Chapter Nine: The Case of the Ingenious A
Table of Contents I am revising this chapter Chapter Nine: The Case of the Ingenious A 116. Law's 1800 house became the fulcrum of the New Varnum Hotel Some 42 years after Thornton and Tayloe died in 1828 and shortly before his own death in 1871, one of the three surviving children of Tayloe, who had thirteen, credited Thornton, his father's old friend and lately recalled as the "original" designer of the Capitol, for designing the Octagon. In an 1888 magazine article about the Octagon, restoration architect Glenn Brown accepted the family legend. He also proposed the Octagon as the headquarters of the American Intitute of Architects, which was then in Manhattan. In 1896, he followed up the 1888 article with an article about Thornton's other designs, and especially cleared up doubts recently cast on Thornton's Capitol design. He also credited him for designing and superintending construction of two houses that the General Washington had built ...