Chapter Eight: John Tayloe III Comes to Town

The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol

by Bob Arnebeck

 Table of Contents

Sir Archy, an engraving of Tayloe's most famous horse

In mid-March 1797, the General left Philadelphia. By the way, once out of office the former president was universally called the General. He made his slow way home to Mount Vernon receiving the heartfelt plaudits of his countrymen. After acknowledging a volley from Captain Hoban's artillery militia at the unfinished Capitol, he dined at the Laws. There he gave the commissioners the signed orders transferring ownership of the streets and public lots to the government. They noticed that the documents did not have the seal of the United States, and the General sent them back to Philadelphia. Then he rode on past the President's house, where he received another volley, and spent the night along Rock Creek with Patsy and Thomas Peter. The next day, he sent his regrets to public dinners in Georgetown and Alexandria and had dinner at Mount Vernon. There, as he would write to the secretary of war, he was surrounded by joiners, carpenters and masons waiting for orders for the work to do at Mount Vernon.

Tayloe family legend has the General having "much to do" with the location of the Octagon. If so, he would have to have put his mind to that during his March visit.(1) The newspaper report of his passing through was closer to the truth. He was in a hurry to get to Mount Vernon. Plus, picking out the site for a rich man's house southwest of the President's house would have fueled a war that had begun between the East and West sides of the city.

The General could fairly blame the war on the commissioners. Thanks to them, decisions he didn't make blew up in his face. He didn't want embassies on the Mall, but didn't say where they should be and thought foreign countries should choose where to put them. He approved the design Hadfield drew for the two Executive Offices which would house the Treasury and War Departments, but he had left it to his successor to pick the sites for the two buildings. Law wrote to the president and complained that Scott "amused" him and other land owners on Capitol Hill by shewing the President's House on the Map and by pointing out where the [Executive] Offices should be and by anticipating "the future splendor of that part of the City by the residence of Ambassadors and by the Assemblage of Americans who were great Courtiers."(2)

On February 6, 1797, two days after complaining to the president, Law taunted Scott and his two colleagues with news that "Mr. Cook of Annapolis, Samuel Ringold of Hagerstown and Mr. Tayloe of Virginia resolved last year to build on Square 688."(3) The square was just southeast of the Capitol. Then on April 19, John Tayloe III, who had all the makings of a great courtier, bought Lot 8 in Square 170 from Scott for $1,000. Thornton witnessed the sale. Square 170 was one of the six squares where Thornton wanted embassies. One of three just  southwest of the President's house. The lot faced the intersection of New York Avenue and 18th Street NW.(4)

In Building the Octagon, Orlando Ridout argues that Thornton was the catalyst and eventually designed the house. Pinpointing events that led to Thornton drawing the design are important because very little is known about the design process for the house. There are two floor plans similar to the Octagon's floor plan in Thornton's papers at the Library of Congress, but they are unsigned and undated. Ridout notes that there is no contemporary documentary evidence extant explicitly associating Thornton with the design. As Ridout puts it: "his correspondence is almost entirely devoid of clues to his involvement in the project, but much can be inferred."

Ridout's inferences run on two tracks. The first builds on Thornton's October 1, 1796, letter to the president about embassies. Ridout writes: "Tayloe's lot choice might seem unrelated to this proposal if his deed of purchase had not been witnessed by Thornton." His second track allows him to preface his chapter on Thornton with a chapter on a more productive architect. He infers that sometime in 1796, Tayloe asked Benjamin Latrobe to design a house for the federal city. That is significant because it all but proves that Tayloe came to the city eager to build.(5)

However, there are problems with Ridout's inferences. The seller,  Scott, also knew of Thornton's proposal for embassy sites. On November 19, 1796, Commissioners Scott and White met with David Burnes and Samuel Davidson and agreed that Lot 8, the largest lot in the square, should belong to the public. Thornton was not there. Two days later, Scott bought Lot 8, from the board. In April 1797, he would sell the lot to John Tayloe III for a handsome profit. According to Law, Scott was pointing out where ambassadors and courtiers would live near the President's house at least two months before Thornton signed the deed of sale. At about the same time, the president encouraged Thornton to do all he could to make sure anyone he could influence lived between the President's house and Capitol. That suggests that if asked, he might have advised Tayloe to buy a lot elsewhere.(6) 

As for Latrobe planning a house for Tayloe before April 1797, Ridout's inference is based on eight undated drawings placed in the wrong folder. One drawing is labeled, in pencil, "ground plan for Mr. Tayloe's house in Federal city." All the drawings were placed in a folder labeled in Latrobe's hand "Designs of Buildings Erected or Proposed to be Built in Virginia from 1795 to 1799." In the journal he kept while in Virginia, Latrobe mentions projects for Virginia gentlemen but nothing for Tayloe. In 1795, Latrobe had left his American mother in England and emigrated to Virginia, then the most populous state in the union. He soon moved to Richmond, designed several houses and the state prison and did engineering work on the Great Dismal Swamp canal in southeast Virginia. His journal focused on natural history, and in it he mentioned as well that he saw one of Tayloe's horses win a race. He also saw Tayloe's iron works in northern Virginia, but he didn't mention meeting Tayloe. Latrobe did not venture north of Virginia until 1798 and didn't begin working in the federal city until 1802 just after construction ended on the Octagon.(7)

Whether or not Latrobe drew plans for Tayloe in 1796 would be immaterial to the design of the Octagon except that Ridout's inferences are accepted by the editors of Latrobe's published papers. Thus when Ridout infers that Thornton recognized the opportunity to "match his skills against the trained and successful professional architect Latrobe..." someone has to defend Latrobe. Having crossed the Potomac River with a discerning eye, he knew that the Federal City was not in Virginia.

A more likely inference is that Tayloe reacted to Dolley Madison's complaint that the Octagon was unhealthy. It briefly housed the First Family from September 1814 to March 1815. In December, she wrote to a friend "We shall remove in March to the 7 buildings, where we shall be better accomodated, in a more healthy region. Mr. M has not been well since we came to this house, & our servants are constantly sick, oweing to the damp cellar in which they are confined." The Seven Buildings were a row of townhouses on nearby Pennsylvania Avenue. Perhaps, after that snub of his house, Tayloe contemplated moving his family to higher ground and asked Latrobe for his design. He was then restoring the Capitol, but needed private work to support his family. Perhaps because Latrobe's design was too elaborate and offered less potential for income, Tayloe hired George Hadfield to design a row of six town houses which became the nucleus of the Willard Hotel in Square 225 on Pennsylvania Avenue. In 1810, when he needed a new roof for the Octagon, he had hired Hadfield.

All that doesn't quite dispose of Ridout's inferences. He infers another reason beyond rivalry for Thornton wanting to design the house for Lot 8. Ridout thinks Thornton "saw architecture as an intellectual challenge, another arena which he could periodically and voluntarily enter to demonstrate the breadth and superiority of his skills." The challenge any buyer of Lot 8 faced was that the lot faced an angled intersection and building regulations required that house walls had to be parallel to the neighboring street. That Thornton came to the sale and signed the deed can fairly be taken that Thornton might have been looking for an intellectual challenge that an oval room could solve.

A letter written two months before Tayloe bought his lot suggests that Thornton did have thoughts about angled lots. As he tried in vain to rescue Morris's and Nicholson's investments, William Cranch complained to the board about the building regulations. He pointed to Square 74 that was divided on December 6, 1796. The lot at the corner of Pennsylvania and 21st Street faced an angled intersection. Evidently, Cranch reasoned that a house fronting Pennsylvania Avenue that satisfied the regulation by paralleling it need, did not have to parallel 21st Street. Cranch insisted that the commissioners did not "have any right to interfere with any other part of a private building than the front." The commissioners, with Thornton likely stating their position, required that all walls parallel the nearby street and that side walls have to be perpendicular to the nearby street.

A month after that letter and a month before Thornton witnessed Tayloe's deed of sale, Cranch wrote to his uncle, the new president, about the commissioners. All three were polite, but Scott "appears hasty and overbearing." Thornton was also hasty, not firm, "a little genius at everything," and little respected. White was "more mild" than Scott, "more firm" than Thornton, "and more respectable than either." Cranch amplified his take on the "little genius." He damned Thornton by adding that for a good board, men of science had best give way to men of business. Evidently, Dr. Thornton did not elucidate the options an angled lot presented. If he had, Cranch would have accorded a man of science with a place on the board. 

Finally, Ridout infers that Thornton simply wanted to befriend Tayloe. Beyond the abstractions of embassies and angles, the doctor simply liked the man. The doctor relished  "the opportunity the project provided to solidify his position in Tayloe's social circle. Already active in Washington society, the Thorntons became close acquaintances of the Tayloes in the years following the completion of the Octagon, an occurrence that would have been impossible for George Blagden or a master craftsman. Certainly a shared interest in fine horses, Thornton's prior friendship with upper-class Washingtonians, and his participation in many civic affairs would have inevitably brought him into close contact with the Tayloes. As it happened, however, the Octagon served as the catalyst for a friendship that endured for years."  

However, there was another catalyst. On April 18, 1797, the city hosted a match race between thoroughbreds for a 500 Guinea purse which was equivalent to $2600. The commissioner had nothing to do with it. By tradition, match races were held at a spot equidistant between the opponents. Charles Conan Ridgely's estate was just north of Baltimore and Tayloe's estate, Mount Airy, was just north of Richmond. Nicholson's hotelier Tunnicliff, late from England, prepared a race course near the Capitol which satisfied the traditions of the turf. Tayloe's Lamplight beat Ridgely's Cincinnatus and won the purse. Tayloe had put up half but the $1,300 he won from Ridegely covered the $1,000 he paid Scott the next day. Ridout notes the race but thanks to a mistake in an 1829 magazine for sportsmen, he has the race run in November 1798. 

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. Tayloe's 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. 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."

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 Mount Airy. Horses sent to be trained would race Tayloe's horses. Any man who dreamed of purses on the turf knew they had best build a relationship with Tayloe. In 1799, Thornton imported two English thoroughbreds, Clifden to stud and Driver to race. In 1800, the latter ran his first race against Tayloe's horses on Tayloe's course.(9)

There is evidence that before 1797 Thornton was interested in breeding. In 1793, he had written to his half-brother that he hoped to cover General Washington's jennies with his Tortola jacks. In 1795, he bought a farm in nearby Maryland where he could breed livestock. He was doing what other gentlemen in the area did and their excitement for racing was palpable. An entry in a journal Tunnicliff sent to Nicholson captured the moment: "Washington City Races began this day, some of your men at the point have taken a few Barrls Beer of me to sell on there own acct. Taylors Horse of Virga. won to 500 Guin. Genl. Lee, Col. Foreman & his Bro. called and slept here for the Races." There is documentation allowing the inference that another architect was impressed by Tayloe's achievement on the turf. At the December 1802 Washington Jockey Club races, James Hoban's Potatoes, a four year old, won the first heat on the third day of races then had to withdraw. Potatoes was sired by Tayloe's Lamplighter.

 

Because of the race, it is easy to infer that Tayloe was not looking for lots where he might build Latrobe's plan. After he won the race, he had money to invest. Scott had been born and reared in Virginia, had a farm there, and likely out persuaded the eccentric Englishman Thomas Law. Then Tayloe promptly returned to Mount Airy and not until February 10, 1799, in a letter to the General, is there documentary evidence that he planned to build in the federal city. 

As for Thornton, he simply wanted to meet the owner of the best horse in Virginia that had just beat the best horse in Maryland. 

Of course, while horses served as the catalyst for their friendship, Thornton could have sealed it with a design that satisfied the board's building regulations. However, what he immediately did that might have made an impression on Tayloe was to buy almost all the lots in Square 171 which is just south of Square 170. It too was one of the squares where he thought embassies should be placed. One of the lots he bought, Lot 17, mirrored Lot 8 in Square 170. It faced the angled intersection of New York Avenue and 17th Street NW. Square 171 was an unevenly eroded slope cheap to buy but not easily built upon. Lot 17, the largest lot Thornton bought, was most amenable to development. A house on the lot would face the President's house. David Burnes, the original proprietor who offered lots for sale, may have hoped that Tayloe might want to control the development of the square across the street. Burnes reserved the four lots directly across New York Avenue from Tayloe evidently hoping for a better price once Tayloe woke up to what Thornton was doing. Thornton's purchases were a curious way to cultivate a friendship. Becoming a neighbor is a friendly gestures, but owning almost the whole of the square across the street? For the moment Thornton did nothing with his new lots. Then in February 1800, according to the diary his wife kept that year, Thornton drew a plan for a house on that square. One can infer that Thornton designed a house for Lot 17. What is significant, is that he drew it in early February 1800, eight months after work began on the Octagon.

 
The case will be made that the death of the General in 1799 inspired Thornton to design houses. In 1797, he was
not looking for more architectural challenges. He was trying to prove that he designed the Capitol. Because of the regard Jefferson had for Thornton and his design, a visitor in August 1797 somewhat exposed the problems Thornton had supporting his claim. In 1796, Thornton had hosted the French savant Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney, who wanted to meet the author of Cadmus. Volney spent far more time at Monticello, then toured America and seemed principally fascinated with its climate. He had written books on Egypt, Syria and fallen empires. Jefferson seemed to be the catalyst for his idea to write about the rising empire. At least Volney first broached the idea while in Monticello. In July 1797, Volney returned to the federal city, spent more time with Thomas Law than Thornton, but also 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. Thornton gave him an engraving of the L'Enfant Plan, and allowed him to copy the floor plan of the Capitol. It wasn't his original floor plan. There was no large chamber for the president between the conference room and vestibule. There were no colonnaded bows along the south and north walls. The Halle au Bles could fit into the House chamber. The North Wing closely resembled what Hallet had drawn and Hadfield was building. Only the grand vestibule was Thornton's. He promised to soon send an elevation of the Capitol to Volney. Judging from a letter Volney later wrote to Thornton, he expected to get a drawing of the West Front. While Glenn Brown would draw what that elevation must have looked like, Thornton probably showed the Frenchman his so-called "Alternative design" with a Roman temple-like colonnade vaulting the "small dome." It is in his papers in the Library of Congress. If Thornton and Volney didn't boast of being the world's leading experts on language, one could speculate that the difference between "est" and "ouest" was lost in translation. A reason why there was no mention of an East Elevation of the Capitol in their correspondence was Thornton may not have had one. 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.

 

In Thornton's collected letters published in 1995, his first explanations of how he designed the Capitol were in two letters written in October 1797 and posted to Quaker doctors in England. In the first, sent to Dr. Fell, his master when he was an apprentice in Lancashire, Thornton bragged that he had "worked day and night at the Capitol. I finished, and obtained the prize against a world of competition; some regularly bred architects. I went at once to the highest order - viz, the Corinthian. I was attacked by Italian, French and English - I came off however victorious. President Washington's determination joined by the Commissioners, after long and patient attention to all, was final, and in my favor." The Italian who attacked him may have been a model maker named Provini who was briefly on the scene in 1794-5, and had refused to show Thornton how to work in stucco. Or, was it Hadfield who was born in Italy? His English parents ran a hotel in Livorno. Then he described the Capitol and made Fell a promise: "This building will be 353 feet in length, and will contain some of the grandest rooms in the world: - one, the grand vestibule, will be about 114 feet in diameter. It is circular, and to be cover'd with a dome. I am making drawings now for publication; and if published, thou my dear friend will not be forgotten."

Five days later, he wrote to Dr. Anthony Fothergill, the rising Quaker physician in London and Bath. He described the Capitol's grandest room, with promises of drawings to come: 

The grand vestibule will be circular and about 114 feet in diameter. I am making drawings for publication. I have deviated in some particulars from the rules, which, from antiquity, custom had established. First I thought that the amazing extent of our country, and of the apartments that the representatives of a very numerous people would one day require. Secondly I consulted the dignity of appearance, and made minutiae give way to a grand outline, full of broad prominent lights and broad deep shadows. Thirdly, I sought for all the variety of architecture that could be embraced in the forms I had lain down, without mixing small parts and large of the same kind, and keeping the whole regular in range, throughout the building. Finally, I attended to the minute parts, that we might not be deemed deficient in those touches which a painter would require in the finishing.

As usual, he didn't reveal exactly what he was drawing: an elevation? a section? views of the interior? And could a mere drawing match the "grand outline" of his prose? There is a curious unfinished drawing of the North Wing in Thornton's papers. It has fluted pilasters on the outer wall. Those on the actual wall are plain.(17)

Clearly, Thornton enjoyed describing his design but at the same, he didn't seem to grasp that the purpose of architectural drawing was to elucidate the viability and cost of a building. As a man of science, he did not have to get his hands dirty, so to speak, to educate himself in that regard. His report on the foundation that he wrote in 1795 suggested that he had the mathematical skills. Of course, he didn't want to beggar his own design, but there were other projects that had to be evaluated. By asking both Hadfield and Hoban to submit a design for the Executive office building, the board precluded the loser Hoban from evaluating Hadfield's $40,000 cost estimate for one building.  As usual, the board was running out of money, and craved another estimate. Thornton did not step up. Instead, William Lovering who had just returned from Philadelphia came to the board's rescue. Hadfield's elevation was not enough. Lovering needed a section. To make one, Hadfield needed his elevation back. With Hadfield's section in hand, Lovering parlayed making an estimate of Hadfield's design into making a simpler design that would save $6,300 on each office building. Thornton had important things to do. He claimed in his letter to Dr. Fell that General Washington asked him for a plan "on a general system of education.... I have begun a piece on the subject, which I hope to mature and finally publish, but the multifarious business I have on hand prevents me from finishing several papers."(15)

 

Of course, to prove that he designed the Capitol, instructing and correcting Hadfield with drawings, just as he had promised his colleagues he would do, would have been sufficient. But for Thornton, it was much easier to use words. In October 1797, he had the board write a note to Hadfield designed to put him in his place. It asked Hadfield to stipulate in writing that the roof of the Capitol would not be higher than the balustrades. Such a worry was beyond the ken of Commissioners Scott and White. Hadfield bowed to that idea of Thornton's, but added that if the board decided the roof could be one or two feet higher, it "would make no difference, and some advantage would be gained in the interior of the building."(19)

In January 1798, Thornton accused Hadfield of having given workers the wrong width for the pilasters. As a result, those on the north wall were asymmetrical, and that "threw the modillions above in disorder." Modallions are relatively small stone pendants arranged under the eaves. Thornton also 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...." 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. 

After reviewing the opinions of Blagden and another mason, Thornton's colleagues voted not to make the changes Thornton wanted. He could no longer force the board to let the president decide. President Adams had told the board that he would always defer to their judgment. Thornton wrote a dissent to be placed in the board's proceedings. He didn't challenge Hadfield's take on the Corinthian order. Instead he warned that the mistake "can never be renewed or corrected after it is put up, but will remain, forever, a laughing stock to architects."(20)

Thornton gave his colleagues his written complaint on the 9th. He wrote his dissent on the 10th. That gives the impression that as the walls rose some fifty feet high with Classical embellishments, no one appreciated Thornton's marring the moment. However, his letter can be read as an exhibition of Thornton's intimate understanding of the building he designed. He began his letter masterfully: "I have laid before you the cornice of the North Wing of the Capitol...." His letter also refers to the "original elevation" and to Hadfield's altering it. But he doesn't own the drawing or the elevation. The latter was likely Hallet's elevation of the north wall of the North Wing. Since Thornton referred to the drawing of the cornice to "exhibit... a very gross mistake," it was likely Hadfield's. Thornton also referred to the board seeing a "sketch of the entablature made by Mr. Blagden."  

After promising in February 1796 to send White a drawing to counter Hadfield's East Elevation,  and promising drawings to Dr. Fell in October 1797, by April 1798 Thornton had an East elevation to show Latrobe when he visited the city. Of course, he did not expect Latrobe's visit, but it was no secret that President Adams had received invitations to visit the city from his relations, friends and the General. Thornton now had an elevation to show the president, but he never published it. Two versions survived. A Bavarian engraver who came to the city in 1811 provided a small engraving of it for the city surveyor Robert King Jr. who used it to decorate the lower right corner of his 1818 map of the city. The etching of Thornton's design didn't have the two semi-circular projections on the north and south ends of building so it wasn't a copy of his January 1793 elevation. However, the full-sized elevation in his parlor did have projections, not semi-circular but two projecting Corinthian columns. Thus that elevation adhered to Thornton's stricture that "in an insular building every front should exhibit the same or similar elegance of stile." There is also an unfinished drawing of the wall of the North Wing with fluted pilasters which the actual doesn't have. But there are no galosh ornaments that were also not built. Then again, the floor plan Thornton let Volney copy in 1797 didn't have the semicircular projections; the floor plan he would give to President Jefferson did. Was he trying to get the projections restored to eliminate any hint of Hallet's modification of his design? Jefferson was among the few that actually saw his original design.

However, his new elevation captured the attention and won praise much like his original did. In April 1798, Latrobe noted in his journal that he thought Thornton's design "one of the first designs of modern times." Some context is in order: in Philadelphia, Latrobe had just seen what L'Enfant had designed and built for Robert Morris. He thought it a French monstrosity. Then he saw Thornton's sleek Neo-classical elevation and simple floor plan. Also, knowing that Thornton was a commissioner may have prompted him to be generous in his praise. In his journal, he noted that he could help Thornton make his plans better. He thought he was seeing the operative design of the exterior of the North Wing and that it had been Thornton's original design. Even if Latrobe didn't know that Hadfield was in trouble, the job was barely one-third completed after five years. He had to have hoped that his time would come. 

It seems that Thornton realized that his acting out as an author wronged by Hallet's and Hadfield's misdeeds was a mistake. If his project in 1795 was to undo "wilful errors," his project in 1798 had to be to convince all those involved that he had done just that. More importantly, he had to convince his colleagues and the president, if not the General himself, that his elevation and floor plans were the operative design for the parts of the Capitol yet built.

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 late May, the board would dismiss Hadfield. It would seem that Thornton had to have been the moving force in effecting that, but he likely wasn't. In February 1798, once again, Hadfield began to have trouble with the men who worked under him. Redmond Purcell, the foreman of the carpenters at the Capitol, demanded that Hadfield make drawings for each element of the roof. When a drawing didn't come in time, Purcell told the board that the slave sawyers had to stop work. Idle slaves were an anathema, and those working as sawyers were paid a dime a day extra that they not their masters could keep.

 

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 Carolina and likely Ireland too. That doesn't prove that his motive for attacking Hadfield was to prod the board to have Hoban to finish the Capitol. However, after workers covered the President's house in the summer of 1797, Hoban was expendable. Before leaving office, the General had insisted that the Capitol be made ready to receive congress before the President's house was made ready to receive the president and his family. It was difficult to argue against that stricture, though some would connive to reverse the order. In one of their last letters to the retiring president, the board speculated that if they suspended work on the President's house, Hoban might supervise construction of the Executive offices. Then they put that project out for bidding so a contractor would have the headaches associated with building it.

Judging from one of Purcell's letters to the board, Thornton did not prod Purcell to attack Hadfield. When he didn't get drawings from Hadfield, he asked what to do: "Mr. Scott made answer, if Mr. Hadfield did not give me directions to keep the men employed to the best advantage until the next board which was to be on the Wednesday following; Dr. Thornton at the same time told me to have my work well done. When Mr. Hadfield came into the yard instead of giving me directions, he began his abusive language." What Thornton did next is not known but in a March 13 letter to Commissioner White, he claimed that he "settled matters with Hadfield and Purcell."(22)

White was once again in Philadelphia trying to get money from congress. That was the board's most pressing problem. Thanks to figures presented by Hadfield and Hoban, it seemed clear that the board would run out of money in July, the peak of the building season. White's 1796 lobbying campaign in Philadelphia had unnerved Thornton and so did this one. In a letter his colleagues he referred to the South Wing as "that superb and elegant building," but worried that it wouldn't be finished "during the present age" unless it housed the Executive offices. The House of Representatives could one day be put in the west end of the "main body," i.e. the Conference room. White had worked with Thornton for almost three years yet his letters suggest that he knew very little about "the original ideas of Doctor Thornton." At the same time, White reported a rumor that Hoban estimated that for $12,000, he could put congress in the President's house and blamed the idea on Scott's friends. But in May, White came back with good news, $50,000 a year for at least two and likely three years, with no strings attached. Finishing the Capitol would have the highest priority. White also assured a congressional committee that work would begin on one of the Executive offices. (23)

Meanwhile, 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. The letter crisis came to a climax but not because of what Hadfield did. The lawyers on the board worried that the only 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 to make sections so Lovering could estimate its cost. Hadfield had never returned his elevation. The board did not want to ask President Adams to sign off on it. In a fit of anger, he had startled White by vowing to return the capital to New York if unruly members of the opposition in congress were not punished. In a moment of whimsy, he had also told White that he wanted the Executive offices next to the Capitol and that being over a mile away from both congress and the executive officers would suit him.(24)

Contractors had to see the design before they could submit bids. The board asked Hadfield to return the signed elevation. In response, he demanded that he superintend its construction. For his insubordination, the board gave Hadfield three months notice. As if on cue, the carpenters complained that Hadfield gave them more orders that wasted their time. On May 23, the board fired Hadfield and put Hoban in charge at the Capitol. He found that "the principal rafters and  girders of the roof were raised on the east and west fronts, and the north end of the building." That suggests that the job was on schedule. He increased the liquor ration and got the job done. As for the Executive Offices, the board wrote to the president announcing their unanimous decision to begin building next to the President's house. He raised no objections. They used Lovering's design. (25)

Hadfield threatened to appeal to President Adams, and told the board that he would teach them about the rights of architects: "I have long since learnt that it is possible to be deprived of ones own, for the advantage and reputation of others." Since he had just learned that his loss of the Executive office was Lovering's gain, the deprivation he referred to must have been his work on the North Wing.

The board promptly presented their case to the administration. In a letter to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, likely written by Thornton, the board welcomed an investigation and assured him that it would embarrass Hadfield. He was a young man of taste, but "extremely deficient in practical knowledge as an architect." The bulk of the long letter detailed his insubordinate refusal to give the board his elevation of the Executive office that President Washington had signed.(26)

Thornton also drafted a personal letter to Pickering that focused on his professional relationship with Hadfield. In it, he described how he introduced Hadfield to the Capitol and had to assure him that the walls then built were big enough. Thornton soon gathered that Hadfield didn't know anything about architecture or building. He didn't know what a projector was and had to ask Blagden how to write "$100,000." Thornton explained that the board did not dismiss Hadfield immediately because the workers ignored him and did the work properly.

Although it was not an issue in the board's current dispute with Hadfield, Thornton ridiculed his pretensions as a designer. That allowed Thornton to not only explain that he had drawn sections of the building that Hadfield couldn't, he also claimed that, with Hoban's help, he had corrected Hallet's mistakes. He also fabricated the story that after quitting in late June 1796, Hadfield got his job back only after apologizing for attacking Thornton's plan, admitting his envy and vicious motives and promising to follow Thornton’s orders. However, Thornton did not make a fair copy of his draft and send it to the secretary of state.(27)

Thornton was comfortable boasting about his genius at everything in drafts of never sent letters and to correspondents in England. However, face to face, he celebrated his amateur status. In May 1798, a young Polish poet, Count Julian Niemcewicz, came to celebrate America. He toured the federal city and met its leading men. Law told him to see Hadfield who showed him the Capitol. Then Niemcewicz met Thornton. He left this impression in a diary style memoir: Thornton "told me himself that it is not long since he had begun to study architecture and it was while he was taking lessons that he made his plan of the Capitol. Should one be surprised that it is bad? In building an edifice so costly and so important could they not have brought over one of the more celebrated architects of Europe, or at least asked them for a plan?"(28)

While in the city, the Polish count had gravitated toward Law and the General both in the city and at Mount Vernon. It seemed that neither of them vouched for Thornton's genius as an architect. Thornton likely didn't sense that because upon their moving to the city, the Thorntons were accepted in the highest society. The General paid them visits and invited them to Mount Vernon where they were esteemed by the General's family, especially the Thomas Laws and Thomas Peters. In 1799, the General and Law would both build houses on Capitol Hill. Throughout the 20th and into the next century, the consensus grew that Thornton must have designed them.

 Go to Chapter Nine

Footnotes for Chapter Ten:

1. GW's diary 15 March 1797; Harris p. 584; 

2. GW to Commrs 29 January & 27 February 1797; Law to GW 4 February 1797, see also Walker to GW, 24 January 1797

3. Law to Commissioners, Feb. 6, 1797;

4. For cost of lot see Ridout fn. 4 p. 130.

5. Ridout 35ff;

6. 1796 Division sheet in the Office of the Surveyor Land Management Record System.;  Square 170. House report 397 United States Congressional serial set. 5407.
 n. 775  lots https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3991082&view=1up&seq=775&skin=2021

7.   

 

4. Latrobe Journal p. 22; see chapter 11.

3. Ridout, pp. 36-37, 39, 40 

4. Ridout pp. 35ff; Latrobe Journal p. 22;

6.  Dolley Madison to Hannah Gallatin 29 December 1814; Daily National Intelligencer 22 April 1816.

7.  Tunnicliff diary April 1797, John Nicholson reels; Bryan, History of National Capital, vol. 1.  p. 304 (Google books); Baltimore Advertiser 19 April 1797; Am. Turf, vol. 1, March 1830, p.325 (click link for download); John Hervey, History of Racing America 1665-1865, vol. 2 (1944);  Tayloe family legend credits the Georgetown merchant Benjamin Stoddert for selling the lot to Tayloe. He was not in the chain of ownership of Lot 8 in Square 170, In Memoriam p. 150;.

8. for Potatoes see Washington Federalist 8 December 1802, p. 1. 

9. Kamoie, Laura, Irons in the Fire; Cohen pp. 114-6; American Turf Register, vol. 2, pp. 323ff, 376;  Maryland Gazette 18 October 1792.

10.  WT to J.B. Thomason, 29 November 1792, Chapter Four footnote #19; Commrs. to Tunnicliff 8 November 1797; 

11. Burnes Papers 15 May 1797, Burnes to Commrs. re dividing lots. The Commissioners assigned all the lots in the square to Burnes, see Surdocs record book; For WT's lots see Notice for a Marshal's sale in National Intelligence 4 July 1820; for warrant see Morris v. Morris, p.  .

12. Mrs. Thornton's diary, p. 102;

13. Cranch to Morris, February 1797, HSP. SurDoc image Record Book Square 74

14. Cranch, William to John Adam 17 March 1797; 

15. WT to Fell 5 October 1797, Harris p. 418.

16. Commrs to Hadfield, 18 November 1797; Lovering to Commrs 26 November 1797; Commrs to Adams, 25 November 1797.Commrs. records.

17.WT to Fell 5 October 1797, Harris pp. 418-20; for more on Provini see Smith, Morris's Folly, p. 116;  WT to Fothergill, 10 October 1797, Harris pp. 424-27;

18. Volney to Jefferson  19 July 1797; Volney to WT 13 aout 1797, Harris p. 416.

19. Hadfield to Commrs, 2 November 1797, Commrs. records; 

20. Hadfield to Commrs, 3 January 1798, Commrs. records; WT to Commrs. 9 January 1798, Harris, pp.430-1.

21.Latrobe Journal p.189; PP. Glover Park History "Conrad Schwarz" .  King map, LOC.

22.  GW to Commrs. 29 January 1797; 1790 Federal Census for Charleston;Purcell to Commrs. 7, 12, and 20 March 1798; Commrs Proceedings 13 March 1799; Hadfield to Commrs., 10 March 1798, Commrs. records; White to WT, 17 March 1798, Papers of William Thornton

23. White to Commissioners 8 & 20 March 1798, Harris pp. 440ff. 

24. Commrs. to White 27 March 1798; Petition from stone cutters 17 April 1798, commrs. records; Commrs to Pickering 25 June 1798, Harris, Papers of William Thornton, pp. 462-4; White to GW 20 February 1798; 

25.Hoban letter to editor, Washington Federalist 27 October 1808.

26. Commrs to Adams 8 June 1798, commrs. records; Commrs to Pickering, 25 June 1798, Harris, Papers of William Thornton, pp. 462-4.

27. WT to Pickering 23-25 June 1798 draft; 

28. Niemcewicz, Julian U., Under Their Vine and Fig Tree: Travels in America, 1797-99, pp. 77-8.