Chapter 11 Mrs. Thornton’s Diary
Table of Contents Rewriting this chapter
Chapter 11: Mrs. Thornton’s Diary
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| Octagon and environs toward southwest in 1817 |
Mrs. Thornton wrote an entry for every day of the year without explaining why she kept a diary. In her March 1 entry she admitted: “This little Journal is rather an account of the my husband’s transactions rather than mine, but there is so little variety in our life that I have nothing worth recording & this may rather be called a memorandum rather than a Journal.” Then as the federal government slowly moved from Philadelphia, their life began to pick up. Up until April, her diary recorded their acceptance in what passed for high society in Washington and Georgetown. That was important to her. She was the 26 year old daughter of the former headmistress of a Philadelphia boarding school. Then her diary chronicled their acceptance in the nation’s elite society which revolved around national politics. Only President Adams did not visit their F Street house. Mrs. Adams did and so did President-elect Jefferson.(1) Despite her never explaining why the characters in her diary, including her husband, did what they did, architectural historians find evidence that he designed Tayloe’s, the General’s and Law’s houses. However, she never said he did, and the evidence they cite can prove that he didn’t.
Her diary does provide the only evidence that in 1800, Thornton did design four houses, as well as a cathedral and a stable. She also noted days that he worked on his Capitol design. Indeed, she helped work on it. The day after she finished copying the elevation for their own house in Square 171, she wrote: “Dr. T- at work all day on the East Elevation of the Capitol. - I assisted a little till evening...."(2) She never explained exactly what he or she did when they worked on the design. However, his correspondence at the time, as well her diary, elucidated the strategy he used to assure his fame. He tried to capitalize on the General’s death to assure eventual construction of his Grand Vestibule and take advantage of Hoban’s complacency to assure that Thornton’s guiding hand in the construction of the North Wing was apparent.
During the first two weeks of 1800, the Thorntons visited all three of the private buildings for which he is famous for designing. After dinner on Saturday January 4, Thornton also took his wife and her mother inside the General’s houses, one of which had been “nearly finished.” She described their salient design feature: “they are divided so as to let one or two houses.” “After dinner" on January 7 "we walked to take a look at Mr. Tayloe’s house which begins to make a handsome appearance.” On January 12, they visited Law's house along with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Peter. She was a sister of the much more famous Mrs. Eliza Parke Custis Law. They found the house locked. So, they "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….”(3)
To be sure, Mrs. Thornton did not explicitly say why her husband visited all three house, but clearly he was exhibiting more than a taste for architecture. He had to see what was going on. For C. M. Harris the mere visit to Law’s house is enough. He opines, without quoting the diary, that "Thornton's role... is partially but substantially documented by his wife's diary for 1800." Pamela Scott agrees and quotes five words: "It was designed by William Thornton, and was 'a very pleasant roomy house' according to Anna Maria Thornton.” Both architectural historians avoid trying to explain Mrs. Thornton’s criticism of the oval rooms low ceilings. Is it likely she would criticize oval rooms designed by her husband? If she shared her observation with the Mrs. Peter, it was a neat way to take sides in a sibling rivalry. Thornton’s climbing through the window of Law’s house was social climbing, not an architect’s inspection. The Peters also had entree to Mount Vernon, Thornton’s Mecca.(4)
It was a hard climb. Despite his intimacy with the family, in the wake of the General's death they relied on Tobias Lear, the General's secretary, to communicate with the rest of the world including Thornton. On January 3, Lear asked Thornton for his accounts of the General’s payments to Blagden. In her diary, Mrs. Thornton explained that “the money to the undertaker of them having all gone thro’ my husband’s hands, he having Superintended them as a Friend.” That entry seems to confirm Pamela Scott’s and other historians’ crediting Thornton for overseeing construction of the houses. However, even though the houses were not finished until April, Thornton had nothing more to do with them after January 21. In a January 20 letter to Lear, he offered “to aid the fulfilment of the objects contemplated by our great and good friend…,” but judging from his wife’s diary, the last thing he did was to send “Joe very early in the morning" to get receipts from Blagden to be sent to Mount Vernon on January 21. Joe Key was the Thorntons’ slave.(5)
Of course, Lear’s letter and Thornton’s reply are in the Papers of William Thornton. However, Thornton never authored a document nor received a letter mentioning the Octagon. In an essay at the end of the book, C. M. Harris cited evidence that Thornton designed the house including brief entries from his wife’s diary, After quoting her January 7 entry, he adds that “she mentioned other walks made on 24 April, 26 June, 17 July and 20, 26 October and then on 2 December 1800 recorded another visit to Mr. Tayloe’s house, to see the chimney pieces of artificial stone.” He implies Thornton was keeping tabs on the house he designed. But in those other walks, often with out of town visitors, she said nothing else about the house itself. In her December 2 entry all she wrote about her visit was “took Miss Brown with us to Mr Tayloe’s house to see the chimney pieces of artificial stone.” In her November 27 entry, she noted her husband’s visit to see them, and nothing else. Back in May, she noted that her husband previewed a sale of chimney pieces at Tunnicliff's hotel. After all, there were fireplaces in the Capitol. Harris also notes that Tayloe imported an iron stove from the Carron Iron Work near Edinburgh. Ergo, stove and chimney pieces "likely reflect Thornton's specific recommendations." Of course, Tayloe was educated in England and no stranger to the stoves of his rich friends. Harris notes that in a 1797 letter to Nicholson, Lovering mentioned using Coade stone in a house he built on Greenleaf's Point.
Harris ignores the obvious reason for their January 7 after dinner walk to Tayloe’s house. Before noting the visit, she wrote: “The Commissioners received a letter from the Secy of the Navy (Mr. Stoddert) mentioning that the President's time being expired in the house he now occupies that he intends removing his furniture here in June." She didn’t note or perhaps didn’t know that Stoddert’s letter also shared the president’s anger at Commissioners White’s and Thornton’s assurance that he could live temporarily in Law’s, Carroll’s or Tayloe’s house. Commissioner Scott got Thornton to join him in sending a letter denying that the board had any intention of putting the president in a private house. Scott, who sold the building lot to Tayloe, probably knew that Tayloe did not expect to move into the house until the fall of 1801. On January 7, Scott likely told Thornton to look at Tayloe’s house and see first hand that his and White’s suggestion that the president could live there in the fall of 1800 was nonsense.(6)
In his Building the Octagon, Orlando Ridout V also harps on the chimney pieces, but takes another tack to associate Thornton them. In the summer of 1800, he hired George Andrews to make stucco ornaments for which Thornton suggested designs to enliven the interior walls of the President’s House. The day he moved in, Adams complained and the board sent a note to Andrews 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 Andrews under his wing and tried to show samples of his ornaments to Jefferson. Coade did not ship all that Tayloe paid for and some of what he shipped was defective. In July 1801, Tayloe sent a letter to "Mr. Coade - ought to be Mr. Shark." Then in September, Andrews came to the rescue. That convinces Ridout that "Thornton can doubtless be credited with Andrew's employment at the Octagon." However, since May Andrews had been advertising that he made chimney pieces at his "Composition Manufactory… in the rear of the President's house." Dorsey and Lovering likely noticed him.(7)
However, there is no doubt that Thornton had a sudden desire to design. It was most likely related to the death of the General. It would make sense to posterity that because the General chose Thornton’s design for the Capitol, he would also ask him to design his Capitol Hill houses. In 1800, it made sense to Thornton that if he designed houses for the General’s family, others would assume that the General had blessed what he had hanging in his parlor, his East Elevation with the Grand Vestibule and Dome. The first entry in Mrs. Thornton's diary provided an early clue: “Wednesday, January 1st – a gloomy day – with the appearance of snow. Mr. T. Peter called and sit awhile – took a letter from Doctor Thornton to take down to Mr. Law to take to Mount Vernon to Mr. Laurence Lewis inclosing... an unpaid ticket in the Canal Lottery which had been in Philadelphia some months for collection.” Thornton would design Lewis’s Woodlawn and Peter’s Tudor Place. According to Mrs. Thornton’s diary, he visited Mount Vernon in early January to principally see Lewis; in early March he showed him where to clear the top of a hill for his house; and in August he would hand him a plan for his house.
But first he designed a house for himself. A letter from Philadelphia may have inspired him. On January 30, Mrs. Thornton noted the difficulty he had replying to a personal letter from Stoddert who castigated the commissioners: "A private gentleman preparing a residence for a friend would have done more than then has been done." 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." Stoddert had owned the farm next to Thornton's and they had confided ideas about the federal city since 1794. In his reply, that took two days to write, Thornton reminded him that he had always been for grandeur throughout the city. His colleagues had always dragged their feet: "They are however 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 president’s 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 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.
On February 1, she wrote: "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." That square is across New York Avenue from Square 170 where Tayloe’s Octagon was being built. Thornton had bought most of the lots in Square 171 shortly after Tayloe bought his lot his Square 170. Thornton evidently finished the design on February 2. On the 4th, Mrs. Thornton "began to copy on a larger scale the elevation and ground plan of the house." She didn’t describe the house but it is likely the design in Thornton’s papers that is mistaken for his first take on a design for the Octagon. 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.
The large elliptical room in his Lot 17 plan is similar to his elliptical House chamber.
A partially erased line in his Lot 17 design reveals a central oval that suggests that there was a second floor. The mark in the middle of the plan of first floor, offset inward from the four columns fronting the semicircle might mark the orientation of the columns on a second floor that raised a dome similar to his arrangement of columns in his West Front elevation. If the elliptical room in back of the house had a lower dome, then his house combined both fronts of his Capitol design.
The lot’s proximity to the President’s house can explain the house’s large and curious portico. It would face the semi-circular South Portico of the President’s house, and resemble the West Portico of his Capitol plan. Someone looking down from the President’s House would see a smaller mansion designed by Thornton that resembled his Capitol a mile away.
It's likely that Thornton used Tayloe’s house a model. Because of the angled intersection, Thornton faced the same problem that the architect of the Octagon and Law's house had solved. 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. In May 1800, Lovering may have advertised that he had them because of the interest Thornton showed in them back in January. With Lovering's solution in hand, Thornton could see how to fit a house into an angled lot. Harris and Ridout do not mention the Square 171 floor plan that explains the two drawings in Thornton’s papers that they claim were early takes on his Octagon design.
All that said, why didn’t Mrs. Thornton write more about his design in her diary? W. B. Bryan opined that 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. The pomposity and inconvenience of Thornton’s design were more likely the reasons for her lack of enthusiasm. Look at in another way, maybe she had herself to blame. Her diary told a simple story. He didn't like Law's oval room; so he designed a house with better oval rooms. His wife thought Law's house roomy and Tayloe's brick wall handsome; so he showed her what a handsome and roomy house should look like.
Of course, Thornton also knew that if built on Square 171, Tayloe would be nearby. Thornton thought they’d naturally be rivals. At that moment, he was doing business with Tayloe and soon they'd be competing in horse races. Since the Tayloes did not live in the city, yet, the rungs leading to the Thorntons being recognized by the richest family in Virginia were few and far between. On January 24, while bargaining about horses at the nearby seat of another Virginia sportsman, Thornton got a message from Tayloe to meet him at the Union Tavern. She bumped into her husband on his way to Georgetown. Entries in Mrs. Thornton’s diary about Tayloe’s house did not follow.That did not lead to entries in Mrs. Thornton’s diary about Tayloe’s house. On February 15, Thornton got a letter from Tayloe. He did him a favor by looking up land records involving holdings by one the doctor’s relatives. On February 16, Mrs. Thornton accounted for their 23 horses and noted that their imported racing horse Driver would be “sent to Mr. Tayloe’s to run.” That meant Driver would race Tayloe’s horses. On March 13, Mrs. Thornton celebrated their slave Joe Key taking Driver and a slave boy as a jockey to meet Tayloe’s people in Dumfries, Virginia, where they would then be taken to Mount Airy to be trained. Thornton expected that thanks to Driver’s pedigree, he would beat Tayloe’s horses.
Then on the eve of the building season, Thornton fielded three requests for a design. Ridout also uses the diary to draw an analogy between 1800 and previous years: : "If Mrs. Thornton's detailed diary for the year 1800 is any indication, Thornton would have been pleased to respond to the opportunity to produce a design for Tayloe, fitting it into quiet afternoons and evenings between his work routine as a commissioner." Ridout quotes her March 12 description of how a gentleman solicited a design and got one almost immediately: "while we were at breakfast a boy brought a note from Mr. Carroll of Duddington,... 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 working on the plans for the houses that were bigger than the General's houses. The next day he brought Carroll home to show him the plans "with which he was much pleased." Ridout notes that in those entries, Mrs. Thornton also noted that he went to the Capitol and to the Commissioners’ office. Ridout concludes that along with Lovering and Hoban, Thornton was “a source of architectural expertise in the federal city.”
In her diary, Mrs. Thornton rarely assessed motives. She didn't intimate that Carroll had been impressed by anything else her husband had designed. There is evidence that Carroll was not trying to tap Thornton’s expertise, and that he only wanted to curry the favor of one of the commissioners. On February 3, in the draft of a letter to her nephew William Cranch, the First Lady worried about “the Presidents House which is represented so very large and like to be uncomfortably cold—situated from all Society.” Of course, the president was adamant about moving into it and she cut that from the letter she sent the next day. Evidently rumors of her reluctance to live there reached Cranch who was then Thomas Law’s lawyer. In late February, Law made Thornton a flattering proposal, he could draw out a plan for carriage house and stables behind Law’s new house. Mrs. Thornton February 27 entry decribed her husband doing just that. Carroll flattered him two weeks later. The First Lady opted for Law’s house, Cranch told her Carroll’s house was better. She got letters describing both. The president moved into the President’s House. Carroll and Law stopped asking Thornton for architectural advice.
Tayloe likely never asked for his advice, which is hard to prove. However, to save going through juxtapositions of characters and situations in which Mrs. Thornton might have been expected to at least allude in her diary that her husband at least contributed to the design of the Octagon, an analysis of the implications of one short sentence in her diary written on June 18 should dispel any doubts that Thornton didn’t design the Octagon.
No news came from Tayloe’s horse training and horse racing complex just north of Mount Airy until the day the Thornton’s entertained the secretaries of State, War, and Navy along with local luminaries. Secretary of State John Marshall lingered to hear Mrs. Thornton play and sing. At day's end, she also noted: "Driver returned from Virginia in the Afternoon, lame and in bad plight." That was all she wrote about their dreams of triumphs on the turf being dashed. So far that year, they had not gotten any money from Tortola and her husband had to ask his Aunt Jane for help. A few days later, Joe took Driver to their Maryland farm, and she did not mention him again, nor did she mention Tayloe. Thornton tried another trainer to no avail. Then, in the spring of 1802, he got his revenge on Tayloe.
In April 1801, Tayloe lost his election for a seat in congress. Defeat must have stung because he arranged another way to add eclat to his making the federal city his family's winter home. Evidently, at the time, merely moving into his home, despite its unique design being so prized today, wasn’t enough. In December 1801, he heralded his arrival in a signed notice in the Washington Federalist newspaper. He would become a resident of the City of Washington "...on or about" January 10, 1802. That meant his house was effectively finished, but that was not the point of his notice. In it, he invited a match race with anyone and "can be accommodated, for his own sum, not less than $1500." William O. Sprigg responded and a match race for $3000 was scheduled for May 13. Sprigg's horse had beaten Tayloe's in the city's first Jockey Club races in November 1801.
Thornton could not accept the challenge. Driver was in no shape to race. But first appearing in early April 1802 and periodically published through June, a newspaper advertisement offered Driver as a stud. For $16 and 5 shillings for the groom, a mare could share Driver’s stable until August. As all ads touting a stud must, Thornton shared Driver’s impressive English pedigree. His "relation Isaac Pickering, esq., of Foxlease, Hampshire," had sent Driver's dam to the Earl of Egremont's. Thornton listed the races won by his sire and grand dam, who was a “running mare.” His great, great, great, grand dam was got by a full brother of a horse got by Godolphin Arabian, who was the gold standard in English breeding. Governor Ogle, Tayloe’s father-in-law certified Driver’s pedigree. Horses are generally put out to stud after an impressive racing career which, thanks to a mishap when under Tayloe’s direction, Driver didn’t have a career. However, in his ad, Thornton bragged about two heats that Driver lost. His description gave a different impression of the horse than Mrs. Thornton’s plaintive June 18 diary entry.
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.
Thornton offered no eyewitness testimony. He put it this way: “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.” He explained why Driver’s racing career ended and didn’t blame his coming home “lame and in bad plight.” As he put it, “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.”
However, Thornton had not entered Driver in the Alexandria races in November 1800, when Tayloe won all three races. Thornton was there but not one of his horses. One newspaper report described a post race parade down the streets of the city with the three winners and the admiring throng. Also, Driver did not race in the first Washington Jockey Club races in November 1801. Obviously, Driver had been in bad plight since June 1800. To the uninitiated reader of Thornton’s ad, Tayloe was merely the host of Driver’s one race. But those in the racing fraternity knew the rumors about Driver and could draw their own conclusion. Later in the article, Thornton tried to influence their deliberations by quoting 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.…" Which is to say that if Thornton had first sent Driver to Duvall, and not to Tayloe, then he would have beaten Tayloe’s horse at the Alexandria races and Sprigg’s horse at the Washington races.
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 was in the process of founding the Washington Jockey Club. Other than history’s say-so, there is no evidence that Thornton had anything to do with it. Thornton's advertisement undermined Tayloe’s mission and would challenge the results of his match race in May. Would Thornton have tried to embarrass Tayloe in the spring of 1802 if he had designed the just opened Octagon?
That Thornton insulted Tayloe in the spring of 1802, and perhaps for good reasons, is verified by how Tayloe tried to make amends. If Mrs. Thornton had a diary in 1801 and 1802, it has gone missing. Beginning January 1, 1803, she began keeping track of expenses, income, and briefly noted visits and visitors. On March 7, 1803, she noted that Joe Key “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. Tayloe's brother-in-law attested that Tayloe bought two foals got by Wild Medley for $1200. Another gentleman lamented that its greatest horse had left Gloucester County which is nestled along the Virginia shore at the wide mouth of the Potomac River. Likely, Tayloe bought the horse and gave it to Thornton. Unlike Clifden and Driver, Wild Medley had a chance to win a race and beat one of Tayloe's horses.
The Thornton-Tayloe friendship blossomed and endured, but there is no evidence that Tayloe ever sought architectural advice from Thornton. In 1810, when the Octagon’s roof had to be replaced and redesigned, Tayloe hired Hadfield. In 1816, when he decided to develop lots on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, he again hired Hadfield. That Dr. William Thornton designed the house and that the Madisons moved into it after the invading British army burned the President’s House in August 1814 are facts cast into the bronze plaque outside the Octagon. Historians assume Thornton must have had something to do with the move. Mrs. Thornton resumed writing a diary during the crisis and resumed her notebook through 1815. She attended Mrs. Madison’s drawing room “squeezes” at the Octagon, but she nor anyone else associated her husband with the house. The president thought the house unhealthy and that it kept their slaves sickly. The First Family left the house on March 4, 1815, and, when they were in the city, made a townhouse on Pennsylvania Avenue their home and office for the rest of his term.
Of course, Thornton’s rough introduction to thoroughbred racing had nothing to do with his quest for fame as the author of the Capitol or the architectural projects he began pursuing after the General’s death. When Driver came back lame both the Lewis house and a cathedral were on his mind. On March 22, 1800, just as Thornton was about to make a plan for beautifying the grounds around the President's house, Mrs. Thornton wrote: "Mr. [Notley] Young's servant brought a letter from Bishop Carroll at Baltimore requesting Dr. T - to draw a plan for a Catholic church which is to be built in Baltimore, they already have several plans but don't like any of them." Young was the bishop's brother-in-law and had a mansion overlooking the Potomac where the bishop often stayed. Thornton went to find the priest who brought the letter to get more information but couldn't find him. The next day he wrote to the bishop. He did not begin working on a design until late April, and worked on it off and on through summer. It is unlikely that bishop was flattering Thornton to help the Carroll clan. He simply wanted to identify the cathedral with Neo-classicism. His late brother Commissioner Daniel Carroll surely acquainted him with the modern monumental look of the future. Thus, somewhat indirectly, Thornton got evidence that thanks to his Capitol design, he was a great architect.
In August, Mrs. Thornton could mark two triumphs. After her husband gave Lewis the plan for a house, they had it made socially: “Monday, August 4th – Dr. T. and Mr. Lewis play’d at Back gammon 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 and 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.” In other entries, she focused on Mr. and Mrs. Peter before they departed, and when they returned: “We, got to town about one o’clock, Mr. Lewis stopped at M. Peter’s – As soon as we came home had to send down to Mr. Law on some business… Mrs. Law stopped at the door with Mrs. Barry & to get a letter I brought down from Mrs. Lewis. Mr. Law came up after dinner - Mr. Lewis & Peter came also.”
Then on August 24, Bishop Carroll saw Thornton’s drawing. According to Mrs. Thornton diary, the bishop “was much pleased with the plan and took to consider it a day or two.” There is nothing more about the design or the bishop in the diary, and a drawing in his papers may explain why. Harris suggests that his design is no longer extant. But in Thornton’s papers there is undoubtedly a drawing of the front of a Neo-classical cathedral. The three front doors are typical for cathedrals and are emblems for the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
The bishop eventually chose Latrobe’s design for the cathedral upon which construction did not begin until 1806. It too has three front doors. To save Thornton’s reputation, curators at the Library of Congress include his drawing for a church in a folder labeled “monuments.” Harris suggests a similar drawing that didn’t have the doors expressed Thornton ideas for a monument for George Washington. Since it resembled his so-called alternative design for the Capitol, Harris also speculates that his Roman temple West Front depicted the General's tomb.
That could lead to speculation that his cathedral design influenced his Capitol design or vice versa. However, Mrs. Thornton’s diary and his letters to Philadelphia suggest that through 1800, Thornton remained true to his original design of the Capitol and to his ideas for how to memorialize the General inside it. On January 6, Thornton wrote to John Marshall, the Virginia congressman who wrote the resolution to place the General’s body in the Capitol. Thornton presumed that congress already knew his grand design and he zeroed in on it. "Here, in the center of the intended dome is the point from which we calculate our longitudes, and here I presume Congress mean to place the body of the beloved and lamented chief. It will be a very great inducement to the completion of the whole building, which has been thought by some contracted minds, unacquainted with grand works, to be upon too great a scale." In 1791, as Andrew Ellicott surveyed the District of Columbia and L'Enfant planned the City of Washington, they hit on the idea of shifting the prime meridian from Greenwich, England, to the Capitol by making the center of North and South Capitol Streets 0 degree longitude. That conceit was on the engraved copy of plan. Marshall replied a month later and evidently only acknowledged receiving Thornton’s letter. In a February 24 letter to Blodget, who was in Philadelphia, Thornton sketched his massy rock idea for the General’s tomb. He made clear that unlike Peter the Great’s outdoor massy mountain in St. Petersburg, his would be under the dome which “being also lighted in the center would be admirably calculated not only to render the principal figures more bright but would give more apparent reality to the design of the figure of Eternity.” She had the rattlesnake around her waist. Blodget’s reply is not extant. It probably relayed the bad news that the congressional debate was focused on a large mausoleum near the President’s house.
Nine months later, Thornton offered the same idea. According to Mrs. Thornon's diary, on Saturday December 6, he visited the editor of the new pro-Jefferson newspaper, subscribed and “copied a part of a letter written sometime ago respecting a monument in the memory of Genl. Washington….” Readers of the National Intelligencer could add Thornton’s “massy rock” to the list of proposals. While Thornton visited the Capitol, presumably to lobby for his proposal, he put his wife to work. On December 19, she wrote "I began to copy the ground plan." On December 20, she added: "did all I could with Dr T's directions to the plan of the Capitol." On December 21 he “wrote a note to Mr. Law respecting the monument.” However, on December 22, writing anonymously to the Intelligencer, Law proposed simplifying the corpse’s commitment to the Capitol. A temporary dome could be built, held up by sixteen columns each with a letter spelling out GEORGE WASHINGTON. The General would be in Potomac marble under the dome. She didn’t mention Law in the last 10 entries in her diary. The Intelligencer reported on December 31 that several cost estimates had been submitted for the Equestrian statue of the General, "among which was one in writing submitted by Dr. Thornton which states with confidence that the expense ... would not exceed from 8,000 to 15,000 pounds currency [$13,000 to $25,000]." Nothing came of any proposal.
Since he was a commissioner, Thornton did manage to put his mark on the design of the North Wing, but his wife’s diary suggested that he faced some headwinds. On February 10, according to the board's proceedings written in Thornton's hand, the plasterer John Kearney asked for a drawing of the ornaments for the tops of the columns circling the interior of the Senate chamber. The board directed "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." In a footnote to the Papers of William Thornton, Harris highlights the proceedings that he thinks made clear that Thornton was directing Hoban, and made a drawing to inform a working drawing to be made by Hoban. However, the Superintendent may have been confused. On February 15, 1800, Mrs. Thornton noted that Hoban called on her husband after dinner to "consult about the Capitals.…"
On April 26, a gentleman interested in business opportunities in the city handed Thornton a letter of introduction from Vice President Jefferson. The bulk of the letter shared his ideas about the Senate chamber, especially the position of the seat for the presiding officer, i.e. the vice president. While it might seem obvious that Jefferson wanted to open a discussion about the layout of the chamber, Thornton chose to read the letter as an expression of support for his design. Jefferson assured Thornton that he wasn't pulling rank on him and that he recognized that Thornton alone made final decisions about arrangements in the Capitol: "I pray you to consider these hints as written privately to yourself, and as meant to have no other weight than your own judgment may give them."
Jefferson asked one direct question: "Are the rooms for the two houses so far advanced as that their interior arrangements are fixed & begun?" Thornton simply thanked Jefferson for his "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...." He filled out his letter to Jefferson, who was also president of the American Philosophical Society, with his theories on the prevention of yellow fever epidemics that included spreading “quick lime and fresh ashes” in reservoirs.
The interior arrangements were not fixed. A month after sending his reply to Jefferson, Thornton met with Thomas Claxton, the Doorkeeper of the House of the Representatives who, Mrs. Thornton wrote, "is empowered to procure the necessary furniture for the Capitol." Then, "they sent for Mr. Hoban and were consulting respecting the seat for the President of the Senate." She left it unclear if Thornton and Claxton sent for Hoban to receive Thornton's orders or Claxton's, or perhaps Hoban explained to both where the seat had to be. Claxton was not one to sit idly by. He would be responsible for putting red Morocco leather on the senators' sully seats, a feature that would attract more notice than the ancient Ionic capitals.
Thornton invited the vice president to stay with him when on his way from Philadelphia to Monticello and offer more advice, but not necessarily about the Capitol: “Though much has been done here we still appear in the infancy of our operations and your improved mind would suggest many things worthy of our attention.” It is unclear if Jefferson had seen the plans that Thornton had sent to congress or gave to Volney. There was no engraved and printed copy easily shared. In 1798, President Adams was at a loss as to what the L’Enfant Plan looked like, and Thornton sent him an annotated copy. But to see his plans for the Capitol, the president had to visit Thornton. When he came in June to inspect the city. Thornton got him to agree to see his plans on June 7, but an hour after the appointed time, Adams' chariot and four rumbled by the house and didn’t stop. Adams left the city on June 13 without seeing them.
1. Mrs. Thornton's diary pp. 113, 152, 214 & 224.
2. Diary p. 102
3. Diary pp. 90, 94, 97.
4. Harris p. 586; Scott, Creating Capitol Hill p. 129; Diary pp. 90, 94, 97.
5. Diary p. 90-1, 97; WT to Lear 20 January 1800, Harris pp. 531-2.
6. Mrs. Thornton's diary, p. 92; Stoddert to Commrs., 3 January 1800, Commrs to Adams, 7 January 1800, Commrs. records; White to Adams, 15 January 1800; Diary pp. 141, 215, 217; Harris pp. 586, 593;
7 .Ridout pp. 90, 123; National Intelligencer 27 May 1801; The Cabinet 9 January 1801 p. 3.
1. Harris p. 528, in his memoir of GW's death, WT refers to Law's brother as Lord Ellenborough. He became a lord in 1802;
2. Harris pp. 242 & 333 footnote 11; Last will and testament ; Annals of Congress, 6th congress p. 208.
3. WT to Marshall 2 or 6 January 1800 Harris p. 526, Harris dates the letter four days before AMT wrote that "in the afternoon wrote to Genl. Marshall...." p. 92 - Harris strains to give WT a leading role but Lear to Adams 1 January 1800 covers issues raised by Thornton in his letter to Marshall;
6. WT to Fothergill, 10 October 1797, Harris pp. 424-27; Mount Vernon Museum, "Particular description..."
7. Ridout pp. 29-30 , 61-5; Diary p. 116; National Intelligencer 5 January 1801, p. 4 & 1 February 1802
8 Adams to Cranch, 4 February 1800 footnote 3 Founders online; Law to Greenleaf, 9 April 1800, Adams Papers: Cranch to A. Adams, 24 April 1800; see also Abigail Adams to Anna Greenleaf Cranch, 17 April 1800, Adams Family Papers.
9. Diary p. 102; Stoddert to WT 20 January 1800; reply 30 January 1800, Harris p. 532-4; Bryan, History of National Capital, vol. 1, p. 346; WT to Madison, 2 September 1823.
10. Diary p. 112; Law to Greenleaf 9 April 1800, Adams Papers.
11. Diary pp. 129, 99,
12. Diary pp. 99, 107, 113, 116, 138; Cohen pp. 117-8; Federal Gazette and Baltimore Daily Advertisers, 7 April 1800, p. 4.
13. Diary pp. 130, 157, 181, 200, 209;
14. Tayloe ad Washington Federalist 22 December 1801; Sprigg ad 16 & 29 January 1802.
15. National Intelligencer 5 April 1802 p. 3;
16. The 1801 Washington Races were called "City Races" and used rules of Annapolis Jockey Club (Federalist 11 November 1801). The November 1802 were called "Washington Jockey Club Races" and used rules of that club. Tayloe was the top officer listed as vice-president. Thornton was not listed as an officer. (Federalist 24 November 1802) --
17. AMT notebook Vol. 1 image 133; Washington Federalist 29 April 1803
18. Thornton v. Wynn 25 US 183; Amer. Turf Reg, vol. 1, April 1830, p. 381;Tayloe, In Memoriam, p. 100; Rattler Broadside; Henry Clay Papers, Clay to Mrs. Thornton, 2 November 1828; American Farmer no. 6 vol. 10 p. 28
19. Hunsberger p. 69; Julia King, George Hadfield: Architect of the Federal City
20. Harris p. 523; Diary pp. 88-9----
21.. WT to Madison 8 September 1801; Madison to Jefferson 16 September 1801; WT to Madison 16 March 1801, 15 August 1801; Madison to WT 8 August 1801; Harris pp. 560-1, 581; “Agreement with Voss 26 June 1802” Madison Paper, Founder online ; National Intelligencer 8 December 1801;
24. WT to Blodget 23 February 1800, Harris p. 535-8; Latrobe to Robert G. Harper, 24 April 1800, Correspondence p. 160.
25. Diary p. 102, 107; Harris, p. 490
26. Jefferson to WT 23 April 1800; WT to Jefferson 7 May 1800;
27. Mrs. Thornton's diary p. 146; Genius of Liberty 1 January 1801
28. WT to Adams 19 February 1798, Harris p. 437; Diary p. 152.
29. Commrs to Andrews 1 November 1800; Diary pp. 208, 222
zz. The Kennebec Gazette 6 March 1801; Bryan, pp. 384-5; on problems with speculators see John Thomson Mason to Jefferson 31 March 1801; on problems with Maryland loan see Commrs. to Jefferson 28 March 1801; on $10,000 appropriated for local improvements see Inhabitants (Thomas Law) to Jefferson 21 March 1801; on congressional committee report on its difficulty comprehending problems commissioners’ faced see Annals of Congress pp. 1350ff.
2. Ridout p. 47; Manasseh Cutler Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 143; Ryan Smith, Robert Morris's Folly: The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder, 2014;.
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