William Thornton Re-examined by Bob Arnebeck

The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol by Bob Arnebeck Table of contents Chapter 11: Rivaling Tayloe Mrs. Thornton by Stuart 1804 The General's death could have been a godsend for Thornton in that he hoped it would hasten the completion of the Capitol. The House of Representatives resolved that the General's tomb should be in the Capitol. He wrote to the author of the resolves, General John Marshall, whom he had never met, congratulating the House for its resolution and noting that putting the body in the center of "that national temple... will be a very great inducement to the completion of the whole building, which has been thought by some contracted minds, unacquainted with grand works, to be upon too great a scale." A month later Marshall acknowledged receiving the letter but didn't react to Thornton's vision. Even Mrs. Thornton seemed unexcited by the letter. In her diary, she merely noted that her h...

The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol by Bob Arnebeck   Table of contents  Chapter Ten: The Ingenious A 116. Law's 1800 house became the fulcrum of the New Varnum Hotel Thornton never claimed in writing that he designed the houses built by Thomas Law, General Washington and John Tayloe for which ground was broken in 1799. No contemporary credited him for designing those houses. But no one else claimed credit or was credited for designing the houses. His biographers give Thornton a good excuse for not stepping forward. Thornton feared that being a practicing architect would tarnish his reputation as a gentleman. So, while he bragged about many accomplishment, he did not claim credit for designing the houses of his gentlemen friends. His biographers find evidence that he did the designs in his correspondence with the General and a diary his wife kept in 1800, even though she too never explicitly said he designed those hous...