Chapter 11: Rivaling Tayloe

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

That Thornton regretted the death of the General was obvious. The entire nation mourned. However, Thornton had more to mourn. The General had adopted his Capitol design and made him a commissioner. He lost his patron who had opened the way to fame. Yet, he had not been asked to design his Capitol Hill houses. Of course, Thornton knew of a more coveted commission that was to come. He had fancied that he had walked over Square 21 with the General and discussed the houses they would one day build. How easily he could picture another walk with the General over the square. If still alive, he might have asked Thornton to design his house. What evidence is there that Thornton clung to a future that could never be? Sometime after 1802, as disappointments accumulated which emphasized the catastrophic loss of his patron, he wrote a short memoir that embellished his reaction to the death of the General. He claimed that on December 15, 1799, he tried but failed to get permission to restore the General back to life.  

In her 1800 diary and subsequent notebooks, Mrs. Thornton never alluded to the aborted restoration of the General. She did notice Mr. Tayloe's house rising in her entry for January 7: "a beautiful clear day.... After dinner we walked to take a look at Mr. Tayloe's house which begins to make a handsome appearance." C. M. Harris counts that and the other seven walks in which she mentioned the house, without commenting on its appearance, as evidence that Thornton kept tabs on the house he designed. By the way, the Thorntons would have another reason to walk down New York Avenue toward the Potomac River. They owned lots in the Square 171 just below Square 170 where the Octagon was being built. In the spring, he would have it planted with buckwheat and fenced.(1)

 

The Octagon in 1807

On January 7, he had a special reason to look at the house. The board received a letter from Navy Secretary Stoddert reporting that the president planned to ship his furniture to the city in June. Adams told Stoddert to tell the board that he insisted on moving into the President's house. He would not be told where he might have to stay and jumped to the conclusion that the commissioners wanted to put him into George Washington's Capitol Hill houses.

Alexander 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 of the work on 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. 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. He wasn't taking a walk to check on a house he had designed.(2)

Harris and others cite an entry Mrs. Thornton wrote five days after their January visit to the Octagon as evidence that Thornton designed Law's house. The Thorntons took Thomas and Patsy Peter to see it, the General's houses and the Capitol. Thomas Peter was an executor of the General's will and would influence decisions about the houses and where to put the General's body. Of course, Thornton wanted it in the Capitol. 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.(3)

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."(4)

But how does one account for Mrs. Thornton's criticism of the oval drawing room's low ceiling? Her husband likely informed her criticism of the room. In 1797, Thornton had written about the yet unbuilt oval rooms over 100 feet long  "full of broad prominent lights and broad deep shadows." His elevation's highlight was a stately dome. He had been struck by Lovering's ingenious design, but fitting oval rooms into a five story townhouse was alien to his sensibilities.

However, while his merely looking at houses cannot prove that he designed them, there is no doubt that in early 1800, Thornton had an itch for drawing plans. On January 4, 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 by a fire in another room where glaziers were working, "Dr. T-n laid out an Oval, round which is to be the communication to the gallery of the Senate room." She did not note his doing anything like that again. The glaziers were working to close the building so work could continue inside during the winter. Hoban and his skilled workers would build the interior rooms. His drawing an oval on the floor was an exercise for his own benefit, but for what purpose? To help him visualize setting a tomb in the Capitol under the dome? Or, setting oval rooms in a house?(5) 

In 1793, he had anticipated a monument for the Great Man under the dome. On January 6, he wrote to Congressman John Marshall, who chaired the joint congressional committee planning the official reaction to the General's death, to hurry the completion of the Capitol to accommodate the monument. He had no design on  paper yet but, as he would confess in a letter he would write to Blodget, it was ever in his mind. In that February 23 letter, he  sketched a "massy rock," inspired by the monument to Peter the Great in St. Petersburg, 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.(6)

Thornton's "massy" tomb

Blodget had no say in the matter, but he was in Philadelphia where congress began debating what to do. No one there, other than Blodget, thought of asking Thornton. Indeed, on January 20, Stoddert wrote to Thornton but not about the Capitol or tomb. He castigated 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 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. Two days after he wrote that letter to Stoddert, Mrs. Thornton noted that he designed a house for Square 171 and thus in full view of the President's house.(7)

"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 added: "I began to copy on a larger scale the elevation and ground plan of the house."(8)

Six weeks later, Thornton drew another house design. On March 12, she wrote: "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." Thornton spent the afternoon "drawing the plans for Mr. Carroll." Ridout ignores Thornton's design for his own house and cites Thornton's design for Carroll as evidence that he designed a house for Tayloe in 1797, 1798 or 1799.(13) 

However, what Thornton drew on February 1 proves that he didn't design the Octagon. Mrs. Thornton's diary told a simple story. Thornton 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, that is thought to be his first take on the Octagon design, is actually his final design for a house on Lot 17 in Square 171. Thornton designed a house to rival Tayloe's.

A slope to the south toward the river precluded building on the western half of Square 171 until the area was leveled. A house on lot 17 at the angled intersection of New York Avenue and 17th Street NW would face the President's house. 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

Thornton's design for Lot 17 in Square 171 would not have worked on Lot 8 in Square 170. An oval room in the rear of a house on Lot 8 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. Thornton owned the lots southwest of Lot 17 and could preserve a view looking down the slope to the Potomac River. The large semi-circular portico on the front side of Thornton's design invited eyes looking down from the south portico of the President's house.

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

Thornton's habit of studying floor plans and elevations in books before drawing his own suggests that he asked Lovering for one of his preliminary plans for the Octagon. If he had followed the same pattern of trying to get a contract with Law and Tayloe as he would with Stier, then Lovering 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. That explains the other floor plan in Thornton's paper that 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. Lovering was trying to get work based on his experience as a designer, not merely on his experience as a builder. That Thornton studied the plan only to design his own house would not bother Lovering. He knew Thornton might pay him for estimating the cost of the building if not actually building it. 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, thus prompting him to place his ad.(10)

What Thornton drew adapts Lovering's configuration to different terrain with a house less convenient for a family but befitting his grandiose ideas to bring eclat to the city. By the way, it would also put Tayloe's house in the shade, so to speak. But why didn't his wife say more about such a consequential design in her diary?

W. B. Bryan offers an explanation for her lack of enthusiasm for the house on Square 171. 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. (11)

However, she didn't allude to a lack of funds. She noted that he spent the day designing his house "to build one day or another." She stated the obvious which meant the opposite. This was not a project that might be done in the future, but couldn't be done at that time. Money was always a factor but in this case Thornton's preposterous design or motives for building a house uncongenial to anyone who had to live in it made its realization equally unlikely no matter the day. Three days later she copied the floor plan and elevation without describing them, and never mentioned the house again. That the floor plan wound up in his papers and the elevation didn't perhaps attests to a striking vaulted colonnade and dome which made it worthy for gifting or sale after the doctor died.

An entry in her diary later that month proved that she could get excited by her husband's designs. On February 27, "Dr. T- received a note from Mr. Law enclosing a rough Sketch of a plan for a Stables & c. behind his house which is five stories before and three behind, which Dr. T- had promised to lay down for him as he had suggested the ideas - The Stables and Carriage house are to be built at the bottom of the lot and the whole yard to be covered over at one Story height, and gravelled over, so as to have a flat terrass from the Kitchen story all over the extremity of the lot.... Dr. T- engaged in the evening drawing Mr. Law's plan."(12) Two weeks later, she chronicled his house design for Carroll.

Both projects were relatively ambitious. While it's not certain that Law used Thornton's design, his stable was able to board 60 horses. Carroll's double houses were as ambitious as the General's. However, given that Mrs. Thornton proved she could write about the genesis of house designs, why didn't she note, in her matter of fact way, that her husband used Lovering's design as a model? Unfortunately, when Lovering came to their house midday on August 21, 1800, she was laconic: "Dr. T. waiting with Mr. Lovering to get into the parlor of which I had the key." If her husband used Lovering's specimen as a model for his house on Square 171, then he understood that Lovering designed Tayloe's house. One can imagine his criticisms of that house in the same vein that he criticized Law's, which he shared with his wife. However, as will be shown, by August 31, she had a very low regard for Tayloe thanks to a matter regarding horses, not houses. That Lovering was associated with Tayloe lessened her interest in him.

Judging by her diary, in early 1800 Thornton and Tayloe were friends. In January 1800,  Tayloe summoned Thornton to the Union Tavern in Georgetown. The former 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. Then 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. It would appear that the two gentlemen became friends. Ridout suggests the Octagon design was the catalyst. But at the Union Tavern, they evidently also talked about horses .(20)

On March 12, the day her husband got the note about designing a house for Daniel Carroll, he also made preparation for sending his slave Joe Key, Randall, a jockey borrowed from another breeder, and Driver to Dumfries, Virginia. They "took with them cornbread and meat to save tavern expenses."(21)

In 1800, Thornton entered the informal Maryland brotherhood of breeders. Page 4 of the April 7, 1800, Federal Gazette and Baltimore Daily Advertisers was full of its doings. An advertisement offered the stud services of "The Celebrated Running Horse Clifden, imported from England last autumn by William Thornton, esquire, of the city of Washington...." On the same page, a notice from the commissioners was signed by Thornton. But Tayloe dominated the page. There was a longer ad offering the services of Mufti, "imported last August by John Tayloe, esquire, of Mount Airy;" also a letter from Tayloe certifying the pedigree of Dunganon and that he sold him "out of training for 500 Guineas;" and a long ad about Ranger noted that he had beaten Ridgely's Medley who "ran a dead heat with Major Tayloe's Leviathan, who is thought the best horse in Virginia."(22)

Mrs. Thornton calculated that they owned 23 horses. Some were carriage horses and farm horses but thanks to her husband's imports, there were also race horses, and they would breed more. With Clifden in Hagerstown and Driver being trained at Mount Airy. The Thorntons expected to make money and they needed it. As more federal officials came to the city they entertained more. Thornton soon realized the men doing less work than he was were making twice his salary. He set his eyes on becoming the next Treasurer of the United States making $3,000 a year. Looking for new sources of income relieved the Thorntons of a nagging worry. No money had yet come from Tortola that year and Thornton needed a loan from Thomas Law to cover a bounced check and hefty penalty.

Despite being pinched for money, on June 18 the Thorntons hosted a dinner for three of the four cabinet officers and other worthies. In 1794, Thornton had written to Lettsom that as a commissioners he was almost as powerful the secretaries of War and Treasury. However, the cabinet was not unanimously impressed with Thornton. Treasury secretary Oliver Wolcott missed the dinner but soon met Thornton. He 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."(26) 

After describing the dinner her diary, Mrs. Thornton confided some bad news. 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 and otherwise empty 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? 

Mrs. Thornton had a knack of seeming underwhelmed by her husband's attainments. But she didn't completely ignore them. On August 4, 1800, while they were at Mount Vernon, she noted that "Dr. T. and Mr. Lewis played at backgammon till tea. After breakfast - Mrs. Lewis, the young Ladies and I went in Mrs. Washington's carriage ( a coachee and four) and Mr. Lewis and Dr. T. in ours, to see Mr. Lewis's hill where he is going to build his farm, mill and distillery. Dr. T. has given him a plan for his house. He has a fine situation, all in woods, from which he will have an extensive and beautiful view." She described the scene but not her husband's plan, but she did mention it. Finished three years later an lacking oval rooms, C. M. Harris has no interest in it: "the house as it appears today has no resemblance to Thornton's other designs."(31)

Still, her being upset at Tayloe for Driver's plight might have cheated historians of her reporting on what her husband did for Tayloe. In late November, she noted her husband's interest in chimney pieces for Tayloe's house that came from London. He told her that she had to see them. She saw them a few days later and said nothing about the house. 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. Harris 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.(28)

Chimney piece in 1896

Meanwhile, Tayloe lost his election for a congressional seat by 300 votes, but it wasn't close. There were only 1100 voters. Defeat must have stung because he arranged a better way to add eclat to his making the federal city his family's winter quarters.  In December 1801, he announced in a newspaper ad that "on or about" January 10, 1802, he would become a resident of the City of Washington. That meant his house was effectively finished, but that was not the point of the ad. In it, he announced that he invited a match race with anyone and "can be accommodate, for his own sum, not less than $1500." William O. Sprigg responded and a match race for $3000 was scheduled for May 13. A reprise of the 1797 match race that had a stake of 500 Guineas had to excite gentlemen in the city.(35)

Thornton could not accept the challenge. Driver was no shape to race. Thornton blamed Tayloe. Beginning in early April and continuing through June, a long newspaper announcement  offered Driver as a stud and suggested that Tayloe ruined a horse that would surely have been one of the greatest racers:

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...."(36)

Tayloe was new to the city and disposed to make friends with all local rivals on the turf. For years, he had offered to improve blood lines in America and train and race horses ultimately for every sportsman's benefit. He founded the Washington Jockey Club. Thornton's complaint undermined all that but rather then challenge Thornton's version, Tayloe made a peace offering. On March 7, 1803, Mrs. Thornton noted that "Joe returned in the evening with a horse called Wild Medley." Then an ad offering the services of Wild Medley ran in the Washington Federalist, but it was not written by Thornton. It noted that the horse was bought in Virginia by "W. Thornton." The ad included a testimony signed by Tayloe certifying the wonders of a filly got by Wild Medley that handily beat Tayloe's horse. Another worthy attested that Tayloe bought two foals got by Wild Medley for $1200. Another lamented that its greatest horse had left Gloucester County. Nestled along the Virginia shore at the wide mouth of the Potomac River, it is certain that Thornton did not ride down there; he likely was not acquainted with any gentlemen there. Tayloe probably bought the horse, had it sent to Dumfries where Joe Key had dropped off Driver in 1800, and then Key brought Wild Medley to his new pasture for his pleasure and Thornton's profit in the City of Washington.(37)

That year, 1803, Thornton's long friendship with Tayloe began. There were rough patches. In 1806, Tayloe did not buy stock in Thornton's get rich scheme, the North Carolina Gold Company. In 1813, when both were in the horse militia, Col. Tayloe balked at trying to persuade President Madison to make Capt. Thornton his aide with the rank of colonel to liaison with the militia. In 1814, as Tayloe lay ill and exhausted in a local hotel after hurrying military messages down and up the Virginia bank of the Potomac, Thornton claimed command of the burned and exhausted city. When he argued with the president over the right of the people to surrender the city even though the government had returned to it, Col. James Monroe, who was at the president's side, threatened any citizen who stepped forward with a bayonet in the back. Mrs. Thornton resumed her diary during the crisis, and never mentioned the Octagon as it became the First Family's new home. Thornton did not design the Octagon.

Save for his ad offering specimens, Lovering did not allude to his work for Tayloe, let alone publicize it. No one in that day bruited about who designed houses. 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."(18)

In his advertisements he did not reveal what he had designed or built. 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. 

Thornton was likely aware of the struggle of practical architects, and that, as well as his gentleman's creed, kept him from making a career out of his talents. However, the demand for Thornton's architectural talents was short lived. Mrs. Thornton did not assess motives in her diary. She didn't note the obvious reason why Law and Carroll involved her husband in their projects. They were flattering him in hopes that as a commissioner he would help them. 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.(15)

Latrobe's Baltimore Cathedral

Meanwhile, 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 that congress would soon abolish the board of commissioners. 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.(16)

Carroll's Row

In his quest for fame, Thornton had to rely on his Capitol design. In that regard, just before Driver came back lame, he suffered a defeat. When he visited the city in June 1800, President Adams promised to drop in and see it, but at the appointed hour, his chariot and four roared by the F Street house without stopping.
Only an anonymous letter "from the City of Washington" published in a New England newspaper 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.(23)

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...." She did refer to his drawing an oval on the Capitol floor on January 4. The same week he drew the design for Lot 17, she described his working on his Capitol elevation, and that she helped him. As for details, on February 15, 1800, Mrs. Thornton wrote that Hoban called on her husband after dinner to "consult about  the Capitals of the pillars...." 

In a footnote to the Papers of William Thornton, Harris highlights the commissioners' proceedings that 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. Harris offers this as proof, as Thornton claimed in various letters, that he did indeed inform working drawings for the Capitol.(24)

However, Thornton exhibited a fascination with the process of making ornaments that compelled him to focus his genius elsewhere. Stoddert had asked him to improve the outside of the President' house. 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.(30) 

More likely because of his personality, but possibly because it was the logical outcome of his posturing since July 1793, Thornton did not busy himself preparing the Capitol for congress. The perfection of the design he handed to the commissioners in March 1793 was a sufficient contribution. Thus, in 1800, it behooved Thornton to assure anyone who asked that the the design for the Capitol was set down to every detailed. In his own mind, he had undone the wilful errors. 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."(25)

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.

Only on one issue did he exhibit the frenetic nervousness of a projector who sensed his time had come. Beginning in October, he worked again on the Capitol elevation in his parlor and in December, he had his wife working on it while he was away on Capitol Hill likely lobbying congress. In December 1800, the city's new newspaper, the National Intelligencer, printed the letter about the General's tomb that Thornton wrote to Blodget in February. 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.(29)

Commissioner Scott died on Christmas Day, making Thornton the senior member of the board. His colleague White had still not moved to the city giving Thornton ample opportunity to persuade President Adams' appointees, William Cranch, for a month, and then Tristram Dalton, to do what he wanted. White still handled the boards complex legal problems on ownership of disputed lots and repayments of loans from the State of Maryland, but evidently without White's knowledge, Thornton changed Hoban's contract so that would superintend the public buildings until they were completed. Presumably, Thornton expected Hoban to build his design of the South Wing, Grand Vestibule and dome. Of course, more building required congressional authorization and appropriations, and the president's approval. 

Then thanks to the House members' distress at how they were situated upstairs in the North Wing, 1801 seemed destined to mark the apotheosis of Thornton as an architect. Before adjourning after Jefferson's Inauguration on March 4, 1801, the House authorized a chamber of its own as soon as possible. The commissioners ordered a temporary meeting place built by December on the site of the South Wing. 

Thornton's original chamber for the Representents, as he had called them, soon lost relevance once his semicircular projections were eliminated. An elliptical chamber was an obvious second choice, and Hallet's choice too. The board decided that while the chamber to be built before the congress returned would be temporary, its foundation and walls would be incorporated into the permanent South Wing. That meant the temporary House chamber had be elliptical. Indeed, in the board's letters it was referred to as the "elliptical room."

However, Thornton did not sense nor seize the moment. If Thornton had indeed made the drawings that he claimed he had provided for the North Wing, he need only draw the elliptical walls of the basement floor of the South Wing where in his plan he envisioned a colonnaded elliptical chamber on the first floor supported by arcades. Instead, 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. Hoban drew a three plans and estimated that the cheapest temporary chamber would cost $5,000 but only $1,000 of it would have to be torn down when the South Wing was built.

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 one story for the moment. The board hired Lovering as the contractor. He had designed and supervised construction of oval rooms in Law's and Tayloe's houses. The Seventh Congress convened on December 7, 1801, in what Thornton called "the elliptical room." Even though it was 90 by 72 feet, members soon called it the "oven," either because it was stuffy or its contours resembled a Dutch oven. 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.(32)

While he did shrink from putting an indelible stamp on the building that the president and congress would notice, Thornton relished giving precise orders to those who did the design. For another example, Thornton arranged for James Madison to rent the just built house next door to his. He shared that news decisively. 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. Our house has only one." 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. Of course, superintending architects usually work on behalf of the property owner by seeing that building and supply contracts are fulfilled and the building matched contracted specifications. In his letter to Madison, Thornton boasted of redesigning the building. He implied that the property owner and builder Nicholas Voss who had been himself a contractor doing work on other houses, planned a third story with only two rooms. 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.

Why Jefferson appreciated Thornton is understandable. The doctor was a walking encyclopedia. For a friendship that began in a Philadelphia boarding house in 1787, very few letters passed between Thornton and Madison. However, assuming that when one writes letters to friends imparting new information, one still touches old chords then Thornton charmed Madison with his humor, whirlwind of activity, and air of confidence bordering on vanity

In his August  letter to Madison, he closed by declining an invitation to visit Madison in Virginia because he was too busy. Thornton explained: "like Cadmus of old, after I have presumed to invent Letters for the Americans, I was sent hither to build their great City!

There’s a Stroke of Vanity—

It lives in all my Doings!———

To descend, I who lately was nothing less than a Commissioner or Edile, am now reduced to a High-way Man. You will remember we are engaged in making Highways. The City improves rapidly. 

An edile was the equivalent to a city commissioner in Roman times. Cadmus, the hero in Greek mythology responsible for the alphabet also founded the city of Thebes. Thornton said nothing about the "elliptical room" then being built under the supervision of the ediles. Nor did he say anything about the houses being built in the city. If he had indeed been Tayloe's friend, he would have likely known that due to their mutual interest in Virginia thoroughbreds, Madison was also Tayloe's friend.(33)

That said, Thornton was not cultivating Madison in order to put a shine on his talents as an architect or city planner. In a September 8 letter he informed Madison that the Treasurer of the United States announced his retirement. Thornton asked his old friend to help him get the job. When congressmen returned to the city in the fall of 1801, President Jefferson appointed a Virginia M. D. who was also a Revolutionary War veteran.

Thornton shifted his focus, and in a way that should have prompted him to brag on talent for architecture. In April, toward the end of its session, congress finally got around to doing what every critic of the board thought it would have done once it convened in the city, it abolished the board as of June 1, 1802. Its duties would be assumed by the new Superintendent of the City, to be appointed by the president. With Scott dead, his replacement a Federalist, and White anxious for a judgeship, Thornton had to expect that he would be asked to become the superintendent, certainly his wife did.

Jefferson faced several decisions in regards to surveying and selling building lots in a way that would finance completion of the Capitol. On April 17, Thornton sent a long letter to the president addressing the problem of a Water Street running along the entire waterfront of the city. Commissioner White had already opined to the president that Thornton's ideas would "carry a Water Street 80 feet wide through the whole extent of the Potowmac and Eastern Branch, one hundred feet distant from the Channel, leaving all the space between that and the shore which in some instances I am inclined to believe is not less than one thousand feet, under water until it shall be filled up. I do not see the propriety of this,..." Before he got Thornton's letter, the president drafted a resolution to only require Water Street to be adjacent to the high water mark. Thus, Thornton's grand ideas, for which he pointed to the Bordeaux waterfront as a good example, may have wearied the president. After he got the letter, he invited Dr. and Mrs. Thornton and Mrs. Brodeau to one of his famous dinners, but he did not reply to his letter. The president made Thomas Munroe, the board's clerk, the new Superintendent on June 1. Mrs. Thornton asked him why he didn't appoint her husband. The president assured her that the job was temporary. Munroe held the job until 1815.(34)

 

  Chapter 12

 Footnotes for Chapter 12

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

2. 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.

3. Mrs. Thornton's diary

4. Harris    ; Scott, Creating Capitol Hill  

5. Diary 

6. WT to Marshall 6 January 1800; WT to Blodget 23 February 1800

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

8. Diary

9. Ridout 

10. National Intelligencer, ad dated 1 May 1800; Ridout

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

12. Diary

13. Diary

14. Natl. Intelligencer

15.

16.

17. Diary  lovering

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

19. 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

20. Diary ; Ridout

21.

22.

23. Diary

24. Bryan

25. Jefferson to WT  30 April 1800; reply 7 May 1800; Harris    ; Diary

26. Wolcott

27. diary p. 106; on timing of Tortola payments see Mrs. Thornton's diary 17 February p. 108, 14 April p. 129; Baltimore Advertiser 13 April 1799.

28. Harris p. 585; Diary p. 215. 

29. Diary p. 223;

30. Diary  andrews

31. DD, Diary pp. 176-7; Harris pp. 582, 591; WT to Jefferson 27 May 1817

32.  Jefferson to Commrs. 

33. WT to Madison 15 August 1801 

34.  WT to Jefferson 17 April 1802; Jefferson enclosure 14 April 1802;  White to Jefferson 13 April 1802   

35. Tayloe ad  ; Sprigg ad

36. Driver ad

37. AMT notebook Vol. 1 image 133  

38.

39.

40.

41. National Intelligencer 7 September 1814; on-line copy of Thornton's letter to the newspaper at http://www.myoutbox.net/poni1814.htm; Journal of Columbia Historical Society, 1916, "Mrs. Thorntos Diary Capture of Washington" pp. 177, 181; Monroe to Hay, 7 September 1814 ; National Intelligencer, September 8, 1814, on-line copy at Dobyns http://www.myoutbox.net/poni1814.htm; Op. cit. September 10, 1814 on-line copy at Dobyns http://www.myoutbox.net/poblake.htm ; AMT papers, Box 4 reel 1 Image 7; WT to Col. WT, 24 June 1815, Gilder Lehrman Institute, (no longer available without registered log-in)

42  WT to Madison 3 March 1817

 

 

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, also 

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. 

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

DD Intellencer 1 February 1802

31.  Alexandria Advertiser 1804; National Intelligencer 1801.

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

EE, Madison account with WT 5 December 1809

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.