Chapter 14: Latrobe v. Thornton

Chapter Fourteen: Latrobe v. Thornton

The novelty of seeing the two largest buildings in the nation, and both faced with stone, in a largely uninhabited rolling countryside evidently made it difficult to focus on residential houses. There were letters home that did mention the unfinished development on South Capitol Street inhabited by blacks and the crowded boarding houses near the Capitol. No recorded reaction to the Octagon remains. Of course, it wasn't quite finished and not open for entertaining during that period 1800 and 1801 when the city got its initial close scrutiny. Finally in 1804, a letter rated the Octagon in comparison with all other houses in the city. To save money, a senator proposed putting congress in the President's house and the president into a private house. Benjamin Latrobe opined that if the bill passed, only one house in the city would do for the president, Tayloe's.(1)

He didn't allude to who designed it. In 1804, the feud between Latrobe and Thornton, that would reach a climax in 1808, was just beginning. If Latrobe had an inkling that Thornton designed the Octagon that feud might not have started. At any time during the dispute, if Thornton had revealed that he had designed it, the feud might have ended. As he lost control of the design of the Capitol and Latrobe impugned his abilities as an architect, Thornton harped on his experience in Europe and his holding honorable offices. He attacked all that Latrobe designed or built. Taking credit for Octagon would have better proved his standing as an architect.

When Latrobe first met Thornton, a mansion built for a very rich man was on his mind. They first met in April 1798. Latrobe was then on his way to and from Richmond where he designed a prison and Philadelphia where he designed a bank.

In the page of his journal before he described his visit with Thornton, Latrobe wrote a long critique of the house L'Enfant designed and almost finished in Philadelphia for Robert Morris. Having been told in Virginia that it was the greatest house ever built, Latrobe ridiculed what he saw as a faux chateau monstrosity with a mansard roof.

L'Enfant's folly likely primed Latrobe to appreciate the Neo-classical simplicity of Thornton's Capitol elevation. In his diary entry just after ridiculing L'Enfant, he confided that Thornton's design "though... faulty in external details, is one of the first designs of modern times." He added that he offered "to give to the doctor a drawing in perspective of his design which I trusted would convince him of his errors." Thornton would remember only the compliment.(2)

At that time, Thornton was still a commissioner, Hadfield's job was in jeopardy, and Latrobe would have been a fool not to anticipate that Thornton might have something to do with his replacement. In Philadelphia, he had previously seen a Hallet floor plan in the possession of James Greenleaf and Volney's sketch of Thornton's floor plan.

Thornton's elevation was likely a pleasure to finally see. Thornton had a knack for making friends quickly but there is no evidence that the two became friends even though they shared interests in botany and mineralogy. Latrobe would soon be elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Latrobe did not cast his genius toward the federal city until early 1800. Thornton was still a commissioner. But in Philadelphia, his name was not in the conversation about what needed to be done in the federal city.  When Latrobe designed a mausoleum for George Washington to be placed on high ground just southeast of President's House, what plan Thornton might have wasn't in the conversation in Philadelphia. 

In his 1793 Capitol design, Thornton had noted there would be space for a monument under the dome. In a February 1800 letter to Blodget, he sketched "a fine group of figures on a well composed massy rock." The bodies of the General and his wife would "be deposited in a place prepared in the rock, in the region where Time and the rest of the figures are grouped, signifying that tho' time has taken possession of his body, yet Eternity has taken his spirit out of the reach of time."(3)

There is evidence that Thornton did not like to discuss his design of the Capitol. He kept its elevation in their parlor. In 1800, Mrs. Thornton noted the visitors who came to see it, but not their reactions. In his 1799 letter to White attacking Thornton, Redmond Purcell jibed that "the original plan is hung as a trophy of science in his parlor." So much to say, despite Thornton's lack of practical knowledge about building, he didn't want to discuss any changes to it. His design was an untouchable exhibition of his genius.(4)

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. He wanted the presiding officer's chair to be placed so people could walk behind it and not be forced to walk between the chair and where senators sat. He thought it "may be done ornamentally even, by making an alcove etc. for the chair, behind which may be the passage." He also wanted a balustrade in the back of the senate placed so that only a single person could walk back and forth. More walkers caused a "great disturbance." Then he suggested having two balustrades crossed "to form a bar at the door in a kind of pew by itself." He noted that the House of Commons has a Speaker's chamber "which is a great convenience. Even a closet will do as a substitute." Then he discussed where that could be placed to advantage.(5)

One would think Thornton would jump at the opportunity to go back and forth with the man he hoped would be the next president. The day he got the letter, April 26, he began working on his design for Bishop Carroll's church. That gave him another reason to discuss the accommodation of people gathered in a room. However, in his May 7 reply, Thornton assured the vice president that what he had suggested was "so nearly consonant to my plans that what I had directed will I flatter my self meet with your approbation." He said no more and turned to  the always lively scientific topic of the day, the deadly yellow fever epidemics.(6)

President Adams visited the city for nine days in June and Thornton joined every social occasion in his honor. He promised to stop in and see the Capitol elevation, but on the appointed day, his coach and four roared by without stopping. Four days after he left, Mrs. Thornton oversaw preparation for a dinner for twelve including three cabinet secretaries: State, War and Navy. Washington was now their home. In a sense, at that dinner, Thornton reached the pinnacle of his career. In a 1794 letter to Lettsom, he had explained that "the trust reposed" in the commissioners "is so great that I do not know of a more extensive power in any offices of our government, except the President, or perhaps the Secretary of State, Treasury and War."(6A)

Mrs. Thornton did not mention if they saw the Capitol elevation. The social ordeal probably exhausted her and on that same day came the bad news about Driver. However, there is other evidence that her husband was not peddling his Capitol design.

Judging from what Treasury secretary Wolcott wrote to his wife, Thornton's expansive genius was not focused on the Capitol. Wolcott missed the dinner but Thornton soon called on him and boasted that the city would have "a  population of 160,000, as a matter of course, in a few years." (Sometime between 1870 and 1880 the population of the District of Columbia passed 160,000.) Then Wolcott lumped Thornton with other locals: "Their ignorance of the rest of the world, and their delusion with respect to their own prospects, are without parallel." By prospects he likely meant a rise in the value of lots, of which Thornton had just bought more in the commissioners' latest sale.(6B)

As the city filled with important men, Thornton was not the only local land speculator on tenterhooks. In January, Stoddert had privately commanded Thornton to make the President's house suitable for a gentleman and his family by improving the surrounding grounds so as to  hide or distract the view of "that large, naked, ugly looking building." Thornton could not muster enough hired slaves to do much in that regard and the board had a Presidential stables built well away from the building. By the fall, Thornton found a contractor with exquisite taste to provide wall paper, and a plasterer in Baltimore who could also make stucco ornaments. Thornton suggested the designs. On November 1, the chariot and four with the President Adams and his secretary rattled by Thornton's house on its way to the President's house. Exactly how the president expressed his displeasure is not known. But that day, the board sent a note to the plasterer to "take down figures at the president's house intended to represent man or beast" and replace them with plaster urns. Thinking ahead, Thornton took the decorator under his wing and tried to show samples of his ornaments to Jefferson. As Mrs. Thornton explained in her diary: "Mr. Andrews came with Dr. T. and brought some samples of his composition ornaments. Dr. T. wanted to show Mr. Jefferson." But Jefferson did not drop in as he promised. Thornton saw him a few days later but Mrs. Thornton did not know or note what transpired.(7)

In late 1800, as bureaucrats settled in homes and congressmen looked for boarding houses, Thornton resumed work on his Capitol elevation. On October 11 "Dr. T had the head ache in the morning drawing at his plan of the Capitol." On December 19 "I began to copy the ground plan." On December 20, she "did all I could with Dr T's directions to the plan of the Capitol."(8) All the stress likely arose from his vain hope that by showing how the General's tomb in his "massy mountain" could sit under the dome, his design of the building's center would be built. His letter to Blodget describing his memorial was printed in the city's new newspaper, the National Intelligencer. He came up with an estimate of how much a memorial under the dome would cost.  However with a change in administrations, with all due respect for the General, congress lost interest in a memorial.

Even though he well knew the General's reason for building houses on Capitol hill, and had, in a small way, helped Thomas Law and Daniel Carroll prepare for the city's sudden increase in population, he seemed oblivious to the impending housing crisis beyond offering a room in his house to Secretary of State John Marshall.(9) A year later, he volunteered to find a house for Secretary of State James Madison. Jefferson had enlisted the help of Leonard Harbaugh, a builder who had been in the city since 1792. Thornton got wind of that and, in Madison's name and without Madison's permission rented the yet to be built house next door for the Madisons. 

He didn’t design the house, but in a letter to Madison he claimed he ordered alterations: "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."

C. M. Harris makes much of this as evidence of Thornton's interest in house design. Once again he "supervised the construction." Harris equates it with the interest he took in the General's houses, and suggests he did even more for Madison: "[He] made alterations in the one Madison had rented to accommodate the particular requirements of the Madison household."But one has to wonder, did the experienced builder need to be told that the size of bedrooms in a residential house should vary and that the third story and basement should be divided into rooms?(10)

When explaining why Thornton "...made no attempts to oversee the execution of his own design [of the Capitol] or to pursue a career in architecture," Harris argued that "he was sensitive to the bias against professional men shared by most of the American gentry, the class of substantial land holders to which one part of him belonged, but he also preferred and was best suited for a broader field of endeavor." That explanation applied to the aftermath of his winning the design contest misses the mark. The year after, he suffered a series of frustrations and offered to throw in his lot with the French Terror. In 1801, he had a firmer footing in the gentry and acted accordingly. Within a month of making Madison his future neighbor, he asked for a favor to double his salary. Through their mutual interest in horses, he knew that the current Treasurer of the United States was retiring.(11)

Otherwise, Thornton made fun of his work as a commissioner. In a letter to Madison he seemed giddy: "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. In a letter to the president, likely written its senior member, the commissioners boasted: "The very dry and hot weather that we have so long experienced, diminished much the progress of our Labourers, and we have now changed entirely our mode of operating, by which we can execute as much in one day as we have done in two—We have got strong ploughs, and two thousand Dollars will finish, we hope, the roads you have recommended to our attention in such a manner as will make them convenient and good." The president didn't reply to the somewhat flippant regard for his orders.(12)

In April 1802, congress abolished Thornton's job effective June 1. In an April 17, 1802 letter to the president, Thornton dusted off his plans for Water Street, wharves and water lots.(14) That letter could have been an audition to succeed the board, but Jefferson appointed the board's clerk to be Superintendent of the Public Buildings. But his old friends took care of Thornton. Madison hired Thornton as his clerk to exclusively handle patent applications. Congress had just passed a law making explicit what the state department had informally done for the previous twelve years. He took a slight cut in salary to $1400. But when Thornton and his ladies made a summer visit to Monticello and Madison's Montpelier, the president also made him one of the District of Columbia's bankruptcy commissioners which the president calculated would make Thornton $600 a year depending the on the monetary amounts of settlements. The new Treasurer of the United States was making $3000 for doing little besides signing warrants authorizing government expenditures.(13)

In 1802, at the president's invitation, Latrobe came to the city to design and build dry docks along the Eastern Branch for the US Navy. He was on Thornton's patch. Judging from his letters to the General, the future of the city's waterfront was a common theme in his conversation.

Latrobe and Thornton met at a dinner for ten with the president, without incident. At another social gathering, Thornton called attention to the artistic limitations of Latrobe's mausoleum. For the amusement of the party, Latrobe ridiculed Thornton's representation of Eternity. His woman wrapped by a snake appeared more like an evil seductress. Latrobe later wrote that the doctor was not amused and the joking "was not easily forgiven."(14)

In 1803, the president appointed Latrobe "Surveyor of the Public Buildings." He spent his first year improving the North Wing. The only evidence that Thornton came to any understanding with the president about future work on the Capitol was that when he hired Latrobe to build the South Wing, he gave him Thornton's floor plan. Latrobe asked Thornton if he had any more plans, and Thornton gave him the same floor plan. In a memoir written years later, Latrobe recalled his first reaction to the two plans given to him: "They were copies of each other and both perfectly useless; neither of them agreed with the work as founded or carried up, and there were no details whatever. In the superintendent's office no drawings existed."

He gave the plans "several days of severe study, and then stated to the President that I could not undertake its execution." In a letter written at the time, Latrobe wrote that the president said the plan could not be changed but promised to talk to Thornton about, as Latrobe put it, "objectionable parts of his plan." After seeing the president, Latrobe got the bright idea to go to Thornton first "to prepare the way for amicable adjustments."    In a short letter to the president, Latrobe reported what happened when he met Thornton at his office in the Six Buildings house where Madison had his: "I judged very ill in going to Thornton. In a few preemptory words, he, in fact, told me, that no difficulties existed in his plan, but such as those that were made by those too ignorant to remove them and though these were not exactly his words, his expressions, his tone, his manner, and his absolute refusal to devote a few minutes to discuss the subject spoke his meaning more strongly and offensively than I have expressed it...."(15)

On February 28, 1804, Latrobe sent a report on the state of the Capitol to a House committee and complained that he had no detailed drawings of the design. "The most indisputable evidence was brought before me to prove that no sections or detailed drawings of the building existed excepting those that were made from time to time by Messrs. Hallet and Hadfield for their own use in the direction of the work."(16)

Thornton sent a letter to Latrobe couched in terms that generally served as a challenge to a duel: "I am sorry to be obliged to declare that your Letter to the Committee is, as it respects me, not only ungentlemanly but false." When Latrobe accused him of wanting to take their dispute "to the field," Thornton said he didn't, but admitted that he had been prepared to settle an affair with another gentleman several months earlier.(17)

Latrobe trusted that he had the president's support, but then one of the many curiosities of the Capitol design process shocked him. Despite the design given to him not corresponding to what had been built and not accompanied with any detailed plans of what was to be built, Latrobe found that design was officially adopted. He reminded President Jefferson that the legislation authorizing resumption of work on the Capitol mentioned making plans. He naively thought he could do just that. He didn't know about the power of "the ideas of Doctor Thornton." Their enduring commitment to those ideas is what saved Washington and Jefferson from seeming to be complete fools for being taking in by Thornton's contest winning design. Both presidents also had feared that if congress got the impression that the plan for the Capitol had not been approved then congress would get involved and make its own plan. In a letter to his assistant John Lenthall, Latrobe vented his spleen: "when once erected the absurdity can never be recalled and the public explanation can only amount to this that one president was blockhead enough to adopt a plan, which another another was fool enough to retain, when he might have altered it."In his design for the House chamber. Latrobe had the good sense to use some of the president's ideas.(18)

Latrobe must have struck Thornton as someone who could easily be replaced. He was often away from the city working on the Delaware-Chesapeake canal project which he also superintended. But he kept coming back. After socializing with congressmen in the city for four years, Thornton grasped their importance. He looked to them for help. On January 1, 1805, he had published "A letter to Members of the House of Representatives." He exaggerated his relationship with the General and exposed Latrobe's duplicity. It provided the evidence used by Glenn Brown, C. M. Harris and others to prove that Thornton restored his design, complete with drawings and sections, at the request of President Washington. Thornton also made much of all that Latrobe had said to him about the design before he was appointed. He claimed that Latrobe said that "....he never saw any plan of a building beside his own that he would deign to build." Thornton added: "I must own that I can not easily conceive why previous to this appointment I should hear nothing but approbation of my plan and after his appointment nothing but condemnation."(19)

Thornton did not express any interest in replacing Latrobe. He was otherwise busy, and not only at the Patent Office. Late in the summers of 1805 and 1806, Thornton, along with his wife and mother-in-law, toured North Carolina gold fields. Nuggets had been found in streams there since 1799. He calculated the extent of land he could buy for $100,000 and balanced that with the amount of gold he calculated could be mined. He organized a company in the federal city to raise the money and promised every stock holder a fortune. Tayloe didn't buy which upset Thornton. Latrobe did, because his friend Daniel Carroll of Duddington became the company's first president.(19A)

Just before leaving on his 1806 trip to North Carolina, he wrote a letter to James Madison sounding an alarm for the fate of the Capitol dome. He cited an example of what must be done. In 1794, President Washington had personally banished Hallet after he tried to change Thornton's design of the Capitol. That described something that had never happened which didn't prevent Thornton from applying that lesson to defeat a threat that didn't exist: "Mr. Latrobe, as if determined to oppose every thing previously intended has carried up a large block of building on the very foundation intended to be taken up, by which the Dome is so encroached on that the part already carried up on the north side will be useless. I am confident the President could never have permitted such a deviation from the original Intention if it had been made known to him. I think it my Duty to mention it now before it be too late to prevent its progress."

Madison sent on Thornton's letter to the president and described it as "disclosing the perturbation excited in his mind, by some of the operations of Mr. la Trobe." Jefferson took Thornton's letter more seriously and replied to Madison: "If Dr. Thornton’s complaint of Latrobe’s having built inconsistently with his plan of the middle part of the capitol be correct, it is without my knolege, & against my instructions. For altho’ I consider that plan as incapable of execution, yet I determined that nothing should be done which would not leave the question of it’s execution free." That is to say, nothing should be done to preclude Thornton from thinking that his plan would be carried out even though both Jefferson and Latrobe knew the plan was "incapable of execution."(20)

 

The president was not necessarily being cynical but only alive to the fact that they were building what no one involved in the project had ever built before. When he approved of elliptical design of the ill-fated "Oven" or temporary "elliptical chamber" for the House, he gave a heed to a warning from Hoban: "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 approved the one story building unless "the prospects of money should brighten & the difficulties of proceeding with it separately from the squarewall should be found less than has been apprehended...." Of course, Hoban was warning that Thornton's stricture that chamber must be elliptical would force Lovering to build an unstable wall. The president hoped that Thornton was right. He wasn't and walls had to be buttressed. That Latrobe planned a square wall to contain the elliptical wall of the Grand Vestibule didn't alarm the president.(21) 

On their way back from North Carolina, Thornton, his wife and mother-in-law, invariably stopped at Montpelier and Monticello to pay their respects to the rusticating president and secretary of state. Mrs. Thornton kept a journal of their trip but didn't mention what her husband discussed with his bosses. Latrobe stayed on the job.

At that time, there was a published contradiction of Thornton's 1805 claim that Washington told him to and that he had succeeded in restoring his design. In 1806, Samuel Blodget published his 226 page opus Economica, the first American tome on economics. Along with pages of valuable statistics, he included a brief discussion of the City of Washington. He lauded and tempered Thornton's Capitol design: "For this truly sublime and beautiful building, Dr. William Thornton received the premium; but as it has undergone some changes, by deviations agreeably to taste... of the several ingenious gentlemen who have superintended the work, we know not how much the architect will disown." Blodget was familiar with Thornton's original design. He had studied it at the request of the first board of commissioners and found it wanting. He was also a close friend of Thornton's as suggested by the gentle way that he told him to accept what might be called the reality of public architecture. Designs are never unalterable.(22)

Since his reports on the public buildings were printed in the National Intelligencer, Latrobe could not avoid a public dispute. He also reported on the repairs to the President's house and Hoban angrily defended his work in letters to the Washington Federalist, the anti-administration newspaper. In November 1806, Latrobe published a letter to congressmen that addressed the root of the problem: Thornton's insistence that only his original plan endorsed by George Washington could be used. Latrobe debunked a design contest as a good way to come up with a design and argued that only someone who knew how a building could be built could design a building.

With each passing building season, Thornton gained an advantage. He could attack what Latrobe had built, and, better still, in order to gain sympathy from congressmen, accuse Latrobe of wasting money. In November 1807, the editor of the National Intelligencer asked Latrobe to describe what he had done. He gave Thornton due credit for his design but hammered the theme that he was not a trained architect: "it must be confessed he has, in his design, exhibited talents which a regular practical education, and a practical knowledge of architecture would have ripened into no common degree of excellence...." He also faulted his design for being illogical with principal rooms on the basement floor. He added that his job building the South Wing would have been easier and the interior even better if he had not been constrained by Thornton's design of the exterior. From the outside the South Wing had to match the North Wing. That said, he complimented Hadfield for being able to build the North Wing: "His exquisite taste appears in many parts of the North wing, particularly in the introduction of the impost tablature which crowns the basement story and gives an harmonious character to the whole mass which it could not have otherwise possessed."(23)

Thornton found the condescension and insults intolerable. He attacked the South Wing and Latrobe in the Washington Federalist. In his long April 27, 1808, letter, Thornton described Latrobe as a "carver of chimney pieces in London" who came to America a "missionary of the Moravians." He insisted that every change Latrobe made went against the wishes of General Washington. Thornton suggested that Latrobe "may have an antipathy to the name of Washington, for that great man was asked by a very respectable gentleman now living, why he did not employ Mr. Latrobe: 'because I can place no confidence in him whatever-' was the answer." Thornton also ridiculed every decoration in the South wing: an eagle looked like an Egyptian ibis, Liberty on an eagle looked like Leda and the swan, country people mistook an eagle on the frieze of an entablature "for the skin of an owl, such as they have seen nailed on their barn doors." He ridiculed the acoustics of  the House chamber that seemed like an echo chamber.

Thornton attacked other buildings Latrobe had designed and his gate at the Navy Yard. He also defended his own standing as an architect:

I travelled in many parts of Europe, and saw several of the masterpieces of the ancients. I have studied the works of the best masters, and my long attention to drawing and painting would enable me to form some judgment of the difference of proportions. An acquaintance with some of the grandest of the ancient structures, a knowledge of the orders of Architecture, and also of the genuine effects of proportion furnish the requisites of the great outlines of composition. The minutiae are attainable by a more attentive study of what is necessary to the execution of such works, and the whole must be subservient to the conveniences required. Architecture embraces many subordinate studies, and it must be admitted is a profession which requires great talents, great taste, great memory. I do not pretend to any thing great, but must take the liberty of reminding Mr. Latrobe, that physicians study a greater variety of sciences than gentlemen of any other profession.... The Louvre in Paris was erected after the architectural designs of a physician, Claude Perrault, whose plan was adopted in preference to the designs of Bernini, though the latter was called from Italy by Louis the 14th.(24)

Recall that Thornton landed on continental Europe at the end of December 1783 at the earliest and returned to Britain by mid-August 1784. Based on a watercolor, biographers also credit him with a trip to the Alps during that 8 month period. Latrobe didn't bother to probe into Thornton's background. Instead, he defended his own background as a Moravian, and described his relations with George Washington. But he couldn't resist smearing Thornton as "a calumniator who is the subject of ridicule, of pity, or of contempt to all who know him..... a man too feeble for personal chastisement, and too ignorant, despicable and vain for argumentative refutation." 

Thornton's response came a few days later. He credited Fernando Fairfax for Washington's devastating assessment of Latrobe. Then he further smeared Latrobe in a style reminiscent of British farces: "The late Moll Turner who lived between Havre de Grace and Baltimore, a woman so infamous in character, that the Poissardes of Paris would have appeared as vestals in comparison, was never outmatched in blackguardism, except by Mr. Latrobe, and it is suspected that this broke her heart,--" Then he ascended the heights:"if I had been so reprehensible a character as he represents, I should hardly have been appointed to the honorable office I had under General Washington, and have received letter of approbation on his retiring from public life, nor should I have been appointed and continued in other respectable offices by his two successors...." He closed by revealing that he did challenge Latrobe to a duel in 1804 but received no answer. Under his name, he put a couplet "Only five feet eight; limbs straight;/ and about one hundred and sixty weight." Latrobe was six feet two.(25)

On May 11, Latrobe announced that he was suing Thornton for libel.  In a May 28 letter to a friend Latrobe opined that Thornton "has miserably fallen in public estimation of late, but I think the worst that can be said of him is that he is a Madman from vanity, incorrect impecuniary conduct, and official intrigue from Poverty." At that time, Thornton had no official connection with the Capitol. Latrobe was casting aspersions at his work at the Patent Office.(26)

The libel suit took five years to play out in court. While Hoban continued newspaper attacks on Latrobe over work at the President's house, Thornton refrained. His silence allowed Latrobe to work in relative peace though the death of Lenthall while removing a brick arch in the North Wing on September 19, 1808, unsettled everyone in the city. 

In March 1809, just prior to Madison's Inauguration, congress appropriated $31,000 for continued work on the North and South Wings, and $12,000 for "continued improvements and repairs" of the President's house. Latrobe gave the Senate a new chamber on the first floor, not in the basement with the help, so to speak. Latrobe redecorated and refurnished the President's house and worked closely with the First Lady. Although remarkable to historians, Thornton's preparing the house the Madisons moved into in 1801 did not prompt the Madisons to ask for his advice in 1809. He did give some official architectural advice. In 1810 congress bought Blodget's hotel. After getting Thornton's ideas about how the Patent Office should fit into the building, Latrobe designed and oversaw the changes.

Yet, the trajectory of Thornton the Architect continued through this period of his life. On May 8, 1808, when the feud with Latrobe reached a climax, Mrs. Thornton noted: "Dr. T. working on a plan for Mr. Peter." This plan for Thomas Peter was definitely for a house. Scholars date his plans for Tudor Place "1805-1816." The first date is when Peter bought an estate in relatively rural Georgetown Heights that had two detached houses. In 1816, the building connecting those two houses was completed. However, in 1811 Mrs. Thornton called the house Tudor Place which suggest a comfortable degree of completion by that time.(27)

Since his floor plan for Tudor Place featured two elliptical rooms, it is taken as more proof that he designed the Octagon which has oval rooms. By the same token, it is proof that he designed a house for Lot 17 in Square 171. As it turned out, the elliptical rooms he designed for Tudor Place were not built. Thornton is that rare architect who became famous even though what he designed was rarely built as he designed it.(28)

He undoubtedly designed the entrance to the house, a vaulting circular portico, that the resident family would call "the temple." However, since his drawings are undated and Mrs. Thornton was relatively uninterested in his designs, one can't pinpoint his designing that element in 1808 as he rhetorically tried to destroy Latrobe who was the then reigning American master of Neo-classical design. However, his designing anything at that time likely stroked Thornton's vanity even though it in no way humbled Latrobe.  Mrs. Thornton would not note any more architectural work until 1811, when she said no more than "Dr. T drawing a plan of a house." An intriguing coincidence was that Lovering had come down from Baltimore to drop off a book two day before.(29)

 

There was still much work to do to finish the Capitol, but in 1812, congress stopped appropriating money for it as economy measure. Then the British burned it. That conflagration treated history to a Solomonic moment. Which architect suffered more at the destruction of what he had authored? Latrobe was not in the city at the time but soon after wrote a long letter to Jefferson describing the damage, complete with drawings. Saving the Patent Office was enough for Thornton. He never wrote about the damage to the Capitol, save to joke in a letter to Jefferson that he had "congratulated the members on the loss of their Library, since you offered yours on such generous Terms."(29A)

Latrobe became a steamboat promoter in Washington and Pittsburgh which only put his family in greater financial jeopardy. With war's end, he asked to restore the Capitol and Madison welcomed him back. Under Jefferson and during Madison's first term, Latrobe had worked without being overseen by commissioners. In 1815, he was summoned to Washington by two commissioners, the third was absent that day. One of them was John Van Ness for whom Latrobe would design a mansion. The absent commissioner was a Lee from Virginia. The third was Thornton's friend Tench Ringgold. Back in 1800, he had bought a half share in one of Thornton's horses, and he often enjoyed the Thorntons' hospitality. Latrobe was soon facing headwinds.(30)

Latrobe wrote two long letters to the president begging for relief. One gave a concise history of the systems used to build the North and South Wings respectively. He did not mention Thornton, only that the commissioners thwarted Hallet and then Hadfield. He totaled the damage done:  "The changes cannot have cost the public less than 250,000 Dollars." He alluded to presidential distress: "In 1797, I had the honor to spend a short time with General Washington, who spoke to me with regret and vexation on the disputes between the Architects and the Commissioners which had retarded the city." He highlighted the pleasures Jefferson had working without commissioners: "...so perfect was the controul of my designs by the President, that part of the plan in detail was executed contrary to my taste, but in submission to that of Mr. Jefferson."

Madison did nothing and seemed unmoved by a more personal letter from Latrobe: 

On the part of the Commissioners, I have been treated in a manner more coarse & offensive than I have ever permitted, to myself, or felt myself capable of using to my poorest mechanics. On the slightest occasions I have been told that there were plenty of architects ready to take my place, that I had been appointed from motives of charity to my family, that, if I meant to continue in their service, I must obey their orders implicitly, even when contrary to those given to me by the Committee of the Senate;... I had been told indeed by one of them, that my pride should be taken down before they had done with me...(31)

Latrobe never implied that Thornton had anything to do with organizing opposition to his work through Ringgold. Indeed, soon the commissioners were gone, but Col. Samuel Lane became the Superintendent of Public Buildings and kept harassing Latrobe who soon resigned. Latrobe left the city in 1818 and in 1819 responded to controversies left behind from Baltimore. He wrote "Vindication" to defend himself from attacks not from Thornton but from Charles Bulfinch, the Boston architect who replaced him. In 1820, Latrobe went to New Orleans to work on its waterworks project. He died of yellow fever in September 1820. His son had died three years before while working on the same project.(32)

Before Latrobe left the city, thanks to Jefferson, the First and Second Architects of the Capitol competed for a last time. In a May 9, 1817, letter, he asked Thornton to "...set your imagination to work and sketch some designs for us [i.e. the University of Virginia], no matter how loosely with the pen, without the trouble of referring to scale or rule; for we want nothing but the outline of the architecture, as the internal must be arranged according to local convenience. A few sketches, such as need not take you a moment."(33) Jefferson had no interest in ovals. He had already sketched colonnade linking pavilions along the boundary of a  large quadrangle. He wanted the exteriors of the pavilions to show off different aspects of the Classical orders. Obviously, the pavilion exhibiting the Corinthian order would be the most important.

In his reply, Thornton was in his element: "I admire every thing that would tend to give chaste Ideas of elegance and grandeur. Accustomed to pure Architecture, the mind would relish in time no other, and therefore the more pure the better.—I have drawn a Pavilion for the Centre, with Corinthian Columns, and a Pediment." Thornton's reply provides evidence enough for some biographers to credit Thornton for designing buildings on the campus of the University of Virginia. He sent Jefferson a drawing of a pavilion with Corinthian columns. As C. M. Harris puts it, Thornton "most noticeably influenced Jefferson in his design for Pavilion VII...."(34)  However, the challenge Thornton faced was choosing the order and arrangement of the columns and dimensions of the pediment. Thornton made wrong choices. The glory of Corinthian columns was lost in his design. If Thornton's sketch did influence his design, Jefferson never discussed it with Thornton. The cornerstone for Pavilion VII was laid in October 1817 and it had Doric columns. 

At the same time that he wrote to Thornton, Jefferson wrote to Latrobe pressing him for ideas. Between June and November 1817, he wrote six more letters about the university project to Latrobe. Today, Pavilion VIII, which has "four massive Corinthian columns," is known as "the Latrobe's Lodge."(35) 

In his last letter to Latrobe, Jefferson lamented his being replaced as architect of the Capitol: "I learned with great grief your abandonment of the Capitol. I had hoped that, under your direction, that noble building would have been restored and become a monument of rational taste & spirit. I fear much for it now. to [my]self personally it can be of little moment; because in the public bui[ld]ings which will be daily growing up in this growing countr[y] [you?] can have no competitor for employ."(36)

Latrobe is now remembered as the Second Architect of the Capitol on the strengths of his changes to the interiors and roofs of the North and South Wing. However, his criticisms of the design and building process prior to his taking the job, does not register in modern histories of the Capitol. Not surprisingly, in 1900 Glenn Brown faulted Latrobe for not strictly carrying on Thornton's work of genius. He summarized the history of the design of the Old Capitol:

Thornton, Latrobe and Bulfinch deserve the distinction of being the architects of the building. Each designed and planned. Of the three, Thornton deserves the greatest praise, as the originator. Latrobe next, doing much of the original work in detail as well as planning and general arrangement of the interior. Bulfinch executed Latrobe's drawings, with the exception of the western portico, as noted above. Hallet, Hadfield and Hoban were merely employed as and were called "superintendents," and deserve probably less credit than Lenthall and Lenox, who were called, on the documents of the day "clerks of the work" or "principal surveyors."(37)

Brown made the whole process seem almost like teamwork with Latrobe and Bulfinch detailing the genius of the "originator." Of course, Hallet and Hadfield were instrumental in rescuing Thornton's design from its mistakes. Then the North Wing constrained Latrobe and Bulfinch. Death robbed history of Latrobe's opinion of the finished product. Thornton lived to see the Old Capitol completed. Trumbull's four Rotunda paintings were installed in 1826. Thornton avoided a candid discussion of the process. That he didn't own any part of what was built suggests how tenuous were his contributions to the building. He had two opportunities to join a discussion.

In 1914, W. B. Bryan endorsed Brown's and Thornton's narrative by citing an 1819 letter to the editor that proved that Thornton restored his original design of the Capitol. It was "corroborated by the testimony of a contemporary who on professional grounds at least had no reason to feel kindly towards Dr. Thornton, and that is George Hadfield." What prompted Hadfield's letter was the image of the future Capitol on the masthead of a newspaper called The Gazette. Its editor boasted that: "This vignette of the Capitol [was]... from a design of Mr. George Hadfield, of the city, as originally approved of by George Washington." 

Hadfield quickly wrote to the editor correcting the masthead: "...except the management of the dome with an attic which I claim..., believing it more consistent with good architecture," the image on the masthead copied the etching on the 1818 King map for which, Hadfield thought, Thornton could claim credit. That was enough to convince Bryan.

However, there was a degree of equivocation in the way he credited Thornton. Hadfield did not write that Thornton designed the Capitol as depicted on the masthead, only that he is "is welcome to the credit of the design." Hadfield still deprecated the design handed to him in 1795. As for the elevation depicted on King's map, Hadfield would only say it was "acknowledged" to be Thornton's design.

In his letter, Hadfield also noted what he had done. The lack of galosh ornaments leaving plain imposts was his contribution to the exterior of the North Wing. He had been responsible for  "the finishing the practical working drawings of all the cornices, and other parts of the exterior of the North Wing from the plinth to the top of the ballustrades, as well as the construction of the roof, which was not doomed, except to confligration, was doing no more than I was obliged to execute, as superintendant of the building." He did not mention the interior which in 1795, Thornton promised the president would adhere to Hallet's design.

Thornton didn't react with a reply to what Hadfield wrote even though it made Thornton seem less of an architect than the Author of the Capitol might have wished. He may have been satisfied with his previous attacks on Hadfield, although only the letter the commissioners wrote the secretary of state was on the record. Or, he may have shied from tangling with someone who had slowly accumulated a creditable record as an architect. In 1816, Hadfield had designed a row of houses Tayloe had built just below Lafayette Square. Tayloe placed an ad instructing builders "that the plan may be seen at Mr. George Hadfield's office, from ten to three, where every necessary information maybe obtained...."(39)

There was likely no lack of rumors more to the credit of Hadfield than Thornton. In an 1801 letter to President Jefferson, Hadfield had recalled "the painful mortification... of seeing my work remain for the praise and reputation of those, who have meditated and effected my ruin." Hadfield had also been prepared to press his case to the president. He assured him "I shall be able to substantiate my assertions, supported by some of the most respectable characters in this City."

In 1804, Latrobe begged Hadfield to "as nearly as possible ascertain what is his, and what stolen property in the plan now said to be the original plan….” In a letter to Jefferson, Latrobe had boasted that Hadfield "remained Superintendant of the work for three years. During this period the original plan disappeared.... The circular domed Vestibule is Hatfields, the two libraries... are his. His style is visible in many other parts of the Work." Evidently, Hadfield did not reply in writing. For a professional architect who wanted to remain in the city, not crossing Thornton made a good deal of sense.

In 1822, in a letter to Hadfield's sister, Maria Cosway, who had been his dear friend in Paris, Jefferson credited her brother, who had just designed a neo-classical city hall, for being "much respected in Washington, and, since the death of Latrobe, our first Architect, I consider him as standing foremost in the correct principles of that art. I believe he is doing well, but would he push himself more, he would do better."(40)

The second opportunity to engage the Capitol as it was being built came as congress assembled for its 1819-20 sessions. Both houses would be in their new chambers. A House committee asked Lane for solutions to acoustical problems. He asked Thornton among others for advice. In the draft of a long letter to Lane, he recommended curtains and that they be soaked in arsenic so as not to be devoured by moths. Then he attacked Latrobe for changing his ellipses to semi-circles and moved on to attack whatever Bulfinch had done or planned to do. In his history of the Capitol, William Allen summarized what Thornton rehearsed:

Every departure from the old design was condemned with Thornton’s gifts of sarcasm and exaggeration. The monitor on the roof feeding light and air to skylights above the Senate chamber was “borrowed from some carpenter’s shop, for there never was so mean a window exhibited before in any public building on the face of the globe.” The dwarf columns and the upper gallery in the Senate were “perfectly fantastic,” reminding Thornton of the platform at London’s Newgate prison “where the convicts are executed wholesale, for never were such galleries seen in any building of dignity and national grandeur.” Access to the Senate galleries was likened to an Italian mule path. On the exterior, the Capitol’s three domes would strike the eye of a “chaste architect” as ridiculous, and would recall “the old fashioned Tea Canisters, Bohea at one end, Green Tea at the other, and in the center the large sugar dish.” Thornton’s letter made it clear that his bitterness had not been soothed by time, and his pretensions to architectural authority were as delusional as ever.1

But did he unveil that new batch of barbs? If sent, his letter to Lane was not printed in the newspapers or congressional documents. Thanks to the War of 1812, the Capitol had become a national icon. It was no longer fair game for pot shots.

Thornton never explained why he finally disowned the Capitol. Perhaps "disowned" is too strong a word, but it is evident that he became emotionally and intellectually detached from it. He had battled would be rivals each in turn: Hallet, Hadfield, Hoban, and Latrobe. There is no evidence that he was cowed by Bulfinch personally. What likely changed his perspective was the resilient growth of the building.

The restoration of the building captured the attention and excited those who witnessed it. In the span of two decades, building methods and workers had changed and there was an ever growing infrastructure in the city and beyond. A canal connected the East and West ends of the city "affording the cheapest and most convenient transportation of our wood, coals, lumber, and last but not least, of thousands of tons of stone for the completion of the Capitol - a building which might be justly styled the Pride of Columbia."(41) The look of work became bolder and more efficient. Slave laborers were still used but as day laborers. They didn't live in a log cabin camp on the side of hill and at once give the impression of always skulking and also being the only men at work. But how could the growing evidence that the nation's engineers and workers could actually build Thornton's grandiose designs intimidate Thornton? Why didn't he gird once again for battle to save his original design, or cast his lot in the City Hall design contest with a building to rival the Capitol, which is what Hadfield did. When he won the contest, a newspaper description of his design glowed: "Mr. Hadfield's plan consists of a peristyle to the North, and a portico on the South front; and the extent of the building, for each front, will occupy a space of 230 feet.... In the center of the South side of the building will be located the City Hall, forming a rotunda, of sixty feet diameter, crowned by a dome, rising eighty feet from its base, and having an ample peristyle on the outside of twenty columns."(42)

The simple answer is that Thornton was not an architect. No one thought of asking him for a plan.  There was a post-war boom in residential housing principally in and around Lafayette Park, a few steps away from his F Street home. Captain Decatur had Latrobe design a house on the square. Ringgold would build a very stylish house on F Street NW at 18th Street. There is no evidence that Thornton offered any advice. Thornton's neighbor during the war, Richard Cutts, also built on the Square. That enraged Thornton, not because he didn't design it, but because he fancied that his money helped build it. He was badgering Cutts for repayment of $3000 he had loaned him in order to facilitate a currency exchange. Instead, as Thornton put it in a letter to Madison, Cutts continued to "defy his Creditors, & live in Comfort and Elegance, while they will be confined by penury & want to live in obscurity, & without those Comforts which the money due from him would have obtained."

Thornton was not the bad off, or was he? In 1813, likely in anticipation of an adverse verdict in the Latrobe libel case, Thornton put all his city property up for sale. Latrobe won the case but only one cent in damages. Latrobe later recalled that knowing Thornton's poverty, he told his lawyer not to ask for damages. Thornton turned the verdict to his advantage by telling everyone that Latrobe sued for $10,000 in damages and only got a penny. Thornton knew of the stuff that makes flattering gossip. But Latrobe's own pre-trial judgment remained uncontested: Was Thornton  "...a Madman from vanity, incorrect impecuniary conduct, and official intrigue from Poverty?" 

 Go to Chapter Fifteen

1. Wolcott, Oliver,  Administration of John Adams, vol. 2; Latrobe to Lenthall, 28 March 1804, letters p. 463.

2. Latrobe Journal p. 163 & 189

3. WT to Blodget 21-24 February 1800, Harris p. 535ff 

4. Washington Federalist 16 April 1799

5. Jefferson to WT, 23 April 1800,

6. WT to Jefferson 7 May 1800; Mrs. Thornton's diary p 146

6A. Ibid. pp. 156-7; Pettigrew 2: 546-7.

6B.  Wolcott, Oliver, Administration of John Adams, p. 378.

7. Commrs. to Stoddert 19 April 1800; Andrews to commrs., ***; Commrs. to Andrews 1 November 1800; Diary pp. 208, 222. 

8. Mrs. Thornton's diary, pp. 103, 104, 106, 200, 223.

9. Ibid. p. 153; National Intelligencer 8 December 1800.

10. WT to Madison 15 August 1801, Founders online, Harris, p. 581

11. WT to Madison 8 September 1801;

12.  WT to Madison, 15 August 1801, Commrs. to Jefferson, 4 September 1801,

13. in her notebook reel 1 image 123ff, Mrs. Thornton described their visits. Thornton deposition 1812 American State Papers vol   p. 193

14.   Latrobe to Mary Elizabeth Latrobe, 24 November 1802, Latrobe Correspondence, p. 232; Latrobe to Jefferson, 27 March 1802; Jefferson to Latrobe, 2 November 1802; Latrobe to Jefferson, 9 November 1802, 28 November 1802, Founders online; Latrobe, Journal p. 189

14.  WT to Jefferson, 17 April 1802, 

15. Latrobe to Jefferson, 27 February 1804, in Latrobe Journal, p. 190.

16. "The Report of the Surveyor of Public Buildings," Latrobe Correspondence pp. 444-5;

17.  Latrobe to WT, 28 April 1804, Correspondence pp. 481-2.

18. Latrobe to Lenthall, 8 March 1804, Correspondence p. 458; for examples of Jefferson's involvement see, Jefferson to Latrobe, 16 January 1805, or 8 September 1805.

19. Harris, Papers of William Thornton. p. 257; Brown, History of Capitol, new edition,  pp. 113ff.

19A. gold company

20.  Natl Intelligencer ad 23 April 1806; WT to Madison 6 August 1806; Madison to Jefferson 15 August 1806; Jefferson to Madison, 28 August 1806.

21. Jefferson to Commrs. 2 June 1801 

22. Blodget, Economica; a Statistical Manual for the United States, 1806, pp. iii, 167

23.  Latrobe to members of congress, 28 November 1806, Correspondence, pp. 296ff; National Intelligencer, 30 November 1807 p. 1.

24. Washington Federalist, 20 April 1808; Latrobe Correspondence vol. 2 pp. 600ff.

25. Ibid., 30 April 1808, p 2; 7 May 1808, p. 3.

26. Brown, Gordon, Incidental Architect, p. footnote 1, p. 67

27. AMT notebook reel 3 image 40;  Tudor Place Museum website, "Tudor Place History." Mount Vernon Museum website "A Community Divided"; American Turf Register volume 2, June 1831, p. 520.

28. Brown, Glenn, "William Thornton, Architect" Architectural Record 1896 p. 64: Harris, p. 588

29. AMT notebook, vol. 3, image 121

29A. Latrobe to Jefferson 12 July 1815; WT to Jefferson 11 December 1814

30. Latrobe to Jefferson, 30 March 1818, enclosure; Carter, Edward C,, Benjamin Henry Latrobe: Growth and Development of Washington. RCHS vot 71/72, p 142. letter

31. Latrobe to Madison, 24 April 1816; Latrobe to Madison, 30 December 1816

32.  Richard Brand Lee to Madison 27 April 1816;  Lane to Madison 29 August 1816; 22 August 1816

33. Jefferson to Latrobe, 9 May 1817. 

34. Harris, Charles M, Library of Congress web article "William Thornton 1759-1828"; Jefferson to WT 9 May 1817; WT to Jefferson, 27 May 1817, 

35. Latrobe to Jefferson, 24 July 1817;

36. Jefferson to Latrobe, 19 May 1818.

37. Brown,  Glenn, U. S. Capitol GPO edition, p. 179.

38. Bulfinch Life and Letters p. 215;  Latrobe, Vindication, 1819

39. The Gazette, 8 February 1819 p. 1; Bryan, History of National Capital volume one, pp. 317-8; Hunsberger,  The Architecture of George Hadfield, p. 61; King, Julia, Hadfield, p. 95.

40. Latrobe to Hadfield, 28 April 1804, Correspondence pp. 480-1; Latrobe to Jefferson, 28 February 1804, p. 441; Hadfield to Jefferson, 27 March 1801,  TJ to Cosway 2 October 1822 

41. City of Washington Gazette, 21 August 1820

42. Ibid. 17 July 1820

 

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