The Irish faction wanted to get rid of Hadfield so Hoban could take charge of the Capitol. In the summer of 1797, after carpenters built the roof on the ground, slave laborers raised it and covered the President's house. While still president, the General anticipated that, and, much to the relief of Thomas Law and the West side faction, persuaded the commissioners to then slow down work at that end of Pennsylvania Avenue and make certain that the Capitol could receive congress in December 1800. As workers moved from the President's house to the Capitol, who would Hoban supervise?
Redmond Purcell, the foreman of the carpenters who had been Hoban's partner in South Carolian and likely Ireland too, 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 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.
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 Alexander 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. In 1798, White sent back the idea of putting the executive officers in the South Wing. He reported another rumor that Hoban estimated that for $12,000, he could put congress in the President's house. 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)
White also assured congressional committees that work would begin on one of the Executive offices. The commissioners decided to ask for bids from private contractors, but the lawyers on the board, Scott and White, worried that the only explicit authorization they had for building the 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)
However, contractors had to see the design before they could submit bids. They 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. They more or less went on strike. 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. It was apparent that Hadfield didn't know anything about architecture or building. Then he seemed completely lost and 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.
In the draft of the letter not sent to Pickering, he also explained why Hadfield suggested design changes. He had told him that the over all plan for the Capitol was set. But at the same time, Hadfield 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 to correspondents in England but, while he would become bolder, in the spring of 1798, he seemed careful and vague about claiming a mastery of architecture to those who could assess what was going on first hand. Face to face, Thornton 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, somebody was designing a house for Thomas Law. In the late 20th century, experts decided it must have been Thornton.
Go to Chapter Eleven
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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