Chapter 11: Designing the Octagon

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

by Bob Arnebeck

Table of contents

Chapter 11: Designing the Octagon

Mrs. Thornton by Stuart 1804

In his 1914 history of the city, W. B. Bryan decided that because Thornton's statements "were not contradicted at the time," his September 21, 1798, letter to his colleagues proved that Thornton restored his design of the Capitol. He also cited the board's proceedings and correspondence in April 1799 as proof that in 1876 Adolph Cluss was wrong to dismiss Thornton as an amateur. That Hoban asked for drawings from Thornton proved that Thornton designed the Capitol. Bryan left unsaid that at the time Thornton was trying to get Hoban fired. Just as Glenn Brown did in 1896, Bryan melded Thornton's other architectural triumphs to prove that Thornton did indeed make drawings. But Bryan had more evidence for that. He could cite Mrs. Thornton's diary that was transcribed and published in 1907. In it, Bryan claimed, there "are references to her husband being engaged in preparing detailed plans of the work to be done at the capitol, as well as to other architectural work he was engaged in at the time, as for example, making the plans and superintending the building of the Octagon house...." 

Actually, there are no references to his having anything to with the Octagon. Construction continued throughout 1800, but Mrs. Thornton's only description of the house came on January 7: "Tuesday [January] 7th, a beautiful clear day.... After dinner we walked to take a look at Mr. Tayloe's house which begins to make a handsome appearance." In 1995, C. M. Harris counts that and the other seven walks in which they saw the house as evidence that Thornton kept tabs on the house he designed. By the way, Thornton owned lots in the Square 171 just across New York Avenue. In the spring he had it planted with buckwheat and had his slave fence the sown field.(25)

The Octagon in 1807

In only one of his several walks to the house did his wife note that he took any particular interest in what he saw in Square 170. In November, 1800, chimney pieces imported from London arrived and Thornton told his wife that she had to see them. Harris assumes they were Thornton's idea. Harris also credits him for two "decorative" iron stoves imported from Edinburgh, and a roof with a parapet just as Thornton wanted on the General's houses. He argues that Thornton must have been involved since he had been in London and Edinburgh. Of course, Tayloe was educated in England and no stranger to the stoves of his rich friends. Lovering had worked in London.(27)

Chimney piece in 1896

Harris and others cite an entry she wrote five days week later as proof that Thornton designed Law's house. The Thorntons took Thomas and Patsy Peter to see Law's new house. Mrs. Law was Patsy's sister, both were Martha Washington's grand daughters:

Sunday [January] 12th— A very fine day, as pleasant as a Spring day. After breakfast Mr T. Peter called and mentioned that his wife was at home; we therefore sent the Carriage for her. I, and Dr T— . accompanied them to the Capitol, the General's and Mr Law's houses —the latter being locked we entered by the kitchen Window and went all over it— It is a very pleasant roomy house but the Oval drawing room is spoiled by the lowness of the Ceiling, and two Niches, which destroy the shape of the Room.— Mr and Mrs Peter dined with us and returned home early in the afternoon some of her Children not being well.(15)

C. M. Harris opines that "Thornton's role... is partially but substantially documented by his wife's diary for 1800." Certainly, that Thornton climbed through the kitchen window to get inside suggests he had some authority, though his friendship with Law and his touring with the Mrs. Law's sister might have given him sufficient license to do that. Pamela Scott puts it this way: "It was designed by William Thornton, and was 'a very pleasant roomy house' according to Anna Maria Thornton."(16)

But how does one account for Mrs. Thornton's criticism of the house's oval drawing room? Her husband likely informed her criticism of the room. Thornton imagined the yet unbuilt oval rooms he had designed as dancing with shadows and lights under high domes. Fitting oval rooms into a five story townhouse was alien to his sensibilities. Seeing what the Ingenious A wrought opened his eyes to the limitations of Law's house.

Ridout also tries to wring proof out of Mrs. Thornton's diary. The entry he cites to prove that Thornton designed the Octagon presents a cozy picture of Thornton the house designer, but Tayloe's house is not mentioned. Ridout holds out the mere fact that Thornton designed another house in March 1800 as evidence that he did a design for Tayloe in 1797, 1798 or 1799: "while we were at breakfast a boy brought a note from Mr. Carroll of Duddington, (living in the City an original and large proprietor) requesting Dr. T- as he had promised, to give him some ideas for the plan of two houses he and his brother are going to begin immediately on Sq. 686 on the Capitol Hill."(28)

What she wrote in 1800 can be taken as an indication of what Thornton did in 1798 or 1799. But the plain houses he designed for Carroll bore no resemblance to Tayloe's house. Ridout excuses that by looking to the future. Plans Thornton drew for his friend Thomas Peter in 1808 also count as evidence that he designed the Octagon. Ridout writes: "Thornton experimented further with geometric forms and other elements of neo-classicism years later on the equally grand Tudor Place in Georgetown."

Tudor Place drawing - the oval rooms were not built

One problem with Mrs. Thornton's diary is that while she says what happened she never speculates on why it happened. In late February, Thomas Law and her husband capped an on-going discussion they had been having regarding a stables to accommodate the horses of boarders soon to arrive when congress convened. The doctor had suggested a design and Law put him to it. She wrote more about that design than anything else Thornton drew that year, but she didn't not the obvious reason why Law had him do it.

Her husband was being buttered up. In February and March 1800, both Law and Carroll had a reason to flatter Thornton. Through her nephew William Cranch, who was then Law's lawyer, they learned that Mrs. Adams had doubts about moving into the President's house. She feared the building would be too green. Law wrote the letter to James Greenleaf already quoted that described his house and asked him to see that Mrs. Adams got the letter. Carroll sent a letter to Cranch describing his house, and Cranch sent it to her. Having Thornton on their side could do neither Law nor Carroll any harm if the First Family needed a house. Coincidentally, through Notley Young, another member of the Carroll clan, Bishop John Carroll asked Thornton to submit a design for a new cathedral in Baltimore. He also asked other architects and eventually chose Latrobe's design.(40)

Latrobe's Baltimore Cathedral

The demand for Thornton's architectural talents was short lived. The president remained adamant; the First Lady leaned toward not coming to the city at all. Congress gave the cabinet money and power to prepare the city for the government. Everyone knew the commissioners days in power were numbered. The Constitution gave congress exclusive jurisdiction over the city and its public buildings. Both Law and Carroll continued to build houses in a vain effort to profit off their many building lots in the city. Other men, including Hoban, designed their houses. There is no evidence that they again asked Thornton for building plans.(39)

Carroll's Row

However, there is no doubt that in early 1800, Thornton had an itch for drawing plans. On the first Saturday afternoon of the year, he went with his wife and mother-in-law to go inside the General's houses. One had just been finished. Then they went to the Capitol and while the ladies sat in another room by a fire, he "laid out an Oval, round which is to be the communication to the gallery of the Senate room." In her diary there is no description of or allusion to his laying out an oval before or after that. But a month later, he finished a house design rich with ovals. 

Left unanswered is why Thornton accommodated Law and Carroll? Neither project added to his fame. Tayloe asked Lovering to design the stable for the back of his house. No one thought of asking Thornton to design the stable next to the president's house. The catalyst for Thornton's sudden interest in designing houses and a stable could have been the death of the General. Not only had he not asked Thornton to design his houses but also didn't involve him in Lawrence Lewis's house on the Mount Vernon estate. In March 1800, Mrs. Thornton noted that while at Mount Vernon, her husband prepared a site for a house. In August, while they were both there, her husband gave Lewis a plan for a house. That house was a country house playing off the design of Mount Vernon. Thornton likely gave it a curvilinear colonnaded entrance, but his point in doing it was to show what he could have done as a friend if the General had only asked. The project for Carroll proved that he could design townhouses suitable for boarders. The project for Law again proved what he could do for another member of the General's family.(41)

Woodlawn

Thornton had anticipated the General's death and the need to memorialize the Great Man. In his 1793 design of the Capitol, he designated the site for a memorial under the dome. In January 1800, he recognized that the imperative to do that could hurry completion of the Capitol and he raised the issue within a month of the General's death. In a February letter to Blodget, Thornton sketched a "massy rock" with the general ascending to heaven on top, and a woman with a snake coiled around her body, symbolizing eternity, on the bottom; the bodies of the General and his wife would be entombed in the middle and all that would be under the Capitol's dome.(42)

Thornton's "massy" tomb

And he designed a house for himself: "Saturday, Feby 1st a fine day. The ground covered with the deepest snow we have ever seen here (in 5 yrs.) - river frozen over. Dr. T- engaged in drawing at his plan for a House to build one day or another on Sq. 171." On February 4, 1800, Mrs. Thornton noted: "I began to copy on a larger scale the elevation and ground plan of the house."

Why treat the future as prologue when the diary actually tells a simple story. He didn't like Law's oval room. So he designed a house with better oval rooms. His wife thought Law's house roomy and Tayloe's wall handsome, so he showed her what a handsome and roomy house should look like. The large design with oval rooms in Thornton's papers does have something to do with the Octagon. It was not a preliminary design for Tayloe's house. Thornton designed a house to rival Tayloe's.

Mrs. Thornton did not give any clue as to why Thornton designed a house for Square 171, nor why he waited so long to design it. He had bought lots in that square in May 1797, a month after Tayloe bought his lot on Square 170. Judging from a map recreating the topography of the city in 1800, the only sensible place to build was on lot 17 facing the President's house at the angled intersection of New York Avenue and 17th Street NW. That left Thornton with the same problem that the architect of the Octagon and Law's house had solved. That meant he could copy Lovering's solution and out do it with a nobler house.

from "historical map" published 1931

That also explains the other floor plan in Thornton's paper that actually resembles the actual Octagon floor plan. In May 1800, Lovering placed an ad in the local newspapers: "William Lovering, Architect and General Builder – Begs leave to inform his friends and the public, that he has removed from the City of Washington to Gay Street, the next street above the Union Tavern in Georgetown, where he plans to estimate all manner of building, either with materials and labor, or labor only. Specimens of buildings suitable for the obtuse or acute angles of the streets of the City of Washington, may be seen at his home."

In Building the Octagon, Ridout quotes the ad and characterizes it as a mere builder taking advantage of what he was learning while building a house designed by a genius: "Supervising architect William Lovering attempted to capitalize on his experience with the unorthodox plan of the Octagon by soliciting other commissions for the eccentrically shaped lots so common in Washington." However, Lovering's ad did not merely offer "his experience." He offered to share "specimens of buildings," that is, plans and elevations to illustrate what could be built on angled lots. If he had followed the same pattern of trying to get a contract with Law and Tayloe as he would with Stier, then he made at least three specimens for each building, affording a new client a choice of six solutions to the problem faced by building in an angled lot. Lovering was trying to get work based on his experience as a designer, not merely on his experience as a builder.(31)

Since Thornton had a specimen of Lovering's design before he placed the ad. Thornton might have led Lovering to believe that there might be a demand for them. What Thornton drew adapts Lovering's configuration to different terrain. Because the ground south of the President's house sloped down toward the Potomac River with the grade of the slope steeper to the southwest, Thornton's design for Lot 17 in Square 171 would not have worked on Lot 8 in Square 170. The oval room forming the rear of his design overlooked that slope. Thornton owned the lots southwest of Lot 17 and could preserve a view of the Potomac from his rear oval room. The rear of the Octagon faces the slope up to the President's house. An oval room there would be hidden from view and have a view of the backs of buildings on F Street to the north that would block any view of the executive mansion. The large semi-circular porch on the other side of Thornton's design invited eyes looking down from the President's house.

Table : Orientation of Thornton design if in lot 17 Square 171

But why didn't Thornton or his wife say more about such a consequential design? W. B. Bryan offers an interpretation for her lack of enthusiasm. She knew the house could not be built "owing, no doubt, to a lack of funds, which was a common experience in the life of a man who moved in a large orb, but one not within in the range of either the making or the saving money." There is something to that, but whenever Thornton sold his Lancaster property, he expected to make $40,000. The death of his mother in October 1799 might have led to some reckoning of the Tortola estate with money coming to Thornton. Still, Mrs. Thornton likely didn't relish the idea of that money, if it came, being wasted in that way. To bring some order to their finances, she would soon begin keeping notebooks recording every household expense.(29)

While it is not surprising that Thornton did not acknowledge Lovering's help, why didn't his wife? She had been particular about the genesis of Law's stable and Carroll's houses. She likely knew of Lovering. A 1799 marriage with a Georgetown widow merited a notice in the newspaper. In the middle of the summer of 1800, she came home and she found "Dr. T. waiting with Mr. Lovering to get into the parlor of which I had the key."There is no evidence in Mrs. Thornton's 1800 diary or her subsequent jottings in notebooks that she kept at least through 1815 that the Thorntons ever socialized with the Loverings. In 1811 she noted that Lovering, who then lived in Baltimore, brought her husband a book. By the way, two days later she noted that he husband drew a plan for a house. Likely, social class blinders did not allow her to conceive of a man like Lovering designing a gentleman's house. Lovering was also careful not tweak those blinders.

However, in 1807, master carpenter Andrew McDonald advertised his services with this reminder. He had "finished the buildings on Rock Hill, near Georgetown, for the late Gustavus Scott, esq...; and also finished that elegant building belonging to Colonel John Tayloe..." So, why didn't Lovering associate his name with Tayloe's house? Lovering probably decided that he could not publicly claim his design because that would diminish the glory of house owners like Tayloe, Law and Stier. Instead, he had to rely on their good word, which he probably never heard. On June 14, 1801, Tayloe wrote to Lovering: "my Object is to be done with the building as quickly as I can with the least trouble and vexation - for the expense of it already alarms me to death when I think of it." Dorsey calculated that the house cost $10,000 over the contract estimate. By the way, in that letter Tayloe demanded that the head carpenter McDonald be fired. Stier also became vexed at Lovering because of delays in building his house. In a letter to his son, Stier called Lovering a "blockhead."(32)

It sounds absurd today, but if Lovering publicly claimed credit for the house, a gentleman, Thornton for example, could broadcast how Lovering vexed Tayloe. McDonald was hired by architects or contractors. Lovering was hired by gentlemen. In his advertisements he did not reveal what he had designed or build. In an 1801 ad, he claimed that he had "been in the practice of drawing for and superintending great part of the buildings in the City of Washington and vicinity." But he didn't say which ones. In 1804, he placed an ad in Alexandria, Virginia, "where he Draws, Designs, and makes estimates of all manner of Buildings and also MEASURES AND VALUES all the different work connected to the building art." He was ready to "contract for any building and complete the same, from a palace to a cottage, which will be executed in the most masterly and economic style." He claimed he had "long experience" but didn't list any houses he designed or built. In 1809, he placed an ad in Baltimore, which exuded a complete command of his profession: "Begs leave to inform the gentlemen of Baltimore and its environs, that they may be supplied with plans, elevations and sections of any building intended to be erected, with the estimates of the different work particularized in a manner in which it is impossible for any dispute to arise, and gives instructions to the different workmen that they have no occasion to make any inquiry during the execution of the building."

Lovering had mastered his profession, but even in booming cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia he did not leave his mark. His moving from Georgetown to Alexandria to Baltimore to Philadelphia and back to Baltimore where he died in 1813 suggests a struggle to earn a living, not a march of fame. 

Although he crossed the phrase out in 1798, evidently, the Ingenious A was one architect that did not raise Thornton's hackles. By building on Lot 17, Thornton was clearly trying to rival Tayloe, not Lovering, and why not rival Hoban and his President's house too?(33)

In effect, just before he finished his design, Thornton wrote a justification for his mansion. Although he signed the letter he and White sent to the president in November, Thornton did not take the choice between Tayloe's, Law's and Carroll's house that seriously. White revealed those choices in a private letter. On January 7, the board received a letter from Navy Secretary Stoddert reporting that the president planned to ship his furniture to the city in June. He told Stoddert to tell the board that he insisted on moving into the President's house. Adams bristled at being told where he might have to stay and jumped to the conclusion that the commissioners wanted to park him in George Washington's Capitol Hill houses.

White was not in the city on January 7. Evidently, he had not told his colleagues what he had written to the president. Commissioner Scott had not signed the November letter and assumed White had asked the president to choose a house to be rented. Scott dashed a letter off to Stoddert disavowing the very idea of not using the President’s house. Thornton also signed that letter.

Scott likely got Thornton to reveal what houses he and White had in mind. Scott had sold the lot to Tayloe and likely remained a friend. It bears remembering that before work began on the Octagon, in response to the president's plea that he move into the city, Scott had his own house built just north of the city. If Tayloe needed architectural advice, he probably relied on Commissioner Scott. To keep track on the progress of Tayloe's house, Scott could check with Andrew McDonald, the master carpenter then working on the Octagon. Thornton had never built a house, let alone his own house. In January 1800, Scott likely knew that Tayloe's house would not be in a state to receive the president's furniture in June 1800. So, he challenged Thornton to see for himself what state the house was in.(26)

On January 20, Stoddert wrote to Thornton castigating the commissioners for not properly preparing the President's house for the reception of the president: "A private gentleman preparing a residence for a friend would have done more than has been done," Stoddert wrote and he wanted an enclosed garden "at the north side of the Presidents Houses" similar to one had by the richest man in Philadelphia, William Bingham. There also should be a stable, carriage house and garden house. The latter should be in a garden that would be "an agreeable place to walk in even this summer."

White House in 1820

On January 30, Thornton wrote back that he had always been for grandeur throughout the city. His colleagues were "afraid of encouraging any expense not absolutely necessary, and seem not to think these things necessary that you and I deem indispensable." He then reflected on the mansion: "Some affect to think the house and all that relates to it are upon too extravagant a scale. I think the whole very moderate,..." He added that the president should get a salary of $100,000 to maintain it. At that time, he made $25,000. Thornton also sent a plan of the President's house to the president and noted that "the colonnade to the south is not completed at present, and temporary steps are to be put in." As a president looked south from his mansion, he would see lots Thornton owned at the east end of Square 171. The day after he wrote that letter to Stoddert, he finished his design for Lot 17.(30)

Arguing that Thornton aimed to rival Tayloe and not serve him challenges perhaps the best evidence that Thornton designed the Octagon. The two gentlemen became friends, and Ridout suggests the Octagon design was the catalyst. There are several references to Tayloe in Mrs. Thornton's diary that didn't have anything to do with houses. In January 1800, Thornton met Tayloe one evening at the Union Tavern in Georgetown. The latter had to get an early start for Annapolis in the morning so, given the winter darkness, they had no time to see his house under construction. In Annapolis, Tayloe graciously helped determine the legal status of property in Georgetown owned by Thornton's sister-in-law who lived in the Virgin Islands.

Then on March 12, the day her husband got the note about designing a house for Daniel Carroll, Mrs. Thornton put more portentous news in her diary: "a boy came from the farm with a 3 yr old Sorrel filly which Dr. T- has exchanged with Mr. Tayloe - He then wrote a note to Mr. O'Reilly to know when he can have his boy to go with Driver to Mr. Tayloe's." "His boy" was a slave named Randall who was a jockey. Tayloe preferred slaves because white jockeys asked for more money if they won a race. Then Randall and Joe Key, Thornton's slave, took Driver and the filly to Neabsco near Dumfries, Virginia, where they gave the manager of the iron works a letter from Tayloe directing him to send a man to take Randall and Driver to Mount Airy.

In her diary, Mrs. Thornton seemed far more interested in horses than houses. Thoroughbreds were the catalyst for her husband's and Tayloe's friendship, but they soon hit a rough patch. On June 18, after hosting a dinner for three of the four cabinet officers, she noted that Driver returned "in bad plight." She only made cursory references to horses after that. She mentioned "Tayloe's house" again, but a three story brick house at an important intersection could not help but be a landmark. She didn't mention Tayloe. Did he avoid coming to the city while his house was being built? Or, did he avoid Thornton when he did come?

That they didn't see each other doesn't prove that Thornton didn't design the house. However, judging from Mrs. Thornton's diary, their door was open to all newcomers and Thornton sought out new arrivals of importance which, of course, would include Tayloe, the richest man in Virginia. Indeed, Thornton was out to better himself. As he met his fellow office holders in the government, Thornton grew envious. Not a few made more money than he did, still only $1,600. Cabinet officers made $5,000, other titled officers, especially in the Treasury department made $3,000.

To be sure, Thornton was proud of his accomplishments as author of the Capitol, a commissioner, and a founder of the city. He showed visitors his East elevation, and shared his vision of the city. Thornton also had building lots to sell and seemed to broach that subject by looking at the big picture. Thornton's hustle puzzled newcomers. Treasury secretary Wolcott wrote to his wife that Thornton assured him that the city would have "a population of 160,000, as a matter of course, in a few years." Then Wolcott added "No stranger can be here a day, and converse with the proprietors, without conceiving himself in the company of crazy people. Their ignorance of the rest of the world, and their delusion with respect to their own prospects, are without parallel." Only an anonymous letter from the City of Washington celebrated Thornton and his Capitol. It also recommended the unfinished Grand Hotel as a perfect headquarters for the Bank of the United States, which gave away Blodget as the author.

In 1914, Bryan claimed that in Mrs. Thornton's diary, there "are references to her husband being engaged in preparing detailed plans of the work to be done at the capitol...." On the other hand, a letter he wrote in May suggested every detail was set. In late April 1800, Vice President Jefferson wrote to Thornton sharing ideas about the Senate chamber, especially the position of the seat for the presiding officer, i.e. the vice president. 

One would think Thornton would jump at the opportunity to go back and forth with the man he hoped would be the next president. But with an eye to his legacy, rather than making the building more convenient for those obliged to use it, he jumped at the opportunity to confirm the supremacy of his plans: "I am much obliged by your kindness in suggesting several important considerations respecting the Arrangements in the Capitol & I have the satisfaction of informing you that they are so nearly consonant to my Plans that what I had directed will I flatter myself meet with your approbation...." Then Thornton wrote at length about the treatment and prevention of yellow fever, and, by the way his prescriptions were somewhat dated. Philadelphia had been cleaning residents' necessaries for almost two years.

Jefferson asked one direct question: "Are the rooms for the two houses so far advanced as that their interior arrangements are fixed & begun?" Thornton didn't directly answer other than saying "that what I had directed will I flatter myself meet with your approbation." A month after sending his letter to Jefferson, Thornton met with Thomas Claxton, who, Mrs. Thornton wrote, "is empowered to procure the necessary furniture for the Capitol." She added: "they sent for Mr. Hoban and were consulting respecting the seat for the President of the Senate."(1)

Claxton was the doorkeeper of the House of Representatives which sent him to the federal city. Did Thornton and Claxton send for Hoban to receive Thornton's orders or Claxton's, or perhaps Hoban, to whom Thornton had passed on the responsibility of making drawings to make expedient arrangements to get the Senate chamber ready, would explain to both where the seat had to be. What is clear is that Thornton did not carry on a consultation about the chair with the first man who would sit in it. It is not clear if Thornton ever made a plan showing the internal arrangements of the Senate chamber.

Mrs. Thornton's diary suggested that he was only engaged in one detail of the work to be done. On February 15, 1800, Mrs. Thornton wrote that Hoban called on her husband after dinner to "consult about  the Capitals of the pillars...." The commissioners' proceedings make clear that Thornton was directing Hoban. On February 10, "Letters received from John Kearney, making application for a drawing at large of the capital of the columns, for the Senate room; which the Board direct James Hoban to furnish him with, in conformity to the drawing given to John Kearney by Wm. Thornton - in the ancient Ionic stile, but with volutes like the modern Ionic.'" He had described such a capital in his April 17 letter to the commissioners. He also wrote the proceedings that described them again. The commissioners hired Kearney to plaster the walls of the Capitol, and he also made ornaments. In January, Thornton had borrowed his book on "Gothic Ornaments," perhaps, to inform his thinking about the General's tomb.

That year Thornton had an abiding interest in ornaments. During the summer, he met a better ornament maker from Baltimore named Andrews. Thornton confessed to Stoddert that he couldn't muster enough hired slaves to beautify the grounds of the President's house. Instead he worked with Andrews to put composition ornaments on the interior walls of the house. Thornton came up with the designs. Then on November 1, the same day President Adams arrived to occupy his house, the commissioners received a note directing that all the ornament depicting men or beasts be removed and replaced with ornamental urns. In December, when the election results were all but final, Thornton tried to introduce Andrews and "samples of his composition ornaments" to Jefferson.

Otherwise, his wife only described Thornton working on his elevation and floor plan in February, October and December. He also had his wife, who seemed to have been the more accurate draftsman, work on and copy his plans. Other than the capitals she mentioned no detailed designs for the Capitol. The Senate sat in its chamber but the House sat in temporary quarters upstairs. Of course, Thornton disdained working on expedient features of the Capitol. 

Of course, the tomb for the General would be for the ages. In December 1800, the city's new newspaper, the National Intelligencer, printed the letter. Thomas Law also lobbied for the tomb; Thornton provided an estimate of its cost; but while authorizing a tomb in the building, congress did not authorize a building to surround it.

Once in town in December, congress first investigated the commissioners and then put off deciding what to do about them. When Commissioner Scott died on Christmas Day, Thornton became the senior member of the board. Also congress adjourned without abolishing the board. Thornton enjoyed more power but not more salary. He let the new president know that he was available for another position. In November 1800, he went to the Alexandria races with the then Treasurer of  the United States. He learned of that worthy's plan to retire from that office which came with a salary of $3,000.

Thornton prided himself for not begging for office. In 1794, he had Ferdinando Fairfax alert the General that he was available. In 1801, he counted on his old friend James Madison to argue his case once the Treasurer retired in September. In the meantime, Thornton arranged for Madison to rent the just built house next door. He shared that news with typical flourish. In an August 15 letter, he told Madison that by agreement, the builder would pay $1,000 if the house wasn't ready on October 1. He added that: "I have directed the third Story to be divided into four Rooms, two very good Bed-chambers, & the other two smaller Bed chambers. The Cellar I have directed to be divided, that one may serve for wine &c, the other for Coals &c—and for security against Fire a Cupola on the roof, which will add to the convenience of the House in other respects. There will be two Dormer Windows in front, & two behind." In a letter to Thornton, Madison had mentioned the need for a good stable and good plastering. Thornton responded by telling Madison "I shall urge the Plaistering as soon as possible, and every thing shall be done to give you satisfaction." 

On the basis of that letter, C. M. Harris claims that Thornton "supervised the construction" of Madison's rental. But did he really tell the experienced builder how to arrange the house's interior? It seems Thornton exaggerated his role in finishing the house. Madison signed a rental agreement with the builder in June 1802 on condition that he build a brick stable and "what remains to be done to the dwelling house shall also be finished." Seeing that all the work is done before occupancy is the superintending architect's principal job. In his letter to Thornton, Madison made having a good stable his highest priority.

During that summer, Thornton was involved in a much more consequential project that proved to be his last contribution to the Capitol project. Before adjourning in March 1801, the House asked for a building of its own. The commissioners ordered a temporary meeting place built on the site of the South Wing. Once again the board needed the services of an architect and once again Thornton didn't mind Hoban making the design, with the caveat that he follow Thornton's plan and make a building elliptical in shape on the foundation already laid and, as much as possible, its brick walls should become part of the permanent South Wing to be built in the future. 

President Jefferson agreed with that approach with a caveat offered by Hoban. He wrote to the commissioners: "mr Hobens observes there will be considerable inconveniencies in carrying up the elliptical wall now without the square one, & the square one in future without the elliptical wall, and that these difficulties increase as the walls get higher." For that reason, the president only approved the one story building. Of course, Hoban was warning that Thornton's stricture that the elliptical chamber must stand alone on the elliptical foundation wouldn't work. The president hoped that Thornton was right. Hoban hired Lovering as the contractor. He had designed and supervised construction of oval rooms in Law's and Tayloe's houses.(5)

The Seventh Congress convened on December 7, 1801, in what Thornton called "the elliptical room" and members soon called the "oven," either because it was stuffy or it resembled a Dutch oven. While it is now treated as an amusing sidelight, the elliptical room was a second step, after laying the foundation in 1795, in the fulfillment of Thornton's plan for the South Wing.

On April 2, the House voted to abolish the board of commissioners and before adjourning in early May, the Senate concurred. Congress set June 1 as its last day. The National Intelligencer updated its readers on the progress of an act on June 1. Coincidentally, the Intelligencer ran an advertisement in the Intelligencer corrected all misinterpretations of the inability of Thornton's prize import to win a race. In her 1800 diary, Mrs. Thornton did not mention her husband's reaction to Driver's "bad plight" when he returned from being trained by Tayloe. Almost two years after Driver's return, Thornton made his reaction public.

The very long ad offered Driver as stud, and explained that despite anticipations of his greatness, thanks to Tayloe, he only raced once:

Driver was never tried but once, by John Tayloe, esq., at Tappanoe in Virginia when the bets were in favor of the winner (Yaricot) distancing the field; but Driver lost one heat by only a few feet, and the other heat by only four inches, in three mile heats, distancing the other horses; which as Driver, like his celebrated sire, is a four mile horse, was thought a great race, especially as he was much out of order in consequence of a bad cough. Col. Holmes [probably Hoomes] told me he was thought by those who saw him run, one of the best bottomed horses in America, or perhaps in the world. Driver was put into training the last autumn, but met with an accident that prevented his starting; however, he proved one of the fleetest horses Mr. Duvall ever trained, and of ever lasting bottom.

By "bottom" was meant staying power and stamina. While the ad didn't blame Tayloe for sending Driver home in "bad plight," later in the ad, Thornton quoted Charles Duvall as saying: "if I had trained him at four years old, I think he would have made the best horse on the continent...."

The rest of the ad also put Tayloe in his place. It celebrated Thornton's English connection when everyone knew that Tayloe's connections were unparalleled. Driver was got by "Lord Edgmont's famous running horse Driver" after he was sold to the Earl of Egremont. Thornton's relation, "Isaac Pickering, esq., of Foxlease, Hampshire, England,... sent the dam of Driver... to the Earl of Egremont's by one of his own grooms." Cousin Pickering owned six plantations on Tortola and so was someone the earl would not slight, but Tayloe knew the earl well. He would soon buy a farm outside the City of Washington and name it Petworth after the earl's seat in England. Thanks to Driver's pedigree, Thornton could drop the names of two lords and a duke. No reader would mistake mere name dropping as indicating a personal acquaintance, but the ad gave the impression that only the Atlantic Ocean kept Thornton and the earl from being best of friends. Thornton added that Driver's pedigree was certified by Governor Ogle, who was Tayloe's father-in-law.(36)

The timing of Thornton's advertisement impugning Tayloe was also coincidental to Dorsey closing the books on the Octagon. Posterity sees the fields green around a building that would endure as the one unalloyed creation of Thornton's genius. But too many coincidences prove that Thornton had nothing to do with the house. Does it make sense that if he had designed Tayloe's house, he would associate Tayloe with the bad plight of Driver just when his house was finished and just when he lost his job as a commissioner, which in the past he had equated as being as powerful as one of the secretary's in the president's cabinet? 

Tayloe did react to what he must have taken as bizarre attack. After all, it was evident to everyone else that, as breeders, Tayloe and Thornton weren't equals. Tayloe relied on an enormous stable to find the horse to cross the finish line first. Thornton propelled his chosen horse with rhetoric. In the spring of 1803, Tayloe seemed to make a peace offering for what Thornton supposed he did to Driver. An ad offering the services of Wild Medley ran in the Washington Federalist. It noted that the horse was bought in Virginia by "W. Thornton." That was the only mention of the owner. The ad included a testimony signed by John Tayloe certifying the wonders of a filly got by Wild Medley that handily beat Tayloe's horse. Thornton owned Wild Medley until he died in 1810.(37)

Thornton was charming and entertaining but essentially an insubstantial know-it-all. He was a doctor who had no patients; an architect who had never built anything; held a position of trust in the government despite knowing nothing of politics; and a horse breeder who had yet to breed a horse of any note. His artful defense of a horse who lost what amounted to a training race two years back boded ill for any who had or would oppose him. Thornton would not face facts, and would manipulate them for his own benefit.

  Chapter 12

 Footnotes for Chapter 12

1.   Adams to GW  22 June 1798; GW to McHenry 22 July 1798; GW to Tayloe  21 July 1798, GW to Tayloe, 23 January 1799, for GW's interest in asses see 23 January 1799 to Robert Lewis.; Tayloe to GW, 10 February 1799, and footnotes; GW to Tayloe 12 February 1799.

2. GW's diary 7 February 1799; Lovering to Nicholson 9 March 1799, Nicholson Papers; In his contract with Blagden, the General required $4,000 security which the contractor established thanks to Hoban backing him, see footnotes to GW to commrs., 27 October 1798.

3. Ridout, p. 65

4. Tayloe to GW  10 February 1799, & 26 March 1799.

5. Ridout, p. 61.

6. Jefferson to White, 2 July 1802; White to Jefferson, 13 July 1802; Commrs. Proceedings, 2 and 15 January 1799.

7. Proceedings, 2 and 4 April 1799;

8. Proceedings 18 March 1799; Hoban to Commrs. 12 March 1799; Middleton to Commrs 22 March 1799.

9. Centinel of Liberty 16 April 1799 p. 1

10. Hoban to Commrs. 15 April 1799; C. M. Harris tries to make the case that Thornton did make drawings. But he quotes from the commissioners' proceedings several months after Hoban called his bluff. The board directed Hoban to "furnish him, in conformity to drawing given to John Kearney by Wm. Thornton - in the ancient Ionic stile, but with volutes like the modern ionic." That hardly proves that anyone previously relied on Thornton for drawings. That passage in the proceedings was written by Thornton himself, Harris pp. 488-90.

11. Jefferson to White, 2 July 1802; White to Jefferson, 13 July 1802

12.WT to Commrs. 17 April 1799; Chambers, Treatise, vol. II, pp. 368. 408, 425;

13. Bryan, pp. 316-6; Commrs to Hoban, 18 April 1799, Commrs. records.

14. WT to GW, 19 April 1799; April 27, 1799 entry in notebook or Almanac in Thornton's papers in Library of Congress, reel 7; for problems the board's surveyors faced see Robert King, Sr., to Jefferson 5 June 1802; Tayloe to GW 29 April 1799; on horse purchase see Pickering letter in "Clifden" ad in Maryland Advertiser 10 April 1800, on timing of Tortola payments see Mrs. Thornton's diary 17 February p. 108, 14 April p. 129; Baltimore Advertiser 13 April 1799. 

15. Lovering to Nicholson, December 4, 1798, Nicholson papers; on Dorsey see Ridout p. 71, and Papenfuse, Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature , vol. 426, p. 279

16. Lovering to Nicholson, 27 December 1798 and 4 January 1799.

17. Lovering to Nicholson, 22 January 1799.

18. Lovering to Nicholson 26 March, 10 & 17 April 1799. For another view of Lovering’s debt problems see Tunnicliff to Nicholson, 9 April 1799.

19. Lovering to Nicholson 22 April 1799.

20. Sarson, Steven,  The Tobacco-Plantation South in the Early American Atlantic World, pp. 11-2.

21. Law to GW, 25 April 1799, Law's April letter to Washington was undated, but marked received April 5. However, the modern editors of Washington's papers cite internal evidence for dating the letter as sent on April 25; Commrs to Lovering 9 May 1799 Commrs. records.

22. Harris, p. 585.

23. WT to GW 1 September 1799; 30 November 1788, GW to Henry Lee, GW to William Fitzhugh 5 August 1798

24. Lear to WT, 12 September 1799, Harris, pp. 508-9.

25. Mrs. Thornton’s Diary p. 92; Harris p. 585

26. Commrs to Adams, 21 November 1799, Commrs. records; White to Adams 13 December 1799 (the editors of the on-line papers transcribed "Taylor" but the letter clearly reads "Tayloe;") Stoddert to Commrs., 3 January 1800, Commrs to Adams, 7 January 1800, Commrs. records; White to Adams, 15 January 1800; Washington Federalist, 28 February 1807 p. 3.

27. Harris p. 585; Diary p. 215.

28. Ridout, Building the Octagon, pp. 29-30, 61.

29. Mrs. Thornton’s Diary, p. 102; Bryan, History of National Capital, vol. 1, p. 346; WT to Madison, 2 September 1823.

30. Stoddert to WT, 20 January 1800, WT to Stoddert, 30 January 1800, Harris p. 532-3.

31. National Intelligencer, ad dated 1 May 1800; Alexandria Advertiser 1804; National Intelligencer 1801.

32. John Tayloe letterbook, quoted in Kamoie dissertation p. 200 footnote; Callcott, Margaret, editor, ...Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, p.29

33.  Natl. Intelligencer 8 May 1801; Alexandria Daily Advertiser, vol. 4, no. 1060, page 4, 11 August 1804 ; American Commer. Adv. 17 June 1809; Poulson's Amer. Daily 23 September1809; Diary p. 181; Baltimore City Directory. 1810, p. 117; AMT notebook vol. 3 image 124

34. Diary, pp. 116-7; Cohen pp. 117-8, already cited in Chapter Ten.

35. lots Mrs. Thornton's notebooks vol 3 Image 38, 75, 141 (for sale of another slave); National Intelligencer. ad dated 16 May 1808;

36. National Intelligencer 5 April 1802 p. 3.

37. Washington Federalist, 29 April 1803 p. 4; Mrs. Thornton's n notebook 1807 vol. 3, image 2 

38. Thornton v. Wynn 25 US 183; Thornton v. The Bank of Washington; Rattler Broadside, downloaded but unsourced.

39. On Tayloe's health see JQA diary 8 November 1821; Clark, "Dr. and Mrs. Thornton", p. 182; in AMT papers, Mrs. Thornton noted WT's activities during racing weeks which usually occurred in the fall; on Tayloe's importance to banks see JQA diary 17 February 1819; on Thornton's debts see Chapter 13 footnote 22; on militia rank see Thornton to Tayloe, 8 June 1813 Madison Papers LOC; on Hadfield see Julia King, George Hadfield: Architect of the Federal City.