Chapter Ten: John Tayloe III Comes to Town
Table of Contents page 153 index
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| 92. John Tayloe III 1806 (Gilbert Stuart) |
On April 19, 1797, Commissioner Gustavus Scott sold Lot 8 in Square 170 to John Tayloe III for $1868.25, $1,000 in down payment. It was on Scott's own account, not the board's. Fellow Commissioner William Thornton witnessed the deed of sale. Perhaps he did that officially. Sometime shortly after moving to the city from Georgetown in February, Thornton accepted appointment as a county magistrate which gave him authority to notarize deeds.
The lot Tayloe bought formed the northeast corner of the intersection of New York Avenue and 18th Street Northwest which was just southwest of the President's house. In his book, Building the Octagon, Orlando Ridout V suggests that because Thornton was there, his influence on the choice of the lot and design of the house built there are unmistakable. The sale began the process that was the catalyst for Thornton's long friendship with Tayloe.(1)
page 154 However, something happened the day before Tayloe bought the lot that was the catalyst for that long friendship. In a match race on a make-shift track near the Tunnicliff's Hotel, Tayloe's thoroughbred Lamplighter beat Charles Carnan Ridgely's Cincinnatus. The best horse breeder of Virginia beat the best breeder of Maryland. Tayloe won 500 guineas or around $2500. As a commissioner, Thornton only made $1600 in a year. Ridout noted the race but had it occurring in 1798. His source was 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, had led it astray. 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.(2)
There is no doubt about the actual date of the race. William 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."(3)
Evidently the race was widely anticipated. 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 ground starting on Monday. The race was held on Tuesday. Easter fell on the 16th that year and in Maryland with a large Catholic population, Easter Tuesday was also a holiday. In his History of the National Capital, Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, citing the April 4, 1797, edition of the Centinel of Liberty, noted the race.(4)
There is no evidence that Thornton had ever condescended to design a houses prior to February 1800. There is evidence that Thornton was interested in breeding. In 1793, he had written to his half-brother that he hoped to cover George 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. Lamplighter's victory likely inspired or fueled Thornton's dream to breed prize winning horses and that shared interest was the catalyst of his long friendship with Tayloe. There is evidence that Thornton was not the only award winning architect struck by Tayloe's victory. 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 got by Lamplighter. By 1797, when Hoban's mare was serviced by Tayloe's stud, Hoban had built or was building several houses of his own design, and by then, the oval room in the President's house could be inspected.(5)
However, prior to the sale, Thornton had shown interest in Square 170. Ridout makes much of that. In a draft of the letter Thornton wrote to the president on October 1, 1796, he page 155 dissented from his colleagues' suggestion that embassies line the Mall just as L'Enfant had tentatively planned.
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| 93. "Every lot, deep coloured red with green plots, designates some of the situations which command the most agreeable prospects, which are best calculated for spacious houses and gardens, such as may accommodate foreign ministers & c." |
Thornton suggested that an area be reserved for embassies that, as he put it, "would facilitate the interchanged operations of the foreign governments with the United States." Before the inner city canal squeezed Goose or Tiber Creek into manageable proportions, the future Mall seemed a world away from the President's house. Hence, Thornton suggested that embassies flank the President's house square and line the open park land below. As he put it, the squares along the west side of 17th Street and east side of 15th Street, including Squares 169, 170, 171, 224, 225 and 226.
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| 94. Thornton wanted embassies facing Square 169, 170, 171, 224, 225 and 226 |
While that certainly proves Thornton's interest in Square 170, his letter to president revealed an active imagination focusing throughout the city. If the embassies were not on the Mall, then houses for congressman could be there as close as possible to the Capitol. He thought it "probable the Congress would adopt, to build at public expense a mansion house for each representative in both houses of Congress in a similar style by which all improper competition in point of grandeur will be avoided;..." He suggested dividing that public ground so each state would have an equal share.(6)
But Ridout doubles down on Thornton's interest in Square 170. He argues: "Tayloe's lot choice might seem unrelated to [Thornton's] proposal [about sites for embassies], if his deed of purchase had not been witnessed by Thornton."(7) However, after the president met with the board on October 25, and quashed the idea of putting embassies on the Mall, on November 21, Commissioner Scott, not Thornton, bought lots 7 and 8 in Square 170 from the board. On April 19, he sold lot 8 to Tayloe.
Meanwhile, by December 4, 1796, Thornton had arranged to rent a house built by Blodget on F Street NW just east of 14th Street. The president congratulated him on the 26th. He especially liked the location, just east of the President's house. After recognizing the need to "bed and board" congressmen near the Capitol, he opined, that to give "eclat" to the city "...buildings between the Capitol and President's house ought to be encouraged as much as possible - and nothing would have a greater tendency toward accomplishing this, than the Commissioners making that part of the city their resident, and compelling all those who are under their control to do the same...."(8)
The president highlighted the need for houses between the Capitol Hill and President's house because by the time Tayloe bought his lot, the city had split into rival camps. At the end of their October 1 letter, Scott and White asked the president to place the Executive offices beside the President's house. The president agreed but thought his successor should pick the spot.
Thornton, by the way, disagreed because "to place brick buildings (though ornamented with free stone) as wings in any way connected with a stone edifice would not only be novel, but irregular and improper." Thornton wanted the offices north of the President's house.
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| 95. The Thorntons' F Street Neighborhood circa 1817 |
Remarkably, the First Architect of the Capitol, had nothing to do with the design of the next notable public buildings. While the president waffled, the board knew decisions had to be made because they had promised congress to have offices ready for the executive departments by the summer of 1800. page 157 The board asked Hoban and Hadfield to submit designs for the two buildings needed.
These decisions stressed Thornton, but not the designs. To placate him, his
colleagues asked him to show how the two buildings should
properly relate to the President's house. In Thornton's papers, there
is an enigmatic sketch of the arrangement of the three buildings
separated by two rows of trees. Thornton seemed to be trying to find
the best way to fill the space between them in order to properly
segregate brick from stone. Thornton embellished that effort with a
pleasing drawing of a man's head in the lower left hand corner. What was also puzzling to posterity was that he put one of the office, which turned out to be the War Office, in somewhat of a sink hole.
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| 96. Thornton's sketch showing how he reconciled to having brick building close to the President's house |
By mid-January, Hadfield had a design with an exterior worthy of being next to the President's house and, to save money, a plain interior. The board sent Hadfield's elevation of the building for the president's approval as well a sketch showing how the buildings would be situated near the President's house. They hoped the president would approve that too.
Then
Hadfield mentioned the planned site of the buildings to Thomas Law
who reacted immediately. The president may have told the board that
the sites of the offices were up to his successor, but no one on the
east side of town took comfort in that. Law and other proprietors,
especially George Walker who owned most of the lots well east of the
Capitol, were outraged. Walker gleaned from a confidant of
Commissioner Scott's that "he 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."(9)
As for his own residence, Scott had bought a house just north of the city line, which is today's Florida Avenue NW. The house was north of S Street between 22nd and 23rd Streets NW, well west of the President's house.(10)
Law also complained. In a February 4, 1797, letter to the president, he 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 page 158 Ambassadors and by the Assemblage of Americans who were great Courtiers."(11) Due to previous complaints from Law, the president had already begged the commissioners to move their own office to Capitol Hill.(12)
It was during this civil broil, that John Tayloe's name entered the commissioners' records. Two days after he wrote to the president, Law wrote to the commissioners and announced a coming victory for Capitol Hill. He boasted that "Mr. Cook of Annapolis, Samuel Ringold of Hagerstown and Mr. Tayloe of Virginia resolved last year to build on Square 688." That square was just southeast of the Capitol.(13)
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| 97. Square 688 in "historic" map showing sites of houses in 1801-2 |
None of the three rumored developers ever built on Square 688 or even bought lots there. However, there is evidence that Benjamin Latrobe designed a house for Tayloe that could have graced a corner building lot in that square. In a portfolio in Benjamin Latrobe's papers labeled "Designs of Buildings Erected or Proposed to be Built in Virginia... from 1795 to 1799," there is one drawing on which someone wrote "ground plan for Mr. Tayloe's house in Federal city."(15)
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| 98. Latrobe's house design for Tayloe |
That drawing was obviously put in the wrong folder. At no time did anyone mistake the federal city as being in Virginia. Also, being in that folder is the only thing dating the drawing. However, Ridout reasons that when Tayloe bought Lot 8 in Square 170, he could have rejected Latrobe's design because it was designed for a rectangular lot. The angle made by New York Avenue and 18th Street was acute. Building regulations required that house walls run parallel to the street.(15)
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| 99. 1796 division of Square 170 into lots |
page 159 Latrobe was active in Virginia from 1795 to 1798. He kept a journal focusing on both how Virginia differed from England, where he had been raised by an American mother, and on how he made his mark in the New World. He was a confident young architect looking for work. In his excursions outside Richmond, Latrobe noted the Tayloe family seat Mount Airy, noted Tayloe's horses' victories in Petersburg and saw his iron furnace in Dumfries but doesn't mention making eight elaborate drawings for a mansion for Tayloe in the federal city. Latrobe did not venture north of Virginia until 1798 when he went to Philadelphia to build the Bank of Pennsylvania for which he won the design contest. He first saw the capital-to-be in that year.
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| 100. Latrobe's Bank of Pennsylvania |
In 1813, Latrobe lost what fortune he had by trying to build a Fulton steamboat in Pittsburgh. When he returned to Washington to restore the Capitol, he also designed private houses. At that time, he likely did his design for Tayloe who was contemplating developing six rectangular lots on Pennsylvania Avenue near the President's house. In 1814, after staying in the Octagon page 160 for three months while the President's house was rebuilt, James Madison decided to make another building the temporary President's house. Its low location made the Octagon unhealthy even in the winter. It made sense for Tayloe to move to higher ground, but he opted for smaller town houses designed by George Hadfield that became Williamson's Hotel and then the nucleus of the future Willard Hotel.
Ridout's chapter on Latrobe's design serves as an introduction
to a chapter that speculates on how Thornton designed the Octagon. That gives the impression that Tayloe thought Latrobe and Thornton were equally talented architects. It also gives the impression that when Thornton met Tayloe, the Virginian was so interested in building a house that he had already solicited a design. However, over two years passed before he broke ground for a house. His horse won 500 guineas the day before he bought his lot. It is likely that they didn't talk about architecture at all. They probably talked about horses.
A little over ten years later, in a public letter, Thornton tried to cut Latrobe by quoting a gentleman who recalled that General Washington declined to use Latrobe. More fodder for his attack would have been a revelation that Tayloe used Thornton's design and not Latrobe's. But at that time, Latrobe had not made a design for Tayloe, and neither had Thornton.(16)
In 1797, racing and breeding horses was a very attractive topic. Not only was there competition between American horse breeders to win races, there was a passion to improve the bloodlines of American horses that united all breeders. While Tayloe 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, 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.
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 Tayloe's program to improve the country's thoroughbred bloodline: "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" Which is to say, he tried to enable other breeders to have horses that rivaled his only to gain a share of their horses. Cohen notes that Tayloe also sponsored races at his own track near Mount Airy where horses sent to be trained would meet their match among 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.(17)
It is possible that Thornton offered to design Tayloe's house as a way to ingratiate himself to America's top breeder, but there is simply no evidence that in 1797, 1798 and 1799 Thornton wanted to design houses. A succession of rich men had involved themselves in the city, Samuel Blodget, James Greenleaf, Robert Morris, John Nicholson, Thomas Law and William Duncanson, and Thornton had not tried to ingratiate himself by offering to design their houses.
Indeed, when Thornton looked at oddly shaped intersections in the city, he didn't think of the problems presented to house builders. He thought of possible benefits to the public. In February 1797, he urged the president to take advantage of large intersections where the extent of open space dwarfed the need to accommodate traffic. He described each one and calculated the area and how much buying each plot would cost the government. For example: "No. 10 At the junction of Kentucky with the intersection of North Carolina and Massachusetts Avenue admitting a street of 100 feet in front of the surrounding squares will leave an area or parallelogram of 686 1/2 feet by 191 1/2 feet containing 131,465 square feet." A map accompanied the list. He added that "these areas will serve for fountains, obelisks, statues, temples, etc. etc. - or page 161 will be amply sufficient for handsome churches, public academies, etc. - and most of them ornamented with grass-plots, gravel walks, trees, etc."(18)
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| 101. Thornton had a tendency to study open spaces not building lots |
Of course, it takes two parties to design a mansion. Doing so might not have crossed Thornton's mind, but why wouldn't Tayloe ask the famous architect of the Capitol to design his house? There were grounds for Tayloe to suspect Thornton's taste in domestic architecture. The rich Virginian was almost of another generation, eleven years younger. He had attended Eton and Cambridge, ten years after Thornton's Quaker education in Lancashire, his apprenticeship and time at Edinburgh. Put it this way, while in a letter to the president, Thornton quoted a book to describe famous British basements. Tayloe had been in some of those basements and also upstairs.
page 162 There is no evidence that Tayloe paid any attention to the federal city until the fall of 1798 when he thought of buying more building lots. He had no lack of things to do in and around his Mount Airy mansion.
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| 102. 19th century drawing of Mount Airy |
He had also inherited iron mines, a ship building operation, several plantations and five hundred or so slaves. He was about to enter politics in Virginia. Until Washington became the political capital of the nation, Tayloe had no use for it. He did not need to speculate in Washington lots to make or preserve his fortune.
Tunnicliff advertised races again for November 7, 1797, but the top purse was 50 Maryland Pounds, about $120. Tayloe likely didn't show and the races lacked proper tone. On November 8 the full board threatened to take away Tunnicliff's liquor license if they heard again of gambling at his establishment.(19)
Finally, family legend has a way of bending history. The sons of Tayloe who wrote about the Octagon credit George Washington for having a great deal to do with its location. In 1799, the retired president would encourage Tayloe to run for congress instead of becoming an army officer. Doing the latter would have aborted the Octagon. In that respect Washington settled Tayloe in the City of Washington. However, in mid-March 1797, the former president made his slow way home to Mount Vernon receiving the heartfelt plaudits of his countrymen. There is no evidence that after acknowledging the volley from Captain Hoban's artillery militia, that he spurred his horse two blocks south to eye Square 170. He also did not disturb his repose and gallop up from Mount Vernon to see the Great Race and join Thornton to witness Tayloe's purchase.(20)
In April, 1797, Tayloe came, conquered, spent his winnings on a lot and left. Friendship with Thornton would come but not until Tayloe moved into the Octagon in 1802. That said, Tayloe's purchase may have had reverberations on Thornton's real estate portfolio.
In May 1797, a month after Tayloe bought his lot, David Burnes, the original proprietor of the area, offered lots for sale. Thornton bought lots in six squares both east and west of the huge government reservation south of the President's house, including lots on Square 171 across New York Avenue from Square 170. Thornton bought all the lots except 9, 10, 11 and 12, which were across the avenue from Tayloe's lots.(21)
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| East end of Square 171 |
page 163 Topography also dictated which lots Thornton bought. All of Square 171 was lower than Square 170. A gully crossed the west end and while the east end of the square was more level, it was on the brink of a considerable slope down to marshy land above Goose Creek where it met the Potomac River. Because of that Thornton got his lots cheaply But Thornton thought the land would be leveled and landscaped once congress moved to the city.
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| 104. An 1818 map shows the slope of Square 171 |
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| 105. An 1817 painting shows the terrain south of the Octagon |
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| 106. Likely Thornton's floor plan for a house on Square 171 |
However, the Father of His Country suffered as all lame duck president's would. After the president urged creation of the National University in a message to congress and after the commissioners sent a memorial designating a site, even James Madison, Father of the Constitution, couldn't persuade congress to endorse the project. It sent the National University message and the commissioners' memorial to a committee and forgot about it for several years.(22)
Congressional scorn did not blunt Thornton’s vision of the future, but he became distracted in a way that may have blunted his impact. In 1796, He had been in Philadelphia at the Philosophical Society when members discussed the prospectus for an essay contest on a system of education "best adapted to the genius of the government and best calculated to promote the general welfare of the United States." That topic was also much on the mind of French savants like Volney who were trying, like good revolutionaries, to make the New Man. Volney
would stay with Thornton for a week in 1796 and several weeks in 1797.
Talleyrand, a rogue bishop and future French foreign minister who was briefly in Philadelphia, sent down an essay to Thornton giving his thoughts on the larger problem. As the problem grew larger, Thornton did not show the decisiveness of Cadmus that had children learning to spell in a few months and then move on to learn new languages. He became mired in morality and the problem of how to teach children to think scientifically. He opposed the apprentice system in which mechanical knowledge was passed on by men ignorant of the principles of science.(23) He kept honing his concepts. Almost a year after congress showed no interest in the National University, Thornton informed his old master in Lancashire, Dr. Fell, that the president asked him for a plan "on a general system of education" which he was still working on "but the multifarious business I have on hand prevents me from finishing several pages." To be sure, Washington was interested in "education generally," but was "particularly" interested in the National University.(24)
That "multifarious business" that he had on hand did not include designing houses. In the summer of 1797, the commissioners were once again running out of money. The only recourse the board had to save the premise of the project, that the sale of lots would finance the public buildings, was to legally reclaim the 5,000 plus lots the speculators contracted to buy from the commissioners and didn't sell to others. However, the seven trustees to whom the speculators assigned their property felt they had a legal obligation to challenge the board. They needed to squeeze money out of the speculators' holdings to pay the delinquents debts to themselves and other creditors. Underscoring the absurdity of any litigation was that when anybody offered any lots for sale, there were very few buyers.
By avoiding entanglements with the speculators, Thornton was an innocent bystander. Scott was on a slippery slope that would result in he and his associates owing the board $33,000.(26) page 165 He had other problems. At the end of a building season mercifully cut short by an early frost, the board had less than $500 to spend. The English mason with whom Scott had contracted to supply and lay stone disappeared without paying his workers despite having been forwarded $2000 by the board.(27)
Thornton seemed to rise above it all, remaining true to what he perceived was his mandate: grandeur and protecting the public from private malefactors. Admirable as that might have been, it did not make him attractive to private interests navigating rising prices and wage demands while trying to build. His rivals were in demand. Hallet was once again in town and wrote to Law in July 1797: "if you could procure me any occupation for my stay here which I apprehend will be much longer than expected."(28)
Away for almost two months, Lovering came back from Philadelphia and struggled as usual to protect and finish the speculators' projects, but a man still had to make a living. 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..."For Alexandria, he added to the headline "(From London)"(30)Soon, the commissioners needed Lovering's services. Despite their lack of money, they also had to build. The board needed a cost estimate for Hadfield's design for an Executive office building. By 1797, Thornton seemed to have given up projecting the cost of building. In 1795 he had made a cost estimate to prove that his plan for raising the foundation would save money. But once congress asked for cost estimates, Thornton left that task to the professionals, Hoban and Hadfield. Likely worried that Hoban's off and on disputes with Hadfield would color his judgment, the board asked Lovering to make an estimate of Hadfield's design. Lovering said he needed more than the elevation Hadfield made for the building. The board asked Hadfield for sections of the building. Hadfield said he would need his elevation back and once he had that he made the sections. He thought the building would cost $40,000 to build. Lovering came back with an estimate of $48,396.
Then in a November 26, 1797, letter to the board, Lovering offered to conduct a more “minute” examination of Hadfield's design, implying he could redesign and build it more cheaply. The board welcomed Lovering's effort. On November 25, they had written to President Adams "for more than five weeks past the extensive operations of the city in which generally not less than two hundred mechanics and laborers have been engaged have been carried on without money." Lovering soon gave them an elevation and floor plan for a building that would cost $42,000. The board planned to build at least two office buildings to house the departments of the Treasury and War, so saving $6300 on each was significant. Throughout this back and forth, there is no evidence that Thornton offered architectural advice. He was not interested in plain buildings.(31)
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| 107. Lovering's Executive office building |
Both John Fell and Anthony Fothergill remained active in medicine. Fell had embarked on a career as an electrical physician. He brought electrical apparatus to his home in Lancashire, tweaked it and treated patients, usually diagnosed as having disorders of the nerves. The Royal Society of Physicians accepted reports on his research. After Fothergill's practice in London languished, he had repaired to Bath, a resort spa, and gained handsome fees and a reputation. Much as Thornton's calling card was Cadmus, Fothergill had a prize winning essay on reviving victims of drowning. Unlike Fell, Fothergill was someone who might be useful to Thornton. In his draft letters, he did not notice Dr. Fell's work, but hailed Fothergill's as works of genius. Thornton discussed the treatment of yellow fever. He didn't mention how he had cured himself but ridiculed Dr. Rush's excessive bleeding of patients. Then he explained why he did not practice medicine: "the fees are small, the attendance required is great; and the different branches of the profession are not divided as in England. It is thus not only laborious, but disgusting." He put it this way to Fell: "I began to practice physic in Philadelphia, but the fees were in my estimation so low in comparison to the duties required of the physician that I was glad to abandon the practice even with the sacrifice of many debts to me."
Then
he described how he "began to study architecture." 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, and had refused to show Thornton how to work in stucco.1 Thornton's claim that he "obtained the prize against a world of competition;..." and that the president's "determination joined by the Commissioners, after long and patient attention to all, was final, and in my favor," was nonsensical. When Washington left office, there was not a final determination of the Capitol's design.
To Fell, he briefly alluded to his design of
"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."
If he had ever thought of doing away with the dome, it was now back. In his letter to Fothergill, he shared his architectural ideas that went beyond a mere dome and into a realm of lights and shadows:
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 page 168 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.(34)
In August 1797, a little over a month before he drafted those letters, the distinguished French savant Volney 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. By that time, Thornton had drawn a West Front with the Roman temple-like colonnade. Judging from he wrote to Fothergill, did he plan to give Volney his Roman temple or something more in line with Glenn Brown's estimate of what Thornton's West front had to look like?
To both Fell and Fothergill, he mentioned that he planned to publish drawings of his design. Of course, he bragged about being appointed a commissioner, an office "considered as one of the first in the Union." To Fell, he claimed that when President Washington retired, he "sent a letter highly approbatory of our conduct."(32)
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| 108. Likely an unfinished drawing for Thornton's never published book celebrating his Capitol design. The actual North Wing does not have fluted pilasters. |
page 167 That mark of presidential approval is not extant. In the letter he wrote to Dr. Lettsom, Thornton claimed that Washington "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." Washington did write a letter to the commissioners the day before he left office but he only reported on decisions made and not made. He did not thank them.(33)
In his draft of his letter to Fell, Thornton hailed his intimacy with George Washington, as well as with Jefferson and Madison. That boded well for his future, but at that moment John Adams was president. In 1799, the First Lady would sum up the president's attitude toward the commissioners and the federal city; "as he has nine plagues, he has been loath to muddle with the tenth, and for that reason he has kept clear of a visit to the federal city." She also admitted that he had no taste for planning buildings and could think of no one better to replace the commissioners.1 In March 1797, William Cranch felt obliged to share his thoughts about the commissioners with his Uncle John. As James Greenleaf's and then Robert Morris's agent he had frequent contacts with the board. He informed his uncle 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." That said, they were "all probably equal to their stations," which "seems to require rather men of business, than men of science."
The final observation was likely a dig at Thornton. White and Scott never made any pretense of being men of science. 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. The issue of respect likely hinged on Thornton's continued vocal support of the French Revolution even as a naval war began between the United States and France.
Distressed by the tone of the local newspaper in the federal city, Abigail Adams asked her nephew why it was not in lockstep with the rest of the pro-government press. Cranch explained that when Greenleaf had money, Cranch had financially supported a man from New England who established the city's first newspaper on Greenleaf's Point. But it appeared he was being influenced by a cabal of doctors who had organized a potential pro-French mob. Cranch did not finger Dr. Thornton.
In his letter to his old mentor Dr. Lettsom, Thornton wrote much more about George Washington. That likely made it easy to forget his current boss. In a previous letter to Dr. Lettsom, he had already boasted of his intimacy with Washington. But in the fall of 1797, he and his wife actually had visited Mount Vernon. As Thornton put it: "I have received from him many invitations and many attentions." He summarized Washington's daily schedule, his having corn bread for breakfast and shared one of his jokes. While Thornton was writing that letter, the General came to visit with Lafayette's son in tow. Critical biographers should be sober judges, impartial to a fault, but would it be out-of-line to suggest that if the 17 year old Lafayette was anything like his father, then he relished an opportunity to return the visit of Madame Thornton who was 23 years old and spoke finishing school French?
As for Washington's "many invitations," in a letter acknowledging Thornton's altering the survey of Square 21 to his advantage, he thanked him for the gift of some fortifying cordials from Tortola, perfect for foggy mornings. Then Washington invited him to come "sometimes to participate in the the taste - fog, or no fog." To put that in context, Washington would write to John Tayloe III that “at all times and upon all occasions I should be glad to see you under my roof."
Thornton did not mention the Capitol in his letter to Lettsom. But in his own mind, establishing his intimacy with Washington likely made the claims he made in his draft letters to Fell and Fothergill plausible. Such intimacy would also prove the legitimacy of his designs if he finally did publish them. 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, Washington 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.
Despite Thornton bragging to Fell and Fothergill that he planned to publish his designs, he never did. He never sent the elevation to Volney. Thornton likely realized that publication of the design he boasted of restoring might complicate his story. The same month that he wrote to Fell and Fothergill, 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, 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. By the way, Thornton had thought kindlier of peek-a-boo roofs. His Tortola design showed the roofs above the balustrades.
By 1797, the freestone of the outer wall of the Capitol had been raised 36 feet and stood 57 feet high. The inner brick walls were 56 feet high. The building that he fancied that he designed presented the agony of reality to the man of ideas. 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."
Go to Chapter Eleven
Footnotes for Chapter Ten:
1. Ridout, pp. 36-49 for cost of land p. 152; Tayloe family legend credits the Georgetown merchant Benjamin Stoddert for selling the lot to Tayloe. Stoddert was related to Tayloe's wife and did buy and sell many lots in the west end of the city and in Square 170. But he was not in the chain of ownership of Lot 8 in Square 170. I have not been able to find documentation of Thornton's appointment as a magistrate. George Washington used him in that role in October 1798.
2. Am. Turf, vol. 1, March 1830, p.325 (click link for download)
3. Tunnicliff diary April 1797, John Nicholson reels
4. Bryan, History of National Capital, vol. 1. p. 304 (Google books)
5. WT to J.B. Thomason, 29 November 1792, Chapter Four footnote #19; Washington Federalist 8 December 1802, p. 1
9. Walker to GW, 24 January 1797 ;
10. On Scott's house see Washington Chronicles, ;
13 Law to Commissioners, Feb. 6, 1797;
15. Ridout p. 37
16. Ibid. pp.37-49; Dolley Madison to Hannah Gallatin 29 December 1814; Latrobe Journal p. 22 ; on feud see Chapter 17 in this book.
17. Cohen pp. 114-6; American Turf Register, vol. 2, pp. 323ff, 376.
18, WT to GW, 14 February 1797,
18A. 1796 Division sheet in the Office of the Surveyor Land Management Record System.
19. Kamoie, Laura, Irons in the Fire; Washington Gazette, 21 October 1797; Commrs to Tunnicliff, 8 November 1797
21. 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.
22. Summary of House action 26 December 1796. Harris pp 290. Also see White to Madison, 2 December 1796,
23. 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;
24. WT to Fell, 5 Oct. 1797, Harris, pp. 418 to 420: GW to Hamilton, 1 September 1796.
25. Justice, Benjamin "A Window to the Past," American Educator Summer 2015
26. Money owed to the Board
27. Commrs to Adams,
28. Hallet to Law, 19 July 1797, Law Family Papers, Maryland Historical Society
29. Tunnnicliff to Nicholson entry for 11 June 1797
30. Washington Gazette ad in 16 December 1797 Washington Gazette and other issues; 14 November 1797, Alexandia Advertiser
31. Commrs to Hadfield, 18 November 1797; Lovering to Commrs 26 November 1797; Commrs to Adams, 25 November 1797
32. WT to Fell, 5 Oct. 1797, Harris, pp. 418 to 420; Paola Bertucci, "Shocking Subjects: Human Experiments and the Material Culture of Medical Electricity in Eighteenth-Century England." Chap. 4,.
33. Harris, pp. 292-4; WT to Trumbull, 6 January 1795; for more on Provini see Smith, Morris's Folly, p. 116
34. WT to Fothergill, 10 October 1797, Harris pp. 424-27.
35. Harris, p. 302
36. WT to Lettsom, 9 Oct 1797, Pettigrew 2: 555-58. GW to Commrs. 3 March 1797,
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