Chapter 11:To Be the Last Architect Standing

 

While Tayloe’s house makes Thornton’s reputation as a great architect, it had almost nothing to do with his life. It is possible that in August 1800, he took the first step to build a house in Square 171 to rival Tayloe’s house. On Thursday August 21, Mrs. Thornton wrote that she “returned at two o’clock found Dr. T. waiting with Mr. Lovering to get into the parlor of which I had the key.” Perhaps he wanted Lovering to estimate the cost of building the house. There is no other mention of Lovering or the never built house in her diary. His rivalry with Tayloe centered on horses.

That the General didn’t ask Thornton to design his house hurt. To certify his fame, Thornton had to make it generally understood that the General realized that his accepting modifications to Thornton’s original Capitol design was a mistake and that he then allowed Thornton to restore his design. The General had never changed his view that the design was the work of a committee and efforts to make design changes only led to delays. That left the impression that in architectural matters the General did not trust Thornton. His not consulting him before sending White a sketch of the houses he wanted to build on Capitol Hill underscored that lack of trust. Thornton must have been shocked that the General used White to arrange matters. The elderly Virginia lawyer knew nothing about architecture and little about the city. Due to his wife's protestations, the president had excused White from having to move to the city. Thornton had designed the Capitol and had thoroughly studied the city plan, had taken levels of the city, contemplated its landscaping, and, most pertinent, had invested in the city while White had not.

That it only took him nine days to come up with a way to turn insult into indelible proof of his architectural genius was a credit to his true genius. On April 5, 1793, when the old board notified Thornton that the president had "given his formal approbation of your plan," they asked him to "be pleased to grant powers or put the business in a way of being closed on the acknowledgments your success entitles you." According to the prospectus, the winner had to choose between a medal worth $500 or $500, and would be awarded a lot "designated by impartial judges." Thornton took the money and did nothing vis-a-vis the lot. On September 21, 1798, the General chose two lots, one from the public and the other from Daniel Carroll of Duddington. He paid $535.70 for the public lot. On the same day, Thornton handed a letter to his colleagues asking that the board finally award him the prize lot.

He couched his letter to his colleagues in a way that made it seem that he was getting his due for making sure the North Wing conformed to his original design. To do that, he had to imply that the changes Hallet made to the design in July 1793 made his being awarded a lot problematical. So he wrote to the board that 
 
I have been prevented by motives of delicacy from requesting your attention to a claim which I have from my drawings for the capitol of the United States being approved by the late President of the United States and the commissioners, our predecessors, which plan, though deviated in some respects, I restored and accommodated to my original ideas, and furnished correspondent elevations and sections for the same, which have thus far been carried into execution, and as no material change is now contemplated it is presumed the whole will be completed upon the plan now adopted…. The plan was decided in the year 1793, at which time a very extensive selection of valuable lots gave a great advantage over the present moment; and the numerous sales which are daily making will so far continue to lessen the choice, that I should do myself evident injustice were I to delay any longer a request that you would be pleased to appoint any gentleman you think proper to make a choice of lot for you…..1

Scott and White chose Thomas Law and Notley Young, two advocates for the East side of the city, and on October 1, 1798, they awarded Thornton a lot next to the General's. But Scott and White didn't reply to his letter. Because they didn't contradict Thornton, in his 1914 history of the city, W. B. Bryan insisted that proved that Thornton had indeed restored his original design. However, having joined the board well after the July 1793 conference and after Thornton's plans went missing, Scott and White were in no position to judge and they did not ask the General or Hoban for their opinion. Evidently, they did not even tell the General that Thornton was given a lot adjoining his, or if they did the General didn’t react. Thornton got the lot on October 1. Even though Thornton visited Mount Vernon for three days that week, evidently Thornton did not break the news until he wrote to the General on October 25.

 
In that letter, he modified his explanation: "the Board allowed me the lot adjoining yours (it being awarded to me by Messrs. Young and Law for the premium which I had not demanded from motives of Delicacy, but which I was entitled to for my plans of Capitol.)" He did not mention his restoring his design and that it would dictate the future course of building. Perhaps, he shied from repeating that because his September 21 letter did not ignite a discussion, let alone a celebration. The General had never acknowledged that and had not endorsed the elevation then hanging in Thornton's parlor.2

Of course, now that he owned the lot next to the General, it behooved Thornton to build on it. That gave him the opportunity to signal to the General that he knew how to design and build a house. In his letter, he offered to save the cost-conscious General money by building a three story brick house “or Houses on a similar plan” next door and assume the full cost of the party wall. Mentioning the party wall was a bit of a stretch. Thornton also confessed to a temporary lack of funds and would not be able to build until he recovered from “some late heavy losses; not in Speculations, but matters of Confidence, to the amount of between four and five thousand Dollars...." He was likely alluding to his inability to mortgage his share of the Tortola plantation. In reply, the General promised to share the cost of the party wall and authorized Thornton to get specifications from the contractor. He never built on the lot.

It is possible that Thornton anticipated the conclusion of W. B. Bryan that merely his being awarded the prize lot proved that he had restored his design. Thornton’s genius luxuriated in the length of time it took to build a monumental building like the Capitol. In his July 1793 response to Hallet’s attack on his design, Thornton had ridiculed the Frenchman’s going on at length about mistakes when “no skilful workman could think himself necessitated to follow in the execution.” As for another goof, Thornton assured that he could have corrected it if only he had time to draw a section. His becoming a commissioner taught him another lesson. He could out last his critics, but he had to give them a push. So, in January 1799, he started a campaign to be the last architect standing when congress came to town. In 1802, Commissioner White recalled in a letter to President Jefferson, "both of the my colleagues were desirous of getting Hoban out of the way and amazing exertions were made to find something in his conduct which would justify them in dismissing him." Thornton began by moving for an investigation of a charge that Hoban fired a carpenter because he would not join the artillery militia. There was no second. Then Thornton broadened the investigation and Scott joined him. In February 1799, the board asked carpenters and joiners for complaints against both Hoban and Redmund Purcell who played such a large role in getting Hadfield out of the way. Evidently, Scott thought Purcell was the source of a rumor that he stole building materials from the public stores for his own house.

The board soon charged Purcell for not properly supervising the men working under him during the winter. He even paid slave sawyers their shilling a day while doing little work. When Hoban heard that the board had received letters from workers impugning his conduct, he asked the board to share that evidence. The investigation centered on the complaints of an English joiner, Joseph Middleton, who claimed that Hoban did not provide the drawings and materials he needed to build shutters that the board hired him to build. On March 12, Hoban explained that he had given Middleton what he needed to make doors and doubted he had time to make shutters.

There was ample evidence that Purcell and Hoban were not negligent in their work. Both the President's house and the North Wing were almost ready. Thornton and Scott laid traps for them. They gave Purcell two days to prepare his defense and fired him when he failed to appear. They asked Hoban to prepare a report on the Capitol giving past and estimating future expenses. He had routinely done that for the President's house. If he failed to report on the Capitol, they could fire him for insubordination.

Purcell counter-attacked in the press. He characterized Thornton as "the fribbling quack architect who smuggled his name to the only drawing of sections for the Capitol ever delivered to the commissioners' office, made out by another man." There were also no updated plans based on the work already done, and Thornton should draw them. In his attack, Purcell mentioned Thornton's extant elevation, but it was not in the hands of the superintendent: "The original plan is hung as a trophy to science in his [Thornton's] parlor." The letter was published on April 16.

Hoban also made the Thornton’s supposed Capitol design an issue. He claimed that he could not very well estimate expenses at the Capitol for the coming season because he had no "plan or sections of the building to calculate by, nor the parts in detail, all which should be put into the hands of the superintendent." Hoban knew of that requirement because he too had been a design contest winner. White also got the impression that Hoban was talking to a lawyer. Perhaps that and White not objecting to firing Purcell persuaded Scott to break with Thornton. On April 15, Hoban wrote a more telling letter to the board. He asked for "drawings necessary for carrying on the following work at the Capitol, viz. 1st. The East entrance and staircase, 2nd. The Elliptic staircase, 3rd. The back staircase, 4. The Representatives Chamber, 5. The Senate Chamber." His colleagues who had not replied to Thornton’s September 21, 1798, letter gave him Hoban’s letter and observed: “We have looked over the original advertisement under which you received the premium for the plan of the Capitol, which evidently requires that the author should furnish the necessary drawings; and your letter of the 17th of November 1795 admits the principle.” That suggests that Thornton had never practiced that principle. If he had, his colleagues could simply ask him to supply the drawings as usual.

Thornton wrote the draft of his reply to his colleagues on April 17. He began by pointing out that he had already made enough drawings and that he was on hand to give advice. He reminded them that the "late Superintendent," meaning Hadfield, was "expressly engaged to furnish the detailed drawings.…" No historian has produced an example of Thornton sketching something for Hadfield to draw. He didn’t, for example, sketch the Capitol roof and relied on forcing Hadfield to stipulate in writing that the roof would not be higher than the balustrade.

Thornton found an ingenious way to split hairs and free himself from any principle that he should make drawings in order to get the Capitol ready for congress. He reminded the board that it "had determined not to finish the rooms in a splendid and expensive style at present but in a plain manner...." He argued that such "plain" expedients to get the building ready for use were not part of his design and not his responsibility. The stairways were to be temporary and made of wood. They were an expedient. Otherwise, he would be anxious to make drawings. He evidently forgot that in his November 1795 letter he had written "...I promise to supply such drawings hereafter, as may be deemed sufficient for the prosecution of the Capitol, and in time to prevent any delay whatever."

Then he launched into a written description of features in each room. For the Senate chamber, he wrote: "I propose that the columns be executed in the ancient Ionic order with the volutes curved in the middle over the column and with an astragal below the volutes to form a neck to the column: the shaft of the column plain - the entablature full but plain and without modillions." That's not exactly from Chambers who described Ionic columns with "angular volutes with an astragal and fillet below the volute." Chambers at least provided a glossary. A volute is a scroll. An astragal is "a small moulding whose profile is semi-circular." Thornton wished marble for the columns but accepted substitutes.  He thought one of the walls of the library, which was to be the House's temporary chamber, "ought to be taken down." He explained how timbers could be supported in another way and where to form an arch to create a "lighted closet," but he offered no drawings. He noted times when the board had asked Hoban for drawings, and suggested that doing drawings had always been Hoban's job.

On April 18, Thornton's colleagues asked Hoban to make the necessary drawings "as conveniently you can." Not surprisingly, Harris interprets the exchange as a complete victory for Thornton. He claims that “the following day they forwarded to Hoban a copy of this response by WT, directing the superintendent to prepare drawings for the board’s examination. The correctness of these exchanges would seem to reflect the uncertainty of Hoban’s position at that time, charges of negligence against him having been taken up by the board.”3

“As conveniently as you can” is not the language of “correctness.” Thornton completely failed in his effort to get Hoban “out of the way.” In an 1802 letter to White, President Jefferson gave the impression that Hoban had in no way been corrected or put in the shade by Thornton: “mr Hobens has set up an extraordinary claim…. it is that he continues in his office at 300. guineas a year until the buildings shall be finished, and independent of any body & every body. this he founds on a written appointment of the Commissioners, or perhaps an entry in their journals, which expressing no definite time of continuance, Luther Martin (as Hoben says) deems determinable only by the finishing of the buildings. I believe the writing says he is to continue till they are finished. he claims damages too for what he suffers in his reputation as an architect by their not being finished.” Martin was the leading trial lawyer in Maryland, and arguably in the nation. White was dumbfounded and said that he talked to Hoban at the end of 1800, and he seemed resigned to being dismissed when congress took charge of the future of the Capitol. When Commissioner Scott died on Christmas Eve, Thornton became leader of the board. Evidently, he and Hoban came to an agreement, and, in return, Hoban agreed not to question that Thornton was the author of the Capitol design. Glenn Brown cited that as proof that all of Thornton’s claims about the Capitol design were true.

Thornton never mentioned the controversy with Hoban in the letters he wrote to the General. Evidently, he didn’t recognize setbacks and certainly didn’t dwell on them. The day after his colleagues reaffirmed their commitment to Hoban, Thornton tried to become the superintending architect of the General’s houses. That may have amused the General. In 1794, he had made Thornton a commissioner so “as by a daily attendance to see that everything moves with regularity, economy and dispatch.…" Within a year, the Capitol’s walls fell down. The General thanked Thornton, allowed that he assumed the sills would be stone, but did not ask Thornton to continue checking on Blagden’s progress. Thornton did not cross that line again. The General also schooled Thornton. He reminded him to get the contractors to paint sashes before installing them, instructed him on the proper mixture of sand in the paint for the walls and lectured him on plaster of Paris. After that last lesson, Thornton referred Washington to a pamphlet on the subject written by a Pennsylvania judge. While president, the General had asked the judge to do the research and write the pamphlet. 

Thornton also tried to school the General after he asked Thornton for his opinion on what the rent should be for the houses. In his reply, Thornton discussed the issue at length, concluded that 10% of the cost of construction would be fair, but he had a better idea: "...preserve them unrented, and keep them for sale, fixing a price on them together or separately; and I have no Doubt you could sell them for nine or ten thousand Dollars each, and if you were inclined to lay out the proceeds again in building other Houses this might be repeated to your Advantage, without any trouble, with perfect safety from risk, and to the great improvement of the City." In reply, other than thanking him "for the information, and sentiments," the General didn't react to Thornton's suggestion that in the waning years of his illustrious life, he become a real estate developer. Then Thornton drove away a boarding house manager who back in September 1798 had expressed an interest in renting the houses. Because the prospective renter wanted to build back buildings, Thornton wrote to the General that he “refused to name any price.”4 The General was probably not amused but didn’t react. In his September 1 letter in which he mentioned seeing Tayloe, he offered to order the ironmongery, The General wanted Blagden to do it as he would be “a better judge of its quality.”5

That others who had built houses were better at the business did not bother Thornton. He continued to shine in other ways. While the General didn’t reply to Thornton’s September report on progress in the city. Tobias Lear, the General’s secretary wrote to Thornton: "I hope the grand and magnificent will be combined with the useful in all the new public undertakings. We are not working for our selves or our children; but for ages to come, and the works should be admired as well as used. Your wharves and the introduction of running water are among the first objects. Let no little mindedness or contracted views of private interest prevent their being accomplished upon the most extensive and beautiful plan that the nature of things will admit of - and - But hold, I am talking to one who has considered and understands these subjects much better than myself, and who, I trust, will exert himself to have everything done in the best manner."6 To be sure, to some, Thornton was a bit too full of himself. In late May 1799, Thomas Boyleston Adams, the First Family's third son, toured the city. In a June 9, 1799, letter to his mother, that was mostly favorable about the city's site and prospects, Thomas painted a dismissive portrait of Thornton. He was "a democratic, philanthropic, universal benevolence kind of a man—a mere child in politics, and having for exclusive merit a pretty taste in drawing—He makes all the plans of all the public buildings, consisting of two, and a third going up."7

Both White and Thornton wrote to the General on December 7 and both reported the usual mix of good and bad news about the city and its prospects. Not surprisingly, the elderly Virginia politician and Thornton elicited different responses. To the former, the General was resigned: "it may be said with truth) that those whose interest it was, most to promote the welfare & growth of the City, have been its worst enemies, yet that matters will still go right." To the latter, he was aroused: "...the obstructions continually thrown in its way—by friends or enemies—this City has had to pass through a firey trial—Yet, I trust will, ultimately, escape the Ordeal with eclat.” For the General, Thornton was a tonic, and sometimes too exuberant, but not an architect.8

The General died at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1799. Informed that the General was sinking, The Laws thought enough of Thornton’s medical table talk to bring him as they hurried to Mount Vernon. They were a day late. There were already three doctors on the scene and Thornton still made an impression. On his death bed, the General had requested that he not be entombed for two days on the odd chance that he wasn't really dead.9 Lear suggested that burial be delayed longer to permit more relatives to attend. The attending physician and Dr. Thornton vetoed Lear’s suggestion because the inflammatory nature of the General's fatal disease made the corpse susceptible to decay and had to be buried as soon as possible. Thornton would write later that “the weather was very cold, and [the corpse] remained in a frozen state, for several days...” Judging from Jefferson's thermometer in the Virginia foothills, the afternoon temperatures at Mount Vernon, which is usually warmer than Monticello, were around 40F until the day of burial.10 Thornton remembered a freeze to enable a fantasy that he would write but not send or publish. He would claim that he “proposed to attempt his resurrection, in the following manner. First to thaw him in cold water, then to lay him in blankets, and by degrees and by friction to give him warmth, and to put into activity the minute blood vessels, at the same time to open a passage to the lungs by the trachea, and to inflate them with air, to produce an artificial respiration, and to transfuse blood into him from a lamb..."11 But, he was "not seconded." What he wrote is not true. Not only did that contradict his own assessment of the decaying corpse noted in Lear’s account written days after the General’s death, the weather didn’t cooperate either.

In the wake of his friend’s death, Thornton fulfilled one duty. On January 3, Lear wrote and asked for his accounts of the General’s payments to Blagden. Thornton didn’t get around to it until of the eve of the executors meeting at Mount Vernon on January 21. That day, according to Mrs. Thornton’s diary,  he sent his slave Joe Key "very early in the morning," to get Blagden’s accounts and then he sent in all to Mount Vernon. If the General had been alive, he wouldn’t have procrastinated. But he had more important things to do to promote the General’s legacy. From Lear’s January 3 letter, he also learned that Mrs. Washington had bowed to the wishes of congress and would allow the General’s body to be in the monument that congress had just resolved to put in the Capitol. After dinner on Saturday the 4th, Thornton took his wife and mother-in-law inside the General’s houses. Then they went to the Capitol and while the ladies sat by a fire in another room where glaziers were working, he “laid out an Oval, round which is to the communication to the Gallery of the Senate Room.” Something was stirring in Thornton. He was not in the habit of going to the Capitol after dinner on Saturday to lay out rooms. She did not note his doing anything like that again. With the General’s death, rhetoric was no longer enough. The critic had to once again design.12

When the General directed that he not be entombed for two days, he was thinking of the family tomb nearby. In 1793, Thornton had described his “dome” as the place to commemorate national heroes, but the deification of the General had been in the works since 1783 when the Confederation Congress authorized an old Roman honor for him, an Equestrian Statue. However, when the General died, no one in Philadelphia had asked for Thornton’s advice or the board’s. The House of Representative’s resolution about the tomb meant nothing without an appropriation to build it and the rest of the Capitol. On January 6, Thornton wrote to the author of the resolves, General John Marshall, whom he had never met, congratulating the House for its resolution and noting that putting the body in the center of "that national temple... 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." Thornton used rhetoric that suggested that his opinion was requisite to the on-going planning. He wrote that he had "doubted not" that the congress would do the right thing. A month later Marshall acknowledged receiving the letter but didn't react to Thornton's vision.13

He soon had an idea for the tomb itself. He recalled an engraving he had seen in Scotland of the monument to Peter the Great in Petersburg. The Czar was mounted on a horse rearing up on a massive rock with a long snake below its hooves.  Thornton sketched and described a "massy rock" inspired by that monument. Sculptures on the rock featured the General on foot climbing to heaven and, among other figures below him, was a woman with a snake coiled around her body, symbolizing eternity. The bodies of the General and his wife would be entombed in the middle and all that would be under the Capitol's dome, once it was built. Finally, Blodget wrote from Philadelphia asking if Thornton had any ideas for the General’s memorial. He sent up a sketch of the massy rock tomb. There is no evidence that Thornton’s proposal had any influence on the on-going congressional debate.

Meanwhile, Thornton tried to focus his genius on the here and now. In late January, Thornton got a personal letter from Navy secretary Benjamin Stoddert challenging him to get the President’s house ready for the president: "A private gentleman preparing a residence for a friend would have done more than has been done." Stoddert wanted an enclosed garden "at the north side of the Presidents Houses" similar to one had by the richest man in Philadelphia, William Bingham. There also should be a stable, carriage house and garden house. The latter should be in a garden that would be "an agreeable place to walk in even this summer." January was not the time to get to work on that, and when the weather allowed, Thornton decided that there were not enough hired slaves to spare. The commissioners would see that a stone stable was built. Still, on January 30, Thornton summoned the rhetoric to match the challenge. He wrote back that he had always been for grandeur throughout the city. His colleagues were "afraid of encouraging any expense not absolutely necessary, and seem not to think these things necessary that you and I deem indispensable."

It was in that frame of mind that he finished his floor plan and elevation of his likely domed house for Lot 17 in Square 171. But why didn't his wife say more about such a consequential design? She noted that he spent the day designing his house "to build one day or another." She stated the obvious which meant the opposite. This was not a project that might be done in the future, and couldn't be done at that time. W. B. Bryan offered an interpretation for her lack of enthusiasm. She knew the house could not be built "owing, no doubt, to a lack of funds, which was a common experience in the life of a man who moved in a large orb, but one not within in the range of either the making or the saving money." There is something to that, but whenever Thornton sold his Lancaster property, he expected to make $40,000. The death of his mother in October 1799 might have led to some reckoning of the Tortola estate with money coming to Thornton.14

His wife didn't allude to a lack of funds. Money was always a factor but in this case Thornton's preposterous design for a house uncongenial to anyone who had to live in it made its realization equally unlikely no matter the day. A house designed for a rectangular lot would, even if done by Thornton, likely accommodate a live-in mother-in-law and frequent house guests, and not stick out like a sore thumb. Mrs. Thornton had grown up in Philadelphia, an orderly brick city on a grid.

Two days later, as her diary recorded, “Dr. T- at work all day on the East Elevation of the Capitol. - I assisted a little till evening worked on my netting."15 Unfortunately, she didn’t say if he was making a copy or making changes. On February 10, the plasterer John Kearney asked for a drawing of the ornaments for the tops of the columns circling the interior of the Senate chamber. According to its proceedings, written in Thornton's hand, "the Board direct James Hoban to furnish him with, in conformity to the drawing given to John Kearney by Wm. Thornton - in the ancient Ionic stile, but with volutes like the modern Ionic." 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...."16

Mrs. Thornton never described what he was drawing or saying about the Capitol. The only elaborating description of a Thornton design  in her diary was for a stables. On February 27, she wrote "Dr. T- received a note from Mr. Law enclosing a rough Sketch of a plan for a Stables & c. behind his house which is five stories before and three behind, which Dr. T- had promised to lay down for him as he had suggested the ideas - The Stables and Carriage house are to be built at the bottom of the lot and the whole yard to be covered over at one Story height, and gravelled over, so as to have a flat terrass from the Kitchen story all over the extremity of the lot.... Dr. T- engaged in the evening drawing Mr. Law's plan."17 The boarding house on Square 689 would advertise that it could accommodate 60 horses but evidently no one ever credited Thornton. By the way, in 1801, Lovering designed and built a stable and coach house to serve Tayloe’s house.

Meanwhile, Thornton discovered another way to remember the General. In February 1799, his nephew Lawrence Lewis and the Martha’s third grand daughter, who both lived at Mount Vernon, got married. In lieu of bequeathing Mount Vernon to Lewis, he gave 2000 acres of the estate and urged him to build a house. But the General didn't mention the house to Thornton.18 In March 1800, while on a visit to Mount Vernon, Thornton showed Lewis where to build as house and told him what trees to cut. On August 4, 1800, while they were at Mount Vernon, Mrs. Thornton described a pleasing day: "Dr. T. and Mr. Lewis played at backgammon till tea. After breakfast - Mrs. Lewis, the young Ladies and I went in Mrs. Washington's carriage ( a coachee and four) and Mr. Lewis and Dr. T. in ours, to see Mr. Lewis's hill where he is going to build his farm, mill and distillery. Dr. T. has given him a plan for his house. He has a fine situation, all in woods, from which he will have an extensive and beautiful view." The house was not built until 1804. Lacking oval rooms, C. M. Harris has no interest in it: "the house as it appears today has no resemblance to Thornton's other designs."19

Then in the middle of March 1800, a boy delivered a note "from Mr. Carroll of Duddington, (living in the City an original and large proprietor) requesting Dr. T- as he had promised, to give him some ideas for the plan of two houses he and his brother are going to begin immediately on Sq. 686 on the Capitol Hill." Thornton spent the afternoon "drawing the plans for Mr. Carroll." His design was likely an expansion of the General's design. Carroll offered the houses for sale in January 1801 and made more of the size of the lot than the character of the houses: "two three story brick houses adjoining each other, 28 feet front each, by forty feet deep - a fine commodious lot 61 feet front, by 196 feet deep, running back to an alley 30 feet wide, and may be occupied as one or two tenements, they are finished in a plain but substantial manner, and built of the best materials...." Those paired houses were larger than the General's which likely pleased Thornton.20

There is no doubt that Thornton enjoyed the projects. His restless energy seemed to be directing him to become what posterity thinks he was, an innovative house designer who complemented his brilliant design for the Capitol. Of course, only his design for Lot 17 and Law’s stable were innovative. Plus, Law and Carroll had a motive other than taking advantage of Thornton’s genius. Through her nephew William Cranch, who was then Law's lawyer, Carroll and Law learned that Mrs. Adams had doubts about moving into the President's house. She feared the building would be too green. Law wrote the letter already quoted that described the house. He not only recounted the General's reaction, but also claimed that “it is warm in the winter and cool in the summer having all the southerly wind.” Cranch thought Carroll's mansion better suited and Carroll sent a letter to Cranch describing his house, and Cranch sent it to his aunt. If the First Family needed a house, having Commissioner Thornton on their side could do neither Law nor Carroll any harm. Coincidentally, through Notley Young, another member of the Carroll clan, Bishop John Carroll asked Thornton to submit a design for a new cathedral in Baltimore. Then the First Lady decided to not come to the city at all. Both Law and Carroll continued to build houses in a vain effort to profit off their many building lots in the city. Other men, including Hoban, designed their houses. There is no evidence that they again asked Thornton for building plans. Latrobe designed the cathedral in Baltimore21

Then Thornton stopped designing houses. He reverted to dispensing opinions but not floor plans. At least his brief experience drawing them helped him master the cant of domestic architecture. In 1801, his friend James Madison, the newly appointed secretary of state, needed a place to live. Thornton learned that the president was trying to find a rental for him. Thornton took over that task and in August advanced rent for a house being built next to his in return for an agreement that the builder would pay $1,000 if the house wasn't ready on October 1. In early August, the builder had advertised that he wanted to hire laborers to work until November 1. Thornton also claimed that he gave directions to the builder, telling Madison that: "I have directed the third Story to be divided into four Rooms, two very good Bed-chambers, & the other two smaller Bed chambers. The Cellar I have directed to be divided, that one may serve for wine &c, the other for Coals &c—and for security against Fire a Cupola on the roof...." Madison expressed his gratitude.22 On the basis of Thornton's letter, C. M. Harris claims that Thornton "supervised the construction" of Madison's rental. Thornton certainly made a rhetorical show of it but there is evidence that Madison was disappointed in what he found in October. In August, he had emphasized to Thornton that he needed a good stable. In June 1802, Madison finally signed a rental agreement with the builder on condition that he build a brick stable and "what remains to be done to the dwelling house shall also be finished."

His failing Madison, who never complained, came a little over a year after he stopped designing houses, which can roughly be dated to late April 1800 when he got a letter from Vice President Jefferson. He shared his ideas about the Senate chamber, especially the position of the seat for the presiding officer, i.e. the vice president. He 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?" One would think Thornton would jump at the opportunity to go back and forth with the man he hoped would be the next president. But with an eye to his legacy, rather than making the building more convenient for those obliged to use it, he jumped at the opportunity to confirm the supremacy of his plans. He 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.23

But, in late April 1800, were interior arrangements fixed?  In his April 17, 1799, letter to the board, in which he had declined making drawings for finishing the Senate chamber, he didn't discuss the placement of Jefferson's seat or any other issue that Jefferson would raise in April 1800. A month after sending his reply to Jefferson, Thornton met with 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. What is clear is that Thornton did not carry on a consultation about the chair with the first man who would sit in it. It is not clear if Thornton ever made a plan showing the internal arrangements of the Senate chamber. In early 1900, W. B. Bryan asked Glenn Brown to give a paper before the Columbia Historical Society describing the North Wing when congress convened there in December 1800. He based his paper on a report Hoban wrote, but, of course, Brown insisted that what Hoban described were the fruits of Thornton's genius.24

However, while it might seem obvious that Jefferson wanted to open a discussion with Capitol, Thornton rightly read the letter as an expression of support for his design. Thornton hoped Jefferson would succeed Adams but tried to make sure that when Adams visited the city that he saw Thornton’s design. During his visit, the president attended all public dinners in his honor. So did Thornton, who managed to corner him. Adams promised to drop in and see his design. Whether he sensed that Thornton would seek his official approval for the design is unknown, but at the appointed hour, his chariot and four roared by the F Street house without stopping.25

Thornton found another way to acquaint the president with his genius. During the summer, he met the ornament maker George Andrews and had him put composition ornaments on the interior walls of the President’s house. Thornton came up with the designs. On November 1, President Adams arrived and moved in. That same day, the commissioners received a note directing that all the ornaments depicting men or beasts at the President's house be removed and replaced with ornamental urns. Thornton arranged for Andrews to meet Jefferson and show him “samples of his composition ornaments.” Adams' ire was not personally directed against Thornton. Mrs. Adams returned a visit by Mrs. Thornton and saw the plan. Advised by Cranch, the president appointed Thornton one of the 28 justices of the peace for the District of Columbia which allowed him to continue adjudicating petty crimes and small debts and notarize deeds as he had been doing as a county magistrate.26

Thornton also lobbied the House to put the General's tomb under the future dome. In early December, the Intelligencer printed portions of the letter he had sent to Blodget in February that described a "massy rock" inspired by the monument to Peter the Great in St. Petersburg.  There is no evidence that his proposal had any influence on the continuing debate which still focused on a monumental mausoleum outside the Capitol.27

Then before adjourning on Inauguration Day, March 4, 1801, the House authorized a chamber of its own as soon as possible. Commissioner Scott had died on Christmas Day, making Thornton the senior member of the board. Commissioner White bowed to Thornton's leadership in architectural matters. The board decided to build a chamber for the House on the site of the South Wing. While it would be temporary, its foundation and walls would be incorporated into the permanent South Wing. Once again Thornton did not mind Hoban drawing the design, with the caveat that he follow Thornton's plan and make a building elliptical in shape on the foundation already laid. Hoban drew three plans and estimated that the cheapest temporary "elliptical room" would cost $5,000 but only $1,000 of it would have to be torn down when the South Wing was built.

President Jefferson, who expected to see his Halle au Ble ideas embodied in Thornton's room, agreed with that approach with a caveat offered by Hoban. He wrote to the commissioners: "mr Hobens observes there will be considerable inconveniencies in carrying up the elliptical wall now without the square one, & the square one in future without the elliptical wall, and that these difficulties increase as the walls get higher." For that reason, the president only approved the one story building. Of course, Hoban was warning that Thornton's stricture that the elliptical chamber must stand alone on the elliptical foundation wouldn't work. The president hoped that Thornton was right. Hoban hired Lovering as the contractor. He had designed and supervised construction of oval rooms in Law's and Tayloe's houses. The Seventh Congress convened on December 7, 1801, in what Thornton called "the elliptical room." Even though it was 90 by 72 feet, members soon called it the "oven," either because it was stuffy or its contours resembled a Dutch oven. Now treated as an amusing sidelight, the elliptical room was a second step, after laying the foundation in 1795, in the fulfillment of the plan for the South Wing.28

What was likely more gratifying to Thornton was how easily decisions were made with the president living in the city. He saw the problem, recognized that Thornton's prize winning plan had the solution and that Thornton and Hoban worked well together. Before the president moved to the city, Thornton did not enunciate what was clearly on his mind. However, he started prospecting for a better paying federal office, which made clear that he thought he could fulfill the obligations of the design contest winner without also being a commissioner. When Jefferson did give him another job, he would indeed consult with him about the Capitol design even though he was no longer a commissioner. On Inauguration Day, he applied to the president to fill any vacancy.

Congress did not pass the bill abolishing the board of commissioners until April 1802 and that relieved the president from having to find another job for Thornton. Thornton had befriended the Treasurer of the United States, with a $3,000 a year salary, learned when he planned to retire and in September asked his old friend Madison to send and endorse his application for the job to the president. The request came at the culmination of Thornton's hurrying the Madisons into the house next door.

When congressmen returned to the city in November1801, the president replaced the retiring Treasurer with a Virginia M. D. who was also a Revolutionary War veteran. Thornton had to assume that the president simply wanted him to continue what he had been doing as a commissioner. When congress abolished the board, it assigned its duties to a new Superintendent of the City, to be appointed by the president. With Scott dead, his replacement a Federalist, and White anxious for a judgeship, Thornton had to expect that he would be asked to become the superintendent, certainly his wife did. Before disbanding, the board advised the president about decisions he should make. On April 17, Thornton sent a long letter addressing the problem of a Water Street running along the entire waterfront of the city. Commissioner White had already written to the president doubting the "propriety" of Thornton's grand ideas. The president agreed with White and perhaps Thornton's letter, in which he pointed to the Bordeaux waterfront as a good example, wearied the president. Still, Thornton and his ladies could delightfully fill out a table. A few days later, he invited all three to dinner.

On June 1, the president made Thomas Munroe, the board's clerk, the new Superintendent. Mrs. Thornton asked him why he didn't appoint her husband. The president assured her that the job was temporary. Munroe held the job until 1815. But Thornton was not forgotten. Before its second session in the city ended in 1802, congress delegated its authority to grant patents to the State department. On June 2, 1802, the president and Madison hired Thornton as the clerk to process patents. He held the job until he died in 1828. There was one problem with his new position. The salary was very high for a clerk but not for a federal officer, only $1400. After 8 years of government service, he took a 12.5% cut in salary. The president was conscious of his slighting Thornton so he also appointed him one of the bankruptcy commissioners for the District of Columbia and calculated that Thornton would make $600 a year in fees. Thornton later claimed that out of pity for bankrupts, he never asked for fees. But with friends in high office, he trusted there would be more honors and emoluments. There weren't, and by 1812, he was a rather bitter bureaucrat, and more bitter still because in the meantime he lost control over his Capitol design despite Jefferson's continued respect for it.29

In the summer of 1802, once Superintendent Munroe dismissed Hoban, Thornton had no rival at Capitol. Then the debacle of 1795, that darkened his relationship with President Washington, almost repeated itself. In October, just before congress returned for its second session in the city, the president, who got his exercise by riding around on horseback, became alarmed. He wrote to Claxton: "Observing that the roof of the Representatives chambers has sunk in the middle, that the walls are cracked in several places and pressing out from the perpendicular, I think it necessary that the cause should be examined into by good & experienced persons...." He mentioned Hadfield and Blagden, but not Thornton, Hoban and Lovering. The next day, the experts blamed the roof "which presses the walls outward," and recommended buttressing the walls.30 No one in the city had yet built an oval roof.

On November 2, 1802, a week after the experts made their report, Jefferson asked Benjamin Latrobe to come the city. He had become Philadelphia's most prominent architect and engineer, an active fellow in the Philosophical Society, and ardent Republican, as supporters of Jefferson were called. He wanted to put most of the US Navy's frigates in dry docks along the Eastern Branch and wanted Latrobe to design and build the dry docks. That was a cost-cutting measure. With ships on land and captains getting half pay, money saved could pay down the national debt. Latrobe drew elaborate plans but congress tabled the idea.31

In 1803, the city experienced its second short session of congress which adjourned on March 3. Capitol Hill boarding houses emptied. Law, Carroll and lesser landlords suffered. However, that year there were advantages for the city. One of the longer unresolved debates was on a resolution to leave the city. One of the shortest debates ended with a $50,000 appropriation to build the South Wing. During that short debate a friend of the administration assured his colleagues that an "eminent architect" vouched for that sum as sufficient. No one asked about the design of the South Wing.32

On March 6, the president, who had invited the Thorntons to dinner, sent a message to F Street asking Thornton to "come a quarter or half an hour before the company, say at three a clock & bring with you the plans of the Capitol...." He also sent two letters to Latrobe who was back in Philadelphia. One offered him the position of "Surveyor of the Public Buildings," and asked him to get to the city as soon as possible and get to work. In a "private letter" sent the same day, he admitted that $50,000 was not enough money. "I think it will raise the external walls to the uppermost window-sills, being those of the entresols; and I have no doubt Congress at their next session will give another 50,000. D. which will compleat that wing inside & out in the year 1804." The president likely had previously discussed the South Wing with Latrobe. A word like entresols, a French variant on mezzanine, does not pop up in a letter out of the blue. He sent a "private letter" because of his devious way of financing the project. He did not mention consulting with Thornton.33

What conversation the president had with Thornton a half hour before dinner is not known. At some time, the president asked Thornton to show how committee rooms would be distributed in the South Wing. There was no immediate follow-up with Thornton. On March 7, the president left for three weeks vacation at Monticello. Latrobe left Philadelphia as soon as he could and soon after his arrival, he consulted Thornton. He asked why the principal chambers were on the basement floor, and Thornton told him that he was advised to lower them to allow for greater height in the chamber for the House. He did not mention Jefferson’s enthusiasm for the Halle au Ble. Latrobe inspected what had been built and in a long report to the president, he noted that the elliptical room seemed to be "intended for the permanent basement of the elliptical colonnade." He found its foundation poorly laid and "wholly unfit to carry the weight of the colonnade." The surrounding foundation walls of the rectangular building also had to be pulled down. Then he criticized the workmanship and design of North Wing and, not knowing Jefferson's role in its design, ridiculed the South Wing at length. But he stopped short of demeaning the Capitol: "The Senate chamber independent of its slight construction and badness of workmanship is otherwise a handsome room, and if justice should be done to the vestibule in the execution, Europe will not be able to exhibit a more magnificent public Saloon. It will be worthy of the intention of the building." Latrobe also attested to Thornton's "talent."34

Latrobe began hiring men and arranging to acquire building material, but also had work to do in Philadelphia and on the Delaware-Chesapeake canal. There is no evidence that the president replied to his report in writing or in person. Although Latrobe was seldom on the scene, faulty foundation walls were brought down and the permanent South Wing began to arise around the buttressed temporary House chamber. John Lenthall, Latrobe's assistant, sent the president a copy of the weekly, largely statistical, report he sent to Latrobe. When Lenthall shared a drawing of a curious building technique in the old wall, Latrobe described it as more evidence of "Thornton's stupid genius." While in the city, Latrobe did mock battle with Thornton over their competing designs for a monument for the General. Latrobe had proposed a pyramid-like mausoleum near the President's house to honor the General. At a social gathering, Thornton held up Latrobe's design as done by an engineer with no artistic sensibilities. Then to the amusement of the gathered, Latrobe mocked Thornton's eternity with a snake around her neck. Thornton seemed offended but Latrobe thought they remained friends.35

However, as he took his measure of Thornton, Latrobe balanced his discovery of his flaws as an architect, with his liking the man and his respect for his multifarious activities. For two years they were friendly. In 1802, the president had invited them both to the same dinner along with the Madisons and a few other notables. During the city's social season the Latrobes enjoyed being entertained by the Thorntons. The doctor talked about all manner of things. He offered himself as a public intellectual. In 1803, the government swelled the national debt by buying the Louisiana territory from the France for $15 millions. In 1804, Thornton published a 24 page letter that proposed increasing the debt by buying all the country's slaves, putting them to work on canals and roads, and then freeing them in the outer reaches of the newly acquired territory, thus keeping the races separated forever. He also amused the city's politicians by offering "a new confederate system of Government for the United States." On the back burner was his plan for "an universal system of education; the result of which in his opinion would be to produce in fifty years time a greater number of ingenious and learned men in the United States, than in all the world besides."36

In February 1804, Latrobe's plans for the upcoming building season required presidential approval. Latrobe also had to appear before a House committee in support of the appropriation for the work. The elliptical room had to be taken down, forcing the House back to the North Wing, and Latrobe had to describe what would replace it. Latrobe anticipated a crisis even though the president offered to talk to Thornton about difficulties with the plan. Latrobe went to see Thornton first and they had a brief encounter outside Thornton's office in the State department.

In a letter to the president, Latrobe paraphrased Thornton's stance: "no difficulties existed in his plan, but such as those that were made by those too ignorant to remove them...."  Latrobe allowed that his first impulse was to resign, but he told the president he would make the project his "difficulte vaincue." That is to say, given the design in hand, the only boon to his reputation as architect would be that he managed to build such an impossible plan. The president responded immediately and sympathetically, but somewhat disingenuously. He took refuge in a simplified history of the design process: "on Dr. Thornton's plan of the Capitol, the North Wing has been executed, and the South raised one story. In order to get along with any public undertaking, it was necessary that some stability of plan to observed. Nothing impedes progress as much as perpetual changes of design. I yield to this principle in the present case more willingly because the plan begun for the Representative room will in my opinion be more handsome and commodious than any thing which can be proposed on the same area." The president neglected to mention Hallet's critique of Thornton's winning plan which a committee of experts chaired by Jefferson had echoed. Plus, the "handsome and commodious" room was Jefferson's idea, not Dr. Thornton's. However, Jefferson did assure Latrobe that if circumstances arose in the building process changes could be made.

In his reply, Latrobe assured the president that changes had to be made but the "elliptical form and the colonnade, the principal features of the work will remain." Then he closed the letter by railing at Thornton and vowing that while Thornton had bested Hallet and ruined Hadfield, he would not beat Latrobe: "If I felt the slightest respect for the original author as an architect, I should be fearless as respects to myself but placed as I am on the very spot from which Hallet and Hadfield fell, attacked by the same weapons, and with the same activity, nothing but a resolute defense can save me."

Latrobe was misreading the history of the design process. Hallet had argued that Thornton's ideas were actually his. When Hadfield presented his plan to President Washington in Philadelphia, Hoban, not Thornton, was also there and defended the adopted plan which had been drawn by Hallet. By attacking Thornton, Latrobe gave the doctor undeserved credit for the design, but how else could he disabuse the president from his belief that Thornton's design was worth building?

Latrobe assured the House committee that Thornton's plan had the force of law and that he would build it and have it ready by 1806, thus he acceded to the president's view. Then he shared a more accurate history of the design. He noted that the original design was missing, that Hallet was hired to correct its deficiencies which he did until he was sacked, and then Hadfield succeeded him and, with only imperfect sketches to work with, he tried to correct the "radical deficiencies of the design." With the loss of Hadfield, Blagden "assured the excellent execution of the freestone work of the North Wing." Latrobe obliquely referenced the role the author of the design played while he was a commissioner: "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." He then listed ten objections to the plan, principally the need for more rooms to make the chamber convenient. He assured the committee that changes he recommended have been "laid before the President of the United States and received his serious consideration."37 A little over a week later, in a letter to 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." Not until his 1811 letter to Latrobe would Jefferson reveal how much he was invested in Thornton's design of the South Wing.38