Chapter 12: Jefferson and the Ideas of Dr. Thornton
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.1
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.2
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.3
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.4
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.5
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.6
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.7
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.8 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.9
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.10
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.11
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."12
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.13
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."14
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."15 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.16
Only Blodget publicly extolled Thornton’s design of the Capitol. An 1800 letter in New England newspapes was anonymous but encomiums for the lottery hotel too suggested Blodget’s hand. In his book on the American economy published in 1806, Blodget lauded Thornton's design but also invited Thornton to assume a new role: "For this truly sublime and beautiful building, Dr. William Thornton received the premium; but as it has undergone some changes, by deviations agreeably to taste... of the several ingenious gentlemen who have superintended the work, we know not how much the architect will disown.” That sentence explodes any notion that as a commissioner Thornton had restored his original plan with which Blodget was familiar. As Blodget saw it, Thornton was only left with deciding what was good or bad in the building.
However, Thornton was incapable of seeing the evolution of the Capitol design as a process, It had to be a contest. In 1804, Latrobe feared that a letter he got from Thornton was a prelude to a duel: "I am sorry to be obliged to declare that your Letter to the Committee is, as it respects me, not only ungentlemanly but false." 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, and, for the moment left it at that.17 Ironically, around the same time, Latrobe wrote to Lenthall fuming 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?18
On January 1, 1805, Thornton publicly responded to Latrobe's 1804 report to congress with a printed letter, "To the members of the House of Representatives replying to criticisms of Benjamin H. Latrobe on the Capitol." In it, 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 doesn't explain what happened to the sections he drew, let alone produce them.19
Neither of the rival newspapers, the pro-administration National Intelligencer or 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 the city and evidently architecture, too. In 1809, he would come to the city to promote a hydraulic pump he co-invented. The English architect was in the city, but had received minor jobs from the administration, the jail and Marine barracks, as well as the Custis mansion. He had no reason to invite controversy.20 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 the President's house roof when Hoban was in charge. 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. He kept to the high road, right to the president.21
Beginning in 1805, Thornton had a distraction that he was convinced would make millions for himself and investors. Gold had been found in North Carolina in 1799. In 1805, Thornton toured sites with an eye trained by Faujas in the summer of '84 to identify rock formations and minerals,. He calculated how much land had to be bought, formed a company in the federal city and even Latrobe bought stock in it.22 In the summer of 1806, just before he left for North Carolina, Thornton wrote a letter to Madison sounding an alarm for the fate of the Capitol dome. He cited 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."23
Thornton, his wife and mother-in-law stopped at Monticello on their way back from North Caroline. Mrs. Thornton kept a journal during their 1806 trip to North Carolina, but didn't mention any topic of conversation at Monticello. How Jefferson replied to Thornton's letter is unknown, but Latrobe was not banished and Thornton soon made clear that he was an anti-administration Federalist. Madison jokingly accused him of being another Vicar of Bray.24
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. However, he didn't ask the president to approve the changes. Delays in finishing the South Wing precluded inviting more scrutiny from congress. Latrobe had to make annual reports on his progress to congress. In the fall of 1806, he also sent a special "private letter" giving more personal details of problems he faced, one of which was the design contest that Thornton won. He pointed out that while popular, contests attract amateurs who know nothing about building. 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 making light of his own mistakes, and 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."25
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.26
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 he drew the elements that Latrobe lauded before Hadfield was hired. In 1819, Hadfield would claim in a letter to the editor that he had designed the tablature and Thornton didn't respond.27 Then, he 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.28 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, who was six feet two, countered with a libel suit.29
On May 8, 1808, a little over a week after Thornton's attack, Mrs. Thornton noted that her husband drew a plan for their good friend Thomas Peter. In archives, there are several undated floor plans with two large elliptical rooms and a circular colonnaded entrance. As built in upper Georgetown, Tudor Place would only have the Roman temple-like entrance. In 1811, Peter would began describing himself as a resident of Tudor Place, Georgetown, which suggests that his mansion connecting two houses previously built there was effectively finished. Ridout and others consider it as another manifestation of Thornton's innovative use ovals. Indeed, his floor plans made transparent how he drew the elliptical rooms by overlapping two perfect ovals. As if keen to show how he mathematically simplified the design process, he did not erase the outlines of the circles.30 His floor plan and elevation had few windows so it resembles his unbuilt design for Lot 17 in Square 171, not the well lit mansion that Lovering built for Tayloe. Perhaps, Thornton considered what he drew as a challenge to Latrobe rather than a plan to accommodate the growing Peter family. If so, it can be counted as a brave display of his genius, but it came at a time when 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. While he evidently continued to like Thornton personally, he was more in tune with 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 to the first floor. Thornton made no public comment. Congress did not appropriate money to continue work on the Capitol, or the President's house where Latrobe was helping Mrs. Madison redecorated building. Latrobe moved to Pittsburgh intending to build a steamboat and sail it to New Orleans. The libel case dragged on until June 1813. In April of that year, Thornton advertised all his property for sale. By the way, in 1802 he assigned the lot next to the General's houses to his mother-in-law, likely to avoid losing it in a lawsuit. 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.31
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.1
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.2
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.3
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.4
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.5
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.6
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.7
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.8 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.9
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.10
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.11
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."12
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.13
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."14
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."15 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.16
Only Blodget publicly extolled Thornton’s design of the Capitol. An 1800 letter in New England newspapes was anonymous but encomiums for the lottery hotel too suggested Blodget’s hand. In his book on the American economy published in 1806, Blodget lauded Thornton's design but also invited Thornton to assume a new role: "For this truly sublime and beautiful building, Dr. William Thornton received the premium; but as it has undergone some changes, by deviations agreeably to taste... of the several ingenious gentlemen who have superintended the work, we know not how much the architect will disown.” That sentence explodes any notion that as a commissioner Thornton had restored his original plan with which Blodget was familiar. As Blodget saw it, Thornton was only left with deciding what was good or bad in the building.
However, Thornton was incapable of seeing the evolution of the Capitol design as a process, It had to be a contest. In 1804, Latrobe feared that a letter he got from Thornton was a prelude to a duel: "I am sorry to be obliged to declare that your Letter to the Committee is, as it respects me, not only ungentlemanly but false." 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, and, for the moment left it at that.17 Ironically, around the same time, Latrobe wrote to Lenthall fuming 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?18
On January 1, 1805, Thornton publicly responded to Latrobe's 1804 report to congress with a printed letter, "To the members of the House of Representatives replying to criticisms of Benjamin H. Latrobe on the Capitol." In it, 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 doesn't explain what happened to the sections he drew, let alone produce them.19
Neither of the rival newspapers, the pro-administration National Intelligencer or 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 the city and evidently architecture, too. In 1809, he would come to the city to promote a hydraulic pump he co-invented. The English architect was in the city, but had received minor jobs from the administration, the jail and Marine barracks, as well as the Custis mansion. He had no reason to invite controversy.20 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 the President's house roof when Hoban was in charge. 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. He kept to the high road, right to the president.21
Beginning in 1805, Thornton had a distraction that he was convinced would make millions for himself and investors. Gold had been found in North Carolina in 1799. In 1805, Thornton toured sites with an eye trained by Faujas in the summer of '84 to identify rock formations and minerals,. He calculated how much land had to be bought, formed a company in the federal city and even Latrobe bought stock in it.22 In the summer of 1806, just before he left for North Carolina, Thornton wrote a letter to Madison sounding an alarm for the fate of the Capitol dome. He cited 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."23
Thornton, his wife and mother-in-law stopped at Monticello on their way back from North Caroline. Mrs. Thornton kept a journal during their 1806 trip to North Carolina, but didn't mention any topic of conversation at Monticello. How Jefferson replied to Thornton's letter is unknown, but Latrobe was not banished and Thornton soon made clear that he was an anti-administration Federalist. Madison jokingly accused him of being another Vicar of Bray.24
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. However, he didn't ask the president to approve the changes. Delays in finishing the South Wing precluded inviting more scrutiny from congress. Latrobe had to make annual reports on his progress to congress. In the fall of 1806, he also sent a special "private letter" giving more personal details of problems he faced, one of which was the design contest that Thornton won. He pointed out that while popular, contests attract amateurs who know nothing about building. 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 making light of his own mistakes, and 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."25
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.26
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 he drew the elements that Latrobe lauded before Hadfield was hired. In 1819, Hadfield would claim in a letter to the editor that he had designed the tablature and Thornton didn't respond.27 Then, he 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.28 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, who was six feet two, countered with a libel suit.29
On May 8, 1808, a little over a week after Thornton's attack, Mrs. Thornton noted that her husband drew a plan for their good friend Thomas Peter. In archives, there are several undated floor plans with two large elliptical rooms and a circular colonnaded entrance. As built in upper Georgetown, Tudor Place would only have the Roman temple-like entrance. In 1811, Peter would began describing himself as a resident of Tudor Place, Georgetown, which suggests that his mansion connecting two houses previously built there was effectively finished. Ridout and others consider it as another manifestation of Thornton's innovative use ovals. Indeed, his floor plans made transparent how he drew the elliptical rooms by overlapping two perfect ovals. As if keen to show how he mathematically simplified the design process, he did not erase the outlines of the circles.30 His floor plan and elevation had few windows so it resembles his unbuilt design for Lot 17 in Square 171, not the well lit mansion that Lovering built for Tayloe. Perhaps, Thornton considered what he drew as a challenge to Latrobe rather than a plan to accommodate the growing Peter family. If so, it can be counted as a brave display of his genius, but it came at a time when 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. While he evidently continued to like Thornton personally, he was more in tune with 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 to the first floor. Thornton made no public comment. Congress did not appropriate money to continue work on the Capitol, or the President's house where Latrobe was helping Mrs. Madison redecorated building. Latrobe moved to Pittsburgh intending to build a steamboat and sail it to New Orleans. The libel case dragged on until June 1813. In April of that year, Thornton advertised all his property for sale. By the way, in 1802 he assigned the lot next to the General's houses to his mother-in-law, likely to avoid losing it in a lawsuit. 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.31
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