Chapter 12: Thornton v. Latrobe
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| The North Wing in 1800 |
Glenn Brown credited Thornton for preventing “further tampering with his design" as long as he was a commissioner from September 12, 1794, until 1802. Then the Second Architect of the Capitol, Benjamin Latrobe, began tampering with his design. Brown thought that Latrobe’s changes were unwarranted and that a better architect could have built the Capitol just as Thornton designed. In his zeal to use Thornton’s genius to elevate design over engineering, Brown cast the ideal architect as a defender of his faith in his design. Washington and Jefferson defined a good architect as one whose design could be built. However, both presidents needed Thornton. Washington needed him to fill a vacancy on the board when other gentleman blanched at the requirement that they live in the unbuilt city. Jefferson embraced Thornton’s plan as long as the South Wing was being built to preclude attempts by congress or Latrobe to change the design of what was essentially his, not Thornton’s, idea. He trusted that Thornton, now the senior commissioner, was enough of an architect to get it built. He wasn’t but two president’s had given him enough leg to stand so that he could attack Latrobe.(1)
On June 1, 1801, the board asked the president to approve work on the South Wing to accommodate the increased representation in congress from 106 to 142 members thanks to the census of 1800. Four days earlier the board had directed Hoban to draw plans for a building “on the eliptic Foundation in the South wing of the Capitol” so that “the Arcades, and as much of the other work as can be done consistently with the general Plan of the Capitol may remain permanent.” The "eliptic foundation" was surrounded by the foundation walls laid in 1795, that did not fall down, upon which the outer rectangular walls of the South Wing would be built. The rectangular walls would be a few to several feet from the elliptic walls. The board had Hoban draw plans with two stories as well as one. Although the president expected to see his Halle au Ble ideas embodied in the chamber, he opted for one story. 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." Obviously, Thornton had persuaded his colleagues that Hoban was wrong, and the board instructed Hoban to ignore the "inconveniencies." The president put off the higher wall until Thornton was proved right. However, he seemed confident that he was right: “if before it is raised one story the prospects of money should brighten & the difficulties of proceeding with it separately from the squarewall should be found less than has been apprehended, we can then proceed to raise it’s second story.”
A paragraph appeared in the nation’s newspaper: “The Commissioners of Washington City have determined to build an elliptical room in the South Wing of the Capitol for the accommodation of the House of Representatives. The dimensions will be 88 by 66 feet and it is intended to construct it as to make it part of the permanent building of the Capitol and in perfect harmony with the original plan.” Finally, Thornton succeeded in drawing a distinction between the adopted or general plan and his original plan. Although it borrowed ideas from Jefferson and Hallet, it promised completion of the Great Vestibule and Dome which once built would assure his fame. The president had given him reason to hope that his original plan would be the final plan. Hoban calculated that the room would cost $5,000 but only the roof and flooring costing $1,000 would have to be torn down when the permanent South Wing was built. The project, with its “bill of particulars” lodged in the commissioners’ office, was put out for bids on June 10, with bidding closed on June 17. Lovering and his partner won the contract. Presumably, Hoban once again made the working drawings, but Thornton was finally proving that he was the author of the Capitol’s design.
Otherwise, during his summer in charge, Thornton seemed to be having the time of his life. In an August 1801 letter to Madison, Thornton bragged as only he could. The mythological demi-god Cadmus also built the Greek city of Thebes:
...like Cadmus of old, after I have presumed to invent Letters for the Americans, I was sent hither to build their great City!
There’s a Stroke of Vanity—
It lives in all my Doings!———To descend,
I who lately was nothing less than a Commissioner or Edile, am now reduced to a High-way Man. You will remember we are engaged in making Highways. The City improves rapidly.
In a letter to the president, the board gave a brief and optimistic update on the South Wing: “We have the satisfaction of informing you that the Brick-work of the chamber of Representatives advances with such rapidity, that the whole will be finished ready for the Roof by the end of next Week, & the Roof is in forwardness.” The walls were up by September 10 but building the wooden floor and gallery, as well as a 145 foot long covered passage way connecting the elliptical room to the North Wing required more carpenters. Work continued well passed the deadline.
A letter from the radical pro-Jefferson newspaper editor William Duane, published in Philadelphia on December 10, 1801, gave a glowing and optimistic description of the federal city. He described the “new chamber” with an “eliptical room” that was 90 feet long east to west, and 60 feet wide north to south. The speaker’s chair along the south wall faced north and looked directly at the walkway to the North Wing. There was a gallery for 300 spectators that occupied “the longer segment of the elipsis.” Duane thought it “fitted up in a neater style” than the room in Philadelphia and had better acoustics. The situation of the speaker’s chair in the middle of the south wall was consistent with Thornton’s original plan, though he had the Senate in the South Wing. He had oriented both chambers so that the speaker’s and vice president’s chairs faced each other. The North Wing as built had the vice president in the middle of the east wall.It was the largest room yet built in the city. An assessor measured all the work in the public buildings in late 1799. He had the largest room in the President’s House 40 by 80 feet with a 20 foot ceiling. The Senate chamber was 48 by 86 feet and 41 feet high. The room upstairs for the House was 35 by 86 feet and, with a coved ceiling, 36 feet high. The first floor of the South Wing had to conform to the uniform height of the exterior wall’s rusticated stone that is 20 feet high. The brick arches forming the walls of the room were its only permanent feature. Fourteen of the sixteen arches had windows. The temporary wooden ceiling was coved if not domed to let in light. The roof was shingled. Ceiling and walls were plastered.
Indeed, what Thornton’s biographers focus on after he was no longer a commissioner was inconsequential. As the bureaucracy moved to the city in 1800, Thornton met federal officers making $3,000, almost double his salary, for doing very little. The only job of several officers situated in the city was to make sure signatures on official documents were in order and a copy properly filed away by a clerk. Officers were being rewarded for previous service. In the summer of 1800, he met and cultivated the Virginia gentleman who was the Treasurer and who intended to retire. Thornton let Madison and the president know that he was interested. Instead, the president appointed a South Carolina M. D. who was also a Revolutionary War veteran. When Dr. Thomas Tudor Tucker died in 1828, he was 83 years old and still making $3,000 a year. However, his friends Jefferson and Madison did not forget Thornton. On June 2, the day after the board was abolished, an event long anticipated, Madison hired him to be his clerk in charge of patents. Since he held the job, soon to be called Commissioner of Patents, until his death in 1828, his biographers fancy that its demands effectively ended his contributions to the city as an architect.
However, it wasn’t a demanding job. There were no reasons to deny a patent other than the applicant not being an American citizen or not paying the $30 fee. The number of patents rose to 40 in 1801. His salary, $1400, was very high for a clerk but, after 8 years of government service, he took a 12.5% cut in salary. The president was conscious of that, so he made Thornton 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. Madison and the president were not helping him start a new career. He remained a bureaucrat, and a courtier. He would soon add a feather to his cap by becoming a public intellectual. He didn’t finish an essay urging the acquisition of Puerto Rico as a home for freed slaves, but with the acquisition of the Louisiana territory, he found a better we to separate the races. The federal government should buy all slaves, put them to work on public projects for a number of years and move them to the outer reaches of the new territory. All of that did not preclude the amateur architect from continuing to give advice, and give it directly to the president without taking into account the opinions of his fellow commissioners. That said, Hoban also lost his job which wasn’t good for Thornton. Hoban claimed that the board had agreed that he could continue to work for $1500 until both the Capitol and President’s House were completed to his satisfaction. White told the president that he had no idea of any such agreement. Had Thornton and Hoban had come to an understanding that Hoban would not challenge Thornton's claim to fame and the board would keep paying Hoban?
The Thorntons visited Monticello and Montpelier in September. While there, Thornton made and later framed a drawing of the latter which he gave to the Madisons. That persuaded Glenn Brown that Thornton designed Montpelier. Once back in the President’s House, the president resumed his habit of getting his exercise by riding his horse around the city. Just before congress returned, he saw that the roof of the Hall had "sunk in the middle" and that "the walls are cracked in several places and pressing out from the perpendicular." He told Thomas Claxton to ask Hadfield, Blagden and another builder, Leonard Harbaugh, to examine the problem. He did not mention Thornton, Hoban and Lovering. The next day, the experts blamed the roof "which presses the walls outward," but they were not alarmed. They believed “that no immediate bad consequnces can hapen.” They recommended that the cracks be patched and if more formed, that the walls be buttressed. Did the president blame Thornton? A few weeks later the president moved on a project that called for a planner/architect familiar with the city’s waterfront. Commissioner Thornton’s last personal letter to a president, written in April 1802, discussed plans for the waterfront. The president sent for Benjamin Latrobe.
Of course, with congressmen back home, he dug into the wall of the Hall and rendered his verdict. The brick work above the foundation “has been forced from 2 to 6 inches out of perpendicular by the roof,—I do not hesitate in declaring it to be my opinion that the whole building ought to be pulled down to the offset…. And this must be done, not only on account of the wretched workmanship of the foundation walls, but because, with the best workmanship, no colonade carrying a heavy superstructure can be safely constructed unless its pressure be spread over the whole foundation by means of counter arches. The fissures in the walls of the south wing are entirely owing to the omission of such precaution.” Not known of Hoban’s warning of “inconveniecies,” Latrobe could not lay the blame where it belonged and otherwise he complimented Thornton's plan: "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."
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. By that time, he evidently learned of the influence the Halle au Ble had on the design. He dashed off “a sheet of sketches” for Jefferson showing how House chamber could be “lighted a la Halle de Bled.” Latrobe also likely wanted to show the president that he had the skill and imagination to do what Thornton had never done. He anticipated a crisis caused by the president’s regard for Thornton’s design. Latrobe later noted that “From the beginning of his discussions” the president had “hung back from any alteration.” He promised to see Thornton but hadn’t. Latrobe went to see Thornton first “to prepare the way for amicable adjustment.” 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: "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." He did not mention that the "handsome and commodious" room was his idea. Thornton’s acceptance of the modified plan as his own also relieved Jefferson from alluding to how much his original plan had embarrassed General Washington. However, he did assure Latrobe that, if circumstances arose in the building process, changes could be made to the design. 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." But he warned the president that he would not put up with Thornton's sniping: “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."(24)
Then Latrobe made his unease with Thornton public in a letter to a House committee. He allowed that because Thornton's plan had the "force of law," he would build it and have it ready by 1806. Then he noted that the original design was missing, that Hallet was hired to correct it which he did until he was sacked. 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 winner of the design contest played: "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 the changes he recommended have been "laid before the President of the United States and received his serious consideration." 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."(25)
It took almost two months for Thornton to react. He followed the proper etiquette for a challenge: "I am sorry to be obliged to declare that your Letter to the Committee is, as it respects me, not only ungentlemanly but false." Latrobe scrambled to defuse the situation. He joked about a duel and complimented Thornton for his ideas about slavery. Thornton confirmed in a letter to Latrobe that some months ago, he had been prepared to take a dispute to the field. Ironically, in another letter to Lenthall, Latrobe fumed about a senator's proposal to save money by stopping work on the Capitol, moving congress into the President's house, and the president into a private house. Latrobe observed that "there is absolutely not a house in Washington into which he might go, excepting Mr. Tayloe's." If Thornton had designed the house, would the feud between Thornton and Latrobe have raged for almost a decade and fueled the claims Thornton made about the Capitol that are not true?(26)
On January 1, 1805, after congress returned, Thornton publicly responded to Latrobe's 1804 report to congress by publishing a letter, "To the members of the House of Representatives replying to criticisms of Benjamin H. Latrobe on the Capitol." Thornton made much about Latrobe complimenting his plan when he first saw it: "....he never saw any plan of a building beside his own that he would deign to build.... I must own that I can not easily conceive why previous to this appointment I should hear nothing but approbation of my plan and after his appointment nothing but condemnation." The witnesses that he summoned to prove that his design of South Wing could be built were anonymous: "It has been deemed practicable by very skillful and practical architects and I have never heard it disputed by other than himself." He claimed that the old board had asked him to superintend the construction of the Capitol. Instead, he trusted Hallet and then had no difficulty correcting his mistakes when laying the foundation. As for drawing sections, he mocked the idea that Hallet could have drawn one because he never superintended the building. The only section extant is attributed to Hallet. Referring to Hadfield, Thornton wrote: "the other did not make a single section that I ever heard of, but requested sections of me, which I drew, of which Mr. Munroe informs me he had informed Mr. Latrobe." However, Munroe was not the board's clerk when Hadfield made his request. Thornton verified his claim by offering evidence that someone else remembered his making the claim. He did not explain what happened to the sections he drew, let alone produce them.(27)
Neither of the rival newspapers, the pro-administration National Intelligencer nor the Washington Federalist, printed or mentioned Thornton's letter. Latrobe did not respond to it, nor did Hallet and Hadfield. The French architect had lost interest in architecture. In 1809, he would come to the city to promote a hydraulic pump he co-invented. Hadfield continued to build a career and had no reason to invite controversy. Hoban likely knew about the Capitol design process better than anyone, but he concentrated his fire on Latrobe for his impugning the design and workmanship of the roof of the President's House. The first newspaper war that would flare up involving Latrobe was initiated by Hoban, who, in the March 6, 1805, Washington Federalist, lampooned the often absent and seemingly always arrogant architect. Lovering was among those who attested to the quality of work done on its roof. Anonymous squibs in the Federalist mocking Latrobe's work at the Capitol soon followed, and Latrobe suspected that Thornton wrote them. He probably didn't.(28)
Thornton counted on his two friends in power to right the wrongs being done to his design. In the summer of 1806, just before Madison left for Montpelier, Thornton sounded an alarm for the fate of the Capitol dome and held up an example of what must be done. He claimed that in 1794, President Washington had personally banished Hallet after he tried to change Thornton's design of the Capitol. That described something that had never happened which didn't prevent Thornton from applying that lesson to defeat a threat that didn't exist: "Mr. Latrobe, as if determined to oppose every thing previously intended has carried up a large block of building on the very foundation intended to be taken up, by which the Dome is so encroached on that the part already carried up on the north side will be useless. I am confident the President could never have permitted such a deviation from the original Intention if it had been made known to him. I think it my Duty to mention it now before it be too late to prevent its progress."
Madison sent Thornton's letter to the president and described it as "disclosing the perturbation excited in his mind, by some of the operations of Mr. la Trobe." Jefferson took Thornton's letter more seriously and replied to Madison: "If Dr. Thornton’s complaint of Latrobe’s having built inconsistently with his plan of the middle part of the capitol be correct, it is without my knolege, & against my instructions. For altho’ I consider that plan as incapable of execution, yet I determined that nothing should be done which would not leave the question of it’s execution free." That is to say, nothing should be done to preclude Thornton and congress from thinking that his plan would be carried out even though both Jefferson and Latrobe knew the plan was "incapable of execution."
Thanks to his organizing the North Carolina Gold Company, Thornton visited both Madison and Jefferson as he, his wife, and her mother made there way back to the federal city. But his letter and their visit didn’t inspire the president to sack Latrobe. In 1806, Latrobe redesigned the central part of the building that eliminated the Conference Room and put a grand stairway up to a portico with a much longer colonnade. The dome remained over Thornton’s grand vestibule. However, Latrobe didn't ask the president to approve the changes. Delays in finishing the South Wing precluded inviting more scrutiny from congress. The Thornton-Latrobe feud continued, fueled by Latrobe straining to maintain his standing with congress which suffered from his frequent absenses and hauty demeanor. In the fall of 1806, Latrobe sent a "private letter" to congress blaming the design contest as the root of his problems. On March 3, 1807, at the end of the short session, Thornton had friends distribute a satire on Latrobe's private letter. "Index to my Private Letter & C." had Latrobe expressing contempt for General Washington who need not be entombed under the dome because "he was not higher in the scale of creation than some other great men or myself."(29)
In the fall of 1807, as the House moved into its new chamber, the editor of the National Intelligencer asked Latrobe to describe the South Wing. He began by describing Thornton's plan as a striking combination of circumlinear rooms: two circular rooms in the middle, the semi-circular Senate chamber and the larger elliptical House chamber. But then he explained that to fit in other convenient features, he had to change the elliptical chamber into a parallelogram with two semi-circles at each end. If he had left it at that, Thornton may have had no complaint. Then Latrobe described the North Wing and lauded Hadfield. "His exquisite taste appears in many parts of the North wing, particularly in the introduction of the impost tablature which crowns the basement story and gives an harmonious character to the whole mass which it could not have otherwise possessed." Then, Latrobe added that his job building the South Wing would have been easier and the interior even better if he had not been constrained by its exterior having to match the North Wing's.(30)
Thornton found the condescension and insults intolerable. He attacked Latrobe in the April 27, 1808, Washington Federalist. He claimed that he had a drawing proving that before Hadfield was hired, he drew the elements that Latrobe lauded. At the time, Hadfield wisely ignored the controversy. In 1819, he would claim in a letter to the editor that he had designed "the impost cornices of the basement, without the Galosh ornament, that was meant to top the basement without any moulding." Thornton damned Latrobe for squeezing the elliptical room. A growing nation with ever more representatives needed more room not less. Then, he turned to Latrobe's motives. Why does he go against the wish of General Washington to have Thornton's design built? He did so to spite the General for not trusting him: "...for that great man was asked by a very respectable gentleman now living, why he did not employ Mr. Latrobe: 'because I can place no confidence in him whatever-' was the answer." Thornton also ridiculed every decoration in the South wing: an eagle looked like an Egyptian ibis, Liberty on an eagle looked like Leda and the swan, country people mistook an eagle on the frieze of an entablature "for the skin of an owl, such as they have seen nailed on their barn doors." He ridiculed the echoes in the House chamber. He dismissed Latrobe as a "carver of chimney pieces in London" who came to America a "missionary of the Moravians." Thornton attacked other buildings Latrobe had designed and his gate at the Navy Yard.
Then he defended his own standing as an architect, not by revealing other buildings that he had designed, but by striking grand chords:
I
travelled in many parts of Europe, and saw several of the masterpieces
of the ancients. I have studied the works of the best masters, and my
long attention to drawing and painting would enable me to form some
judgment of the difference of proportions. An acquaintance with some of
the grandest of the ancient structures, a knowledge of the orders of
Architecture, and also of the genuine effects of proportion furnish the
requisites of the great outlines of composition. The minutiae are
attainable by a more attentive study of what is necessary to the
execution of such works, and the whole must be subservient to the
conveniences required. Architecture embraces many subordinate studies,
and it must be admitted is a profession which requires great talents,
great taste, great memory. I do not pretend to any thing great, but must
take the liberty of reminding Mr. Latrobe, that physicians study a
greater variety of sciences than gentlemen of any other profession....
The Louvre in Paris was erected after the architectural designs of a
physician, Claude Perrault, whose plan was adopted in preference to the
designs of Bernini, though the latter was called from Italy by Louis
the14th.
Recall that Thornton landed on continental Europe at the end of December 1783 at the earliest and returned to Britain by mid-August 1784. Based on a watercolor, biographers also credit him with a trip to the Alps during that 8 month period. At the time, he seemed to have ended his medical studies and embraced mineralogy. In his reply, Latrobe didn't bother to probe into Thornton's background. He explained that his parents were Moravians, and described his relations with George Washington. But he couldn't resist smearing Thornton as "a calumniator who is the subject of ridicule, of pity, or of contempt to all who know him..... a man too feeble for personal chastisement, and too ignorant, despicable and vain for argumentative refutation."
Thornton's response came a few days later. He credited Ferdinando Fairfax for the General's assessment of Latrobe. Then he further smeared Latrobe in a style reminiscent of British farces: "The late Moll Turner who lived between Havre de Grace and Baltimore, a woman so infamous in character, that the Poissardes of Paris would have appeared as vestals in comparison, was never outmatched in blackguardism, except by Mr. Latrobe, and it is suspected that this broke her heart,--" Then he ascended the heights: "if I had been so reprehensible a character as he represents, I should hardly have been appointed to the honorable office I had under General Washington, and have received letter of approbation on his retiring from public life, nor should I have been appointed and continued in other respectable offices by his two successors...." He closed by revealing that he challenged Latrobe to a duel in 1804 but received no answer. He put a belligerent couplet under his name: "Only five feet eight; limbs straight;/ and about one hundred and sixty weight." Latrobe was six feet two. In a letter to a friend, Latrobe declared victory and blamed Thornton’s being a “madman” on his “vanity” and “poverty.” Then he sued him for a libel.(31)
The saga of Thornton and Capitol effectively ended. With the South Wing finished, Jefferson had Latrobe work again on the North Wing. In 1804, he had told Latrobe that it properly fulfilled Thornton's design. In 1808, he allowed Latrobe to make changes, and everyone soon knew that was what Latrobe was doing. In September, Lenthall was crushed to death when a brick arch in the North Wing gave way. Initially, Latrobe suspected foul play. Hoban renewed his attacks, but then Latrobe restrained himself. In the press at least, Thornton was silent, perhaps because of the libel suit or because he realized he had lost the Capitol. Work on the North Wing continued after Madison succeeded Jefferson. Madison continued to like Thornton, but preferred to flatter the sportsman. He invited both Thornton and Tayloe to dinner before the 1811 Jockey Club races. But President Madison had no interest in the "ideas of Dr. Thornton." By 1811, Latrobe had moved the Senate chamber up from the basement to the first floor. Thornton made no public comment. After Congress did not appropriate money to continue work on the Capitol, Latrobe moved to Pittsburgh intending to build a steamboat. The libel case dragged on until June 1813. In April of that year, Thornton advertised all his property for sale. The jury found for Latrobe and awarded him one cent in damages with costs. Claiming that Latrobe had sued him for $10,000 in damages, Thornton declared victory. Latrobe would later claim that he didn't ask for damages.(33)
Fortunately for Thornton's posthumous reputation as an architect, in 1817, Jefferson sent Thornton a sketch of a large quadrangle for a university bounded by "a range" of one story dormitories behind a colonnade linking two story pavilions with a classroom below and an apartment for a professor above. He wanted the pavilions to "be models of taste & good architecture, & of a variety of appearance, no two alike, so as to serve as specimens for the Architectural lectures." He asked Thornton for his ideas. In reply, Thornton sent a long letter about how to organize a university as well as build it. For example, he advised that "There ought to be extra grounds for the great Exercises; such as running, riding, Archery[,] Shooting with Pistols, rifles, Cannon,—The military Exercises on horseback & foot.—In the Roman Catholic Academy, in George Town, they have erected a Ball Alley, but I would allow no Child’s-play."
He corrected Jefferson's sketch of the campus by absurdly taking "the liberty of advising that the two buildings next the Angles be joined together, & be placed in the angles." He sent a drawing of "a Pavilion for the Centre, with Corinthian Columns, and a Pediment."4 However, when attacking Hallet and Hadfield, Thornton had made a virtue out of thin columns and that was what he drew. To Jefferson, they must have seemed anemic. A bold presentation of the Classical orders was the whole point of his project. Jefferson also wrote to Latrobe who was then changing the design of the Capitol while supervising its restoration. He asked him for ideas. In his notebook, Jefferson attributed the design of the Corinthian pavilion to Latrobe, and didn’t mention Thornton in any regard.
Latrobe finished the South Wing but could not undo the widepread impression that he was arrogant, expensive and, because of Lenthall’s death, dangerous. President Madison had first saddled him with three commissioners, then replaced them with one with whom Latrobe almost came to blows in front of President Monroe. Charles Bulfinch, a Boston architect Monroe met while touring New England while Hoban restored the President’s House, replaced Latrobe in January 1818. In May, Jefferson wrote to Latrobe lamenting the change of command at the Capitol: "I learned with great grief your abandonment of the Capitol. I had hoped that, under your direction, that noble building would have been restored and become a monument of rational taste & spirit. I fear much for it now. to [my]self personally it can be of little moment; because in the public bui[ld]ings which will be daily growing up in this growing countr[y] [you?] can have no competitor for employ."(35) Latrobe died of yellow fever in New Orleans in September 1820 while building a waterworks system for the city to prevent yellow fever epidemics.
Perhaps the best opportunity for Thornton to make another stand against changes to his original design was in February 1819 when the City of Washington Gazette printed a “vignette” of what the Capitol would look like when completed. The Gazette’s editor claimed it was Hadfield’s design as approved by General Washington. It had Thornton’s wings but not as Latrobe restored them with a canopy on top. The center of the building boldly raised a dome atop a squared attic half the height of the wings. The dome swelled higher than the height of the attic. Hadfield did not make the design for the president. He made it for $50 bills printed by the city’s Bank of the Metropolis just after the war. Hadfield corrected the editor’s claim and also allowed that Thornton was acknowledged as the designer of the wings. But Hadfield did tout his dome as “more consistent with good architecture,"and thus better than Thornton’s as depicted in his East Elevation that was finally published as a small engraving on a map in 1818. Thornton did not respond.(36)
Congress returned to the Capitol in December 1819. The Jefferson/Thornton elliptical hall was halved. The commissioner that Latrobe almost slugged asked Thornton and others for suggestions on how to cure it of an echo. He responded full blast, but no one seemed to be listening. In a draft of letter found in his papers, Thornton recommended curtains soaked in arsenic so they wouldn't be eaten by moths. Then he attacked Latrobe for changing his ellipse into a semi-circle and attacked whatever his replacement, Charles Bulfinch, had done or planned to do. In his history of the Capitol, William Allen strung together "Thornton’s gifts of sarcasm and exaggeration:" Skylights were “borrowed from some carpenter’s shop, for there never was so mean a window exhibited before in any public building on the face of the globe.” Dwarf columns belonged in London’s Newgate prison “where the convicts are executed wholesale, for never were such galleries seen in any building of dignity and national grandeur.” As for the whole, it recalled “the old fashioned Tea Canisters, Bohea at one end, Green Tea at the other, and in the center the large sugar dish.” Allen concluded that "Thornton’s letter made it clear that his bitterness had not been soothed by time, and his pretensions to architectural authority were as delusional as ever."
That said, in the meanwhile another remarkable house, that like the Octagon still stands as museum, was built and is now credited as designed by Thornton. Because it was, an writer in the November 22, 1908, Evening Star thought it only natural: “It is not surprising that the house is well built, and that it stands a veritable monument of American memories, for all the skill of Dr. William Thornton was employed in its design and building. Dr. Thornton was the architect of the Old Capitol, the one that was burned, and he also designed the Octagon House in Washington. It seems fitting that the work of a man whose hand is seen in these other buildings of such close association with American history should be seen in Tudor Place, for not only is quaint and beautiful, but it is full of the memories and even the household gods and belongings of the great Washington.”
That was not written by Glenn Brown. While he gloried finding a floor plan for the house in Thornton’s hand, he lamented that “alterations in the plan, probably to save money, are decidedly inferior to the original.”
Given that when Peter bought the land on the Heights of Georgetown in 1805, the two wings of the house were built, the ground plan of the central block is similar to Thornton’s design for Square 171 that he finished in February 1800. Mrs. Thornton noted that her husband drew a plan for Peter on May 8, 1808, at the climax of his feud with Latrobe. At some time Thornton drew a rather severe Neo-classical elevation for the house, so perhaps his design answered Latrobe who was the country’s foremost exponent of Neo-classicism. It likely also reminded Thornton of his Woodlawn plan that he gave to Lewis in August 1800. He may have been reminded of his wishing that he had designed the General houses in 1798s. As it turned out, Peter only built Thornton’s “Temple Portico,” which must have pleased Thornton. There is no extant evidence of what he thought of the house as built, but his portico did open the way to the household gods of the General. Thomas Peter was an executor of his estate.
The Thorntons saw Washington burn while seeking refuge at Tudor Place. Like all officials, Thornton fled the city after a British regiment routed American troops at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24. News of the British intention to burn all the public buildings brought him back to the city the next day on a mission to rescue a musical instrument he had invented that was being built by a workman at the Patent Office then sharing a corner of Blodget’s Hotel that had been bought by the government in 1810. Thornton persuaded British officers not to burn down the "Museum of the Arts." Indeed, Thornton charmed the enemy. He visited and befriended Colonel William Thornton, a wounded British officer whose brigade had spearheaded the British charge at Bladensburg. When the government returned, the president ordered the models removed and Patent Office prepared to receive congress. The priority of northern members was to move the federal government back to Philadelphia, but thanks to Thornton’s heroics, congress met in the Patent Office. In the summer of 1815, the doctor wrote to the colonel, who had since survived New Orleans, and returned to England. He reported that he had coined a bon-mot that had swept the city: "One William Thornton took the city and another preserved it.”
But not without some waffling. After the conflagration, British troops in ships off Alexandria seemed poised to invade the city. On August 27, the president and Secretary of State Monroe rode to the Navy Yard. In a letter he wrote to his son-in-law on September 8, Monroe recalled: "...we were followed by Dr. Thornton who stated to the president that the people of the city were disposed to capitulate. The President forbade it. He pressed the idea as a right in the people, notwithstanding the presence of the govt. I turnd to him, and declard, that, having the military command, if I saw any of them, proceeding to the enemy, I would bayonet them. This put an end to the project. The doctor retird, and afterwards changd his tone."
On the day Monroe penned his letter, the Madisons moved into Octagon. That Dr. William Thornton designed the house and that the Madisons moved into it after the President’s House burned are facts casted into the bronze of the plaque outside the Octagon. Historians assume Thornton must have had something with the move. At the time, the Madisons thought more highly of Tayloe than they did of Thornton. His urge to capitulate was the half of it. In 1813, Lieutenant Thornton of the Horse Militia asked Col. Tayloe to ask Madison to make Thornton and Mrs. Madison’s son aide-de-camp liasons with the District’s militia. That would raise Thornton to the rank of major, though colonel would be more proper, and save the First Lady’s son from real militia duty. When that didn’t come to pass, Thornton continued to serve in the militia but gave the impression publicly that he was against the war. While exhausted and ill in a city hotel after doing duty as a scout and messenger on the Virginia side of the Potomac, Col. Tayloe evidently arranged for the Madisons to use his house. 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 their slaves were sickly. They left the house on March 4, 1815, and made a townhouse on Pennsylvania Avenue their home and office for the rest of his term.
When Madison left office in 1817, Thornton wrote to him about the shock Mrs. Thornton felt at not getting a farewell visit from Mrs. Madison. As for himself "I have long had to lament a marked distance and coldness towards me, for which I cannot account." Evidently, Madison never wrote his reflections on the trajectory of his old friend, nor did Jefferson. John Quincy kept a diary with an entry for ever day of his long life, much of it spent in the federal city. He had little to do with Thornton in regards to the U. S. Capitol. When Adams returned to the city after helping negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, the doctor had another Capitol in mind, far to the South and for the whole Hemisphere. He had moved on to greater things, the steamboat and revolutions in Spanish America. But, again, contemporaries did not accord him the fame he thought he deserved. Adams caught him lying which should reflect on his one-sided narrative of the genesis of the Capitol’s design.
Congress returned to the Capitol in December 1819. The Jefferson/Thornton ellipse was halved. The Supervisor asked Thornton and others for suggestions on how to cure chamber's acoustics of an echo. He responded full blast, but no one seemed to be listening. In a draft of letter found in his papers, Thornton recommended curtains soaked in arsenic so they wouldn't be eaten by moths. Then he attacked Latrobe for changing his ellipse into a semi-circle and attacked whatever his replacement, Charles Bulfinch, had done or planned to do. In his history of the Capitol, William Allen strung together "Thornton’s gifts of sarcasm and exaggeration:" Skylights were “borrowed from some carpenter’s shop, for there never was so mean a window exhibited before in any public building on the face of the globe.” Dwarf columns belonged in London’s Newgate prison “where the convicts are executed wholesale, for never were such galleries seen in any building of dignity and national grandeur.” As for the whole, it recalled “the old fashioned Tea Canisters, Bohea at one end, Green Tea at the other, and in the center the large sugar dish.” Allen concluded that "Thornton’s letter made it clear that his bitterness had not been soothed by time, and his pretensions to architectural authority were as delusional as ever."(37)
He already had another Capitol in mind, far to the South and for the whole Hemisphere. He had moved on to greater things, the steamboat and revolutions in Spanish America. But, again, contemporaries did not accord him the fame he thought he deserved. One who knew him well and kept copious notes caught his lying which should reflect on his one-sided narrative of the genesis of the Capitol’s design.1. Brown, 1796 p. 68.
1. "No. 9 Report of James Hoban...November 13, 1799" in New York Gazette 17 December 1799 p. 3.
3. 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; Diary pp. 90-1.
Stoddert to WT 23 January 1800 Harris pp. 532-3.
6. Harris p. 523; Diary pp. 89-90, 115, 174-5; Harris pp. 582, 591; WT to Jefferson 27 May 1817; to see floor plan; National Park Service "Historic Landmark Nomination, Woodlawn," March 1998.
7. Diary p. 102, 107; Harris, p. 490
8. Jefferson to WT 23 April 1800; WT to Jefferson 7 May 1800,
9. Diary p. 146; Genius of Liberty 1 January 1801.
10. WT to Adams 19 February 1798, Harris p. 437; Commissioners to Andrews, 1 November 1800; Diary pp. 151-2, 208, 222;
11. Tristram Dalton to Adams 21 June 1798, Adams Papers; WT to Stoddert 28 June 1798; WT to Jefferson 30 December 1800;; Marbury v. Madison 5 U.S. 137 (1803); Mrs. Thornton’s diary p. 153.
12. 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 1800;
13. Norwich Courier 8 October 1800; National Intelligencer 8 & 31 December 1800; Harris p. 523; Diary p. 223.
14. Diary p. 223; The Kennebec Gazette 6 March 1801; the War office caught fire on November 8, 1800, and the Treasury Building on January 20, 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.
15. Commrs. to Jefferson 1 June 1801; Jefferson to Commrs., 2 June 1801; Philadelphia Gazette 18 June 1801.
16. WT to Jefferson 17 April 1802; Jefferson enclosure 14 April 1802; White to Jefferson 13 April 1802; Jefferson to WT 23 April 1802: Munroe to Jefferson 15 June 1802; On termination of board see Commrs. to Jefferson 1 June 1802; Clark, "Dr. and Mrs. Thornton" p. 189.
17. Robert King, Sr., to Jefferson 5 June 1802; On Patent Office appointment see Dobyns History of the Patent Office, Chapter 7 and Preston, Daniel, "Administration of Patent Office...." Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 331-353; Thornton deposition, American State Papers vol p. 193
18. Jefferson to Claxton, 26 October 1802, Harbaugh et al to Jefferson 27 October 1802;
19. Latrobe to Jefferson, 27 March 1802; Jefferson to Latrobe, 2 November 1802; Latrobe to Jefferson, 9 November 1802, 28 November 1802.
20. Annals of Congress, House, 28 February 1803; Jefferson to WT 6 March 1803; Jefferson to Latrobe 6 March 1803.
21. Latrobe to Jefferson, 4 April 1803 Enclosure,"Report on the Public Buildings:" Latrobe, Benjamin, The Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of, p. 278;
22. Latrobe to Lenthall, 5 May 1803, Ibid. p. 289; Latrobe Journal p. 207 ;
23. Latrobe to Thornton 28 April 1804; W. T., "Political Economy: Founded in Justice and Humanity, in a letter to a friend;" John Quincy Adams diary 12 March 1805; Latrobe Journal p. 206;
24. Latrobe to Jefferson, 27 & 28 February 1804, Jefferson to Latrobe 28 February 1804; Op. Cit. pp. 437ff
25. "The Report of the Surveyor of Public Buildings," Latrobe Correspondence pp. 444-5; Latrobe to Lenthall, 8 March 1804, Correspondence p. 458.
26. In his memoir B. O. Tayloe described the duel as arising from Thornton's "ludicrous account" in verse of another duel settled without a shot. p. 99; Latrobe to WT 28 April 1804, Correspondence pp. 481-2; Latrobe to Lenthall 28 March 1804 p. 463;
27. Harris, Papers of William Thornton. p. 257-8; Brown, History of Capitol, new edition, pp. 113ff.
28. Hallet to Madison 9 September 1809; Washington Federalist 6 March 1805.
29. Latrobe's Private Letter is in Correspondence vol. 2 pp. 305ff where quotes from Thornton's Index can be found in footnotes.
30. WT to Madison 6 August 1806, Madison to Jefferson 15 August 1806; Jefferson to Madison, 28 August 1806; National Intelligencer 30 November 1807p. 1.
31. Washington Federalist, 20 April 1808; Latrobe Correspondence vol. 2 pp. 600ff; Ibid., 30 April 1808, p 2; 7 May 1808, p. 3; The Gazette, 8 February 1819 p. 1.
32. AMT notebook vol. 3 image 121; Ridout p. 122.
33. Washington Expositor September 24, 1808; Washington Federalist 15 November 1808 p. 3; Latrobe to Madison 8 September 1809; AMT notebook vol. 3 image 130; Latrobe to Gilmore, 24 May 1808: "The worst that can be said of him is that he is a Madman from vanity, incorrect impecuniary conduct, and official intrigue from Poverty;.” Latrobe, Correspondence p. 628.
34. WT to Jefferson 11 December 1814 ; Latrobe to Jefferson 12 July 1815; Latrobe to Madison 25 February 1815;
35. Harris, Charles M, Library of Congress web article "William Thornton 1759-1828:", Jefferson to WT 9 May 1817; WT to Jefferson 27 May 1817; Latrobe to Jefferson, 24 July 1817; Jefferson to Latrobe, 9 May 1817; Jefferson to Latrobe, 19 May 1818, Latrobe to Jefferson, 30 March 1818, enclosure; Carter, Edward C., Benjamin Henry Latrobe: Growth and Development of Washington. RCHS vot 71/72, p 142.
36. The Gazette, 8 February 1819 p. 1; Bryan, History of National Capital volume one, pp. 317-8; Hunsberger, The Architecture of George Hadfield, p. 61; King, Julia, Hadfield, p. 95.
37. Allen, William, "The Bulfinch Years 1818-1829" History of the United States Capitol, p. 143; Latrobe, Benjamin, Vindication, 1819
11. Greenleaf and Law in the Federal City, p. 250.
ad in National Intelligencer 23 April 1806; Thornton v. Carson's Executor, Google Books;
AMT notebook vol. 2 image 137ff; Madison Papers "Account with William Thornton" 5 December 1809.
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