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BENJAMIN HENRY LATROHK 




The Hermit and the Children. 



Latrobe Sketchbooks 



An Indian Mother Mourning Her Child: An illustration for Ned Evans. 



Latrobe Sketchbooks 




BENJAMIN HENRY 



LATROBE 




TALBOT HAMLIN 



Hew Tor\ OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS I955 



COPYRIGHT 1955 BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, INC. 

Oxford University Press, Inc., 1955 

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 55-8117 



All rights to material from the letter books and illustrations from the sketchbooks 
are held by Aileen Ford Latrobe and may not be reproduced or used in any way 
without her express consent. 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



TO Aileen Ford Latrobe 



FOREWORD 



OF THE IMPORTANCE of Benjamin Henry Latrobe to the future architecture 
of the United States my study of Greek Revival architecture in America 
made me continually more aware. It was my first attempts to express this 
conviction, through lectures and articles, that brought me the privilege of 
an acquaintance and eventual friendship with the late Ferdinand Clai- 
borne Latrobe II (1889-1944), the architect's great-grandson. We shared 
an interest in the architecture, antiquities, and history of the young coun- 
try, and little by little there grew up between us an informal understand- 
ing that someday I should write the biography of this pioneer American 
architect. 

To know Ferdinand Latrobe was a delight. Definite and colorful, he 
was a man of wide curiosities. If you wanted to know where the best 
hunting in the Chesapeake was to be had, he could tell you; he could keep 
you enthralled for hours with early Chesapeake sailing ships and rigs, 
and he could give you the best way of cooking terrapin. But with equal 
pleasure he could cite you a reference in a Latrobe letter or give you the 
political background of Robert Goodloe Harper, and to him the devious 
patternings of the Nicholas Roosevelt-B. H. Latrobe finances were a 
simple riddle to read. His mind was saturated with the local history of 
the Virginia and Maryland countryside and with the political and eco- 
nomic history of Baltimore, of which his father, Ferdinand C. Latrobe I 
(1833-1911), had been mayor for seven terms. And all these varied interests 
were but facets of a personality of warm and unassuming charm, enlivened 
by a pungent vernacular wit. He wrote easily and with a definitely personal 
style; Iron Men and Their Dogs (Baltimore: Drechsler, 1941), commis- 
sioned as a history of the Bartlett-Hayward Company and its predecessors, 
shows how in dealing with such a subject his richly stored mind could 
make a book fascinating to read and could enhance its interesting story 
of the development of a great iron company with a wealth of anecdote 
and description to bring it all to vivid life. Among his other publications 
are The DiamondbacJ^ Terrapin; from The Epitome of the Chesapeake 

vii 



FOREWORD 



Bay (Baltimore: Twentieth Century Press, 1939) and Chesapeake Bay 
Coo\ Boo\ (Baltimore: Horn-Shafer Co., 1940); several of his shorter 
pieces appeared in the magazine section of the Baltimore Sunday Sun. 

Gradually I learned that Ferdinand himself, in association with Mr. 
Mark S. Watson, former editor of the Baltimore Sunday Sun, had pre- 
pared a manuscript entitled "The Writings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe," 
which was not published because he realized it was basically incomplete. 
But in the course of this work, as well as out of pure interest in his an- 
cestor, Ferdinand had devoted years of whatever time he could seize from 
his many activities not only to the preservation, arrangement, and study 
of the priceless Latrobe papers and sketchbooks in the possession of the 
family but also to extensive delving in the widely distributed material else- 
where, and especially to investigating the political background of his 
great-grandfather's work. In this study he was continuing and broadening 
the efforts of his own grandfather, John H. B. Latrobe, who all through 
his life, by addresses and papers and by annotations on Latrobe drawings 
in the Library of Congress, had succeeded in keeping alive the memory of 
the architect's great contributions to the welfare and beautification of his 
adopted country, 

In the course of this study Ferdinand had prepared a digest of the entire 
series of existing letter books, had indexed the notebooks and journals and 
the sketchbooks, and had begun a complete transcription of the letters. He 
had also made many notes on correlative material from Washington and 
Philadelphia newspapers and from other sources. All this material, to- 
gether with the free use of the original documents themselves, he gen- 
erously offered to me, and since his premature death his widow, Aileen 
Ford Latrobe, who herself has acquired a vast knowledge of the papers, 
has given me the most gracious and untrammeled co-operation. 

At first my interest had been in Benjamin Henry Latrobe as an archi- 
tect, but as I studied the material and talked further with Ferdinand I 
became more and more aware of the fascination of the architect's person- 
ality and the meaning behind the tragedy of his life. For besides being 
in touch with scores of the most noteworthy Americans of his time Jef- 
ferson, Madison, Joel Barlow, and Robert Fulton among others B. H. 
Latrobe had a definite place in the history of the country's industrial as 
well as architectural growth. The more deeply I dug into the large mass 
of available material the more important the task seemed to be. And the 
more difficult it appeared, too; not only-the greatness of his architectural 
contribution had to be made clear, but in addition the quality of his char- 
acter, the reasons for his successes and his failures, and the inevitability 
of the tragedy of the man "ahead of his time." The whole also had to be 



FOREWORD IX 

enriched with at least a modicum of the interesting sidelights which his 
letters and journals cast upon a time of struggle and transition. Without 
the work Ferdinand Latrobe had already accomplished, without the fruits 
of many conversations with a personality so rich in understanding, and 
especially without his encouragement and the inspiration which I received 
from his own enthusiasm, this work would have been, if not impossible, 
at least surrounded with almost insuperable difficulties. It is therefore to 
him first that I wish to set down my deepest gratitude for his suggestion 
that I undertake the work, for his continuous assistance and co-operation, 
and for the inspiration his memory affords me. 

Then, too, I am indebted to Mrs. Ferdinand C. Latrobe for her unstinted 
assistance in arranging for me to have access to the material in her pos- 
session (often at great personal inconvenience and effort), in having tran- 
scriptions and photostats prepared, and in furnishing many valuable leads 
for further investigation as well as for her continuing interest in the 
work. 

And it is a pleasure to acknowledge the help I have received from other 
members of the family, especially two of the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. 
Ferdinand Latrobe: Mrs. John H. Heyrman, who with her husband photo- 
graphed Latrobe and Hazlehurst tombs at Mount Holly, New Jersey, and 
did other research for me there; and Mrs. Samuel Wilson, Jr., who herself 
has an extensive knowledge of the contents of the Latrobe papers, tran- 
scribed many of them for me, and was of the greatest help in identifying 
elusive passages. 

To Samuel Wilson, Jr., architect and historian, of New Orleans, I owe 
more than I can express for his continued and generous help in all matters 
regarding Latrobe in New Orleans, and for permission to use much ma- 
terial from Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe's Impressions Respecting 
New Orleans (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), which he 
edited with an introduction and notes; I am grateful, too, to the Columbia 
University Press for its permission. 

I cannot acknowledge in sufficiently appreciative words my debt to Miss 
Dorothy Stroud, Assistant Curator of Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 
for the amazingly productive research she accomplished in England at my 
behest. A large part of the sections dealing with Latrobe's life in London, 
and especially with his professional work there, is derived from her dis- 
coveries and from her photographs; her patience and assiduousness in dis- 
covering and documenting this material have achieved results of a richness 
I had not dreamed possible. 

Professor Paul Norton, of Pennsylvania State University, had made a 
long and thorough study of Latrobe's work on the United States Capitol 



FOREWORD 



and had embodied this in a doctoral dissertation for Princeton University 
in 1950. This he generously put at my disposal, and I am happy to express 
my gratitude; many of the results of his study are necessarily included in 
the chapters on Latrobe's work for the United States government. 

To Professor Louise Hall, of Duke University, I am also deeply grate- 
ful. In the course of her own research in the origins of the architectural 
and engineering professions in this country she had come across a wealth 
of material dealing with the life and work of Latrobe and the conditions 
surrounding it, and all that was pertinent to this book she placed at my 
disposal with unhesitating generosity. I am especially in her debt for a 
microfilm record of Latrobe's Washington lawsuits and of his bankruptcy 
proceedings, as well as for extensive illustrative material dealing with the 
Richmond penitentiary. 

Mrs. George W. Emlen, of Ambler, Pennsylvania, and her son Mr. 
James Emlen, called to my attention and generously lent me the transcrip- 
tion of a two-year section of the diary of Thomas Cope, of Philadelphia, 
containing much valuable material dealing with the controversies sur- 
rounding the Philadelphia waterworks; I am grateful to them for the 
opportunity this give me of setting forth perhaps for the first time an 
adequate account of this struggle. 

Mr. Charles E. Peterson, of the National Park Service, has been most 
helpful in calling my attention to many interesting Latrobe items and 
problems in connection with the Philadelphia region, and I am deeply 
indebted to his extraordinarily wide knowledge of the early architecture 
of this area. 

But many other people have helped me, either by sending material that 
was directly pertinent or by calling my attention to sources I might other- 
wise have missed. Among them are: Mr. Jerome H. Abrams, Baltimore, 
for preparing excellent color photographs of many Latrobe sketches; Pro- 
fessor Nelson F. Adkins, of New York University, for calling my atten- 
tion to Latrobe's contributions to the Transactions of the American 
Philosophical Society; Mr. Wayne Andrews, of the New-York Historical 
Society, for many valuable suggestions, and especially for calling my 
attention to items in the Livingston papers in the Society dealing with 
Latrobe, Roosevelt, and early steamboat affairs; Mrs. Truxtun Beale, 
Washington, for generously sending me photographs of the Latrobe draw- 
ings for the Decatur house, which she now owns, and permitting me to 
reproduce from them; Mrs. William F. Bevan, Ruxton, Maryland, for 
information regarding Latrobe's possible work on the Ringgold house in 
Hagerstown, and for an illustration of Latrobe's courthouse there; Mr. 
Nelson M. Blake, of the National Archives and Records Service, Wash- 



FOREWORD XI 

ington, for assistance in tracing records and drawings of Latrobe; Mr. 
Louis H. Bolander, Librarian of the United States Naval Academy, 
Annapolis, Maryland; Mr. Richard Borneman, Assistant Curator of the 
Baltimore Museum of Art, for assistance with regard to Baltimore ma- 
terial of and about Latrobe, and for making available to me a large 
amount of material, including rare illustrations, concerning the Baltimore 
Exchange; Mr. Alan Burnham, architect, Greenwich, Connecticut, for 
permitting me to use his valuable notes and drawings of the Baltimore 
Exchange; Mr. J. N. Burr, Columbus, New Jersey, for a picture of Clover 
Hill in Mount Holly; and Mr. W. F. Burton, State Archivist of North 
Carolina, Raleigh, for generous help in sending me records of Latrobe's 
proposed employment as engineer of the state. 

Also Mr. Courtney Campbell, New York, for valuable suggestions con- 
cerning Latrobe's relations with Gilbert Stuart; Mr. Milton H. Cantor, 
New York, who is preparing a book on Joel Barlow and sent me some 
Barlow material; Mrs. Ralph Catterall, Librarian of the Valentine Mu- 
seum, Richmond, for valuable help in tracing many details concerning 
Latrobe's Virginia life and work; Mr. Randolph W. Church, Librarian 
of the Virginia State Library, Richmond, for help in investigating the 
Latrobe material in that library, and for permission to reproduce part of 
it; Mrs. Robert W. Claiborne, Director of the Valentine Museum, Rich- 
mond, for valuable assistance in many Virginia matters, and especially 
for her identification of Miss Susanna Catharine Spots wood; Mr. Mere- 
dith Colkett, of the National Archives and Records Service, Washington, 
and Director of the Columbia Historical Society, for valuable assistance 
in locating Latrobe material; Mr. H. P. Copland, Curator of Marine His- 
tory, East India Marine Hall, Salem, Massachusetts, for assisting me in 
the effort to trace the history of the ship Eliza; Mr. Hubertis Cummings, 
Consultant of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Division of Pub- 
lic Records, Harrisburg, for sending me copies of the complete records of 
the Susquehanna survey made by Latrobe; Mr. C. Frank Dunn, Frank- 
fort, Kentucky, for material concerning the arsenal in Frankfort; Mr. 
H. G. Dwight, New York, for making available to me a long letter from 
Latrobe to Dr. Scandella which was in his possession and which he later 
generously presented to the Avery Library of Columbia University; Mr. 
Harold Donaldson Eberlein, Philadelphia, for calling my attention to 
Latrobe material in the Ridgeway Branch of the Free Library of Phila- 
delphia, as well as for sharing his deep knowledge of many phases of old 
Philadelphia; President William W. Edel, Dickinson College, Carlisle, 
Pennsylvania, for constant encouragement and assistance, and for calling 
my attention to the relation between Latrobe and Brackenridge; and Pro- 



FOREWORD 

All 

fessor Cecil D. Elliott, of the School o Design, North Carolina State Col- 
lege, Raleigh, for calling my attention to Latrobe letters in the North 
Carolina state archives. 

Also Professor Milton E. Flower, of Dickinson College, Carlisle, for 
valuable help concerning Latrobe's work at Dickinson, and for sending 
me photographs of the Latrobe drawings there, as well as for information 
with regard to Professor Cooper and the Emporium; Mr. James W. 
Foster, Director of the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, for con- 
tinuing assistance in analyzing the rich stores of Latrobe material in the 
Maryland Historical Society, and for permission to reproduce some of it; 
Mr. W. Neil Franklin, of the National Archives and Records Service, 
Washington, for locating illustration material; Mr. Deoch Fulton, Assist- 
ant to the Director of the New York Public Library, for generously search- 
ing for Latrobe manuscripts in the library and for sending me a complete 
list of them; Bishop S. H. Gapp, Archivist of the Moravian Church, Beth- 
lehem, Pennsylvania, for information with regard to the Moravian schools 
in Germany; Miss Bess Glenn, of the National Archives and Records 
Service, Washington, for "generous assistance in locating the trial records 
of Latrobe's various legal adventures; the Reverend Dr. C. Leslie Glenn, 
Rector of St. John's Church, Washington, for his generous gift of a repro- 
duction of Latrobe's rendering of St. John's Church; Mr. John S. Green- 
feldt, Editor of the Moravian, for calling my attention to Moravian rec- 
ords in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Mr. Hugh J. Hazlehurst, Baltimore, 
for much valuable information with regard to the Hazlehurst family as 
well as Latrobe's Antes relatives; Professor Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Jr., 
of the Smith College Art Gallery, for important suggestions in respect to 
Latrobe as a painter; Mr. F. F. Holbrook, Librarian of the Historical So- 
ciety of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, for suggestions concerning 
early Pittsburgh; Miss Hope K. Holdcamper, of the National Archives 
and Records Service, Washington, for locating plans of the Mississippi 
lighthouse; and Mr. Marion Johnson, of the National Archives and Rec- 
ords Service, Washington, for generous assistance in finding and repro- 
ducing the records of Latrobe trials. 

Also Mr. Clay Lancaster, of Columbia University, for continual and 
generous assistance dealing with the Pope house, Ashland, and other 
Kentucky buildings designed by Latrobe, and for other pertinent Ken- 
tucky materials; the late Miss Mildred Latrobe-Bateman, Streatley, Eng- 
land, for the use of Latrobe family documents in her possession; the Rev- 
erend Mr. A. J. Lewis, Headmaster of Fulneck School, Yorkshire, for 
communicating important information regarding Latrobe's years in Ful- 
neck; Miss Virginia E. Lewis, Curator of Exhibitions, University of Pitts- 



FOREWORD Xlll 

burgh, for suggestions as to illustrations of early Pittsburgh; Mr. Alex- 
ander Mackay-Smith, President of the Clarke County Historical Society, 
Virginia, for valuable information including plans and photographs of 
Long Branch, designed by Latrobe; Professor Joseph Maurer, of Lehigh 
University, Bethlehem, for help in examining the Moravian background 
of Latrobe; Professor Doktor Georg Mayer, Rector of the University of 
Leipzig, East Germany, for examining the matriculation lists of the Uni- 
versity; Professor Carroll L. V. Meeks, of Yale University, for information 
with regard to Latrobe's exhibits at the Academy of Fine Arts in Phila- 
delphia; Dr. Isaac Mendelsohn, of Columbia University, for generously 
transcribing Latrobe's Hebrew script; Professor John O'Connor, Jr., Asso- 
ciate Director of the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute of Tech- 
nology, for assistance in tracing early Pittsburgh material; Miss Alice Lee 
Parker, Acting Chief of the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of 
Congress, for her most co-operative assistance in connection with the 
Latrobe material in the library; Mr. Horace W. Peaslee, Washington 
architect, for assistance in connection with Christ Church and St. John's 
Church, Washington; Mr. James H. Rodenbaugh, of the Ohio State Mu- 
seum and Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, Columbus, 
for information, plans, and photographs of Adena, in Chillicothe, de- 
signed by Latrobe; Mr. Nicholas G. Roosevelt, Philadelphia, for assistance 
in searching for material dealing with his ancestor Nicholas Roosevelt; 
and Miss Anna Wells Rutledge, Charleston, South Carolina, for a list of 
Latrobe's entries in the Academy of Fine Arts exhibitions in Philadelphia. 
Also Miss Mary Wingfield Scott, Richmond, Virginia, for invaluable 
assistance in investigating the trail of Latrobe in Richmond, and for shar- 
ing her wide knowledge of the architecture and history of early Rich- 
mond; Professor H. L. Seaver, Lexington, Massachusetts, for sending me 
a copy of a Latrobe letter in his possession that dealt with glass for the 
United States Capitol; Professor Charles Coleman Sellers, of Dickinson 
College, for many valuable suggestions and for information with regard 
to the Peale family and the portraits of Latrobe; the Reverend Mr. C. H. 
Shawe, Chairman of the Provincial Board of the Moravian Church in 
Great Britain and Ireland, London, for assistance in searching Moravian 
records in England; Mrs. Roger Sherman, Williamsburg, Virginia, for 
fascinating material dealing with the Virginia theater and with West's 
troupe of players; Mr. Henry C. Shinn, Mount Holly, New Jersey, for 
sending me a history o the Hazlehurst estate, Clover Hill; Mr. Albert 
Simons, Charleston architect, for suggestions and assistance of many 
kinds; Professor Robert Smith, of the University of Pennsylvania, for 
valuable suggestions as to sources; Mr. John S. Still, Special Projects 



X J V FOREWORD 

Historian, Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, Columbus, 
for valuable information with regard to Adena, in Chillicothe, designed 
by Latrobe; Mr. Charles M. Stotz, Pittsburgh architect, for many valu- 
able suggestions with regard to Latrobe's Pittsburgh work; Mr. Walter 
Knight Sturges, New York architect, for much assistance in connection 
with the Baltimore Cathedral, and for permission to use some illustra- 
tions of that building; Mr. John Summerson, Curator of Sir John Soane's 
Museum, London, for valuable suggestions regarding the English back- 
ground of Latrobe; Mr. Howard Swiggett, Hewlett, Long Island, for 
interesting material concerning Gouverneur Morris and his relations with 
Latrobe; the Right Reverend Dr. H. St. George Tucker, Bishop of the 
Episcopal diocese of Virginia, who wrote me about the Latrobe water 
color of Mount Vernon which he owns and of which he generously sent 
me a photograph for reproduction; Mr. Carl Vitz, Director of the Cin- 
cinnati Public Library, for valuable information with regard to early 
steamboats on the Ohio River; the Reverend Mr. C. Preston Wiles, Rector 
of St. Mary's Church, Burlington, New Jersey, for assistance in tracing 
records of the Hazlehurst family; Mrs. George Windell, Assistant Li- 
brarian of the Historical Society of Delaware, Wilmington, for generous 
help in connection with Latrobe's survey and plan for Newcastle, and 
for sending me reproductions of it; and Mr. Joseph F. Winkler, of the 
National Archives and Records Service, Washington, for locating La- 
trobe's plans for Norfolk fortifications. 

I wish also to thank the following for so generously responding to my 
published appeal for Latrobe material: Mrs. Leroy R. Dumsey, Allen- 
town, Pennsylvania; the late Mr. James R. Edmunds, Past President of 
the American Institute of Architects, Baltimore; Mr. R. M. Harper, 
University, Alabama; Mr. T. Worth Jamieson, Baltimore; Mr. Stephen 
G. Rich, Verona, New Jersey; and Mr. William E. Rooney, Monroe, 
Louisiana. 

Several of my Columbia University colleagues and friends have been 
most helpful, both through encouragement and through sharing with me 
their specialized knowledge. Especially I wish to thank Dean Leopold 
Arnaud of the School of Architecture for his continuing encouragement; 
Professor James Grote Van Derpool of the Avery Library for assistance 
in many matters concerning the background of Latrobe's architecture; 
and Professors Henry Steele Commager and John A. Krout of the History 
Department for help in historical matters and for constant and enthusi- 
astic support. To Columbia University, too, I am deeply indebted for a 
generous grant from the Fund for Research in the Humanities (received 



FOREWORD XV 

through the recommendation of Vice-President and Provost John A. 
Krout) under which the foreign research was undertaken. 

I have received the utmost in co-operation, also, from many libraries 
and historical societies. To them and their willing and skillful staffs I 
must express my warm gratitude. Among the libraries, which so often 
furnish the lifeblood of research, are the Avery Library of Columbia Uni- 
versity, the Columbia University Library (chiefly its reference staff), the 
Library of Congress (especially its print, manuscript, and map divisions), 
the National Archives, the New York Public Library (particularly its 
print, map, manuscript, and local history rooms), the Ridgeway Branch 
of the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Virginia State Library. The 
State Archive Departments of North Carolina and of Pennsylvania have 
also been most helpful. The societies whose facilities and holdings have 
been of the greatest value include the Boston Athenaeum, the Columbia 
Historical Society of Washington, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 
the Maryland Historical Society, the New-York Historical Society, and 
the Valentine Museum of Richmond, Virginia. 

Last of all, I wish to set down my deep gratitude to my wife, Jessica 
Hamlin, for endless help of many kinds in putting this book into its final 
state, for preparing the index, and especially for her trained and sympa- 
thetic editorial eye which alone has saved me from numberless ambigui- 
ties and verbal infelicities. 

TALBOT HAMLIN 
Columbia University 
June $o f 



PROLOGUE 



IF YOU had been walking down Second Street in Philadelphia on a fall 
Sunday afternoon in 1800, you might have seen ahead of you, turning 
into the street from Chestnut, a tall, dark-haired man, quietly but fash- 
ionably dressed, with his much younger wife on his arm. They had just 
come from Centre Square (where the City Hall now rears its ponderous 
hulk), and he had been showing her the progress on his latest building 
the white-marble pump house of the waterworks which, already well 
above the foundations, scaffold-surrounded, revealed through its doorway 
the deep pit within, where the awkward steam pump would eventually 
puff and wheeze. Now they were bound to his other great Philadelphia 
structure, the Bank o Pennsylvania; down the street its gleaming white 
walls and its Ionic portico formed an impressive contrast to the old rose 
and gray bricks of the usual Philadelphia streets. 

The tall man a good six feet two was Benjamin Henry Latrobe, now 
at thirty-six in the flower of his young maturity; his wife, pretty, petite, 
slim in her fashionable Empire costume, had been Mary Elizabeth Hazle- 
hurst of Mount Holly and Philadelphia before their marriage that May. 
As they approached the new bank, the purity of its simple walls, the 
graciousness of its proportions, the unaccustomed power and simplicity 
of its Greek Ionic capitals the first that Philadelphia had ever seen 
suddenly struck her with their beauty, as the drawings for them she had 
watched her husband making had never been able to do, and she stopped 
involuntarily, pressed her companion's arm, and looked admiringly up 
to him. As he felt the pressure he, too, turned to her, and his quiet, seri- 
ous, almost somber face with its strong rounded contours, the full art- 
ist's lips, and the eager eyes which alone gave a hint of the passion within 
came suddenly to ardent, smiling life, and for the moment he seemed 
not only sensitive and strong but handsome; for he had been disciplined 
by long years of religious training, by years in England of gaiety, intel- 
lectual experiment, success, tragedy, and failure, and only imagination 

xvii 



xyiii PROLOGUE 

and emotion could break his usual control so that his countenance re- 
vealed the true depths behind. 

Some seventeen years later, you might have seen the same man^ in 
Washington, striding along with almost the same eager tread, coming 
from a bankruptcy proceeding his own. The face now has lost its earlier 
roundness; the cheeks are slightly hollowed, the chin sharper, the mouth 
drawn with greater determination. He is wearing steel-rimmed spectacles, 
and the eyes behind are sad; yet they are still the eyes of the dreamer and 
the maker, and they are still innocent and kind. He is going home through 
the chilly December gloom, almost forgetful of the half-frozen slush 
through which he walks, to the little house on the hills toward the north- 
westhome to tell his wife that the inevitable step has at last been taken 
and that soon, with whatever possessions the insolvency law allowed them 
to retain, they would be departing forever from the gangling city. Wash- 
ington had seen for them so much of pain and of harassing attacks from 
professional and political opponents or rivals, so many lawsuits over the 
notes he had rashly endorsed for friends, so many growing claims from 
the shattered schemes that once had been bright dreams of financial se- 
curity! Yet the expanding capital had brought them, too, tremendous 
professional successes; the finest new houses in the town were of his de- 
sign, and the new interiors of the rebuilt Capitol so much improved 
since the burning by the British in 1814 had a controlled richness, a 
power of space design, and a beauty and perfection of detail that were 
to win the admiration of later millions. In Washington they had also 
known their greatest social success; they had been intimate with presi- 
dents and cabinets, foreign ministers, clergymen and artists, and the best 
intellects in Washington had flocked to their doors. And now this this 
insolvency this mark of failure somewhere. Now, the Capitol commis- 
sion resigned, they must move to Baltimore and try again to rebuild their 
lives. 

Then another three years, and in a little house at the lower end of 
New Orleans you might have seen him lying dead dead of the yellow 
fever that had earlier claimed his eldest son and the distracted family 
planning how they might return again to the security of friends in Balti- 
more. 

Latrobe's life, then, is a tale of rise, and of decline and fall. How did 
it happen that this man this brilliant architect and engineer, this de- 
signer of so many of the country's most distinguished buildings, this 
single-minded creator of the architectural profession in the United States, 
this architect whose two pupils William Strickland and Robert Mills be- 
came in turn the country's most distinguished architects to carry forward 



PROLOGUE XIX 

the development of the profession how did it come that Latrobe, ap- 
parently almost forgotten, was to die nearly penniless in New Orleans? 

It is a long story, in which character and the conditions of life in the 
young country all had their part. It is the story of a man ahead of his 
time, a man with a vivid imagination that not only could create buildings 
of superb power and restraint but could also see (almost too clearly) the 
advantages that America in those days spreading so rapidly into the 
west and in the east changing gradually from an agricultural to a com- 
mercial and industrial base could gain from steam power and the devel- 
opment of machines. It is the story of how a country, then as alas occa- 
sionally now suspicious of the artist and fearful of beauty (or rather of 
the emotions beauty arouses), would give to Latrobe's intense aesthetic 
vision merely the most superficial and grudging admiration and would 
pay only grudgingly and under pressure a pittance for his professional 
services. It is the story of a man trained in England, where the architec- 
tural profession was already respected and secure, trying to bring the 
benefit of that system and the knowledge and talent his training had 
given him to a country where the old traditional builder-designer system 
still held almost complete sway and the "architect" was either an amateur 
or an ambitious carpenter or bricklayer. It is the tragedy of a man de- 
voted to the ideals of imaginative planning in a country where mere im- 
provisation was still the rule. 

But, added to all this, it is the tale of an artist irresistibly drawn almost 
by fate, it would seem, and by ambition, and later by the mere attempt to 
obtain a modicum of financial security into business and speculation. 
Latrobe, almost at the beginning of his career, was plunged into a morass 
of debts, not his fault (except as his generous enthusiasm and lack of 
caution might be faults), losing thereby the capital he had brought with 
him from England; then, driven alike by his ambition and his imagina- 
tion, he became engulfed in larger and larger schemes, each of which was 
intended to make the money to pay the debts which the preceding failure 
had entailed until the whole structure crashed. In the story there is per- 
sonal villainy on the part of more than one associate. Often there is merely 
the rather heartless business logic of men with more capital than he. 
Sometimes he is the victim of what can only be called the intervention 
of a cruel fate. And the irony of it is that all those schemes on which he 
labored (water systems, steam engines, steamboats, power looms) were 
good but ten or fifteen years later. Out of them all, others did make 
successes and fortunes. But to Latrobe they brought only disaster, and 
the capital so painfully obtained from his architectural practice which 
he poured into them, drop by drop, all vanished into thin air or into the 



XX PROLOGUE 

capacious pockets of other men. On his architectural earnings Latrobe 
could have lived not luxuriously, perhaps, but well. It was his optimistic 
business enterprises and his generous trust in others that spelled his ruin. 

Today we can realize his enormous gifts to the country. Today every 
architect and every individual or corporation that has used and profited 
by architectural services may thank Latrobe, who almost single-handed 
created in this country the true professional attitude in the art of building. 
Now, when we walk through town after town in the East and the Middle 
West and see in the white houses the harmony that American genius has 
created by its imaginative use of Greek forms and Greek feeling, we may 
thank Latrobe again; for he, first in America, used Greek precedent and 
from it developed new and creative American expressions. And today, as 
hundreds of thousands of sightseers are guided through the Capitol, some 
at least will draw in their breath suddenly as the wide spaces of Statuary 
Hall (originally the House of Representatives) open to them; many will 
be thrilled at the purity and the grace that rules in what now is labeled 
the Old Supreme Court (originally the Senate Chamber); more will be 
delighted at the capitals Latrobe so deftly composed from the American 
corn and tobacco plants; a few will note the brilliance of the vaulting 
of the entrance stairs and of the room originally designed for the Supreme 
Court beneath the old Senate Chamber. They will carry back with them, 
these sightseers, however ignorant architecturally they may be, impres- 
sions of space and dignity, of richness and restraint, of fine and perma- 
nent materials beautifully used. These impressions, arising from the de- 
signs Latrobe made so long ago, continue a century and a quarter later 
to bear witness to his genius. 

It is the tale of this architect, this artist, this engineer that the ensuing 
pages will tell; it is an evaluation of his work that this book attempts to 
give. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PROLOGUE xvii 



PART I: LATROBE IN EUROPE 

1 Background and Youth 3 

2 Latrobe in London 18 

3 Architectural Background 35 

4 To America 49 

PART II: LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

5 Latrobe in Virginia: 1796-1798 67 

6 Architectural Work in Virginia and Some Other 

Houses 95 

7 Philadelphia at Last 127 

8 Architect and Engineer in Philadelphia 146 

9 The Unrelenting Web 168 

10 Professional Struggles: 1802-1807 I ^ 1 

11 Colleagues and Quandaries 214 

12 The Baltimore Cathedral 233 

PART III: THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

13 Work for the United States Government: 1798-1812 255 

14 Washington Years: 1807-1813 305 

15 Private Professional Practice: 1807-1813 339 

1 6 Prelude to Pittsburgh: Steamboats and War 370 

17 Pittsburgh Debacle 397 

18 Rebuilding of the Capitol: 1815-1817 438 

19 Final Washington Years: 1815-1817 457 



xxi 



XX11 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PART IV: END OF THE ROAD 

20 Baltimore Interlude: 1818 

21 New Orleans: The End 

22 Latrobe as Artist 

23 Latrobe as Engineer 



483 
55 
53i 

544 



APPENDIX 



ii 
12 



Road Directions, Virginia Style 567 

Art, Manners, and Morality 569 

Dr. Sellon's Death and the Reading of His Will 572 

Letter to Mary Latrobe Describing a Dinner with 

Jefferson 576 

Report and Estimate on the New York-Long Island 

Bridge 578 

References to the Plan and Sections of the Town of 

Newcastle 583 

Letter to Robert Mills with Regard to the Profession 

of Architecture 585 

A Comparison of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr 591 

Letter to Henry Baldwin on Latrobe's Connection 

with the Early Development of Steamboats ~ 592 

Selections from a Letter to Miss M. Sellon (November 

15, 1817) on Henry Latrobe's Death 600 

Criticism of Tom Moore's Verse 602 

Hymn for the Dedication of St. John's, Washington 604 



MAJOR SOURCES 
INDEX 



605 
607 



LIST OF PLATES 



(Unless otherwise noted, the sketchbooks of B. H. Latrobe are in the possession of the 
Latrobe family.) 

PLATE SOURCE 

Frontispiece. The Hermit and the Children. 

An Indian Mother Mourning Her Child: An Illustration for Ned TLvans. 
From Latrobe's water colors in the Latrobe sketchbooks. 

Between pages 92 and 93 

1 Benjamin Henry Latrobe as a young man. 

From a portrait once belonging to Christian Latrobe 9 in 
the Maryland Historical Society. 

Benjamin Latrobe, the architect's father. 

From the Portrait Collection of the British Museum. 

Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds. 

From Latrobe's water color in "An Essay in Landscape," 
in the State Library of Virginia. 

2 Ashdown House. B. H. Latrobe, architect. Two views. 

Photographs by Dorothy Stroud. 

Hammerwood Lodge. B, H. Latrobe, architect. Two views. 
Photographs by Dorothy Stroud. 

3 Somerset House, London. Sir William Chambers, architect. River side. 

Courtesy Avery Library. 

Bank Stock Hall, Bank of England, London. Sir John Soane, architect. 
Courtesy Avery Library. 

Old Newgate Prison, London. George Dance, Jr., architect. 
Courtesy Avery Library, 
xxiii 



XXIV LIST OF PLATES 

PLATE SOURCE 

4 The Sloop Olive Branch, of Stonington, Conn. 

View on the York River, Virginia. 

From Latrobe's water colors, in the Latrobe sketchbooks. 

5 Colonel Blackburn's House, Virginia. 

From Latrobe's water color, in the Latrobe sketchbooks. 

View on the Appomattox River, Virginia. 

From Latrobe's "An Essay in Landscape," in the State 
Library of Virginia. 

6 Mount Vernon, Virginia. 

From Latrobe's water color, in the possession of Bishop 
H. St. George Tucker. 

7 Clifton, the Harris House, Richmond. 

Pennock House, Norfolk, Virginia. Stair hall. 

From Latrobe's water-color perspectives, in the Library 
of Congress. 

Proposed Tayloe House, Washington. Section. 

From Latrobe's original drawing, in the Library of 
Congress. 

8 Juliana Latrobe's Tombstone, Mount Holly, New Jersey. B. H. Latrobe, 
architect. General view and detail. 

Photographs by Mr. & Mrs. John H. Heyrman. 

Mrs. Claiborne's Tomb, New Orleans. B. H, Latrobe, architect; Giuseppe 
Franzoni, sculptor. General view and detail. 

General view, photograph by Richard Koch. 
Detail, photograph by Samuel Wilson, Jr. 

Between pages 188 and 189 

9 Proposed Theater, Hotel, and Assembly Building, Richmond. 

Main-floor plan. 

Section of the theater. 

From Latrobe's original drawings, in the Library of 
Congress. 



LIST OF PLATES XXV 

PLATE SOURCE 

10 Proposed Theater, Hotel, and Assembly Building, Richmond. The as- 
sembly room. 

From Latrobe's water-color perspective, in the Library 
of Congress. 

The Penitentiary, Richmond. Main-floor plan. 

From Latrobe's original drawing, in the State Library 
of Virginia. 

11 The Penitentiary, Richmond. Entrance. 

From Latrobe's water-color perspective, in the State 
Library of Virginia. 

Same. Cell block, with later added top story. 

From an old photograph, courtesy the Valentine Museum, 
Richmond. 

Long Branch, the Burwell House, Virginia. B. H. Latrobe, architect. 
Entrance front. 

Photograph by Rohden, courtesy Alexander Mackay- 
Smith. 



12 Competition for the New York City Hall. Perspective. 

From Latrobe's original drawing, in the Library of 
Congress. 

Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Preliminary perspective. 

From Latrobe's original drawing, in the Maryland His- 
torical Society. 



13 Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. B. H. Latrobe, architect. 

From an engraving of a drawing by George Strickland, 
in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 

Same. Section. 

From Latrobe's original drawing, in the Historical So- 
ciety of Pennsylvania. 

14 Philadelphia Waterworks. B. H. Latrobe, architect and engineer. Centre 
Square Pump House on the Fourth of July. 

From a painting by Krimmel, in the Philadelphia Acad- 
emy of Art. 



X Xvi LIST OF PLATES 

PLATE SOURCE 

14 (cont'd) Same. Settling basin on the Schuylkill. 

From Latrobe's original drawing, in the Historical So- 
ciety of Pennsylvania. 



15 Chestnut Street Theater, Philadelphia, as altered by B. H. Latrobe. 

From an engraving by Birch, in the Historical Society 
o Pennsylvania. 

Sedgeley, the Crammond House, Philadelphia. B. H. Latrobe, architect. 
From an old engraving, in the Historical Society of 
Pennsylvania. 

Burd House, Philadelphia. 

From an old photograph, in the Historical Society of 
Pennsylvania. 



1 6 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. The Medical School. B. H. 
Latrobe, architect. 

From a pencil perspective by William Strickland, in the 
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 

"Old West," Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. South front. 

Photograph by W. Boone, courtesy Dickinson College. 

Same. North front. 

Photograph courtesy Dickinson College. 



Between pages 284 and 285 

17 Adena, the Worthington House, Chillicothe, Ohio. B. H. Latrobe, archi- 
tect. View from the garden. 

From an old photograph, courtesy the Historical and 
Archaeological Society of Ohio. 

Same. Rotating server. 

Photograph courtesy James H. Rodebaugh. 

Wain House, Philadelphia. B. H. Latrobe, architect. 

From an old water color by J. Kern, in the Ridgeway 
Branch, Free Library of Philadelphia. 



LIST OF PLATES XXVii 

PLATE SOURCE 

1 8 Roman Catholic Cathedral, Baltimore. 

Gothic side elevation. 
Gothic plan. 

First "Roman" plan. 

From Latrobe's original drawings, in the possession of 
the Diocese of Baltimore, courtesy the Diocese of Balti- 
more and Walter Knight Sturges. 

19 Roman Catholic Cathedral, Baltimore. Section of the "seventh" design. 

From Latrobe's original drawing, in the possession of 
the Diocese of Baltimore, courtesy the Diocese of Balti- 
more and Walter Knight Sturges. 

Same. Part measured section, showing actual dome construction. 

Courtesy the Diocese of Baltimore and Walter Knight 
Sturges. 

20 Roman Catholic Cathedral, Baltimore. 

Exterior. 

Interior. 

Photographs by J. H. Schaefer and Son. 

21 Proposed Storage Dry dock for the United States Navy, Washington. 

From Latrobe's original preliminary drawings, in the 
Library of Congress. 

Stern of the United States Sloop of War Hornet. 

Treasury Fireproof, Washington. 

From Latrobe's original drawings, in the Library of 
Congress. 

22 United States Capitol, Washington, before the War of 1812. 

Plan of the South Wing. 

Section of the House of Representatives. 

Arches and vault of the Supreme Court, 1808. 

From Latrobe's original drawings, in the Library of 
Congress. 



LIST OF PLATES 

PLATE SOURCE 

23 United States Capitol, Washington. 

Senate rotunda with Latrobe's tobacco capitals. 
Photograph by I. T. Frary. 

Senate vestibule with Latrobe's corn capitals, 1808, 1816. 

From Glenn Brown, A History of the United States 
Capitol. 

Section through Senate and Supreme Court, 1808. 

From Latrobe's original drawing, in the Library of 
Congress. 

24 United States Capitol, Washington, before the War of 1812. 

South elevation with proposed propylaea. 

West elevation with proposed propylaea. 

From Latrobe's original drawings, in the Library of 
Congress. 

Between pages 412 and 413 

25 The President's House, Washington. 

Plan of first floor showing proposed alterations. 

Latrobe's "Egyptian" design for the Library of Congress, 1808. 

From Latrobe's original drawings, in the Library of 
Congress. 

26 Gothic Buildings by B. H. Latrobe: 

Christ Church, Washington. Exterior and interior. 
Photographs by the author. 

St. Paul's Church, Alexandria. Exterior. 

From a drawing by Bontz, courtesy John O. Brostrup. 

Bank of Philadelphia. 

From an old engraving, in the Historical Society of 
Pennsylvania. 

27 The Early Mississippi Steamer Paragon. 

From F. B. Read, Upward to Fame and Fortune. 



LIST OF PLATES XXIX 

PLATE SOURCE 

27 (cont'd) Proposed Central Building, Pittsburgh Arsenal. Elevation. 

Proposed Commandant's House, Pittsburgh Arsenal. East elevation. 

From Latrobe's original drawings, in the Library of 
Congress. 

Dr. Herron's Church, Pittsburgh, as altered by B. H. Latrobe. 

Old view, courtesy Henry Clay Frick Fine Arts Depart- 
ment, University of Pittsburgh. 



28 United States Capitol, Washington. Plan for rebuilding after the War of 
1812. 

From Latrobe's original drawing, in the Library of 
Congress. 



29 United States Capitol, Washington, as rebuilt after the War of 1812. B. H. 
Latrobe, architect. 

The House of Representatives at lamplighting time. 

From a painting by S. F. B. Morse, in the Corcoran 
Gallery, Washington. 

Old Senate chamber, now called "Old Supreme Court." 

Photograph courtesy Ware Library, Columbia University. 

Old Supreme Court, now called "Old Supreme Court Library." 

From Glenn Brown, A History of the United States 
Capitol. 



30 The Decatur House, Washington. 
Details of the parlor doors. 
Same. Details of the vestibule. 

Same. Second-floor plan. 

From Latrobe's original drawings, in the possession of 
Mrs. Truxtun Beale. 

St. John's Church, Washington. Perspective showing the burned-out Presi- 
dent's House in the background. 

From Latrobe's original water color, in the possession 
of St. John's Church. 



XXX LIST OF PLATES 

PLATE SOURCE 

31 Baltimore Exchange. Godefroy and Latrobe, architects. 

Study plan for Post Office and Customs House. 

From Latrobe's original drawing, in the Maryland His- 
torical Society. 

Gay Street front. 

From Latrobe's water-color perspective, in the Maryland 
Historical Society. 

32 Baltimore Exchange. Godefroy and Latrobe, architects. Exterior. 

Same. View looking up into the dome. 

From old photographs, courtesy Richard Borneman. 

Proposed Library, Baltimore. 

From Latrobe's original drawing, in the Maryland His- 
torical Society. 

Between pages 508 and 509 

33 Benjamin Henry Latrobe, circa 1800. Portrait by Charles Willson Peale. 

Photograph by Blakeslee-Lane, courtesy Mrs. Ferdinand 
C. Latrobe. 

Benjamin Henry Latrobe, circa 1816. Portrait attributed to Rembrandt 
Peale. 

Courtesy Peale Museum, Baltimore, and Avery Library. 

34 Competition Design for the Second Bank of the United States, Philadel- 
phia. 

From Latrobe's original drawings, in the Historical So- 
ciety o Pennsylvania. 

Front elevation. 
Side elevation. 
Section. 

35 Customs House, New Orleans. B. H. Latrobe, architect. 

Waterworks Pumping Station, New Orleans. Henry Latrobe, architect. 

From marginal drawings in J. Tanesse, Plan of the City 
and Suburbs of New Orleans . . . 1815 



LIST OF PLATES XXXI 

PLATE SOURCE 

35 (cont'd) Dike for the Suction Pipe, Waterworks, New Orleans. 

From B. H. Latrobe's original drawing, in the possession 
of Samuel Wilson, Jr. 

36 Cathedral of St. Louis, New Orleans. B. H. Latrobe, architect for the 
central tower. 

From a drawing by T. K. Wharton, 1845, in the New 
York Public Library. 

State Bank of Louisiana, New Orleans. B. H. Latrobe, architect. 
Photograph by Rudolf Hertzberg. 

37 Thomas Jefferson. Pencil portrait by B. H. Latrobe. 

From the original, in the Maryland Historical Society. 

38 Characteristic Latrobe Landscapes. 

View on the Passaic River, New Jersey. 
On the Road from Newark to Paterson. 

A New Jersey Roadside. 

From Latrobe's original water colors, in the Latrobe 
sketchbooks. 

39 Latrobe's Trompe-l'oeil. 

Breakfast on Board the "Eliza, 1796. 

Two Landscapes and the Face of Washington. 

From Latrobe*s original water colors, in the Latrobe 
sketchbooks. 

40 Engine for the Navy Yard, Washington. Plan and elevation. 

Washington Canal, Washington. Details of a lock. 

From Latrobe's original drawings, in the Library of 
Congress. 



LIST OF TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS 



(Unless otherwise noted, the journals, sketchbooks, and letter books of B. EL Latrobe are in 
the possession of the Latrobe family.) 

FIGURE SOURCE PAGE 

1 North Terrace, Fulneck. School buildings at left. n 

From Fulnec%_ Schools, 1753-1953, Bicentenary Me- 
morial Appeal. 

2 Earl of Derby's House, London. Plan. Robert Adam, architect. 38 

From The Works in Architecture of Robert and James 
Adam. 

3 Strata Found in the Well, Penitentiary, Richmond. 81 

From a Latrobe journal in the Maryland Historical 
Society. 

4 Weir on the James River at Richmond. 90 

From a Latrobe journal in the Maryland Historical 
Society. 

5 Pennock House, Norfolk. Plans. 96 

Redrawn from Latrobe's original drawings in the 
Library of Congress. 

6 Harvie-Gamble House, Richmond. Plans. 101 

Redrawn from Latrobe's original drawings in the 
Library of Congress. 

7 Design of a House for Mr. Tayloe, Washington. Plans. IO 4"5 

Redrawn from Latrobe's original drawings in the 
Library of Congress. 

8 Senator Pope's House, Lexington, Ky. Plans. 107 

Latrobe's original drawing in the Library of Congress, 
xxxiii 



XXXiv LIST OF TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS 

FIGURE SOURCE PAGE 

9 Senator Pope's House, Lexington, Ky. Elevation and part section. 109 

Redrawn from Latrobe's original drawing in the 
Library of Congress. 

10 Brentwood, Washington. Plans, elevation, and section. no 

From Talbot Hamlin, Gree\ Revival Architecture in 
America. 

11 Long Branch, the Burwell House, Clarke County, Virginia. B. H. 
Latrobe, architect. 114 

Redrawn from measured plans, courtesy Alexander 
Mackay-Smith. 

12 Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Plans. 153 

Redrawn from Latrobe's original drawings in the 
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 

13 Sketches Made along the Susquehanna. 184-5 

From Latrobe's workbook of the Susquehanna sur- 
vey in the Maryland Historical Society. 

14 Proposed Philadelphia Exchange. Rough sketch plan. 191 

From Latrobe's letter to Daniel Cox, February 4, 
1805, in the Latrobe letter books. 

15 Adena, the Worthington House, Chillicothe, Ohio. Plans. 200-201 

Redrawn from measured plans, courtesy James H. 
Rodenbaugh. 

1 6 Baltimore Cathedral. Measured plan, showing later additions. 243 

Courtesy Avery Library and Walter Knight Sturges. 

17 The Capitol, Washington. Ground-floor plan as proposed by 
Thornton. 2 g z 

From Glenn Brown, A History of the United States 
Capitol. 

1 8 Sketch Explaining the Fall of the Supreme Court Vault in the 
Capitol. 277 

From Latrobe's letter to Jefferson, September 23, 1808, 
in the Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. 



LIST OF TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS XXXV 

FIGURE SOURCE PAGE 

19 Camp Meeting near Washington in 1806. Plans and sections. 320-321 

From the Latrobe journals. 

20 Markoe House, Philadelphia. First-floor plan. 342 

Redrawn from a sketch in a Latrobe sketchbook. 

21 Markoe House, Philadelphia. Sketch for revision of the bathroom 
arrangement. 343 

From Latrobe's letter to Robert Mills, January 23, 
1 8 10, in the Latrobe letter books. 

22 Ashland, the Henry Clay House, Lexington, Ky. Sketch plan of 
wing arrangements. 382 

Original Latrobe drawing, 1812-13, courtesy Clay Lan- 
caster. 

23 Part Plan of Pittsburgh, showing land purchased by Latrobe from 
O'Hara and the house in which the Latrobes lived. 401 

From Latrobe's letter to Robert Fulton, November u, 

1813, in the Latrobe letter books. 

24 Latrobe's Shipbuilding Shops, Pittsburgh. Sketch plan. 402 

From Latrobe's letter to William Stackpole, May 24, 

1814, in the Latrobe letter books. 

25 Proposed Commandant's House, Arsenal, Pittsburgh. Plans. 420 

Redrawn from Latrobe's original drawings in the 
Library of Congress. 

26 Anderson House, Bedford, Pa. Plan. B. H. Latrobe, architect. 423 

From Charles M. Stotz, The Early Architecture of 
Western Pennsylvania. 

27 Courthouse, Hagerstown, Md. Elevation. 462 

Redrawn from the border picture of an 1850 map of 
Hagerstown, courtesy Mrs. William F. Bevan. 

28 Pennsylvania Avenue near 20th Street, N.W., Washington, site of 

the Van Ness House. 464 

From Latrobe's original sketch, reproduced in The 
Journal of Latrobe. 



XXXvi LIST OF TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS 

FIGURE SOURCE PAGE 

29 Van Ness House, Washington. Plans. B. H. Latrobe, architect. 466 

From Fiske Kimball, Domestic Architecture of the 
'American Colonies and the Early Republic. 

30 Baltimore Exchange. Second-floor plan of central section. 494 

From Latrobe's original drawing in the Maryland His- 
torical Society. 

31 Baltimore Exchange. North-south section of the Exchange Room. 496 

Restored by the author. 

32 State Bank of Louisiana, New Orleans. Plan and section. B. H. 
Latrobe, architect. 527 

Redrawn from measured drawings by the Historic 
American Buildings Survey, in the Library o Con- 
gress. 

33 A Classic Group at Mount Vernon. 533 

From the Latrobe sketchbooks, as reproduced in The 
Journal of Latrobe. 

34 Profile of Edmund Randolph, 1796-7. 535 

From the Latrobe sketchbooks, as reproduced in The 
Journal of Latrobe. 

35 "Taste, Anno 1620." 540 

From Latrobe's illustrated manuscript book, "An 
Essay in Landscape," in the Virginia State Library. 

36 Improved Quilling Machine, invented by B. H. Latrobe. 554 

From a sketch in Latrobe's letter to Henry Orth, April 
5, 1815, in the Latrobe letter books. 



PART I: LATROBE IN EUROPE 



CHAPTER 
I 



Background and Youth 



IN THE rolling country of mid- Yorkshire, halfway between the lush fields 
and streams of the East Riding and the wild and barren moors of the 
northwest, a little stream curves east and then north into the river Aire 
at Leeds. From the bend a rounded hill rises, breastlike, to a ridge where 
stands the ancient weavers' village of Pudsey. On this hill, midway down 
to the valley, a street of old buildings follows the contours around the 
slope; this is Fulneck. 

Here, in the center of a great woolen-cloth weaving area, Fulneck was 
established some two centuries ago by the Moravians the Unitas Fratrum 
(Unity of the Brethren, or United Brethren) who had made many con- 
verts among the weavers in Pudsey and the villages near by. In due time 
there rose along the street a row of comely brick buildings : a school (still 
one of the distinguished boarding schools of England), a home for the 
director, a "sisters' house" and a "brothers' house" for the unmarried 
members of the community. As the advantages of the beautiful site and 
the rare combination it offered of country seclusion and nearness to Leeds 
and Bradford became plain, the Unitas Fratrum moved its London schools 
for boys and girls to Fulneck, which soon became the British educational 
center of the Moravian movement. 

Today the immediate scene has changed but little, though Leeds in its 
industrial sprawl has reached out toward it. From the gracious, simple 
Georgian buildings one still looks down to the south and east over swell- 
ing vacant fields and, across the little river, to woods on the other side 
that are still, as they were a century ago, part of the park of an adjacent 
manor house. The little stream still flows down, curving out of sight to 
the north into a picturesque and rocky defile, and the schoolchildren still 
study and play in the rose-gray brick buildings and over the sloping, 
rounded fields. 



, LATROBE IN EUROPE 

There, in the schoolmaster's house, on May i, 1764, a baby was born to 
Benjamin and Margaret Antes Latrobe, and on the next day he was bap- 
tized in the school chapel and christened Benjamin Henry Latrobe. 1 

The Latrobes were an exceptional family. At the time of the revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, the family of Boneval de La Trobe 
was divided, brother .against brother, one a Protestant and the other a 
Roman Catholic. The Protestant, Count Jean Henri, fled the country 
with his wife and went to Holland, where he joined the army of the 
Prince of Orange. An uncle of his, a Catholic, later became famous (or 
at least notorious) in his own right; a wanderer, an eccentric, bored with 
France, he journeyed to Constantinople, embraced Mohammedanism, was 
created a Pasha by the Sultan, and had a luxurious palace complete with 
a large harem on the Bosphorus. Casanova visited him there in 1741 and 
later left in his Memoires an extensive if somewhat scandalous account 
of the visit. Long afterward the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, then 
in faraway America, remembered the legend and remarked in a letter 
(November 4, 1804) to his elder brother Christian in England, "From the 
days of our old grand uncle Count Boneval, Pacha of Belgrade, we have 
been an eccentric breed." 

Nor was the life of the young Protestant count without adventure. He 
accompanied William III to England, then joined the Irish expedition, 
and was wounded at the Battle of the Boyne. Later he made Ireland his 
home and settled in Dublin, where he prospered; he was probably the 
John de La Trobe mentioned in old records as a founder and developer 
of the fine-linen industry in Dublin. 2 His son James (1702-52), who estab- 
lished a sailcloth business, dropped the Boneval and became simply James 
de La Trobe. A pillar of Protestant society there, James gave his son 
Benjamin (1726-86) the best possible education at the University of Glas- 
gow and evidently on the Continent as well, including an intensive 
training in Germany, though the details are lacking. James married 
three times; Benjamin was the son of the first wife, Rebecca Adams, 3 but 

1. Baptismal record and school journal. 

2. David C. Agnew, Protestant Exiles from France . . . 3d ed. (London: for private 
circulation, 1886). 

3. This is based on a genealogical table in the possession of the Latrobe family. Agnew 
(op. cit.) gives the mother's family name as Thornton, perhaps the name of James's sec- 
ond wife. A manuscript note signed "James Latrobe, Episcopus Fratrum, 26 July 1884," 
discovered in the papers of Miss Mildred La Trobe-Bateman by Miss Dorothy Stroud, con- 
tains the following passage: "A brief memoir of James Latrobe inserted in the Diary of 



BACKGROUND AND YOUTH 5 

it was James's third wife with the good old Irish name of OToole that 
his grandson the architect came to know. 

Benjamin had planned to enter the ministry as a Baptist and had 
formed a small group of some thirty enthusiastic young people to study 
theological problems. In 1746 they invited a Moravian missionary then 
in Dublin to preach to them, and Benjamin Latrobe was enthralled de- 
spite his Baptist upbringing; both the broad tolerance and the mission- 
ary zeal of the Moravian faith won his fervid support. Unhesitatingly he 
cast his lot with them and was immediately disowned by his father, 
even though the Moravians made no claims of being a separate denomina- 
tion. Actually they were declared, by an Act of Parliament in 1749, a 
valid part of the Church of England; their later sectarianism was forced 
upon them by the need for a definite organization not only to protect 
them from outside attacks but also to watch over their world-wide activi- 
ties. Benjamin threw himself into the new movement with complete de- 
votion. Some of the group later became Methodists, but he remained 
faithful to his Moravian associates. He began work with them on June 
15, 1746, and in the same year accompanied Cennick on a missionary trip 
through Antrim. In 1750 the Dublin Moravians were formally instituted 
as a city congregation by Bishop Buehler. 4 

Unquestionably Benjamin Latrobe was a magnificent preacher; Holmes, 
the Moravian historian, writes of him, "We have never seen his equal in 



the Dublin Moravian Congregation states 'that he was married to his first wife in 1721, 
by whom he had 13 children; she died in 1744.' " Another hand has inserted "Thornton" 
as this first wife's name. 

The same manuscript, quoting one Peter Latrobe, remarks that Benjamin's father, James, 
had closed his doors on his son when Benjamin joined the Moravians; but he, too, was 
at last won over and joined them himself in 1750. Benjamin officiated at his father's first 
Moravian communion, and the father exclaimed, with tears, "My son, in my ignorance I 
drove thee from thy father's house, and now dost thou bring me the blessed bread." 

The Latrobe family in America seems to have believed that Benjamin ha'd been born in 
the colony of New York, to which his father James had emigrated and where he remained 
for a short time before returning to Ireland, and that it was on this ground that B. H. 
Latrobe claimed American citizenship from the time of his arrival in the country. In none 
of the English or Irish sources with which I am acquainted is there any mention of this 
American sojourn or of his father's birth in America. Furthermore, in a letter to Thomas 
Jefferson on July 4, 1807, he refers to his American descent in the fourth generation. This 
obviously has reference to his mother's family and to his mother's grandfather, Baron von 
Blume, the original Antes in Pennsylvania. 

4. Rev. John Holmes, History of the Protestant Church of the United Brethren (London: 
the author, 1825). 



6 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

our church." But he was a superb administrator as well, and a scholar 
and a man of means; the little Dublin congregation could not hold him. 
Soon he was sent to England, where he became head of the excellent 
Moravian school at Fulneck; in 1765 he was moved to London and placed 
in general charge of all the Moravian establishments in the British Isles, 
especially the schools. His title was merely "provincial helper," and de- 
spite his great services to the church he was never made a bishop. 

His brilliance as .a preacher, scholar, musician, and conversationalist 
won him entree into all classes of society. He formed, says Holmes, "an 
extensive circle of acquaintances, especially in the higher ranks of so- 
ciety, who esteemed him as a man and a Christian, and honored him as 
a devoted servant of God." In London his close associates ranged from 
Sir Charles Middleton of the Navy to Dr. Burney and Dr. Johnson. 
Boswell, in commenting on the religious breadth and tolerance of the 
great lexicographer, cites his friendship for Benjamin Latrobe as an ex- 
ample. The Moravian leader was equally close to Dr. Burney and is said 
to have helped him translate most of the German musical authorities 
Burney used and cited in his various writings. This intimacy with the 
Burney family was to persist, after his death, among members of the 
younger generation. 

But though Benjamin Latrobe was a friend of the great in society and 
in literature he seems to have been no less the friend of the lowly. Years 
later, his son, in America, set down at length a story that reveals the 
esteem in which he was held. While he was at Fulneck an illiterate cob- 
bler of Leeds, one Thomas Rhodes, had come to know him well and to 
trust him like a father. Rhodes unexpectedly fell heir to a large fortune 
from a distant and childless relative, and went at once to Latrobe in 
London for advice. He wanted to be a gentleman, he said. And the story 
goes on to show how the Leeds cobbler, though unable to read and 
write, with the aid of Latrobe proceeded to Germany, bought a great 
estate in Silesia, married a fortune-seeking widow baronin, and himself 
became Baron von Rothe. 

The background of the architect's mother was as romantic and as in- 
ternational as that of his father. Margaret Antes was born in Pennsyl- 
vania, where her father, Henry Antes, was a wealthy landowner who 
had become much attached to the Moravian missionaries there and had 
helped them in the purchase of the land where they built Bethlehem; in 



BACKGROUND AND YOUTH J 

fact, in the early years of the settlement he was its titular owner. His 
own father originally a German Baron von Blume, a religious-minded 
man and abbot of a monastery somehow had become converted to Protes- 
tantism and had married an abbess, who like himself had become a 
Protestant; together they fled from Germany to the welcoming tolerance 
of Pennsylvania, where they started a new life and took the name of 
Anthos (the Greek word for flower, to correspond with the German 
Blume), which they later simplified to Antes. 

Henry Antes had a large family. One of his sons, Frederick, became a 
noted colonel in the Revolutionary War and remained an important fig- 
ure in Pennsylvania till his death. A daughter, Anna Catherine, was a 
leading figure in the settlement and building up of the two Moravian 
communities in North Carolina, Betharaba and Salem. But it was the 
life of his eldest daughter, Margaret, born in 1729, that showed most 
clearly the Antes devotion to the Moravian cause. In 1742 Count Zinzen- 
dorf, the acknowledged head of the Unitas Fratrum, visited America and 
made extended stays with Henry Antes between mission trips to the 
Indians and to New York. When he returned to Europe in 1743, Mar- 
garet, then a young girl of fourteen, accompanied him to be trained in 
the Moravian schools in England. There she remained, passing at grad- 
uation from the role of student to that of teacher in these schools. She 
was especially known as a teacher of music, and the Moravians set great 
store by music. 5 Later she became head of the girls' school in London, 
moving with it to Fulneck, and in 1756 she and Benjamin Latrobe, 
thrown into close association by their respective official responsibilities, 
were married. 

It was to this extraordinary couple that Benjamin Henry Latrobe was 
born on the first of May in 1764. A French count become Irish Protestant, 
a German baron become Pennsylvania Dutch, and English, Scotch, and 
Irish strains all contributed to his inheritance, just as Moravian enthusi- 
asm, Moravian unconventionality, and the tolerant cosmopolitanism of 
the Moravian ideal contributed to his education. From his mother he 
must have learned much about the primitive Pennsylvania that she had 
known as a childthe hearty hospitality of the Henry Antes home, as 



5. See, for example, "Music in Wachovia, 1753-1800," by Maurer Maurer, William and 
Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, vol. 8, no. 2 (April 1951), pp. 214-27. 



g LATROBE IN EUROPE 

well as the idealism that governed it; the forests, the Indian missions, the 
hope of Indian conversion and friendship, and tales of occasional Indian 
hostility and cruelty. Though she had left America before the troubled 
days of the French and Indian war, she must have learned much of the 
pervading anxiety from her family and from the general Moravian talk; 
some of this she doubtless passed on to her children. To Benjamin Henry 
especially, one feels, America became a constant source of interest and 
curiosity. Later on he received through his mother large land holdings 
in Pennsylvania as his share in the Antes wealth, and these were to be 
incalculably helpful to him in time to come. 

From his father the influences were no less important to his future; in 
him he could see the benefits of scholarship, of wide interests, of per- 
sonal charm and vivacity, and through his father's wide social circle the 
son could not fail to realize the delights of social exchange with the 
great, the learned, the well born. Young Latrobe was in an ideal posi- 
tionand that at an ideal time in the history of English culture to re- 
act to the romantic background of his mother and to the intellectual and 
human richness of his father's personality. In this double heritage, 
whether a matter of genes or of relish in the environment so formed, 
lay the seeds of much of his character and personality. 

The education Benjamin Henry Latrobe received was equally out of 
the ordinary. To understand it one must know something of the Mo- 
ravian attitudes toward education as well as toward the family. Though 
their viewpoint was international, their educational objectives were indi- 
vidual. At this time, when the usual child-education aims in both Eng- 
land and America were concerned with "breaking the child's will" and 
rendering him a docile receptacle for rote learning, and when individual 
caprices were seen as works of the devil, the Moravian ideal was defi- 
nitely "advanced" or, as we should call it, "progressive." The individual 
will was seen as an engine for God's work and not as an instrument of 
the devil. Much later, Jacob Smedley in Philadelphia expressed the Mo- 
ravian ideal thus: "A great deal is said of the necessity of breaking a 
child's will Why need a child's will be broken? He will have use for 
it all. The difference between strength of will and weakness of will is 
often the difference between efficiency and inefficiency. . . . Wide mar- 
gin should be granted for the expansion of a child's own individuality, 



BACKGROUND AND YOUTH 9 

for his peculiar mental action and for the cultivation and the gratifica- 
tion of his tastes." 6 

But the international character of the Moravians was also a powerful 
factor in their educational aims. The Unitas Fratrum was not then Brit- 
ish or American or German it was all of them, and more. Its historic 
origins lay in Central Europe, but it had missions all over the world. 
Many of its greatest leaders Zinzendorf, Nietschmann, Buehler, and 
others came from Germany, and it remained a custom for the acknowl- 
edged leaders of the movement to obtain some of their education outside 
their own countries. Naturally the English and American groups turned 
toward Saxony, the home of their beloved leader. This meant that the 
brethren brought to the problems that faced them an attitude basically 
international. 

Furthermore, the Moravians held the family per se in lighter esteem 
than did many other eighteenth-century Christians. It is significant that 
the early Moravian settlements in both England and America were com- 
munal in character, though their common holding of goods was always 
felt to be a temporary condition that was to yield to individual property 
and individual family living as soon as conditions became sufficiently 
stable. But the seed was sown; close family connections were long seen 
as perhaps a barrier to the freest, most efficient Christian living. Husbands 
and wives were seldom separated, it is true, but boarding-school educa- 
tion in a community and away from the family was considered the best 
type, even from the most tender ages. The results of this concept were 
various. In some instances it gave rise to a complete freedom from family 
ties, an attitude that to many seems cold or heartless; but in the case of 
more affectionate and sensitive natures (like that of Benjamin Henry, 
for example) it resulted in quite the reverse a violently emotional need 
of a devoted family around, as if to make up for the earlier lack. Still an- 
other reaction in which family living, when it was discovered, came as 
a complete surprise is revealed in a letter from Fanny Burney to her 
sister Charlotte (December 7, 1784) : 

One of the Moravians was here again the other evening and was really enter- 
taining enough by the singular simplicity of his conversation. He was brought 

6. From Hints for the Training of Youth: A Scrapboo\ for Mothers (Philadelphia, 1875)* 
quoted in Monica Kiefer's American Children through Their Boo fa 1700-1835 (Philadel- 
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1948). 



10 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

up in Germany and spent the greater part of his early youth in roving about 
from place to place, & country to country, for though he had his education in 
Germany, he is a native of Ireland & his father and mother reside chiefly in 
England. 

"Not being used," said he, "to a family when I was a boy, I always hated 
it. They seemed to me only as so many wasps, for one told me I was too silent, 
another wished I would not speak so much & all of them find some fault or 
other. But now that I am come home to live, & am constrained to be with 
them, I enjoy it very much." 

What must be the sect and where the travelling that shall un-Irish an Irish- 
man? 

Another of his confessions to me was this: "Luckily for me," said he, "I 
have no occasion to speak till about 2 o'clock, when we dine, for that keeps 
me fresh. If I were to begin earlier, I should only be like skimmed milk the 
rest of the day." 

As he came in between 5 & 6 o'clock, we were still at dinner. My father 
asked him if he would join, and do what we were doing. "No, Sir," answered 
he, very composedly, "I have done my tea at this hour." 7 

Both Benjamin Henry and his older brother were educated largely 
abroad and were much away from their parents. Although their father 
had been transferred to London the year after the future architect's birth 
and made his home there for the rest of his life, the younger son spent 
the greater part of his fourth to twelfth years at Fulneck, and it must 
have been early impressions of the Yorkshire hills, the lovely varied coun- 
try around, and the rapidly growing cities of Leeds and Bradford that 
formed him rather than the London of his brief vacation periods. For a 
lad of ten, both these centers were within walking distance from Fulneck, 
and Leeds especially was undergoing at that time a phenomenal growth 
as the woolen trade expanded. That extraordinary Jacobean mansion, 
Temple Newsam, with its roof parapet formed into an inscription, was 
its great house, and on the banks of the Aire rising in superb pictur- 
esqueness over the luxuriant trees and meadows of the river valley 
were the ruins of Kirkstall Abbey (the finest of Cistercian Gothic ab- 
beys), then much more extensive and better preserved than at present. 



7. If, as is likely, this quotation refers to either Christian Ignatius or Benjamin Henry, 
for the young Latrobes had returned to England in the fall of 1784, Fanny Burney is in- 
accurate in calling her visitor a native of Ireland, for the two brothers were born in Fulneck. 
Probably the memory of their father's Dublin origin still held sway in her mind. 



BACKGROUND AND YOUTH 



II 




From Fulneck Schools, 1753-1953 
FIGURE i. North Terrace, Fulneck. School buildings at left. 

B. H. Latrobe was a precocious artist and as a young child he loved 
to draw landscapes and buildings; his son John H. B. writes: 

There is now in the possession of the family [but it seems since to have dis- 
appeared] a drawing of Kirkstall Abbey, from nature, made by him in his 
twelfth year, the accuracy and force of which, in all its Gothic details, would 
do credit to any artist. Various other drawings, made about the same time 
prove him, at this early age, to have possessed a correctness of eye and a force 
and facility of delineation which are not easily attained until after years of 
practice. 8 

The Kirkstall drawing proves him not only an artist but a boy deeply 
interested in buildings, and here perhaps lay the seeds of his later profes- 
sional passion. 

Benjamin Henry remained at the Fulneck School till 1776, when he 
was twelve years old. By that time he must have received a good back- 
ground in Latin and Greek, an introduction at least to geometry and 
algebra, and an extensive training in religion. His brilliance of mind 



8. The Journal of Latrobe, with an introduction by J. H. B. Latrobe (New York: Apple- 
ton, 1905), p. viii. 



12 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

must already have been evident to his parents and his teachers, and now 
he was ready for the next stage of his education, which by family habit 
would be on the Continent. Five years earlier, his brother Christian 
Ignatius (born February 12, 1758) had gone to Germany at the age of 
thirteen. 

The school diary notes Benjamin Henry's departure in an entry to- 
ward the end of 1776: 

Besides this we will mention the following changes and occurrences in our 
sphere. ... In Sept. Four of our boys viz., John Hartley, Wm Okely, Benj. 
La Trobe and Frederick Landes set out for Germany with Br. and Sr. Okely 
to be brought up in the Pedagogium at Niesky. 

On the day they left, September 17, 1776, we read: 

In the morning we had a farewell Love Feast in our dining-room with our 4 
Boys and Br. and Sr. Okely who will conduct them to Germany. Br. and Sr. 
Hauptmann were our guests. After the Children's meeting they set out for 
Leeds to take the coach to York. But as it rained we could not accompany 
them very far. Br. Nicholson and Lodge went with them as far as Leeds 
and Br. Bern Hartley as far as Hull. 9 

Evidently such departures were regular annual events and as such sur- 
rounded with a certain ceremony. The progression from Fulneck to 
Niesky was, in fact, a sort of Commencement a passing from elemen- 
tary school to one more advanced. That the new school was in Germany 
was merely incidental. In the introduction to The Latrobe Journal, John 
H. B. Latrobe suggests that this move was made because of the start of 
the Revolutionary War and the fact that the family had connections with 
the Revolutionary army through the architect's American mother; but 
in the light of the well-established Moravian custom it seems a dubious 
inference, especially since Christian was already in Germany. The basis 
for the claim is in a letter B. H. Latrobe himself wrote to a later asso- 
ciate, Samuel Blydensburg (September i, 1810): "At the outbreak of 
the American war, my father ordered his children to be removed to 
Germany, & I completed my studies in the heart of the linen country in 
Saxony . . ." Here his memory was perhaps at fault; he may have mis- 
understood a remark of his father's that it was fortunate his two older 



9. I owe this quotation to the Reverend Mr. A. J. Lewis, M.A., the present head of 
Fulneck School. 



BACKGROUND AND YOUTH 13 

sons were then in Germany. Christian, in fact, had gone to Germany 
five years earlier. 

Niesky, where he took up his studies, is a little city in German Silesia, 
about fifteen miles north of Gorlitz. For over two centuries it has been 
an active Moravian center, and at least up to the Second World War the 
Paedegogium of the Unitas Fratrum has continued to operate. From here 
Latrobe passed on to the Moravian seminary at Barby, north of Halle in 
Saxony. 

Young Latrobe was in Europe from 1776 to 1784, from the age of 
twelve to twenty, the most formative years. Unfortunately this impor- 
tant period is the least documented of his entire life; even in the volumi- 
nous notes about his earlier years which the architect, lonely in Rich- 
mond, wrote out in 1797 there are only a few indirect references to that 
time. There is, however, a family legend set down by his son John H. 
B. that in addition to the schooling at Niesky and Barby he spent three 
years in the University of Leipzig and that he served briefly as a "cornet" 
in the army of Frederick the Great, having enlisted almost as a lark 
with two English friends; that he was wounded in a skirmish and, when 
the wound was cured, resigned, and that after traveling extensively 
around Europe he returned to London "towards the end of 1786." Yet 
examination of the matriculation books at the University of Leipzig re- 
vealed not a trace of his name; 10 if he attended, it must have been in- 
formally or at public lectures only. The same doubts hang over his al- 
leged military service. Nowhere in the extensive writings of B. H. La- 
trobe that have been explored is there a reference to a wound or any 
definite statement about his army service. 11 

There are nevertheless a few hints that might point to some military 
connection. The most important is a note that Latrobe added to his Eng- 
lish translation of a popular German work on Frederick the Great which 
he published in London in 1788; it places him (if we may credit the 



10. The rector of the University, in his letter answering my inquiry, adds that these 
records are so complete he can see no possibility of error. 

11. Dr. William Thornton, however, in one of the numerous letters he wrote to the 
Washington Federalist attacking Latrobe's competence and personal rectitude, says that La- 
trobe had once told him that he had been in the Austrian army and had worn a green 
uniform. But the Austrian army was not the army of Frederick the Great, and Thornton's 
antics in controversy were at times strange indeed. His unsupported statement, therefore, 
confuses rather than clarifies the situation. I am grateful to Professor Paul Norton for 
bringing Thornton's letter to my attention. 



J-A LATROBE IN EUROPE 

statement) in 1782 in the "fortress of Silberberg, situated upon the ridge 
of mountains separating Silesia from Bohemia," He writes: 

I happened to be in Silberberg when the King arrived, and was close to his 
carnage. As soon as he alighted, the governor presented himself to his Majesty, 
and a conversation ensued which was almost verbally the following: King. 
Haas, have you finished your worl^, are all the -fortifications complete? Haas. 
Indeed, Sire, they could not be finished. King. So! Is the moat compleated? 
Haas. Your Majesty mil see that it was impossible. King. Arrest him im- 
mediately. . . . The governor remained in arrest (I think) two months, but 
being an officer of merit, he was suffered to keep his post; but an inspector- 
general was appointed, who had the supreme direction under the King of all 
Silesian fortresses. I was afterwards informed by an officer of rank, that it was 
the opinion of the inspector-general, that the work could not have been com- 
pleted in the time allowed. 

We shall return to this book later; here the episode from it is quoted 
merely as evidence of Latrobe's military interests. Possibly his presence 
in Silberberg was somehow distorted into the notion that he was in the 
German army. Yet it is obvious that he had a vital interest in military 
affairs and especially in fortification; at one time, he wrote Jefferson 
(July 4, 1807), he had hoped to become a military engineer. 13 It seems 
likely, therefore, that it was in the capacity of a student of fortification 
rather than as an army officer that he visited Silberberg. 

The wound he is said to have received is equally puzzling. The "Potato 
War," the last military episode of Frederick's reign, had ended in 1779, 
and Frederick's last years were years of complete peace; there were no 
skirmishes in which Latrobe could have been wounded. But in 1781 
Latrobe states it was when he was seventeen he did have a nervous and 
physical collapse (the first of a series of similar illnesses that were to 
occur periodically throughout his life), characterized by a blinding head- 
ache and accompanied by digestive disorders that left him exhausted and 
listless. In a note of 1806 he describes this first attack vividly; it was in 
some ways the worst of all, because it was coupled with a period of un- 
consciousness. Latrobe was on a mountain top, in Silesia, with two 
friends (perhaps the English friends of the army legend?) when sud- 
denly he fainted; his friends carried him, still unconscious, to an inn in 



12. ". . .1 offer you the knowledge of fortification I acquired before I was 20 as a 
foundation of the profession of a military engineer I had adopted ..." 



BACKGROUND AND YOUTH 15 

the valley. There he recuperated, but for several days he was incapaci- 
tated by severe headaches and spells of violent indigestion. Could this 
sudden illness have been somehow transformed in his son's memory, 
long afterward, into the mythical wound? 

But, although the question of army service and honorable wounds is 
still debatable, fortunately we do know a little about his Niesky period 
and something of his .actual travels in these youthful years. It is clear, 
for example, that at Niesky he had a friend who watched over him and 
served, in a sense, in loco parentis Baron Karl von Schachmann, an emi- 
nent Moravian who lived near by in his castle, Konigshain. The baron 
was deeply religious, most understanding and kind, and a great scholar; 
he knew England well, was one of Zinzendorf '$ secretaries, and had been 
instrumental in the passage of the Act of 1749 by which Parliament ac- 
cepted the Moravians as part of the English church. Latrobe notes that 
the baron's castle was his own "second home" and the place where he 
passed his happiest German hours. 

And the baron was a classical expert, a collector, a connoisseur, and 
something of an artist as well. His collection of ancient coins and medals 
was famous, and in 1774 he had published a valuable catalogue of them; 
later they went to the ducal medal cabinet at Gotha. How Latrobe must 
have delighted in this collection; what a background in ancient history, 
what a training in sensitive taste it gave him as he pored over it! Baron 
von Schachmann was noted, too, for his talent in the painting of land- 
scapes and of architecture. Here then, in Konigshain, the growing youth 
found himself in affectionate association with an older man who could 
share his own enthusiasms, admire and criticize his precocious drawings, 
and perhaps even point the way to a different future from the Moravian 
ministry for which he seems to have been educated. The facts are un- 
certain, but the probability of the baron's influence in that direction is 
great. A nephew of Latrobe's, setting down his reminiscences of his 
father, Christian, states that the architect made the final decision about 
his profession "about 1783." Both Christian and Benjamin Henry were 
still in Germany then, and, if by that time the younger brother had ac- 
knowledged his hope of becoming an architect, surely the influence of 
the elderly baron an enthusiast for architecture and presumably his most 
beloved German friend can be inferred. 

With that decision made, a trip around Europe became more than 
ever desirable, and to it a large part of the final year abroad was de- 



jg LATROBE IN EUROPE 

voted. We do not know its itinerary, but fortunately we can place La- 
trobe definitely in certain localities. For instance, he knew Silesia well; 
he knew eastern Saxony, and Barby, and Leipzig; he knew the moun- 
tains along the Bohemian border. Farther south, he knew Paris, for 
later he used the anatomic theater of the Paris Hospital as an inspiration 
for the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. And, finally, an Ital- 
ian stay is clearly indicated by the text he wrote in one of the two vol- 
umes he prepared for Susanna Catharine Spotswood, in Virginia, to help 
her to a knowledge of painting. 13 Here, in speaking of truth to nature, 
he tells the story of an artist he met on the Bay of Naples who refused 
to make sketches, but only looked; then, back in his house, the artist 
poured out generalized paintings of Vesuvius and a picturesque shore 
which he sold as paintings from nature. The value of the story is not in 
the fact that to Latrobe this practice seemed arrant dishonesty, but that 
the tale lends definite proof that Latrobe had visited Italy. In short, he 
had made almost the typical grand tour of the young Englishman, and 
it filled his mind with visions of architecture new and old which were 
to fertilize his genius later. 

Latrobe returned to England in midsummer, ijSq. 14 Still preserved is a 
letter from him on August i, 1784 (from the Stamp Office, London, 
where he was working), to J. F. Fruauif, a professor at the seminary at 
Barby whom he calls the "foremost" of his German friends. The letter 
is full of Germanisms almost as if written first in that language and 
then translated word by word but from that time on his anglicization 
went on apace, and London for eleven years became his home. 

Yet, if there is little dependable record of his whereabouts and activi- 
ties from time to time in those eight critical years of his youth, his en- 
tire subsequent life was evidence of the breadth and depth of the edu- 
cation he achieved. First of all, he became an accomplished linguist. Be- 
sides German, his second tongue, he was fluent in French, was almost 



13. "An Essay in Landscape, explained in tinted drawings," by Benj n Henry Latrobe 
Boneval, Engineer. Two illustrated manuscript volumes, 1798-1800, in the State Library of 
Virginia. 

14. Latrobe seems to have made a second trip to the Continent in 1786. In his journal 
(May 22, 1797) he mentions having been a dinner guest of Sir William Hamilton's in 
Naples and notes that Mrs. Hart (later the famous and often painted Lady Hamilton) was 
present. Since she did not go out to Naples till early in 1786, this event could not have 
occurred till that year. It is this second visit from which, according to the family account, 
he returned in 1786. 



BACKGROUND AND YOUTH IJ 

equally so in Italian, and knew considerable Spanish. Of Greek and 
Latin he was a complete master; evidently he had read widely in both, 
and in his diary he cloaks some of the more intimate passages in one 
or the other of these languages. He had had a good Hebrew training 
as well and used that on occasion too. From childhood he was an excel- 
lent mathematician and possessed some knowledge of sidereal navigation 
to reinforce his skill as a surveyor. 15 Obviously he had read widely in 
philosophy, logic, and ethics. To cap it all, he was a musician with much 
more than an amateur's knowledge. 

Much of this education would seem to indicate, as has been suggested, 
that Benjamin Henry was originally trained for the ministry. Unquestion- 
ably Christian was, and apparently their training was to a great degree par- 
allel. But something in the mercurial, skeptical, inquiring nature of the 
younger brother evidently stepped in to make any such future for him un- 
thinkable. If not the ministry, then what? He was at the mercy of the inde- 
cision that is the curse of many young people with multiple aptitudes. 
Certainly the Stamp Office job that he held on his return to London 
was only a stopgap; the civil service was not for him. Intellectually ma- 
ture though he was, and far ahead of his contemporaries, emotionally he 
was still a boy charming, vivacious, full of animal spirits, gay, impetu- 
ous, pert, and probably not a little vain when he came home to his father 
and mother. He was also amazingly gifted and at the same time bur- 
dened with a nervous sensitiveness almost abnormal. But he had not yet 
found the niche he fitted or the work that could command his complete 
unbroken allegiance. 



15. On September u, 1804, he wrote to William Dubourg, Director of the College of 
St. Mary's in Baltimore: "I remember that getting hold of a few plain instructions at 8 
years of age, I made myself a tolerable geometrician about that period; and at 12 I was 
almost master of the Mattheiis [sic] pura, having studied it from an irresistible propensity 
and with very little help . . .*' Perhaps we should read "10 years of age" instead of "8" 
in consideration of the other errors in Latrobe's memory already referred to. But the "12" 
should probably stand, since that is the age at which he went on from Fulneck to Niesky. 



CHAPTER 
2 



Latrobe in London 



IN MIDSUMMER or the early autumn of 1784, then, Benjamin Henry La- 
trobe found himself back in London, living with his father and mother 
in a large, dignified old house in or close to Neville Court. The London 
political world was confused; vague projects for great reforms of all 
kinds were bubbling up all over and even exploding in bursts of oratory 
in Parliament. The social circles he entered were distinguished. Above 
the Latrobes lay the world of the nobility confused, often frivolous, 
wealthy, powerful, and delighting in eccentricities. Around this roared 
the world of the businessmen of the city, rapidly growing in power and 
wealth and pushing up into politics and the nobility. And somewhere in 
between extending feelers into both nobility and business and being fed 
from the large amorphous "mob" beneath was the third world, the 
world of literature, art, and religion. It was a sort of Bohemia and, as 
the diaries of Fanny Burney and the Bo swell papers show, it included 
scholars, artists, actors, dissenting clergymen, musicians, rogues, and all 
kinds of hangers-on. This was the freest of the London worlds; class 
stratifications tended to break down within it. It was vivid, creative, by 
turns pious or scandalous. It produced, despite the poverty of Grub Street 
and the uncertainties of patronage; from it came the great seminal ideas 
and the ferments that kept men's minds and ideals alive. It had many 
centers, but two of the most important were Dr. Johnson and Dr. Burney; 
with both of these the Latrobes were intimate. 

One of the associates of the elder Latrobe was the eccentric general 
secretary of the Unitas Fratrum, John Hutton of Lindsey House, Chel- 
sea. 1 This extraordinary man had sought the acquaintance of Dr. Burney 
in order to correct some of the musicologist's statements about German mu- 

i. Fanny d'Arblay, Memoir of Dr. Burney . . . (London: Moxon, 1832), vol. i, p. 251. 

18 



LATROBE IN LONDON 15 

sic, and Hutton remained a good friend of the Burney family. It was 
probably through him that the Latrobes enjoyed a close association with 
the Burneys, and perhaps it was through Dr. Burney that Hutton and 
the elder Benjamin Latrobe became acquainted with Dr. Johnson, for 
Bos well brackets them together when he notes the friendship. Benjamin 
Henry Latrobe may well have met the great man, for Dr. Johnson did 
not die until December 13, 1784, and Latrobe returned to London in 
the summer of that year. 

Thus the young architect-to-be found himself, on his return to this 
complex late-eighteenth-century metropolis, in the very midst of one of 
the city's most interesting and stimulating milieus. We see him, fresh 
from his continental experience and still strange and foreign in his ways, 
entering the Stamp Office as a clerk; evidently, with the Moravian min- 
istry out of the question for him, he and the family had settled on the 
Civil Service, and his father's friendship with some highly placed indi- 
vidual had gained him a position at once. But we may imagine what 
boredom, what feelings of futility and frustration would creep over him, 
constituted as he was, at the routine work such a position entailed. For 
him ebullient, mercurial, imaginative a future of years of pen-pushing 
in the vague hope of achieving eventually a place of dull importance 
was completely unthinkable. How many months he remained there we 
do not know, but in all likelihood it was not long. What then ? 

In a note in Fanny Burney's Early Diary, the Latrobe brothers are 
referred to as "professional musicians." But Christian was already on the 
way to a career as a Moravian clergyman as well as a great collector of 
religious music and a learned hymnologist. Could it be that Benjamin 
Henry, for a time, played with the idea of using his musical knowledge 
as the basis of a career ? There is a portrait of him from those early Lon- 
don days (now in the Maryland Historical Society) which shows a young 
man elegantly dressed, pert, even frivolous in expression; the face is still 
formless with the suave uncertainty of youth. We know he played the 
clarinet; perhaps for a while he may have toyed with the idea of becom- 
ing a professional musician, but that also was not his true vocation. 

There are two glimpses of him slightly later from the pen of Charlotte 
Burney, who was his closest friend in the Burney household. Writing 
(now as Mrs. Francis) to her sister Fanny, probably from her home in 
Aylsham in Norfolk, where Benjamin Henry was visiting, she tells of a 
play and adds: 



20 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

The overture was composed, or rather patched, borrowed, stolen and flagrantly 
crib'd by Mr. Rivet, one of the band. . . . The most execrable composition I 
ever had the honor of hearing. At the end of one of the tunes, Benjamin La 
Trobe gave the signal, tho' it was in the middle of the overture, and set up 
a violent clap and encore! . . . [Then, two or three days later:] Sir William 
Jerningham call'd here last week and chatted with La T[robe] and me. . . . 
Saturday La T[robe] and the rest gave us a ball with twenty couple -a very 
merry one. 2 

If she dated the letters correctly, this must have been in 1788, and by 
then the shy foreign traveler had become a somewhat bumptious initiate 
in a gay society. 

Years later Latrobe himself adds some amusing sidelights on this 
period in the course of a correspondence with Charlotte (then Mrs. 
Broome). She had been searching for evidence of the death in America 
of her former husband's brother, who was a trustee of some of the funds 
Dr. Francis had left her, and Latrobe by dint of a long and crooked 
search had at last found the evidence she needed and had forwarded 
it to her. In response to her reply he writes (August 13, 1816) : 

Thank you many times for your budget of news [with regard to Dr. Burney 's 
death and Charlotte's disappointment that the sale of his extensive library had 
brought so little]. . . . That he miscalculated the value of his library was 
natural enough. There are not I suppose twenty men in England who would 
give a farthing for the most rare, the musical part, not even for Matheson's 
Musical rainbows, which I had such a fag at translating, & so much pleasure 
in seeing him laugh at them . . . [Mrs. Burney] was always very kind to 
me . Dick was the naughty boy of your family, a character which those gen- 
erally earn whose hearts & heads are both good, but whose susceptibility is a 
little morbid. What has become of Lady Bab Holderness? Mrs. Arthur Young, 
God bless her, has I hope taken her temper along with her to heaven. She 
has I hope repented of turning her husband's cattle into his Lucernefield, for- 
getting them there, and then making me get up at midnight to drive them 
out, as he was expected home next day. Had I broken my neck when I missed 
the gate and tumbled into the Haha she would have had still more to ask 
for. As it is, I must forgive her the pain of the rest of the night by having 
fallen into a forest of netdes and other unpleasant things at the bottom. Ar- 
thur Young's blindness is afflicting, & would be more so to a man of less 
genius & force of mind. With how many thousand pleasures & recollections 

2. The Early Diary of Frances Burney, edited by Annie Ellis (London: Bell, 1889), vol. 
ii, pp. 318-20. 



LATROBE IN LONDON 21 

would I not fill up my paper. I could even commission Dr. Munsey [prob- 
ably Dr. Monsey, the eccentric doctor of Chelsea Hospital, where Dr. Burney 
lived during his later years]. Your sister d'Arblay author has [?] of the 
Atlantic in Evelina, Cecilia, and Camila. In our simple life enough occur- 
ences of complication happen to make these novels intelligible [was he think- 
ing, perhaps, as he wrote, of the strange romance of the marriage of his eld- 
est daughter Lydia to Nicholas Roosevelt?], but the Wanderer is no favorite 
. . . After her her copyists Maria Edgeworth, Anna Seward borders on the 
Namby Pamby, & we'll go to sleep with her friend Hayley. As to my queer 
brother, he is gone to the Cape of Good Hope, so cheerful a Christian is not 
easy to be found . . . 

The Arthur Young mentioned was a dear friend of the Burney s; Fanny 
d'Arblay in her Memoirs of Dr. Burney has a passage eloquent of their 
love and admiration for him. He was the great English agricultural 
scientist of his time and the author of agricultural writings that are said 
to have made over the face of England; hence the particular heinousness 
of his wife's error in turning the cows into his lucerne field! Mrs. Young's 
temper was also famous, winning mention even in the august pages of 
the Dictionary of National Biography. It produced continual friction and 
frequent crises in her relation to her husband, and they lived happiest 
apart. The episode of Latrobe's midnight wandering shows him in con- 
tact with another branch of this "fourth estate" of writers, artists, and 
scientists an excellent social background for an alert and inquiring 
young man. And it may have been partly, at least, through Arthur Young 
that his interest was aroused in the natural sciences, an interest that plays 
so great a part in his early notes on Virginia. 

If music, then, was not to be his life work, what about literature? 
Surely this field would offer opportunities for such a creative youth as 
Benjamin Henry Latrobe. And there was a family precedent: his father 
had published several translations as well as original works dealing with 
Moravian matters, had translated David Crantz's History of the Moravian 
Church, and had written a history of the Moravian missions in Labra- 
dor. 3 The son, in fact, out of his experience in Europe did produce two 



3. David Crantz, The Ancient and Modern History of the Brethren; or, A Succinct Nar- 
rative of the Protestant Church of the United Brethren, or Unitas Fratntm, translated with 
additional notes by Benjamin Latrobe (London: Strahan, 1780). Benjamin Latrobe, A Erie] 
Account of the Mission Established among the Esquimaux Indians . . . by the Church oj 
the Brethren, or Unitas Fratrum (London: M. Lewis, 1774). 



22 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

books, one published in 1788 and the other a year later. The first, Char- 
acteristic Anecdotes . . . to Illustrate the Character of Frederic^ the 
Great, was a translation of a book then popular in Germany, with the 
addition of a preface and various notes and stories about Latrobe's own 
experiences, one of which has already been cited. The second was Au- 
thentic Elucidation of the History of Counts Struensee [sic] and Brandt 
and of the Revolution in Denmar\ in the Year 7772 . . . , 4 a translation 
of the amazing account of an eye witness usually identified as S. O. Fal- 
kenskiold, with an extensive introduction by Latrobe. 

These two publications evidence how Latrobe's mind and personality 
had matured since the childlike letter to Dr. FruauiJ only four years 
earlier; not only has he become a master of his native language, writing 
it in some passages with marked skill and effective design, but he also 
shows himself definitely interested in the great political disputes then 
tearing England in two. And the choice of the works he translated is 
significant; both of them deal with the essential problem of the relation 
of government to the popular welfare, and both show that Latrobe was 
already dedicated to the radical side of political and economic questions. 
To a young man brought up in the unselfish idealism of the Moravian 
brotherhood, the chasm between the mob and the aristocracy in the 
England of the 1780'$ must have been shockingly apparent; even if 
Latrobe had broken away from the dogmas of the Moravian faith, he 
was still the product of its somewhat egalitarian and communal thinking. 

Not that this attitude would make him a revolutionary in the French 
sense of 1789; rather, it would make him want to do something about 
social reform and to make those in power do something about it. Thus 
in the first of these books he strove to give the English a truer picture 
of Frederick the Great; he shows him "doing something about it." He 
tells of the land banks, the tremendous expenditures for improving agri- 
culture, the attempts often so pitifully unsuccessful to make the feudal 
landowners more conscious of their responsibilities as well as their rights. 
Yet he was puzzled, as so many had been, by the basic inconsistencies 
in Frederick's character his rigidity, his refusal to change his mind 
even when confronted by irrefutable evidence that he was wrong and, 

4. London: printed for John Stockdale, opposite to Burlington House, Piccadilly, 1789. 
The original work was Denkwilrdig\eiten und hochstmerfyvurdige Attfflarung Geschichte 
der Grajen Struansee und Brandt, aus dem jranzosischen Manuscript ernes Hohen unge- 
nannten zum ersten mahl iibersetzt und Gedrucfy (Geramien: Kempten, 1788). 



LATROBE IN LONDON 23 

on the other hand, surprised and pleased at the king's musical knowl- 
edge, his grasp of cultural as well as military affairs, and his personal 
understanding of common soldiers and uncouth peasants. One of the 
anecdotes he relates concerns a conversation between Frederick and an 
old peasant; here the king is speaking and, as Latrobe explains in a foot- 
note, "The King of Prussia pronounced what the old man said in the 
broad provincial dialect of that country [Silesia], I have attempted to 
imitate it, in the Yorkshire dialect": 

Father! Can you tell me, why the two sovereigns quarrelled? "O dear-a-me, 
yea," replied the burgher, "that's what a can, th' top and bottom on 't. When 
ahr elector war a youngster, he larn'd at th' univarsity o' Utrecht, and thear 
wur th' King o' Sweden, tew, when he wur prince; and thear ye mun noa, 
they fratch'd, and wur ohlus at loggerheads: and nah a telPd ye th' thing as 
't is." 

Then, too, as an Englishman and this is the main evidence of La- 
trobe's complete acceptance of the Anglo-Saxon-Norman idealism of the 
English-speaking world he was immensely bothered by the dichotomy 
of a despotism that accomplished things as contrasted with a free coun- 
try that did nothing. Look not here, he warns the reader, for anything 
corresponding to English liberty; the basic liberties of Prussia of which 
so much has been written are not liberties in the English sense but 
merely the rights enjoyed by the Prussian nobility to be free from inter- 
ference, to exploit their tenants to the last degree. 5 



5. "In a country, where neither the constitution, nor the wise and amiable character of 
the monarch, admits of the smallest idea of tyranny, every despotic act of a foreign unlim- 
ited prince, though authorized by the established laws of his dominions, may appear to be 
dictated by arbitrary or tyrannical motives. The sense of the natural rights of individuals, 
biases the mind too strongly, to suffer it for a moment to conceive an infringement of 
them, by the single will of one man, to be legal. But an exertion of power, which in this 
island would be looked upon as a most flagrant instance of oppression, might perhaps in 
Prussia, deserve the softer name of a beneficent exertion of royal authority in a case of 
necessity. 

". . . But whoever travels into Germany with English ideas of this jewel, who does not 
expect to find liberty in its pure and natural state, but hopes to see it as modified and 
curbed by the regulations of civilized society; may perhaps in most parts, be totally dis- 
appointed. ... 

"If TYRANNY can produce these effects, the meaning of that word is in general strangely 
misconceived. That they were produced by violent exertions of arbitrary power is certain, 
and that individuals often felt themselves hurt, and oppressed, is no less so. Every interest 
that stood in the way of the general good, was forcibly removed, and the dearest rights of 



24 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

Thus the book is a puzzled book, just as it deals with a puzzling char- 
acter in a changing and puzzling world. But in this very puzzlement 
there is something symptomatic of Latrobe's character. Theoretically he 
believed in English liberty to the uttermost. He was a passionate sup- 
porter of Charles James Fox. Personally he was always a hater of op- 
pression, yet in practice he saw that democratic action had often resulted 
merely in schism and in futility, and he admired action and results. 
Evident in this book, therefore, are the foundations of a fundamental 
split in him a split that at times of discouragement could result in an 
almost complete cynicism with regard to the effects of political action, 
yet a split that never resulted in his abandonment of his basically demo- 
cratic ideals. It is only with this in mind that we can understand the 
complexities of his reactions to America later. 

The second book the tale of the Danish Revolution of 177215 even 
more significant. The original is supposed to have been in French; the 
German translation appeared in 1788, and from this German edition 
Latrobe made his English version. The events described had excited wide 
English interest, for the queen who is the tragic protagonist was the 
sister of George III. The story of the scandals, the intrigues, and the use 
of the weakness of a half -crazed king to achieve unlimited national power 
is extraordinary and terrifying. The paradox of the great reforms, so 
sorely needed, for the realization of which the usurped power was used 
by Dr. Struansee and his friend Brandt; the bloody medieval horror of 
the collapse of the ill-fated, ill-born, but idealistic regime, and the execu- 
tion and quartering of the two leaders these together form one of the 
great tragic tales of history. Again it is a case of reform through im- 
position from above, but here another lesson is taught with almost the 
power of a Greek tragedy the fact that ends do not justify means, that 
in the long run wickedness in the seizure of power works out inevitably 
to vitiate and to destroy the power created and the results achieved. 

This story needed no embroidering by the translator; it told itself. But 
to it Latrobe added an extensive introduction which is worthy of some 
attention. It Is both an apology for publishing the book and an explana- 
tion of why he considered it an important document; incidentally it sets 
forth Latrobe's own philosophy of historical writing and his criticism of 



private persons were frequently trampled upon, to pave the road for some regulation, gen- 
erally beneficent." 



LATROBE IN LONDON 25 

much of that in existence. In it he shows a basic skepticism, perhaps re- 
lated to the critical attitude that prevented his becoming a Moravian 
minister. In all periods of the far past, Latrobe says, myth and legend 
necessarily confuse the reality of history; on the other hand, documents 
or accounts written at the time of actions are likely to be biased and 
partisan. The work he is translating he believes has "a degree of authen- 
ticity to which few similar works can lay claim" and "its youth is not 
so tender as to render its judgment partial or prejudiced, biassed by fear, 
or swayed by hope; nor its age so decrepid as to make its narrative 
fabulous, and to place it beyond the reach of enquiry and examination." 
And there is a touch of irony: 

But it is almost impossible to wish that the great historians, whose works 
carry us so smoothly and pleasantly along the current of time, had confined 
themselves to what is most probable or best authenticated. The defalcation 
would be too considerable: every pleasing treatise upon certain events would 
be bared of fancy and genius, and most of our elegant histories would shrink 
into dry chronicles; the greatest heroes would want the most brilliant mo- 
tives for their actions; a victory, now ascribed to the superior valor of one 
general, would be found to be due to the greater cowardice or misconduct of 
his enemy; the whim of a courtezan would recover its merit, in bringing about 
a revolution, from the pretended wisdom of a statesman . . . 

Latrobe was a true son of the Enlightenment, but he was going even 
farther along the critical road than most of the writers of his time. 

The critical independence and idealism of this introduction character- 
ized Latrobe's thinking all his life. A decade later there is confirmation 
of it in an early letter of his from Philadelphia (March 28, 1798) to 
Thomas Jefferson, whose writings he seems to have known and admired 
before he sailed from England. Remarking that he would like to be 
selected to design the proposed United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry 
but that he had been told he had no chance, "for I am guilty of the 
crime of enjoying the friendship of many of the most independent & 
virtuous men in Virginia & even was seen at a dinner given by Mr. 
Monroe" (a reference to the Federalist hatred of himself that was already 
piling up), he goes on: "Since my arrival in America, it has been my 
very anxious wish to come to know you & to improve an old acquaint- 
ance with & admirer [sic] of your works, into a personal knowledge. 
If you will permit me, I will do myself the honor to wait upon you in 
your appartment tomorrow morning , . ." 



26 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

In 1790 Latrobe was again involved with the writing and publishing 
world, when James Bruce finally brought out the first of the volumes 
describing his African travels and his researches in Abyssinia nearly two 
decades earlier. Referring to it long afterward in a letter to Jefferson 
at Monticello (August 12, 1817), Latrobe says that "the whole first vol- 
ume [of Bruce's Travels], with the drawings . . . was published from 
my manuscript." He adds that the succeeding volumes "were, I believe, 
done into English by Fennel, the comedian. My uncle John Antes resided 
in Egypt 12 years ... a favorite of Ali Bey . . . and connected with 
the Moravian Mission ... he supplied [Bruce] with money" for the 
trip. From this it seems likely that Latrobe received the editorial job 
partly through the Antes family and partly through the Burneys, who 
had entertained Bruce with a grand party shortly after his return from 
Africa as they entertained many lions of the time. Dr. Burney had been 
particularly interested in the harps and lyres that Bruce had found both 
in ancient Egyptian tombs and in use in Abyssinia; in her Memoir of 
her father Fanny d'Arblay tells of Dr. Burney's pride that it was in the 
pages of his history of music that these instruments were first published; 
then they appeared again in Latrobe's manuscript for Bruce's long- 
awaited and epoch-making work. 

The style of the first volume of the Travels is straightforward and 
simple; Latrobe's work on it was apparently more than mere copy-editing. 
And in the case of the drawings the task must have been still greater; 
it was to take the sketches Bruce had made though he was no mean 
delineator and give them the precision and form, render them with the 
lights and shadows, that would be appropriate to the requirements of 
the skilled engravers of late-eighteenth-century England. Here again his 
job was not so much creative as interpretive, but much of the beauty 
and accuracy of the plates as published must be due to his sympathetic 
work. The view and, even more, the section of the Nile ship Canja dis- 
play a touch that shows a technical skill of no common order; the views 
of Egyptian sculpture and wall decoration (containing the famous harp 
and lyre) are similarly skilled. These, if we may believe Latrobe's state- 
ment, may well be considered the earliest examples we possess of his 
professional work or at least of his technical skill. 

The question of when Latrobe finally decided on an architectural ca- 
reer and of exactly what training he received is still unsolved. According 
to notes made by his nephew, as we have seen, his decision was made 



LATROBE IN LONDON 27 

"about 1783," the year before his return to England from Germany. 
Family tradition has it that he received instruction from and worked 
with the famous engineer John Smeaton, who was a friend of the family, 
and then went into the office of S. P. Cockerell sometime between 1787 
and 1789, working up rapidly to become the chief draftsman. Thus far 
it has been impossible to trace any pertinent records of either the Smeaton 
or the Cockerell offices, .and few Cockerell drawings have been preserved. 
Fanny d'Arblay, voluble as she was, gives us for those early days only 
generalities; in the memoir of her father, however, there is a passage 
(vol. i, p. 294) which though lacking in detailed information is at least 
eloquent testimony to the erudition and ability of the Latrobes and the 
esteem in which they were held by the Burneys: "The learned and ven- 
erable Mr. Latrobe, and his two sons, each of them men of genius, though 
of different characters, were frequent in their visits, and amongst the 
Doctor's warmest admirers; and, in the study of the German language 
and literature, amongst his most useful friends." 

Facts that are definite seem to support the basic family tradition, par- 
ticularly if we accept 1784 as the date of Latrobe's return to London and 
1783 as the year when he decided to become an architect. Thus we may 
picture him as spending the last year of his sojourn abroad in travel, 
sketching, and technical study. On his return we may see him, after his 
short stay at the Stamp Office, studying informally with Smeaton for a 
year or two (or even three) and working for him as a draftsman. 6 Then, 
we are told, he entered the Cockerell offices "in 1787 or 88, it is not cer- 
tain which." 7 

The Admiralty Building in Whitehall was built in 1787-8 from the de- 
signs of Samuel Pepys Cockerell, and we know from a Latrobe letter to 
Charles Middleton (after he had become Lord Barham) that he worked 



6. Definite evidence of Latrobe's engineering work in England is contained in a letter to 
Joshua Gilpin (August 19, 1804) which deals with the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal: 
"The whole of the district of the Basingstoke Canal on which I was employed was let to 
Pinkerton at 6$ a yard." This canal, built between 1791 and 1794, was under the general 
design and supervision of William Jessop; Latrobe was probably a divisional engineer. The 
canal is still in operation. He also mentions his work under Smeaton in a letter to Thomas 
More (January 20, 1811): ". . . having commenced my studies under Mr. Smeaton" by 
making a report for him on the "scouring works" which Smeaton had designed in the 
Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire fens. 

7. The Journal of Latrobe, with an introduction by J. H. B. Latrobe (New York: Apple- 
ton, 1905). 



2 g LATROBE IN EUROPE 

on that building; it is obvious, too, that one of Latrobe's early Philadel- 
phia houses, the Burd residence, bears a close resemblance to it. This sug- 
gests a conjecture which may help to account for the young architect's 
rapid rise in CockerelTs office as well as for the fact that he was able to 
sidestep completely the long and expensive apprenticeship that was the 
usual means of entering the architectural profession. Admiral Sir Charles 
Middleton, an excellent executive, was then Controller of the Navy; later 
he became First Lord of the Admiralty. Lady Middleton and he, on trips 
in the West Indies while he was still a Navy captain, had been deeply 
shocked by the cruelty of West Indian slavery. Sir Charles, hearing that 
the Moravian missionaries were doing their best to alleviate the condi- 
tions of the slaves, called on Benjamin Latrobe and later became his inti- 
mate friend. So close, indeed, was this friendship that in 1786 the elder 
Benjamin, in his last illness, spent five months at the Middleton estate, 
Teston Hall; he died in the Teston vicarage. 8 Thus it seems altogether 
likely that in one way or another young Latrobe came to Cockerell 
through the influence of Middleton; he may even have made some draw- 
ings for the Admiralty Building earlier and brought them with him. Such 
an introduction would of course have given him a position of some stand- 
ing in the Cockerell office and, combined with his own brilliance as de- 
signer and delineator, would have allowed him to rise to the position his 
talents justified without the benefit of the usual apprenticeship. Coming 
with such sponsorship, a man of his ability could not help rising rapidly; 
for, then as now, unfortunately perhaps, good connections had a vital in- 
fluence on early success. 

During part of this time Benjamin Henry and Christian were sharing 
a house. Their father had died in 1786, after a long illness. In 1788 the 
two brothers had bachelor quarters together on Great Tichfield Street, 
and the arrangement was a happy one on which the architect looked 
back with warm pleasure. On the ship Eliza, in mid-Atlantic on his 
voyage from England, he set down in his diary (February 12, 1796) : 



8. According to the Rev. C(hristian) I. Latrobe's Letters to My Children, Written at Sea 
during a Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, 1815, with an introduction by the Rev. J. A. 
La Trobe, M.A., Incumbent of St. Thomas's Church (Kendal: privately printed, 1851), in the 
British Museum, he was laid up there for several weeks before his death. The authority for 
the residence in Teston Hall is a letter of B. H. Latrobe's to Isaac Hazlehurst on September 
1 8, 1805. 



LATROBE IN LONDON 29 

This day I did not forget the birthday of my brother C. L L. It has always 
been one of my most ardent wishes & sanguine hopes to be placed in a situa- 
tion in which a constant intercourse might give me a full opportunity of 
receiving all the pleasure, happiness & instruction which the goodness of his 
heart & the brilliancy of his genius render inseparable from his society & con- 
versation. The winter of 1788 during which we lived together will ever be 
memorable to me as almost the happiest of my life. Since then marriage and 
business have separated us, & whenever I have met him the regret arising 
from the scarcity of our interviews has almost overbalanced the pleasure they 
gave. We are now perhaps forever divided. 

The marriage he speaks of was his own. 

Perhaps through his brother, perhaps through the Middletons, he had 
made the acquaintance of the Sellon family. William Sellon was a fa- 
mous clergyman the "permanent Curate" of St. James, Clerkenwell 
with considerable wealth and a prosperous living. Among the members 
of his large family was his daughter Lydia, three years Latrobe's senior 
and evidently a woman of charm and independence. The two young 
people fell in love, and Latrobe asked for her hand in the true eighteenth- 
century manner. The Reverend Dr. Sellon acquiesced at once, appar- 
ently with enthusiasm, but among the rest of the family there was much 
opposition. Years later in Richmond, Latrobe wrote out in 1797 a vivid 
account of the affair, with pungent character sketches of all the mem- 
bers of the Sellon group. It is obvious that Mrs. Sellon was more worldly 
than her husband and had hoped for a wealthy marriage for her daugh- 
ter; eventually she was brought round to accept the one that was of- 
fered, to which even she could have no objections on any grounds of 
character, personality, or social charm. One married daughter was vio- 
lently opposed, the other was favorable; similarly the sons were divided, 
and Latrobe notes that the family seemed split clean through the middle 
between those who were chiefly avaricious and worldly and those who 
like the father were idealistic and openhearted. But, finally, after various 
family meetings at some of which Latrobe, to his great embarrassment, 
was forced to be present the father won out and the marriage was at 
last approved. 

Then came the question of a settlement. Lydia's father was generous; 
she had been his favorite daughter, and she was to be protected at all 
costs. Here he was adamant; the hostile children raged, without avail. 



30 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

On Lydia therefore the Doctor settled a generous income during her life- 
time, a small reversion to her husband, and a large reversion to her chil- 
dren after her death. It is ironic to find that after Lydia's death, when 
Latrobe (in 1795-6) and the children (in 1800) had come to America, all 
Latrobe's efforts to collect for his daughter and his son what was their 
due came to naught. The children's estate had been left in charge of their 
uncles, John and William Sellon, who never paid. Again and again, 
when Latrobe found himself faced with almost insoluble financial diffi- 
culties and his mind turned to this inheritance, he wrote to his brother 
Christian in London urging him to seek a settlement. He suggested that 
Christian call on John Sellon (which Christian did, without result) and 
later that the whole matter be put into the hands of John Silvester, the 
Latrobes' counsel, for handling. In one of these letters (May 7, 1804) 
Latrobe wrote : 

The conduct of the Sellons to me & my children, in not rendering an ac- 
count of the money accumulating in their hands is unpardonable, and even 
dishonest, & the neglect of John Sellon in not returning your visit is un- 
gentlemanly. William, I know, is no better than a bankrupt. If justice were 
done, he should pay, principal & interest, to my children of at least ; 20,000. 
But they will never get a penny. 

Four years later he must have had news from his brother that perhaps 
some progress was being made, for he wrote to Christian (January 10, 
1808) that he had drawn on him for ^100 on account of the Sellon 
property. Christian paid, but protested. After three months Latrobe wrote 
again, apologizing for drawing on his brother inconveniently and saying 
that he thought the Sellons had paid the interest and that he would use 
the money to keep his son Henry another year in college. That hundred 
pounds is all that ever came to Latrobe and his family from the Sellon 
inheritance, and we do not even know whether the Sellons ever reim- 
bursed Christian Latrobe. William Sellon's bankruptcy put a final quietus 
on any further hopes. Here the Sellon avarice had at last overreached it- 
self, bringing ruin not only to William but to the other Sellons, whose 
assets like the Latrobes' were the basis of his speculations. But this un- 
happy finale came almost two decades after the settlement arranged by 
Dr. Sellon. 

Lydia and B. H. Latrobe were married at her father's church on Feb- 
ruary 27, 1790. The house they took in Grafton Street still standingis 



LATROBE IN LONDON 3! 

bleakly simple, one of a long row typical of the speculative London 
houses of its day, three stories high, with an arched rusticated doorway. 
But it was not a mean house, and the area they chose to live in was an 
artistic center the Chelsea or Greenwich Village of its time. Architects 
and artists were living all around; J. Bonomi, John Francis Rigaud, T. 
Scheemaecher, and Edward Burney, Fanny's artist cousin, were all near 
by, and other architects and artists were not far away. 

The life these two lived was an extremely happy one. Lydia was gen- 
tle, sympathetic, and affectionate despite a quick temper, and for the 
first time Latrobe enjoyed the complete devotion and co-operation for 
which his soul, starved emotionally till then, so passionately yearned. We 
have many vivid pictures of their comradeship in his nostalgic notes of 
1797 written in Richmond in a time of loneliness. There is, for instance, 
the story of Dr. William Sellon's death an account worthy of the best 
late-eighteenth-century novelists. The contrast between the artificially in- 
flated grief of the family at the deathbed and the angry recriminations at 
the reading of the will is vividly before us. 9 

Then a happier picture: Lydia, we learn, often accompanied her hus- 
band on his visits of inspection to his jobs; they would ride out together, 
and she would become almost as well acquainted with the various work- 
men as he was she even wrote an elegy for one of the masons when 
he died. It is a picture that shows Lydia to have been independent as 
well as gentle, for it was not the custom then for women to be so close 
to the professional work of their husbands. And apparently in these first 
married years they lived a busy social life. Dining at Dr. Burney's apart- 
ment at Chelsea Hospital they met Fanny Burney, just on her return 
from a trip to the West of England to recover her broken health after 
five years' bondage as Lady of the Robes to Queen Charlotte. In connec- 
tion with this dinner (in November, 1791) Fanny writes of Lydia and 
indicates that before her marriage Miss Sellon had been a visitor at one 
of those almost oppressively serious parties at Mrs. Montagu's the queen 
of the bluestockings held in the gorgeous salon that James Stuart had 
built for her (1777-82) : 

The younger Latrobe and his wife have dined here. His wife seems a 
natural, cheerful, good character, rather unformed, though with very good 
and even sharp natural parts. [How much she sounds like a character from 



9. See Appendix for excerpts. 



32 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

a Jane Austen novel!] She told me she supposed I had forgotten her. I had 
never seen her, I answered. "O yes," she said, "before I was married I met 
you at Mrs. Montagu's. I was Miss Sellon. I should have known you again, 
because I took such good note of you, as Mrs. Montagu said you were an 
authoress, before you came in, which made me look at you." 

Another scene still more amusing and personal comes from Latrobe's 
own notes. It seems that a bear cub had been caught when a survey was 
being made of his lands in Pennsylvania and then sent to him in London 
by some member of the Antes family. As a cub the bear had been a 
charming pet, but when it grew up and became ill-tempered and vicious 
a servant finally killed it. One day Benjamin Henry and Lydia were 
calling at Dr. Burney's the indications point to the summer of 1792, for 
Lydia had a baby in arms at the time and someone proposed they all 
write elegies to the bear, but recently dead. (Fanny apparently was not 
at home.) Latrobe's elegy is correct, rather pretentious, and uninspired; 
Lydia's is more real, occasionally witty, and satirical, though as verse 
rough and incorrect. The elderly Doctor, however, who was a rude versi- 
fier of considerable power, produced a quatrain so funny but so scatalog- 
ical as to put a quietus on the whole festival. As verse, his is the best of 
the three by far, and it reveals how an earlier, gustier, and less polite 
eighteenth-century manner persisted in some of the older folk well into 
this later, more "refined" period. 

Yet the happiness and the well-rounded life of the pair were destined 
to be brief. From 1791 on, the French Revolution more and more occu- 
pied the front position in English policy. Latrobe was on the radical side 
in the English controversies, and he was one of those who like Hazlitt 
retained for many years his faith in the French Revolution. This position 
must have alienated some potential clients, and on February r, 1793, the 
declaration of war against France brought almost all building to a stand- 
still. The financial picture was no longer the rosy one that Latrobe's 
early successes and rapid rise had seemed to warrant. But worst of all 
was the purely personal tragedy. Lydia had borne her first child, Lydia 
Sellon Latrobe, on March 23, 1791; a second, Henry Sellon Latrobe, fol- 
lowed on July 19, 1792. Then, scarcely more than a year later, Fate struck 
and Lydia died in childbirth, along with her third child, in late Novem- 
ber, 1793. Thus the same year saw the fall of the young architect's hopes, 
both personal and professional One or the other alone, perhaps, he could 
have endured; with all his varied talents and with the love and co-opera- 



LATROBE IN LONDON 33 

tion of Lydia he could have been victorious over the slings and arrows o 
outrageous economic fortune, but without professional opportunities of 
any importance and with his sympathetic helpmate no longer at his side 
where could he turn? 

One precious and poignant monument of their love remains; it is the 
"Ode to Solitude" which he composed sometime shortly after her death 
and wrote out again in Richmond in the lonely summer of 1797, Almost 
all his notebooks and diaries of that year are woven through with a violent 
longing for earlier days the days of his settled social position in England 
and the gold thread that dominates the weave is his passionate longing 
for and devotion to the memory of Lydia. The ode is not great or even 
good verse; but it is deeply sincere, and despite its outdated eighteenth- 
century conventions it rises at times to true poetic eloquence: 

Ode to Solitude 
written December 20, 1793 

Oh solitude! though sung in fancy's glowing ode 
Strewed by the pensive band with withery flowers, 

Alas! to me how dreary seems the chill abode 
How weighs the air in these thy silent bowers. 

Unnerved my mind starts from reflections forms, 
Looks round! Ah me! is aught of guilt to fright? 

Are these of lawless rage the embryo storms? 
That tremble in my breast, and sully reason's light? 
Low on the horizon burns the evening gleam 

Clouds thicken o'er the long-stretch'd radiant line 
The dark fog glides on day's departing beam 

Woods, streams and plains in misty tint combine, 

What sound hangs on the sighing blast 

Quick let me fly! Ah useless haste! 

Thy wide dominion, Solitude, extends 

Far as the low'ring welkin's circle bends: 

Enthroned within my sick'ning soul 

Thy baneful sceptre with'ring every budding smile 

Each friendly phantom raised, my sorrows to beguile 

Thou chas'st, kill'st all my infant joys, nor fearest controul. 

Once ah! how broken is the sullied trace 
On mem'ry's tablet of that lovely face 



34 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

Blotted by tears, worn by corroding woe! 

The faint lines smile! the pale cheeks' redd'ning glow! 

Away! thou phantom. To the dark vault they bore 
Her lovely corpse; those beauteous arms entwine 
Her pale cold boy, my boy, for she was mine. 

Oh! break, my heart! for she is mine no more! 

See where along the solitary way 
To press their father to his dreary home 
Clasp'd hand in hand, her orphan children come 

And ask him where, oh heav'n, his Lydia stay. 

Go, go, ye wretched babes, why call your mother's name 

Why of your father's tears the dread occasion seek? 
Why fan of fierce despair the madd'ning flame? 

And clasp his trembling knees, & kiss his fading cheek [?] 

She's gone, she's gone! Did ye not hear the knell 

Nor see the sable hearse forsake the door 
Weep, weep, poor babes, your mother's passing bell 

Has toll'd, she's gone, ah, to return no more. 

But come, ye pledges of our spotless love, 

Where the young violet buds upon her sod 

Kneel by your father; there the present God 

To calmer tears his burning eyes may move; 
Pour balm upon his widow'd, wounded heart; 
And strengthen him to act a father's part. 

Lydia's death was a stunning blow, and a pitiful end was drawn to this 
chapter of Latrobe's life. Though he remained two more years in Eng- 
land, trying vainly to rebuild his life there, his efforts seemed doomed to 
failure. Following a severe nervous breakdown he became listless, in- 
capable of making decisions. A complete change of scene seemed es- 
sential. 



CHAPTER 



Architectural Background 



LATROBE'S education at Fulneck and in Germany and his architectural 
training and practice in London had obviously filled his mind with co- 
gent architectural memories, yet at first sight his German experience dur- 
ing his formative years appears to have yielded little. Of the brilliant 
Early Renaissance which distinguishes the towns o Silesia even Baron 
von Schachmann's castle, Konigshain (Latrobe's second home), was 
Early Renaissance in style 1 there seems in his work scarcely a trace. 
What today we admire in these Early Renaissance and Late Gothic towns 
and buildings probably seemed to him merely quaint or picturesque, and 
presumably as a late-eighteenth-century youth he found them without 
architectural significance. 

In Germany at that time, however, there existed an architectural move- 
ment which must have excited him the development of the new Prus- 
sian classicism. One of its important creators was a Silesian architect, 
Carl Gottfried Langhans (1733-98) ; 2 and it was precisely at the period 
of Latrobe's residence in Silesia that many new towns characterized by 
this new and quiet classicism were being built and important official 
buildings in the same vein were being added to older towns. 3 In both 
we can see clearly the rapid swing from Baroque and Rococo expressions 
to compositions ever more classic, some of them suggestive of the work of 
the Adam brothers in England. Among the new villages perhaps the 



1. Hans Lutsch, Verzeichnis der Kttn$tden\maler der Proving Schlesien (Breslau: Korn, 
1886-92). 

2. Walther T. Hinrichs, Carl Gottfried Langhans, Schlesischer Baumeister (Strassburg: 
Heitz & Miindel, 1909). See also Paul Mebes and Walter Curt Behrendt, Urn 1800 . . , 
(Munich: Bruchmann, 1920). 

3. Hans Joachim Helmigk, Oberschlesische Landbaukfinst (Berlin: Verlag fur Kunst- 
wissenschaft, 1937). 

35 



-2g LATROBE IN EUROPE 

most original was one that would have appealed especially to Latrobe 
Gnadenfels, founded by the Moravian brethren. It was begun in 1780, 
from designs by M. Rietz, and completed in 1783. Surely Baron von 
Schachmann must have been impressed by this new colony and called it 
to the attention of his young protege. It is interesting to note that the 
church-and-meetinghouse there resembles markedly the one that stands 
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, although in detail its restraint is character- 
istic of the new Prussian classicism. All of this new work, recently com- 
pleted or under construction, filled Latrobe's mind with a vision of a new 
kind of restrained and dignified beauty. 

With regard to what Latrobe gained specifically from his year of travel 
in Europe it is more difficult to be precise. Undoubtedly the brilliance of 
French architecture would have impressed him, probably more for its 
firmness of planning and the boldness of its construction than for its 
detail. The church of Ste Genevieve (later the Pantheon), by J. G. 
Soufflot, followed by Rondelet, was then under construction; could the 
daring of the light vaulting, added to the influences he later received 
from Soane, have helped to stimulate the love of vaults which is so evi- 
dent in his American work ? But it would have been the newer, simpler 
houses, like those of Ledoux, that interested him most, and he would 
have been delighted with the powerful geometry of Ledoux's new Bar- 
rieres. For the rest, this tour seems to have served chiefly as a broaden- 
ing, enriching experience generally, for in his work there is little trace of 
French Gothic or Italian Renaissance or Baroque influences. Undoubt- 
edly the great Roman ruins impressed him and reinforced in his mind 
the importance of the inspiration to be gained from the ancient Greek 
and Roman forms. And surely the dome of the Roman Pantheon moved 
him profoundly, for its stepped base and relatively low outline appear 
constantly in his later work. 

On his return to London Latrobe found English architecture in one 
of its most interesting stages interesting because it was in rapid transi- 
tion as English life was shifting from the world of Tom Jones to that 
of Pride and Prejudice. Three chief schools were active, all headed by 
important designers Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam, and George 
Dance the younger, along with John Soane. 

The first of these movements, and the oldest, was the school of Sir 
William Chambers. It stood for traditional Palladianism and owed much 



ARCHITECTURAL BACKGROUND 37 

to the work of William Kent and the Earl of Burlington, but it was 
more thoughtful, more logical, in a way more strict. Chambers sought 
inspiration from other Italian Renaissance masters besides Palladio, and 
his own work was spiced with occasional exoticism. He had spent con- 
siderable time in Canton, China, where he was impressed by both the 
buildings and the gardens; the Pagoda which he designed for Kew Gar- 
dens remains as a telling monument to this influence. Chambers came of 
a merchant family; it is no accident that his style became the accepted 
model for the new haute bourgeoisie of England and that he was close 
to and admired by George III (of all the Georges the one most repre- 
sentative of waxing business influences), who appointed him Surveyor 
General and commissioned him to design Somerset House, the greatest 
governmental project of the time. It was begun in 1775, and the first 
block was complete by 1780; then the remaining blocks, including the 
river front, were built. When Latrobe returned to London in 1784 this 
was the most important edifice recently completed. 

The second school, that of the Adam brothers, had just passed the 
height of its popularity but was still deeply influential. The members of 
this group seem to have worked chiefly for the wealthy Tory nobility, 
though they never enjoyed extensive royal patronage; yet their effect on 
the taste of England was incalculably great. Robert Adam's own personal 
style was definitely Roman in origin, though it had sprung from two 
different sources. The Palace of Diocletian at Spalato (Split), the measure- 
ments of which he took and then published in a book which John Sum- 
merson calls "one of the three most important architectural travel books 
of the century," taught him that in the time of Diocletian at least the 
"orders" held no such absolute sway in Roman architecture as the Pal- 
ladian architects had believed. For example, in this palace there were 
hardly two orders alike, the proportions varied from slim to stumpy, 
and there was a riot of surface ornament which evidenced almost un- 
trammeled imagination on the part of the designers and craftsmen. This 
freedom was bound to sap at the foundations of English Palladianism, 
and a similar variation of the orders in the architecture of Robert Adam 
ran directly contrary to the "correct" work of men like Chambers. 

Another influence in the Adam designs was that of the wall and ceiling 
decorations in Nero's Golden House, which had been rediscovered and 
newly excavated in the eighteenth century. Robert Adam was in Rome in 
1754, and it was precisely at this time that his compatriot Charles Cam- 



38 




From Worlds in Architecture 

of Robert and James Adam 

FIGURE 2. Earl of Derby's 

House, London. Plan. Robert 

Adam, architect. 



LATROBE IN EUROPE 

eron (later the architect of Catherine the 
Great of Russia) was making careful ex- 
plorations there. From those lavish decora- 
tions Adam drew the inspiration for the 
fans, the half and quarter fans, the swing- 
ing garlands, and the pictures framed in 
delicate moldings which characterized 
much Adam decoration. Yet Robert Adam 
used this ancient alphabet to write his own 
lyrics. His works, unlike those of some of 
his imitators, were in impeccable taste, 
with ornament concentrated in telling spots 
and bands on serene surfaces, with delicacy 
in just balance with monumentality, and 
with perfect clarity in over-all design. 

Furthermore, the Adam brothers were 
superb planners; their work blends per- 
fectly a grasp of functional requirements 
with the creation of varied and beautiful 
interior spaces. This is the mark of great 
planning, and it can be seen strikingly in 
the University of Edinburgh and in the 
plan for Lord Derby's London house, 
where the service needs are beautifully 
cared for and help to give form to the 
whole composition. The spirit of the 
Adams' planning is as Roman as the 
sources of their decoration. The varied 
vault shapes, the niches, the curve-ended 
rooms, and the columnar screens all come 
from Robert Adam's study of Roman 
plans. 

A style of such vividness with all the 
fresh appeal of a summer dawn had 
tremendous effects on the architecture of 
its time, and influences from it affected 
men as different from Adam as James 
Paine, Henry Holland, and several of the 



ARCHITECTURAL BACKGROUND 39 

Wyatt family; even "Athenian" Stuart and the younger George Dance 
were influenced by it. And in the plan books o William Pain, such as 
the British Palladia, distant reflections of the Adam details were spread 
abroad in England and in the American colonies, to reappear, again 
transformed, in the later New England work of Asher Benjamin and 
Charles Bulfmch. Naturally work of such genius was bound to influence 
the young architect, and Latrobe's own love of niches and hemicycles, 
like his feeling for surface, may be traced at least in part to it, despite the 
fact that he felt the Adam decoration to be finicking and over-rich. 

Latrobe belonged, rather, to the third of the schools, the work of which 
was characterized by simplicity, geometric power, and rationalism. This 
was sometimes called the "plain style." George Dance the younger, as 
Summerson has so brilliantly pointed out, was its English originator. 4 He 
had, during Latrobe's infancy, produced the surprising interior of All 
Hallows, London Wall (1765-7), the widely spaced engaged columns of 
which, like the plain walls and the clear patterning of the vaulted ceil- 
ing, set a new note. The same feeling affected men like Holland and 
later even John Nash. But it was in the work of Sir John Soane (1753- 
1837) that this movement achieved its greatest triumphs. Soane was a 
pupil and employee and the lifelong friend of the younger George Dance. 
As a student he had won the Royal Gold Medal, together with the 
chance to study in Rome, but it was only on his return that his true 
genius flowered, to give final authoritative expression to the new aims 
simplicity, geometry, and rationalism. 

This third movement was definitely Whig, even radical, in tone. Hol- 
land's great patron was the Prince Regent, later George IV, and the new 
manner appealed especially to those who were to follow Charles James 
Fox and show marked sympathy for the French Revolution. It was defi- 
nitely a Francophile style and in many ways paralleled the revolution- 
ary work of Ledoux, just as it found its sanction in the rationalist criti- 
cism of Laugier. This political orientation was not without importance 
in Latrobe's architectural development. 

It was in the work of Soane that this style received its most perfect 
embodiment. In his published work his development can be readily seen, 



4. For a description of the origin of this manner sec John Summerson, "Soane: The Case 
History of a Personal Style," in Journal of the RJ.B.A., January, 195?- 



40 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

from the youthfully exuberant Designs in Architecture 5 through Plans, 
Elevations, and Sections of Buildings . . . 6 (often cantankerous, even ec- 
centric, but at the opposite extreme from the style of either Chambers or 
Adam), to the dramatic Sketches in Architecture . . . 7 in which the 
orders are pulled out or pushed down, crowded together for decorative 
accent, and treated with what seems an almost angry disregard of classic 
canons. 

Soane's master work is the Bank of England; as architect of this great 
project he had succeeded Sir Robert Taylor. In its famous "Tivoli Corner" 
he piled up a fantastic conglomeration of classic forms a successful tour 
de force in which the dramatic value alone prevents a realization of its 
fundamental eccentricities while within he shows himself magnificently 
the integrator of function, structure, and form. The daring vaults, pointed 
up with a new kind of incised and abstract decoration, bespeak his 
creative originality. In this interior he was inventing new kinds of vol- 
umes, lighted in a new way by lanterns and clerestories and decorated 
only to accent the volumes and the structure. Here indeed was precedent 
enough for all Latrobe's later inventions. Only one of these great halls 
was built during Latrobe's English years, but surely he must have 
watched it with admiration as it rose to completion in 1792. Like Soane, 
Latrobe retained a lifelong love of incised rather than raised plaster orna- 
ment. For instance, he wrote in a letter (October 24, 1805) to John 
Lenthall, his superintendent in Washington, with regard to the ornament 
in the entrance to the House of Representatives in the Capitol: "You will 
observe that in this room, as through all my designs, much of the plaister 
work is sunk below the surface ... I am of the opinion that internally 
large projections are absurd in reason and exceedingly ugly in effect." 
This might almost have been written by Soane; elements in it seem taken 
from Laugier. 8 Latrobe obviously recognized and was proud of his "ir- 
regularities." 9 Nevertheless there appears to be no reference to Soane in 
the entire mass of the Latrobe papers. 



5. London: Taylor, 1778. 

6. London: Taylor, 1788. 

7. London: Taylor, 1793. 

8. Marc Antoine Laugier, Essat $ur V architecture, nouvelie edition (Paris: Duchesne, 
1755), and Observations stir I' architecture (The Hague: Desaint, 1765). 

9. For example, in a letter of September 22, 1817, he wrote to Mr. Shields, plasterer, at 
General Vanness': "I never, unless it is especially ordered, put up enriched mouldings in 



ARCHITECTURAL BACKGROUND 41 

Latrobe's active connection with architecture began with his association 
with Samuel Pepys Cockerell in 1787 in the design of the Admiralty 
Building. Of other work he did for Cockerell there is little evidence. To 
assess Cockerell's taste at the time is difficult. He seems to have been a 
busy architect, without perhaps too definite a creative personality, for it 
is only later (1803), in the extraordinary steeple of St. Anne's, Soho, that 
he produced a design of real originality. As in the case of many prosper- 
ous architects, his taste appears to have been conditioned by the job, by 
the taste of his clients, and by the particular skills of his office staff. To 
be in such an office would, for a young man like Latrobe, have afforded 
more valuable training than to be in the office of someone with a more 
rigid personal style just as, on the other hand, a brilliantly imaginative 
designer like Latrobe would have been a priceless addition to Cockerell's 
office. 

Thus Latrobe's eleven London years (1784-95) were a period in which 
the city was in a stage of exuberant growth, its rising or newly risen 
buildings an inspiring school to a promising young man just entering the 
profession. In the new Somerset House, for instance, what probably 
struck him most was the superb daring and the great scale of the bold 
arcaded warehouses on the Thames front rather than the pure Palladian- 
ism of the rest. Similarly he must have been conscious of a large amount 
of work in the Adam vein, and though he might have been inspired by 
its imaginative functional planning, he was probably bored by its lav- 
ish ornament. In the city he might have been depressed by the Mansion 
House by the elder George Dance, but the son's expressive Newgate 
Prison undoubtedly won his admiration, for here was power the brute 
power of stone. Here was expression, the architecture parlante of which 
Ledoux wrote. 1 ' Farther west Latrobe would have seen Holland's Dover 
House at Whitehall; he would have been struck by the beauty of its 
Greek Ionic portico and moved by the dramatic contrast of the colonnade 
with the rusticated wall behind. Holland's Carleton House (1788-90) 
would also have delighted him because of the clear serenity and the dis- 



plaister, because they are very expensive, because they are knocked off by the chambermaids 
sweeping down cobwebs, and they are ruined in their sharpness and beauty the first time 
they are whitewashed, unless soaked first in boiled oil, & then painted in water color . . ." 
10. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, U Architecture sous le rapport de I' art, des moeurs, et de la 
legislation (Paris, 1804). 



42 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

tinguished classicism of its proportions. 11 Especially he would have been 
excited by the touches of Greek detail that were appearing here and 
there, for more than by any actual building he was undoubtedly overcome 
by the beautiful plates of Stuart and Revett's Antiquities of Athens, the 
new evangel of Greek purity. Just so, in the actual London architectural 
scene, what most impressed him was the new experimental work of the 
younger George Dance and of John Soane; here was inspiration indeed. 

One of the elements that was sure to impress itself on any London ob- 
server at that time was the extensive building of homes to take care of 
the rapidly increasing population row on row, on new streets and along 
new squares to the north, west, and south. 12 The houses were almost all 
of the simplest possible design, examples of a type that had taken form 
almost a century earlier .and over which the changing fashions eddied, 
altering cornices, moldings, windows, and doors but making no essential 
modifications. Latrobe after his marriage lived in such a house near the 
end of a long row on Grafton Street (now Graf ton Way). The house, 
which still stands, is undistinguished, obviously rented by him because of 
its neighborhood and its relative newness, and the general type probably 
buttressed his preference for the "plain style" and gave him another cri- 
terion by which to judge the houses of America later. 

Latrobe opened his own office in 1791, shortly after his marriage. It was 
not altogether a propitious time; the French Revolution was already 
striking terror into the hearts of many an Englishman, and building was 
falling off. Nevertheless work did come in. Much was probably small 
commissions alterations and the like such as every beginning architect 
must undertake. Some of these alteration jobs we know Teston Hall, 
Frimley, Sheffield Park, and Tanton Hall. The first was the home of the 
Charles Middletons; it became Barham Hall after Sir Charles had been 
created Lord Barham. It still remains, though much altered at various 
periods, and it is almost impossible to isolate Latrobe's work in it. The 
commission was a natural one because of the close association of Sir 
Charles with the Latrobe family. Frimley, too, is still standing a large, 
classic pile of several dates, now used by the British Army. In this one 
may with more assurance pick out the young architect's work : the pedi- 
mented central pavilion. Here the arched recess enclosing a wreathed 



11. Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland, 1745-1806 (London: Art and Technics, 1950). 

12. Sec John Summerson a Georgian London (New York: Scribner's, 1946), p. 150. 



ARCHITECTURAL BACKGROUND 43 

opening above a Palladian window has a definitely personal quality and 
combines just those influences a touch of Adam and a touch of the 
new simplicity which one would expect to find in Latrobe's design of 
that time. 13 

Our knowledge of Sheffield Park, which is not mentioned in other 
lists of Latrobe's work, comes from letters written by a Lady Stanley of 
Alderly during her girlhood. 14 Writing to her friend Ann Firth (Sep- 
tember 10, 1794) with regard to alterations at Sheffield Place, near Uck- 
field in Sussex, she says: 

What do you think of this house being once more in brick and mortar? 

The job now about, however, is I believe a necessary end, but I hope I 
have helped to stop another that was certainly not so. They are now pulling 
down the partition between Papa's bed-chamber and the dressing-room, which, 
being built of brick and without support, promised to descend speedily into 
the inferior regions. The superfluous is a project of Mr. Latrobe's, an archi- 
tect employed by Mr, Fuller in the house he is building upon the Forest 
[Ashdown House], and brought here by him. It is to open a great window 
into the dressing room, and the Lord knows what vagaries besides. 

A sympathetic client! Sheffield Park had originally been designed by 
James Wyatt, who was commonly famous or infamous for the cheap 
construction he often allowed. Whether or not Latrobe's "superfluous" 
alterations were made we may never know. 

Tanton Hall (village and county unknown) cannot now be identified, 
but we have its record in Latrobe's own notes; it was commissioned for 
the "two Miss Hoissards." The story behind it is a fascinating one; La- 
trobe wrote it out later in America. John Silvester, the Latrobe family 
lawyer, had married the widow of an East Indian trader, a Mrs. Hoissard. 
Her brother, one George Livius, according to Latrobe, had cut quite a 
swathe in London as a dandy and man-about-town. Her two daughters 
lived with the new husband's family, and the younger one, Charlotte, 
was a gentle, retiring girl, timid though charming. One day she sud- 

13. This entire section on Latrobe's English work is based on research by Miss Dorothy 
Stroud, who not only visited and photographed the buildings where they still existed and 
could be identified but also gave me the benefit of her wide knowledge of English archi- 
tecture in that period. 

14. The Girlhood of Maria Josepha Holroyd (Lady Stanley of Alderly)) Recorded in 
Letters of a Hundred Years 4go, edited by J. H. Adeane (London; Longman's Green, 
1896). This reference was given me by Miss Dorothy Stroud, Assistant Curator of the 
Soane Museum. 



AA LATROBE IN EUROPE 

^TT 

denly eloped with the family groom, a complete ne'er-do-well, and they 
were secretly married. The Latrobes and John Silvester sought them 
through London and soon ran them to earth, living in a slum, the girl 
crushed and horrified at the cruel behavior of her drunken husband. 
They rescued her, already pregnant, found the husband and had him 
sent abroad to Canada; Charlotte was sent into the country, where she 
had her child, who was "put out" for adoption. The family had suc- 
ceeded in keeping the matter entirely private, and, in order to give time 
for all to blow over, John Silvester bought an old house apparently far 
from London and had Latrobe alter it into an elegant country house 
where Charlotte and her older sister could live a retired but fitting life 
as society spinsters. This was Tanton Hall. But the true irony of the 
story was yet to come, for, after a divorce had been quietly arranged for, 
Charlotte married a second groom! This one was in the service of the local 
duke and apparently was a fine, upright man, and generous John Sil- 
vester (by then Sir John) set them up with a good farm, where for all 
we know they lived happily ever after. Latrobe wonders why a beauti- 
ful, gentle girl, bred in the best society, with exquisite tastes and man- 
ners, should show such a penchant for grooms. 

In addition to these alterations, two large and completely new houses 
by Latrobe still stand in England Ashdown House and Hammerwood 
Lodge. Both are obviously the work of a young designer full of imag- 
ination and eager to try his wings. Ashdown House, the later of the 
two, is the more polished and more completely achieved, but Hammer- 
wood Lodge is the more dynamic, full as it is of violently experimental 
forms. 

Ashdown, of stone, is almost a square house, three bays wide and deep, 
entered through a semicircular porch of four Greek Ionic columns. The 
front is broken into three parts vertically, and this division is emphasized 
by carrying an attic story over the ends alone, with only a parapet above 
the central element. The center is stressed by framing the second-floor 
window with delicately projecting pilaster strips that carry up to the 
frieze, but there is no break in the frieze itself. The tall windows flank- 
ing the porch are set in recessed arches. Throughout, the influence of the 
"plain style" makes itself felt. The cornice is thin and delicate, the frieze 
an unbroken band; in the attic the base and cap are formed by mere 
projecting bands of stone. Within, too, the detail is of the simplest type, 
though the parlor doors are of rich mahogany. 



ARCHITECTURAL BACKGROUND 45 

The plan of Ashdown House is unusual; it is interesting to note that 
in many of its arrangements it is closely related to the plan of the Markoe 
house in Philadelphia which Latrobe designed some fifteen years later. 
It forms as a whole a home of modest size but definite distinction, and 
the interweaving of the square plan with the three-part fa$ade is handled 
oddly but effectively. The whole promised well for the further develop- 
ment of its designer. 

Hammerwood achieves importance as a monument in Latrobe's career 
when it is realized (if we can believe the architect's obituary in Acker- 
mann's Repository 15 ) that it was his first independent work. According 
to Ackermann: 

While pursuing his studies at home, he was visited by a friend, Mr. Sperling, 
who, finding him disengaged [apparently he had already resigned from the 
Cockerell firm], and admiring his growing talents, commissioned him to de- 
sign and build for him a mansion near East Grinstead, to be called Hammer- 
wood Lodge . . . This building obtained for him the further patronage of 
Mr. Trayton Fuller, for whom he designed a house at Ashdowne Park . . . 

Today Hammerwood Lodge is chopped up into flats, and its interiors are 
wrecked; we can judge little of its original plan. But its exterior reveals 
a basic desire to tear open the usual conventions of eighteenth-century 
country-house design, to use new forms and old forms strangely, to create 
drama almost wonder for the observer. In places it harks back to the 
stark power of Vanbrugh; in others it looks forward to the Greek Re- 
vival. It has a great main body five bays wide, with heavy Doric pilasters 
for the central pavilion; between these the three central windows under 
recessed arches are crowded in with only hairline jambs. The frieze 
again a plain band (except over the pilasters) is much heavier than an- 
cient precedent would suggest, as though its designer were after the colos- 
sal in scale even in a country house, and above rises an attic as quietly 
powerful as the rest. A slightly projecting band course separates the two 
lower floors, and the recessed arches are without architraves or moldings. 
The two wings that flank the central block are even more unusual in 
design. Here the lower floor consists of arcades of narrow arches, with a 
window in each, and is terminated at the end by a primitive Greek Doric 
temple porch carrying a pediment. The upper floor has simple rectangu- 
lar windows, those over the arcade treated as a single band with recessed 



15. 2nd scries, vol. xx, January i, 1821, pp. 30-33. 



46 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

piers. It has been suggested 16 that the second floor of the wings is a later 
addition, but the simple flat frieze band and the thinness of the cornice 
might equally well suggest that they were original despite their awkward 
juncture with the main block; perhaps this incoherence is due merely 
to the youth and inexperience of the architect. 

Thus Hammerwood Lodge is a strikingly interesting whole, full of 
awkwardness but of daring imagination as well; it is complicated in com- 
position, but every detail has been reduced to the basic simplicity of the 
"plain style." Its virtues, like its faults, are those of youth, enthusiasm, and 
a violent search for originality. We may be astonished at the intro- 
duction of Greek Doric end pavilions at this date that is unusual 
enough but we also find something even rarer: Greek inspiration 
used with a surprising freedom. The capitals have the broad spread 
of the primitive Doric of Paestum or Sicily, and they have fluted neck- 
ings; but the entablature above combines frieze and architrave into 
one single broad band without triglyphs or metopes. It is Greek, but not 
Greek taken directly from the plates of Leroi or Stuart; it is Greek seen 
through the eyes of and interpreted with the taste one would expect from 
a Soane. The whole, in other words, is entirely Latrobe's in its uncon- 
ventional scale, its search for drama, its use of ancient inspiration in an 
original manner, and its basic drive toward simplification of details. It 
shows Latrobe already expressing, albeit in an unformed, youthful way, 
almost all the ideals that were his guiding principles in his mature design. 

In London we know there was a small amount of official work, too, 
for Latrobe calls himself at various times Surveyor of the Police Offices or 
Surveyor of Public Offices. 17 Careful research has failed to disclose docu- 
mentary evidence of his appointment, though this is not surprising since 
documents for those years are scarce; but what we learn tends to support 
the claim. It turns out that the two titles are one and the same, for police 
offices were often called simply public offices, just as the original Bow 
Street Police Station had been called the Public Office. Seven police sta- 



16. By Miss Dorothy Stroud. 

17. Family legend has it also that Latrobe was offered and refused the job of Surveyor 
General to the Crown at 1,000 a year. This is manifestly incorrect; it may have arisen 
through a confusion with regard to his Police Office work and his final dropping of it; as 
described below. Not only did Sir William Chambers hold the position till 1796, the year 
after Latrobe's departure from London, but politically Latrobe as a friend of Fox would 
have been completely unacceptable. Moreover, the salary Chambers received was ^500 a 
year, not .1,000. 



ARCHITECTURAL BACKGROUND 47 

tions were set up (in addition to the Bow Street central office) as a result 
of the Middlesex Justices Act of 1792. These were Queens Square, Hat- 
ton Garden, Worship Street, Whitechapel, Shadwell, Southwark, and 
Great Marlborough Street. Generally they were housed in existing build- 
ings, so that architectural work in connection with them was limited to 
alteration, repair, and equipment. It is significant that Henry Dundas, 
the Home Secretary from 1791 to 1794, was a relative of the Latrobes' 
friend Sir Charles Middleton, and the probability is that it was through 
Sir Charles that Latrobe received the appointment. The position was not 
an easy one; all kinds of minor details had to be checked, and in the 
process of carrying out the task the young surveyor found himself con- 
fronted with the less estimable conditions that sometimes arose even 
then in connection with governmental work. Eventually, because he 
would not connive at polite graft, his position was rendered untenable, 
as may be seen from a letter (January 5, 1807) to his brother Christian, 
who in recent correspondence had mentioned Henry Dundas: 

But I am not equally an admirer of Henry Dundas, because as I owe to 
Ch. Fox thanks for distinguished politeness, so I owe to Old Harry an old 
grudge, for when I was Surveyor to the Public Offices, and managed the whole 
business in the absence of Mr. Reeves, the Receiver General, a proposal was 
made to me, sanctioned by a note from Mr. Dundas, thro & by a relation of 
his, for the supply of everything they wanted, which would have committed 
my honesty completely. I hesitated and refused. From that moment I found 
obstacles to all I attempted, & could not get a shilling from the Treasury. 
You remember the circumstance, no doubt . . . 

One other monument remains of Latrobe's professional career in Eng- 
land: two of the drawings he made for the Chelmsford Canal. 18 This 
project was formally called the Chelmer-Black water Canal and was de- 
signed to connect Chelmsford with navigable salt water at the coast town 
of Maiden. Rennie had proposed a canal that would follow the course 
of the Chelmer and Blackwater rivers and by-pass Maiden completely, 
but Maiden then a busy port which owed its living to the traffic from 
the hinterland naturally opposed the canal in general and the Rennie 
scheme in particular. As a result, Latrobe was commissioned to restudy 
the scheme, and in 1793 and 1794 he submitted his proposals. His plan, 



1 8. These were discovered by Miss Dorothy Stroud in the Essex Record Office at Chelms- 
ford. 



48 LATHOBE IN EUROPE 

based on deepening and straightening the Chelmer between Maiden and 
the sea, took the canal through Maiden, improved Maiden harbor, and 
thus did much to obviate the Maiden objections. The scheme was accept- 
able locally and was taken through Parliament as far as the committee 
stage, but it was then turned down; apparently in this period of national 
jitters arising from the French war local canals were considered luxuries. 
The Latrobe drawings consist of two maps showing the proposed im- 
provement the earlier dated November n, 1793; the later, covering a 
larger area, dated September 30, 1794. They are exquisitely drawn, espe- 
cially the earlier one, and beautifully lettered in a decorative eighteenth- 
century script. The second of the two schemes shows a different route for 
the canal above Maiden, apparently designed to make it more direct and 
less expensive. 

With these buildings and these drawings before us, we are now able 
to make a much better judgment of Latrobe's American career. We can 
see him already original, accomplished, and thoroughly prepared for 
larger and more demanding work. We can see him as an architect doing 
distinguished houses, and as an engineer sufficiently respected to have 
been commissioned to design an important local canal. In the face of this 
evidence, how stupid, how malicious, and above all how completely un- 
founded seem his Washington enemies' attacks upon him later as an un- 
trained bungler! 



CHAPTER 



To America 



AFTER the death of his wife, the architect faced in England a bleak and 
difficult future. His home was gone, destroyed almost in the twinkling 
of an eye. Building was in the dumps because of the French war; archi- 
tectural commissions bid fair to be few and far between for an indefinite 
time to come. All the political ideals cherished by Latrobe were con- 
demned and attacked; to seek and cherish sympathetic intellectual com- 
panionship might even be dangerous. And across the Atlantic, three thou- 
sand miles away, lay the United States, still to many Europeans a beacon 
light of freedom; there, too, lay his Pennsylvania lands. Is it strange that 
at this juncture his eyes turned longingly westward? 

To have faced the English future successfully would have required the 
most active effort, clear-sighted and constant, and that was precisely what 
Latrobe in this moment could not achieve. He was emotionally and nerv- 
ously broken, the center of his whole life now removed. He was sud- 
denly alone and, after three years of great happiness and emotional ful- 
fillment, alone in a hostile world. His great need for affection, both to 
give and to take, was again without direction or object, and a dull leth- 
argy for a while flooded over him. 

Even his two children were taken away from him (though with his 
consent) under what must have been harrowing circumstances, for Eng- 
lish common sense or was it prudery? was at work. Latrobe himself 
unveils the moving story in a letter (August 25, 1805) to his friend Eric 
Bollmann, who was himself in a somewhat similar predicament, though 
one that had a different and rather sordid end. Bollmann's wife had died 
and left him with two small children; as the daughter of the wealthy 
Philadelphia banker Nixon she had been a great catch, but her family 
had cut her off without a cent because of her marriage to the German- 

49 



r- o LATROBE IN EUROPE 

born adventurer. Bollmann consoled himself with the children's nurse, 
and she had a child by him; the resultant scandal rocked Philadelphia so- 
ciety and did not a little to make his business prospects even shakier than 
they were. In answer to a letter of Bollmann's bewailing the whole occur- 
rence and attacking the Philadelphians for their narrow hypocrisy, La- 
trobe wrote him about his own experience: 

I have been exactly in your station, however, as a widower, with two 
small children, and have felt & experienced the difficulty of discretion in 
that case. Perhaps it was the lynx-eyes of the two maiden aunts that dis- 
covered scandal, where the cause did not as yet exist, & which alarmed my 
discretion, which otherwise I believe would have slept, where it is said, yours 
did. Those good ladies saved me from the precise course which you have 
to all outward appearance followed. For my nursery maid wa$ very pretty, 
& every moment distressed for me, and very fond of the children, & often 
in tears, & still oftener in the room with none but the children as witnesses. 
However I escaped: for my good sisters-in-law invited themselves to stay at 
my house and comfort me, & kept so jealous a watch over me & Isabella, 
as to put the thing into my head which I really had not thought before, 
namely that the poor girl was violently in love with me, Under these cir- 
cumstances, I had discretion enough to break up housekeeping. My children 
went, Lydia to my own sister, Henry to nis maternal aunt White, and Isa- 
bella got an excellent place through her interest. [He goes on to state that, 
had it not been for the aunts, perhaps someone would have written to him 
in just the way he was now writing to Bollmann. He concludes,] for human 
nature under the influence of tenderness is very weak, especially when pleasure 
coaxes sorrow to be comforted. 

Latrobe by the time he wrote this letter was again happily married,, and 
time had given him the perspective to realize the worldly perhaps even 
the personal wisdom of the steps that had been taken in his case; there 
had been no scandal, and a potentially dangerous personal relationship 
had been killed in the bud. But, during the sad days of the waning year 
of 1793, this too must have bitten deeply into his soul, and in the chilly 
gloom of an English winter his loneliness must have been all the more 
devastating. Wife and children gone, what was there to work for? 

The intellectual and political climate in England from 1793 to 1795 
was also profoundly distasteful to him. Hazlitt has left us scores of glow- 
ing references to the heady inspiration, like the lighting of a sudden bril- 
liant lamp in a dark room, which the French Revolution raised singing 



TO AMERICA 51 

in the minds of many enthusiastic Englishmen, as in this from "The Feel- 
ing of Immortality in Youth": 

For my part, I set out in life with the French Revolution, and that event 
had considerable influence on my early feelings, as on those of others. Youth 
was then doubly such. It was the dawn of a new era, a new impulse had been 
given to men's minds, and the sun of Liberty rose upon the sun of Life in 
the same day, and both were proud to run their race together. Little did I 
dream, while my first hopes and wishes went hand in hand, that long before 
my eyes should close, that dawn would be overcast, and set once more in the 
night of despotism "total eclipse"! Happy that I did not. I felt for years, and 
during the best part of my existence, heart-whole in that cause, and triumphed 
in the triumphs over the enemies of man! . . . 

At the beginning, sympathy with the French Revolution was widespread 
in England, especially among the intelligentsia precisely the group with 
which the Latrobes were in closest contact. Even the pious Fanny Burney 
once belonged to a "Revolutionary Club." In her diary letters to her sis- 
ter Susan she remarks (in October, 1791): 

The respectable Mr. Bateman was there also, and we had much Windsor 
chattery. Miss Merry, too, was of the part; she is the sister of the "Liberty" 
Mr. Merry, who wrote the ode for our revolution club. . . . [Miss Merry 
talked about French affairs] which I would not have touched upon for the 
world, her brother's principles being notorious. However, she eagerly gave 
me to understand her own were the reverse . . . [Fanny goes on to inveigh 
against the tyranny of Mrs. Schwellenberg at Windsor and continues:] 'Tis 
dreadful that power often leads to every abuse! I grow democrat at once on 
those occasions. Indeed, I always feel democrat where I think power abused, 
whether by the great or the little. 

This is significant of the mixed emotions felt by thousands of liberal 
English people at the time, as well as of the tremendous effect that 
Burke's writings on the French Revolution had in turning England 
against it. As time passed, sympathy gave way to fear: what if the pov- 
erty-ridden mob of England were to rise? Then came the Terror, and 
fear was buttressed by violent moral passions. The French war of 1793 
was the fruit of fear; its popular support was procured by appeals to a 
morality with which its basic cause had in reality little to do. This was 
tiot the first time nor, alas, has it been the last in which a basic power 
conflict has clothed itself in the shining armor of the crusader. 



52 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

Everywhere friends of France and friends of the Revolution were sus- 
pect, and in 1794 came the final fruit of the hysteria the repeal of the 
right of habeas corpus in cases of suspected political crime. And Latrobe 
was among the friends of Fox and of the French Revolution. Of his ad- 
miration for Fox he writes to his brother in the letter (January 5, 1807) 
already quoted in part in connection with Henry Dundas : 

Mr. Fox on one occasion paid me the highest compliment I ever received, 
for tho' only slightly introduced to him, he recognized me once in Pall Mall, 
took me into a coffee house & conversed with me on all sorts of things, and 
the next day, when the tax on bricks was proposed, sent for me and obtained 
from me, in a manner I shall never forget, all the information on the subject 
of bricks, and brick houses which I possessed. 

And of his own revolutionary enthusiasm, in his later life in New Or- 
leans (March 6, 1819) he set down sadly in his journal: 

I remember the time when I was over head & ears in love with Man in a 
state of nature. By the bye, I never heard any fine theory spun together in 
behalf of Woman in a state of nature. Social compacts were my hobbies, the 
American revolution (I ask its pardon, for it deserves better company) was a 
sort of dawn of the golden age, and the French revolution the Golden Age 
itself. I should be ashamed to confess all this if I had not had a thousand 
companions in my Kalei[do]scopic amusement, & those generally men of ar- 
dent, benevolent & well informed minds, & excellent hearts. Alas! experience 
has destroyed the illusion, the Kallei[ do] scope is broken, and all the tinsel of 
scenery that glittered so delightfully is tarnished & turned to raggedness. A 
dozen years of residence at the republican court of Washington has assisted 
wonderfully in the advance of riper years. 1 

To Latrobe's natural enthusiasm for the Revolution the Terror itself 
must have come as a stunning blow, even though it did not destroy his 
faith and hope. And this, too, must have increased the sadness of those 
last years in England. To be one of a passionately hated minority might 
offer a challenge, but to a man of Latrobe's affectionate and trusting 
nature it must have been torture as well. Can he then be blamed for 
having sought a different social and political scene, particularly when 
that scene was also the scene of that other revolution which seemed to 



i. Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe, Impressions Respecting New Orleans, edited with 
an introduction and notes by Samuel Wilson, Jr. (New York: Columbia University Press, 
1951). 



TO AMERICA 53 

him "the dawn of the golden age"? Besides, there loomed ahead the 
shadow of bankruptcy, of professional failure. We do not know what he 
lived on during his last two years in England, with Lydia's annuity for- 
ever stopped and even the stated reversion to him held back by the 
trustees. What .and how much he may have received from his father's 
family may never be known, but it is not likely to have been a large 
amount. What he earned professionally during that period must have 
been only a pittance. If the Chelmsford Canal had gone ahead, that 
would have assured him a position for several years to come and brought 
with it other jobs. But with the failure of the canal scheme in Parlia- 
mentary committee after so much eager anticipation the gates of hope 
clanged shut. 

There remained only the American land left to him by his mother. To 
realize on this in London at the time would have been difficult if not 
impossible. Apparently it was still a wilderness, unimproved and unex- 
ploited, and Latrobe was not the man to make a future out of land specu- 
lation in acres he had never seen. So far, its only revenue to him had 
been one bear cub and three elegies. But might it not bring him a for- 
tune in America? And his memories of his mother's stories of the dis- 
tant, romantic land, mixed with enthusiasm for the American Revolu- 
tion and admiration for the new country where at last English ideals of 
liberty would be able to flower, far from Parliamentary chicanery and the 
influence of a greedy aristocracy, must have made America seem a prom- 
ised land indeed. 

Toward the end of 1795, therefore, he made his decision. He packed 
up and sent on ahead the greater part of his large library about fifteen 
hundred books, he says later and some of his precious instruments. He 
arranged for passage and at last, on November 25, 1795, was rowed out 
to board the American ship Eliza at Gravesend; a little later she set sail. 
Apparently he had left his affairs in England in conf usion, for his name 
occurs in a list of bankruptcies in the European Magazine for July- 
December, 1795: "Latrobe, Benjamin, Gratton [Grafton] Street, Decem- 
ber 5th." But now he had put this and other disappointments behind 
him. Before him stretched three thousand miles of winter sea and a new 
world. 

Benjamin Henry Latrobe's initiation into America if an American 
ship can be called a part of America was not propitious. The Eliza was 
a new vessel of moderate size 286 tons and apparently fairly fast, but 



IATROBE IN EUROPE 



she was ill-provisioned, ill-equipped, and badly run. Her captain, Noble, 
was manifestly unqualified; he was a bad organizer, a loud talker, a care- 
less navigator, and this was his first trip to Europe in command of a ship. 
The food and water aboard were so insufficient that only fortunate 
meetings with vessels better supplied enabled them to avoid actual fam- 
ine and thirst, and for a week or more the rations were so scanty that 
the crew was unable to carry on the routine work with any efficiency. 2 
This winter voyage westbound the upwind passage was undertaken 
with only one spare sail (a foretopsail) and gear already worn, and with 
insufficient repair material; instead of doing the necessary repairs in port 
and sailing with a shipshape vessel at the start, Captain Noble had "taken 
a chance," and no radical repairs were made until pieces of gear were 
literally falling off the spars. In the first severe weather the foremast was 
almost lost as a result of this carelessness. 

The voyage was some fifteen weeks in length, but that was by no 
means exceptional then for a westward winter passage. The Eliza took 
the standard route: south to the Azores, then picking up the northeast 
trades and west across the ocean, and at last gradually north in the Gulf 
Stream to port. But many things combined to confuse the clear design 
of the passage. A possible voyage of this duration could have been fore- 
seen and should have been provided for. The water shortage (the supply 
was even less than that called for by the American regulations) was em- 
phasized by the fact that the most valuable part of the cargo was a ship- 
ment of horses. Latrobe reports (February 17, 1796) : 

On the i5th or i6th of December, the whole ship's company, passengers in- 
cluded, were put on an allowance of 2 quarts a day. We had then been out 
only three weeks. The allowance of the horses was stinted to a bucket a day 
, . . the deficiency [of water] p. man will be more than 65 gallons, and the 
whole deficiency nearly 20 casks . . . But of [the captain's] misconduct there 
is so much to be said that I sicken at the idea of dwelling upon it. 



2. Latrobe's journal of his voyage to America exists in transcript only, in two versions, 
one slightly more extensive than the other. These two transcripts were in the hands of 
Gamble and Osmun Latrobe when they were collated and retranscribed by Ferdinand C. 
Latrobe II. It is this retranscription that has been used for quotation here. It is my surmise 
that the original was brought to this country by Charles Joseph Latrobe, Christian's son, the 
famous traveler and author; that it was transcribed during his visit here in 1832 and was 
taken back with him when he left the country. If the original still exists, it very probably 
is in Australia, where Charles spent many years; he was Lieutenant Governor of the state 
of Victoria from 1851 to 1854. 



TO AMERICA 55 

Except for a Mr. Taylor who was picked up at Deal, the passengers 
came on board at Gravesend and found the ship a shambles; even the 
cabin was filthy and in terrific disarray. Only after some two weeks of 
acute discomfort were they able, by taking things into their own hands, 
to produce some order out of the chaos and impose on the shiftless crew 
a sense of even ordinary cleanliness and decency. The cabin was too 
small for the comfortable housing of the cabin passengers; Latrobe, after 
trying an athwartship bunk, moved first to the floor and later to a ham- 
mock in the between-decks steerage, and Mr. Taylor's wife and her baby 
were transferred from the steerage into the first mate's stateroom, which 
was vacated for her. 3 

Starting with wild westerly winds, fog, rain, and sleet, the Eliza took 
two weeks till December 9 to get out of the Channel, most of the time 
tacking back and forth with no precise idea of her position. Latrobe was 
horrified to discover that the captain had not the slightest knowledge of 
the Channel tides and shores and that no dead reckoning was kept of the 
ship's heading or the distance run; it was all a matter of wild guessing 
of sailing so many hours south and then so many north. Latrobe himself 
made a tide table of the Channel for the captain, but because of the slip- 
shod way in which the ship was sailed even that could be of little real 
help. And always there was the danger of French privateers. The cap- 
tain's attitude did little to allay the passengers' sense of insecurity; on the 
night of November 30, after a grueling day of tacking or wearing ship 



3. The passenger and crew list seems to have been as follows: 



Cabin Passengers 

Mr. Brewster (who had an excellent li- 
brary with him) 

Mr. Califf (an experienced sailor) 

Mr. Latrobe 

Mr. Martin ("a busy and good-natured 
man") 

Mr. and Mrs. Taylor and baby 

Mr. Tenney (an ex-butcher) 

Mr. Turner (a minister) 

Mr. Young (an American) 

Steerage Passengers 

Mr. Christie (a Scotch farmer) 
Mr. Cotton (a painter and glazier) 
Two sons of Mr. Turner 



Officers and Crew 
Captain Noble (lazy, incompetent) 
First Mate Shaw (the real hero of the 

voyage) 
Second Officer 
Cook 
Groom 

Cabin Boy, Dick 
Antonini, a Portuguese 
Joseph, a Frenchman 
Peter, a Negro 
Six others 

This means that for a ship the Eliza 
was undercrewed as well as under sup- 
plied; there would have been but four 
men in each of the two witches. 



r g LATROBE IN EUROPE 

every three hours under reefed courses only and in a wild sea, with nearly 
everyone sick, he said (as quoted by Latrobe) : 

"Why, I could make my fortune by going to Havre, & giving up the ship & 
cargo as English property. I don't say I should do so; but no man can answer 
for himself when strong temptation comes in his way." "If you will excuse my 
opinion, Captain [said Latrobe], I believe you incapable of the thing you sug- 
gest: & that you play with our feelings. But, if you could, for a moment, en- 
tertain it, you would deserve to be hung at your own yard arm." "Why," he 
replied, "I know such things have happened, & I can't [?] say that I should 
be sorry to have any such temptation, especially as some of you have left fami- 
lies in England, & therefore I would rather not go to Havre, but I do not 
think any man ought to answer for himself. Why, now, even the passengers' 
goods are worth something." 

On the very brink of leaving the Channel they were delayed again by 
being hailed and stopped by British men-of-war who asked for their 
identification; but at last with a fresh and fair breeze they stood down 
the Channel, and under the influence of the more favorable weather La- 
trobe took the occasion to give a picture of the life aboard: 

We are shamefully short of water, & the men already on an allowance of half 
a gallon a day. We are not allowed a drop to wash our hands & faces. For 
the most commonest calls of nature, in illness, no provision has been made. 
The cabin which is only 22 feet wide by 14 long is occupied by two sleeping 
places on each side and two others across over the lockers. A stove in which 
we seldom care to make a fire on account of the insufferable smoke & a filthy 
table occupy the remaining space. The floor is the receptacle of every species 
of filth, & the violent agitation of the ship so frequently overturns dishes, cups 
& glasses, that indifference is almost necessary . . . We have one tin coffee 
pot, & a tin tea kettle. Dick, our cabin boy, makes coffee for breakfast, & 
in the coffee pot water is boiled for tea. The coffee is not bad by any means, 
but the tea is the coarsest Bohea. We have a few pewter teaspoons that 
are never cleaned, & the deficiency is made up by pewter table spoons still 
blacker than the others. Our biscuits are good & the butter tolerable, but put 
upon the table in the nastiest manner imaginable . . . For supper we eat up 
the remains of dinner if any, cold cabbage, cold beef, all mixed up in the 
square tin pans in which they have been dressed. We have not a sufficient 
number of wine glasses to serve all, & we therefore assist each other. All tum- 
blers are broken but three, & the last passes from the hand of the grog drinker 
to that of the porter drinker, contains brown sugar at tea, & serves as a slop 
basin at breakfast. If in the course of the several offices it gets one washing 



TO AMERICA 57 

we are more than usually happy. Mr. Brewster 4 has a collection of books of 
the best sorts which, with great liberality he has given to the general use of 
us, & Mr. Taylor has many volumes of novels. We are extremely unsociable 
. . . The evenings are necessarily occupied in reading, in which we all crowd 
around a farthing candle swinging by a rope yarn in a lacquered candlestick 
. . . But to sit & read by a movable candle, holding fast to a rickety table, & 
remember what is read requires more genius than is ordinarily granted to 
mortals. Poor Martin [the ship's bore] alone finds comfort in listening to his 
own harangues upon law, religion, prolifixity (a noun derived from prolific) 
of rabbits and Scotswomen, the inspiration of Milton . . . the bundling of 
American inamorati, & the prophecies of Jeremiah. . . . 
The ship is wholly navigated by the mate [Mr. Shaw]. 

Out of the Channel, the Eliza, instead of being sailed south to get 
across the Bay of Biscay as rapidly as possible, was driven toward the 
southwest, for the captain, Latrobe says, was afraid of getting "into the 
hands of the Algerines. Now, by the best accounts, peace has subsisted 
between the Algerines & America these 18 months, nor has a single 
vessel been captured during that time." Two or three days later, on De- 
cember 12, an incident occurred which revealed startlingly the qualities 
of the captain's character and seamanship: 

The captain who is not often on deck, excepting to look after dinner, has be- 
come a great reader. About 8 in the evening he had just finished "The Vicar 
of Wakefield," & was enquiring of me "whether I recollected how Goldsmith 
had disposed of Burchell," when I observed to him that I thought the vessel 
began to pitch more than usually. "I suppose," he said, "that the jib is set. I 
will order it down presently." Mr. Califf however, whose intrepidity saved the 
ship, ran upon deck, & before the captain could follow him the wind blew a 
hurricane. The mate had turned in, the second mate was frightened out of his 
wits, & the captain did not know what to do. Mr. Califf, however, got the 
ship before the wind, and every sail was shivered. All hands were soon on 
deck & the mate got up. For a long time it was doubtful whether we could 
save our masts. The ship was with difficulty kept large [off the wind, in 
modern usage "broad off"]. . . . With much exertion we got our courses, 
the main & mizzen topsail, as well handed as the violence of the wind would 
permit, & scudded under our foretopsail which threatened every moment to 
go. The foremast bent like a cane. In two or three hours the gale somewhat 
moderated. At 10, the captain went to bed, nor did he rise till the next morn- 



4. This man's name is doubtful; it has been transcribed as "Bowker" and as "Brewsher," 
but my acquaintance with Latrobe's writing makes me venture that it is really Brewster. 



-g LATHOBE IN EUROPE 

ing after 7 o'clock. The mates & the crew were up all night, wet to the skin & 
hard at work. Towards morning the wind died. Though danger existed more 
in the unskillfulness of the captain, his entire neglect of precautions & his 
incurable laziness, than in the violence of the storm, we had for an hour, in 
the captain's opinion, no chance of saving the masts. To the exertions of Mr. 
Califf & the mate we owed our escape. 

Monday, December 14: 

As our beef becomes unpleasantly salt, we this day killed one of our sheep. 
The live stock we took on board was four sheep, four pigs & some dozen of 
fowls. The sheep have done very well. ... The pigs are miserably poor, & 
two of them not likely to live. Of the fowls, we have lost one half & the others 
are not likely to be eaten, so wretchedly old & tough are they. Besides these 
live provisions, we have a cask or two of beef salted in London, five or six 
hams and a barrel or two of potatoes. This is all we have to look to for sub- 
sistence on a voyage one tenth part of which is not yet finished . . . 

So they slogged down slowly, south and southwest, as the heavy west- 
erly gales permitted. Mr. Shaw, the mate, only twenty-one years old, 
proved the one bright spot in a dreary succession of stormy days; always 
cheerful and a fine seaman, he supplied the knowledge and the energy 
which the captain so woefully lacked. On January 4 they considered that 
they had reached the latitude of Corvo, "the most northerly & westerly 
of the Azores Islands, but that they were considerably to the west of 
them.'* Yet two days later, January 6: 

... we were all called on deck by the cry of "Land" to the northwest of us. 
Surprise took possession of all our sea folks from the captain to the cabin boy. 
For my part, I confess that the beauty of the morning and the grandeur of the 
scene, exhibiting three or four islands covered with clouds that were gilded 
by the rising sun gave me much more pleasure than I felt disappointment 
from the certainty we were much behind our hope and our reckoning. By 
degrees, the sun dispelling the clouds, showed the majesty of Pico de Azores 
half covered with snow the brilliant whiteness of which was equal to polished 
silver . . . 

It took them two whole days to leave the land behind, but the captain 
refused to put into Fayal for supplies. On January 12: 

The warmth of the weather has produced a general disposition to sauntering 
& idleness. I have read since we left the Downs Hume's History of England, 
all Smollet's & Fielding's novels, which Mr. Taylor has, some parts of Vol- 



TO AMERICA 59 

taire's works & several other small volumes, & have now undertaken Gibbon's 
Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire. . . . 

Generally the horse latitudes brought them only calms and severe squalls; 
they made little progress, until at last, on Thursday, January 21, almost 
two months out: 

. . . the first breath of the tradewind blew from the NE & inspired us with 
new hopes. We immediately hoisted starboard & larboard . . . steering sails 
forward, & ran before it. A very heavy swell from the north made the ship 
roll exceedingly, & our rigging, tumbling about our ears rendered the deck 
dangerous. 

On this day, too, Neptune was scheduled to come on board, to signalize 
not the crossing of the equator, as today, but the crossing of the Tropic 
of Cancer. The captain, who had refused to go farther south in his search 
for the trades, faked the latitude to make this possible. 

Antoni[ni] impersonated Neptune, & Joseph, a french sailor on board, trans- 
formed himself into a species of priest with a rosary of blocks, a cross of 
hoops & a beard of rope yarn. How Neptune came to be transformed into an 
old Portuguese sailor & to be attended by a french priest cannot easily be ex- 
plained, but it would be still more difficult to explain ... his occupation as 
barber to the green sailors on board. 

Unfortunately for the rite, most of the green sailors and passengers found 
a way of escaping from the 'tween decks in which they had been impris- 
oned preparatory to their initiation, and Neptune and his priest "were 
obliged to content themselves by lathering with slush tar & shaving with 
a harpoon our miserable negro Peter. All the rest escaped, & the elegant 
amusement which was to have rewarded Antonini's & Joseph's ingenuity 
at least with a gallon of grog ended in disappointment & ill humor." Even 
Neptune seemed cursed on the Eliza! 

By failing to go farther south, the ship found itself again in the horse 
latitudes, slatting in calms and belabored by squalls. And every day the 
food and water situation got worse. On January 26: 

... we must now be content to live upon maggoty bread for a week, & then 
descend to a few casks of completely rotten biscuit. . . . Our fate is miserable 
for food, but our apprehensions are worse. The sailors have already refused & 
are indeed unable to do anything but the commonest work of the ship, & fam- 
ine must attack us in a fortnight, unless we are relieved or resolve to eat the 



g LATROBE IN EUROPE 

horses. They, even, are upon a very short allowance & would furnish but a lean 
supply of beef . . . 

Yet the surroundings of the vessel grew more and more interesting, and 
the weather stayed generally warm and pleasant. Latrobe notes the great 
number and the beauty of the flying fish. On February 4, the weather 
being perfectly calm, the captain permitted Latrobe and Mr. Taylor to 
launch the small boat, and with two sailors they rowed to a great patch 
of floating seaweed near by. (They were then in the Sargasso Sea area.) 
Latrobe was fascinated by the gulfweed and the eels and small crabs that 
made this floating island their home. Later he wrote a long, vivid descrip- 
tion of the Portuguese man-of-war and commented on its beautiful color 
as well as its poisonous tentacles. He remarks: "This animal has a caustic 
quality when handled, & leaves a painful impression which lasts for some 
time upon the skin. The sailors play tricks with the green-hands by tell- 
ing them it serves the purpose of soap for washing; & one or two of our 
people were taken in . . ." 5 But the evening of the same day brought 
more serious thoughts : 

[It] called us to a consideration of bread & water; & the loss of time & the 
near approach of famine occurred to us when the last ten biscuits per man 
was delivered. The same quantity is reserved for us in the cabin & when they 
are consumed, nothing remains but ten or twelve casks that are absolutely 
rotten. [Mr. Taylor, who had been put in charge of the water rationing,] took 
such excellent care of the water that instead of a deficiency some quarts were 
saved. The captain succeeded him last week, & I am to take charge of our 
few remaining provisions for the ensuing week. Our last pig being now in 
tolerable case, but consuming more water than we can spare, I ordered him 
to be killed, in hope of relief before we shall eat him all up. 

On Monday, February 8, their hopes for relief were raised by the sight 
of a sail to windward, but night was falling and although they got out 
the boat to pursue the distant ship it was all in vain. The next day, how- 
ever, their hopes were rewarded. They had reached the general traffic 



5. In these passages on nautical fauna and on the gulfweed, together with the sketchbook 
drawings that illustrate them, we get the first expression o one of Latrobe's controlling 
interests biology. Where he picked up his extensive knowledge of the natural sciences is 
at present unknown, but, whatever the source, he had undoubtedly read widely, remem- 
bered what he had read, and applied it with more than amateur accuracy. Insects, plants, 
geological structure these were all endlessly fascinating to his inquiring mind. 



TO AMERICA 6l 

route between the United States and the Virgin Islands, and again they 
sighted a sloop: 

We immediately hoisted our ensign at the mizzen peak, and she bore away for 
us. She was about 2 leagues distant. . . . Mr. Shaw with Mr. Califf left the 
ship with the small boat & reached her about a league from the ship, & we 
found when she came within hail that she could supply us with every article 
in the list sent on board. She came from Stonington, in the state of Connecti- 
cut, commanded & as it would seem owned by Captain Stanton. . . . The 
articles with which he supplied us were 4 dozen fowls, 2 turkies, i barrel of 
captain biscuits, % barrel excellent beef, i barrel of butter, a cask of potatoes, 
6 pounds of sugar, all he could spare, 6 gallons of rum, a bag of white beans, 
2 hams, a box of mould candles, & a quantity of tobacco. He offered to break 
his cargo to supply us with more biscuits, but Mr. Shaw, very properly, would 
not suffer it. Besides this he sent as a present to the cabin passengers two 
case bottles of brandy, & to Mrs. Taylor, whom he accidentally saw on deck, 
a cheese. His bill, which he offered to reduce . . . amounted to only 79%$, 
or ^17, ips., 9d. sterling. Being the market price in America. . . . The sloop 
was bound to the Swedish Island of St. Bartholomew. The contrast between 
the conduct of the two American captains before our eyes was infinitely ad- 
vantageous to Captain Stanton. Upon his departure we gave him three rousing 
cheers. . . . His sloop was a beautiful little vessel of 60 tons . . . 6 

With good food again, everyone's spirits rose, although squalls and vari- 
able winds continued. But the new supplies, despite careful rationing, 
could not sustain twenty-nine people for long; again famine was not far 
away. On February 15 they hailed another ship: 

She bore up & proved to be the Hermaphrodite brig Sally of New York, Cap- 
tain Match, bound for Jamaica. She was in every respect the ugliest machine 
I ever saw, & though there was very litde wind and scarce any swell, she 
rolled her chains in on each side and appeared as she bore down on us, ridicu- 
lously drunk. Mr. Shaw and Taylor went on board and found her captain 
in liquor, but sufficiently sober to sell us 2 barrels of seaman's biscuits at 7 dol- 
lars, a very big price. He had nothing else that we wanted & was very un- 



6. The sloop was the Olive Branch; her name is given in the caption Latrobe wrote for 
an exquisite water-color sketch of her. According to data from the New London Custom 
House, the Olive Branch was 50 feet long and 17 broad. She was built in Stonington in 
1795 by Zebulon Hancox and sold in June that year to Ebenezer Stanton (her captain) 
and Stephen Brown. She went through several ownerships in the next few years and is 
last listed in 1804. I owe this information to the Mystic (Connecticut) Marine Museum. 



62 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

civil. She therefore rolled off without receiving the usual compliments of 
three cheers. 

Two days later there were sails in sight all around the horizon. They 
hailed the beautiful brig Sally, of Philadelphia, bound for Havana. Un- 
fortunately the only things they could get from her were some sugar, 
of which they had none, two kegs of "American biscuits called crackers" 
an interesting note on the early use of this now common term and a 
few apples. But there were also some American papers, the latest dated 
February 11. Captain Audlin of the Sally gave them his longitude as 71 
west of London; their own reckoning had been 73. They now hoped to 
make Norfolk on Sunday, but a heavy northwester dashed their hopes; 
they were driven south, and it was not till a week later that they suc- 
ceeded in working back toward their desired course and, Latrobe adds, 
"God knows how much to the eastward." But the color of the water had 
changed from deep blue to green and, although they could get no sound- 
ings at 80 fathom, they felt that land was not far away. 

For the next week they worked slowly in toward the Chesapeake, 
speaking on the way the schooner Telegmphe of Baltimore, from which 
they obtained two casks of bread and some "tasteless oranges." A small 
Marblehead fishing schooner gave them the bearing and distance of Cape 
Henry thirty leagues away. They caught a brief glimpse of the low shore 
on March 4, but there they were becalmed. Again they had the good for- 
tune of getting needed firewood and a bushel of potatoes from the ship 
Birmingham of Baltimore, which almost drifted afoul of them in the 
calm. She had had an even worse trip than theirs, for she had sailed on 
October 9, had been nearly wrecked by a gale in the Irish Channel, and 
was delayed in Kinsale two months for repairs. 

Finally, on Monday, March 7, a fair southwest breeze came up. Every 
heart was raised: 

Our hopes of safe arrival within the capes before eventide, the delicious 
weather, & a good fresh dinner, after so long a period of almost fasting and 
despair, raised sensations to which we had long been strangers. Seventeen 
vessels of different kinds were in sight steering the same course as ourselves, 
& every moment brought us nearer to the shore. . . . About 4 o'clock a pilot 
boat came alongside, but she had no Norfolk pilots on board, & the Potow- 
mack & Baltimore pilots have no right in the navigation of the James River. 7 

7. It is interesting to note that this strict division of pilotage rights is still in force. 



TO AMERICA 63 

At eight o'clock a brisk southeast breeze sprang up: 

Our joy was such as the deliverance from 15 weeks voyage in which every- 
thing that deserves the name of anxiety had been experienced could only oc- 
casion, the man in the chains sung "quarter less six" and the lighthouse was 
only a mile's distance, when all in a moment all our prospects vanished, the 
wind chopped around to NE b E & began to blow a gale. No time was to be 
lost, & at 5 the light was discerned no more. It then began to snow & grew 
excessively cold. Our mainsail was shivered, & we were glad to come under 
close reefed main topsail and fore course. I had been up the greatest part of 
the night, & was perfectly seasick in the morning so violently was the vessel 
agitated. 

The next day was no better: 

The most dismal day we have yet experienced. The weather was so cold that 
the ropes were frozen in the blocks. The snow lay thick on the yards and the 
deck was covered with a sheet of ice. The gale continued with immense vio- 
lence & we shipped many heavy seas. The agitation of the vessel would not 
permit us to light a fire in the cabin and we sat shivering though covered 
with heavy great coats. Our meals were eaten upon the floor; for the bars 
that had secured our plates and dishes on the table were destroyed on the 
day of our hopes. I was so ill that I neither ate nor drank the whole day. A 
beautiful mare in foal belonging to CoL Holmes fell down through weakness 
and could not rise for want of food. Our poor sailors were miserably cold and 
wet and quite dispirited. I went to bed at nine and put all the clothes I could 
get over me and slept tolerably but was frequently awakened by the convulsive 
kicking of the mare in the hold who died about four o'clock. 

Wednesday, March 9, 1796. With this date but no entry the journal 
ends, the day after Latrobe's first devastating and disappointing experi- 
ence of that all-too-common American phenomenon the sudden burst- 
ing forth of a wild polar front. There is no record of the final arrival at 
port, but on March 14 the Norfolk Herald carried the following adver- 
tisement: "For freight or charter. To any part of the world. The Ameri- 
can ship Eliza. A new vessel, 286 tons. She made one voyage to London. 
Apply to the subscriber at Mrs. Livingston's, who has been a constant 
trader to London. SAMUEL CHAUNCEY. She will be ready to receive a 
cargo in ten days." 8 Thus it would appear that probably on March 9 



8. Some four weeks later she was evidently still in Norfolk, for on April n she was 
advertised again: "For London. The American ship Eliza. Samuel Chauncey, Master. Has 



64 LATROBE IN EUROPE 

the northerly had blown itself out and had left the ship perhaps a hun- 
dred miles out; then the breeze had veered south, as it usually does in 
such circumstances, and the Eliza could have docked late on March n 
or i2. 9 

The Virginia diaries of B. H. Latrobe begin on March 21 and indicate 
that he had been some days ashore; in all probability, therefore, by the 
evening of March 12 at least he had become a resident o the United 
States. One great section of his life had come to an end and another, more 
fruitful, was about to begin. 



good [ ! ] accommodations for passengers and is on her second voyage. Burthen 500 tons 
Tobacco; having the greater part of her cargo already engaged. For freight of the remainder, 
or passage, apply to the Master on board, or to Phineas Davis." Evidently Captain Noble's 
incompetence had been discovered, and the agent or owner Chauncey had finally de- 
cided to take over the command himself. 

9. I owe this analysis to notes on the journal made by the late Ferdinand C, Latrobe II. 



PART II: LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 



CHAPTER 



Latrobe in Virginia: 1796-1798 



BY MID-MARCH, despite occasional cold, spring had begun in Virginia, 
and some of its intoxication swept over Latrobe when he landed in Nor- 
folk. There was, too, intense relief after the long and dangerous voyage, 
as well as the excitement of seeing a new country founded in revolution 
and dedicated to freedom. He became all ears, all eyes; insatiable curios- 
ity intensified his perceptions and drove away for the time being any 
nostalgia for the England he had left. All through the notes in his jour- 
nals, as in his sketches, during 1796 and early 1797 there is a breathless 
eagerness as he describes peculiarities of speech and manners and the 
special characteristics of the land itself its flora and fauna, its rocks and 
soils and valleys. And he plunged almost at once into a flurry of profes- 
sional work. 

Latrobe's obituary in Ackermann's Repository 1 perhaps founded 
largely on the architect's own notes is our only authority for his earliest 
days in America. According to it, his ship had originally planned to land 
in Philadelphia and came to Norfolk only because of the stress of weather. 
This hardly seems likely, for in his journal of the voyage Norfolk is men- 
tioned as the port to which they were sailing ten days before they raised 
Cape Henry. There are other reasons as well to suggest that Ackermann 
is in error on this point. 2 But the circumstances of his introduction to 
American society may well be those which Ackermann gives: "Here [in 



1. 2nd series, vol. xi, January i, 1821, pp. 30-33. 

2. The late Ferdinand C. Latrobe II has pointed out, for instance, that the horses on 
board the Eliza were imported by a Colonel Hoornes and that a Colonel Hoomes of Bowling 
Green ran the stage from Richmond to Washington. These would hardly have been shipped 
on a vessel bound for Pennsylvania. The confusion might easily have arisen from a misin- 
terpretation of a remark in Latrobe's notes that one of his reasons for going to America 
was to examine his Pennsylvania lands. 

67 



58 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

Norfolk], unknown to everyone, he accidentally accosted a gentleman, 
who proved to be a commissioner of customs, and who, interested in his 
amiable manners, invited him to his house, and shortly introduced him 
to Col. Bulstrode [sic] Washington." 3 Evidently, too, through the com- 
missioner he soon met the intellectual aristocracy of Norfolk, for he 
writes (March 31) in his journal: 

The friends to whom I was recommended have been extremely kind to me, 
& I have loitered my time away at their Houses, doing odds & ends of little 
services for them; designing a staircase for Mr. Acheson's new house, a House 
and Offices for Capt n Pennock, 4 tuning a pianoforte for Mr. Wheeler, scrib- 
bling doggerel for Mrs. Acheson, tragedy for her mother, & Italian songs for 
Mrs. Taylor. An excursion into the Dismal Swamp, opened a prospect for pro- 
fessional pursuits of more importance to me; I saw there too much to describe 
at random, & too little to describe at all without seeing more. 

Norfolk, he found, was a rambling, straggling, unbeautiful town. It 
had only begun to rise again from the ashes left by the terrible fire set 
by the British bombardment in 1776. Latrobe observed that the town was 
ill-built and unhealthy. His sketches bear this out, and obviously the 
malaria from the surrounding swamps was endemic. Yet even in Nor- 
folk he found at least one thing to interest him greatlythe way the 
wharves were built, of logs set layer on layer and left to sink into the 
mud by gravity at any angles they might take, then gradually straight- 
ened out to the horizontal by the adding of more logs and timbers as 
necessary, and back-filled with ballast stones and with 

Wharfwood (that is young fir trees of about 4 or 6 inches diameter) cut into 
lengths of 10 or 12 feet, and laid parallel across the ties. . . . These wooden 
wharfs are said to have been the invention of Mr. Owen, a Welshman. He 
was a drunk dog . . . but when sober his ingenuity and industry made up 
for lost time. 

All these observations are prophetic. Not yet three weeks in America, 
Latrobe was already at home in the best society of Norfolk; his charm, 



3. The misspelling "Bolstrode" for "Bushrod" is interesting and provides additional evi- 
dence that the Ackermann passage was composed from Latrobe's notes; the same mis- 
reading of the architect's handwriting occurs constantly in The Journal of Latrobe, with 
an introduction by J. H. B. Latrobe (New York: Appleton, 1905). 

4. Captain Pennock was a commercial and not a Navy or Army captain; he was a 
shipowner and in the general export and import business. 



LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 69 

his musical knowledge, and his literary abilities won him almost im- 
mediate welcome. But, more important, he had also designed his first 
American building (the house for Captain Pennock), he had entered the 
field of engineering in his trip to the Dismal Swamp, and he had become 
deeply interested in those new ways of building which ingenious Amer- 
ican immigrants had devised to meet local conditions. Not only was he 
the cultivated gentleman bringing to the new country the riches of his 
unusual background; also, in less than a month, he became an American 
architect, an American engineer. 

And gradually his mind became saturated with the historical back- 
ground of his adopted country, its legends, its memorials, its pride. On 
March 29 he writes of the memories of the Revolution which still filled 
the hearts of many Americans. Ruined Norfolk itself was a reminder, 
but that was not all: 

There are few stones in the country or I should have said Nullum sine nomine 
saxum. Many of [the mementos] are of a melancholy nature. In passing down 
the Elizabeth River, its eastern shore recalled the shocking remembrance of 
thousands of miserable negroes who had perished there with hunger or dis- 
ease. Many waggon loads of the bones of men, women & children, stripped 
of their flesh by Vultures & Hawks which abound here, covered the sand for 
a considerable length. Lord Dunmore, soon after the commencement of the 
War, offered liberty to all the slaves who would rise against, or escape from 
their Rebel masters. The hopes of getting on board the English fleet collected 
them at the mouth of Chesapeake bay, they were left behind in thousands & 
perished. 

Evidently the trip to the Dismal Swamp was at least semi-professional 
The projected canal had been partly dug, "but the company had run into 
all sorts of difficulties. As a result of his advice in this matter and because 
of his obvious technical knowledge, his new friends told him of the plans 
to improve the channels of the James River and its tributaries and im- 
pressed upon him both the urgency of the work and the likelihood of 
his being put in charge of it. This is the "prospect for professional pur- 
suits of more importance to me" which he mentions. To further any 
such appointment a visit to Richmond, the capital of the state, was essen- 
tial; on April i, therefore, he set out, going via Williamsburg, and soon 
his circle of Norfolk friends was widened to include a large number of 
the most influential and interesting families in the tidewater area. 

As he traveled, his journal was not overlooked. The eagerness with 



70 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

which he sought information, the keenness o his eyes and ears for local 
peculiarities, and his continual reference of these thronging new experi- 
ences to his wide background make his writings the most vivid and re- 
vealing of existing pictures of that somewhat unformed area, where fam- 
ily traditions and a sense of class were struggling with the new vision 
of liberty, where great gentlemen lived in log mansions in the wilder- 
ness, where beautiful houses were surrounded by fields still filled with 
tree stumps, and where backward agricultural methods were fighting al- 
ready worn-out soil. 

Latrobe crossed Hampton Roads on the mail boat (a schooner) and, 
landing in Hampton, he notes that the schooner's owner, Captain Loyal, 
was growing prosperous in this trade, for there was much coming and 
going between Norfolk and the north and the Hampton route was the 
quickest. The day was April i, as indicated by a dated sketch of Craney's 
Island made from the mail boat. His route to Richmond led him through 
Williamsburg, which both interested and depressed him. It was, in 1796, 
almost deserted and rapidly falling into ruin; its one function except for 
being the seat of William and Mary College had disappeared when 
Richmond was made the state capital. Of it he paints a mournful picture: 

The principal street of Williamsburg is near a mile in length. At one end 
stands the Capitol, at the other the College. The Capitol is a heavy brick pile 
with a two story portico towards the street, the wooden pillars of which are 
stripped of their Mouldings & are twisted and forced out of their planes in all 
directions. 5 ... A beautiful statue of Lord Bottetcourt, a popular governor 
of Virginia before the war, is deprived of its head & mutilated in many other 
respects. This is not the only proof of the decay of Williamsburg. The Court 
House which stands on the North side of the street, has lost all the columns 
of the Portico, & the Pediment sticks out like a Penthouse carried only by 
timbers that bind into the roof. 6 Many ruined & uninhabited houses disgrace 
the street . . . 

And in his sketchbook he made a vivid sketch of the ruined hall of the 
Capitol and the mutilated statue, adding a carefully drawn detail of the 
exquisite pedestal documents which have proved of great value to the 



5. The original capitol had had no such portico, but one had been added later to bring 
the building "up to date" and in accord with the growing classicism of eighteenth-century 
fashion. 

6. Evidently Latrobe thought that the courthouse had originally had its four columns. In 
the present restoration it still lacks them. 



LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 71 

modern restorers. By April 5 he was at Richmond and was at once struck 
by its similarity to the Richmond he knew in England. On April 7 he 
writes : 

The amphitheatre of hills covered partly with wood, partly with buildings, 
the opposite shore with the town of Manchester in front, & fields & woods in 
the rear, are so like the hills on the South bank of the Thames, & the situa- 
tion of Twickenham on the north, backed by the neighboring woody parks, 
that if a man could be imperceptibly & in an instant conveyed from one side 
of the Adantic to the other he might hesitate for some minutes before he could 
discover the difference . . 

He remained in Richmond till the beginning of June, except for a trip 
to Petersburg at the end of April. This Petersburg visit brought him his 
first taste of Virginia's passion for horses and for gambling. On April 21 
he wrote from there to his new friend Colonel Thomas Blackburn of 
Rippon Lodge, the father of Mrs. Bushrod Washington: 

I travelled hither with Col. Prior, Mr. Martin (who came with me from 
England) & a Mr. Thornton. The latter afforded me a good deal of enter- 
tainment. He seems to be a proper horse jockey, what at Newmarket you 
would call, a l^nowing one. . . . Religion & love have old claims to pref- 
erence in producing [the] delightful sensation enthusiasm, but our friend 
Thornton in speaking of 50 different courses proved that horse racing is not 
behindhand with them. The woods rang to the clattering of Lamplighter's 
hoofs, and the dogwood shed its flowers to the shriek of applause bestowed 
on the haunches of DaredeveL . . . 

We dined at Osbornes. A most miserable dinner & six & threepence to 
pay for it. It is an exception to my general observation of good & plentiful 
table, and moderate charges in this part of the World. After stopping an 
hour, & bestowing a few ninepences on a very clumsy sleight of hand man 
we jogged on, & got time enough to Petersburg, for me to find that I might 
as well have staid at home as to business, & for us all to see the horses 
entered for the race. The same scenes I find collect in every country the same 
sort of people & for the same purposes. Here was a duodecimo edition of 
a Newmarket horse race in folio. The contents on the first turning over the 
leaves were the same in every respect. Respectable gentlemen attending for 
amusement, young puppies waiting to be pilfered, sharpers ready to do 
their business, and whores all agog to drain the sharpers. ... I cannot help 
thinking that Dame Nature's freaks & fun are the principal part of her em- 
ployment, & that if ever Nature's self shall die, as some mad poet expresses 
himself, she will be choked with a fit of laughter. Rational beings indeed! 



72 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

Things in leather breeches with a great four legged irrational being between 
their two legs jostling, & hustling, & pushing & grinning & made to pay the 
cash which should support their families in order to acquire a supposed in- 
terest in the fore & hind quarters of another man's horse. Just as I was 
going on in a train of reflections which might have ended in a compleat 
elucidation of the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul ... a glass of 
punch washed away the whole fabric, & I betted a quarter of a Dollar or 
a drink of Grog upon the field against the Carolina horse with Capt. Howel 
Lewis. . . . [Later they returned to Armstead's tavern, where a roulette game 
was established and] ... a lusus artis still remained behind, more dangerous 
to the morals & interests of your friends. With two Majors, one Colonel, a 
member of the House of Representatives of the state of Virginia, & a rich 
merchant ... we just went to ta\e a touch. . . . First then this said touch 
is a circular affair in the center of which is a whirligig. You may naturally 
suppose the whirligig whirls round. . . . Upon the edge of the said whirli- 
gig are 72 boxes marked with the letters ABC. The whirligig which I 
think you may call the wheel of Misfortune being set in motion a Ball is 
thrown into it which naturally must find its way into one or other of the 
72. boxes. The ball runs round & round bobbing from box to box, while the 
anxious spectators' hearts bob about in their breasts, & the resdess dollars 
in their pockets, till at last it settles in some one of the literary boxes, & 
those who have betted on A, B, or C pay or receive the stake. As the devil 
is in perpetual want of kitchen boys & turnspits to attend his fire, Nature 
has provided a number of Gentlemen, professed Gamblers, who by providing 
and attending his business here, qualify themselves for usefull and necessary 
situations hereafter. Messers Hayden, Harris, Overton, & Willis ... are at 
present in due preparation in Petersburg. "But what," you will ask, "puts 
Latrobe into such a passion?" The loss, my dear Sir, no, I can never acknowl- 
edge that the loss of ten Dollars has any share in it; it is, to be sure, my 
zeal for the good of society, & my detestation of the vice of gambling. Ah, 
had I but my ten dollars back!!! Then might I gain credit for my sincerity 
in deploring that the youth of a country which once meant its virtue, now 
means only its poverty, indolence, and dissipation. . . , 7 

This letter is quoted at considerable length, for it so clearly expresses 
Latrobe as he was at that time; its denunciation of betting and gambling 
is sincere, but the whole is artificial and written with a definite aim for 
effect. It is a "stunt," the work of a man still very young despite the 
hardships and sorrows he had already undergone. 



7. Manuscript journal, vol. i, pp. 42-5. 



LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 73 

In the town, crowded for the races, Latrobe had the greatest difficulty in 
finding accommodations. He was given one of six beds in a room in a 
private house, but when he found that he was to share it with a disgust- 
ingly drunken mulatto he fled back to the inn. This was little better. 
Kept awake by the sound of the colonels and majors carousing in the 
bar, but finally falling into a light slumber, he was wakened by their 
drunken arrival upstairs. Sleep was impossible and he arose early to seek 
the fresh air and quiet of the dawn. Such were the difficulties of travel 
in these early days! 

Evidently Latrobe's letters of introduction had served him well and he 
was sent out in June to examine the navigational possibilities of the Appo- 
mattox River. In those days of few and bad roads, water transportation 
was vital. The inland parts of Virginia were growing rapidly, but com- 
munication between them and tidewater was difficult. Two water ap- 
proaches were possible; the north area was tapped by the Potomac 
through the Shenandoah Valley (one of the chief reasons why Potomac 
canals were considered so vital at an early date), and the south by the 
Appomattox, which wandered down from the hills and fell into the 
James River in one of its then most populous reaches. The Appomattox 
was narrow and often shallow, with many rapids, but it wound through 
a region that was rapidly filling with plantations belonging to the first 
families of Virginia. If it could be made more navigable by flatboats and 
barges, tremendous benefits to the state would accrue, and Latrobe was 
asked to make a preliminary survey. After a busy period forming new 
acquaintances, visiting the courts to study American legislative and judi- 
cial ways, and laying the foundations of his friendship for the Bushrod 
Washingtons and the Randolphs, he left Richmond to make his inves- 
tigation. 

His general plan was to go by land to the headwaters, then descend the 
stream by boat or along the banks. It was a trip through wild land, still 
sparsely settled, and living conditions were often crude enough; but La- 
trobe seemed to have savored it all and eagerly taken the rough with the 
smooth long rides through wilderness; hospitality that varied from lux- 
ury to indigence and from warm welcome to brusque rudeness; a wild 
shooting of rapids; life in a primitive flatboat. His journal contains vivid 
pictures of it all. 8 He finally arrived at the mouth of the James River 



8. See The Journal of iMrobe, especially pp. 1-36. 



74 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

on June 15 and in a leisurely fashion returned to Richmond. But more 
interesting than these bare facts are the striking vignettes he made of 
people and manners along the way. 

Latrobe left Richmond early in June, going first to Colonel Skipwith's 
place in Cumberland County well named Hors du Monde where he 
expected but failed to meet two of the Navigation directors. From there, 
vainly seeking them, he proceeded southwest to Richard Randolph's 
plantation, Bizarre, where he found himself an accidental witness to the 
denouement of one o early America's most puzzling tragedies. On this 
distant and lonely estate, in a simple, rather crude house, lived Richard 
Randolph, his wife, their son, and her beautiful sister who much later 
was to become Mrs. Gouverneur Morris. Apparently Latrobe had heard 
nothing of the earlier scandal that had linked Richard Randolph with 
his sister-in-law Nancy and brought them both to trial for doing away 
with a newborn child; they had been acquitted. 9 Latrobe rode into 
Bizarre toward noon on June 10, planning to stay there overnight with 
the Randolphs and to press on the next day. He found Richard Randolph 
ill with some sort of digestive fever very ill indeed and very weak and 
he offered to go on at once. But Randolph would not hear of it and made 
it plain that for the architect to leave before he had intended would be 
considered a discourtesy; Latrobe therefore remained overnight, making 
himself as useful as he could to the distracted family. Evidently he was 
as fascinated by Nancy as many other men had been before and were to 
be later, for her looks haunted him and he made a sketch of her. In it 
her face is partially concealed by a bonnet; only her long classic nose and 
her strongly sculptured profile appear. Even the sketch has a disturbing 
quality. 

The next morning a doctor came to examine the sick man and told 
Latrobe privately that he could see very little hope. The architect rode 
away grieving for the wife and her sister and totally unaware that a 
murder was possibly taking place before his eyes, for it has been univer- 
sally believed that Richard Randolph was poisoned by either his wife or 
Nancy or by both. From Bizarre he returned to Hors du Monde and 
found the two directors, Venable and Epperson. They all proceeded to 

9. Jay and Audrey Walz's The Bizarre Sisters (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1950) 
is a fictionalized account of this strange menage and of Nancy's further career. It offers, 
however, only one of several possible interpretations of the events. See also Howard Swig- 
gett, The Extraordinary Mr, Morris (New York: Doubleday, 1952). 



LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 75 

Captain Patterson's on the Appomattox, where they embarked on a ba- 
teau with an awning rigged over it as a protection against sun and rain, 
to float down to the mouth of the Appomattox and to map it and make 
studies of what could be done to improve its navigation. 10 It was the first 
time such a trip had been made. Latrobe arrived at the mouth on June 15, 
1796, having enjoyed the trip and the hospitality he had everywhere re- 
ceived. As he wrote to Colonel Blackburn: 

In Amelia I could have again fancied myself in a society of English Country 
Gentlemen, (a character to which I attach everything that is desirable as to 
education, domestic comfort, manners and principles) had not the shabbi- 
ness of their mansions undeceived me. Of the latter I do not mean to speak 
disrespectfully. It is a necessary consequence of the remoteness of the country 
[from places] where workmen assemble & can at all times be had. An un- 
lucky boy breaks two or three squares of glass. The glazier lives fifty miles 
off. An old newspaper supplies their place in the mean time. Before the mean 
time is over the family gets used to the newspapers & think no more of the 
glazier. 

On his return to Richmond he went to visit the Blackburn place on 
the Potomac Rippon Lodge which he sketched. It consisted of two two- 
story log cabins set some distance apart, apparently to leave between 
them space enough for a large future mansion. And it was from here 
that he made the memorable trip to Mount Vernon of which his journal 
and his sketches form a priceless record. With him he took a letter of 
introduction from Bushrod Washington, the President's nephew and the 
future owner of the estate, whom he calls his "particular friend." He 
realized the importance of the occasion, understood the extraordinary 
historical stature of his host, and in his journal took pains to write care- 
fully, vividly, and at length. His approach to Mount Vernon had been 
through Colchester, ten miles away on the Occoquan, and he comments 
on the condition of the estate: 

Good fences, clean grounds, and extensive cultivation strike the eye as 
something uncommon in this part of the world, but the road is bad enough. 
The house becomes visible between two groves of trees at about a mile's dis- 
tance. It has no very striking appearance, though superior to every other 
house I have seen here. [A brief description follows.] Everything else is ex- 



10. One night was spent at Clemen's Mill, another at Mr. Walk's house at Flat Creek, 
and a third at Watkin's Mill. The high state o the river hindered accurate determinations. 



76 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

tremely good and neat, but by no means above what would be expected in 
a plain Englishman's country house of ^500 or ^600 a year. 

He continues with a panegyric on the superb site, with its unsurpassed 
views up, down, and across the Potomac, and at last comes to the visit 
itself: 

Having alighted at Mount Vernon, I sent in my letter of introduction, and 
walked into the portico next to the river. In about ten minutes the President 
came to me. He was attired in a plain blue coat, his hair dressed & powdered. 
There was a reserve but no hauteur in his manner. He shook me by the 
hand, and desired me to sit down. Having enquired after the family I had 
left [the Bushrod Washingtons], the conversation turned upon Bath [the 
Virginia Hot Springs], to which they were going. [The President deplored 
the growing dissipation there, and remarked that he planned never to go 
there again except from purely medical necessity.] 

The conversation then turned upon the rivers of Virginia. He gave me 
a very minute account of all their directions, their natural advantages, and 
what he conceived might be done for their improvement by art. He then 
enquired whether I had seen the Dismal Swamp, and seemed particularly 
desirous of being informed upon the canal going forward there. He gave 
me a detailed account of the Dismal Swamp Canal Company and of their 
operations, of the injury they had received by the effects of the war, and 
still greater, which their inattention to their own concerns had done them. . . . 

This conversation lasted above one hour, and, as he had at first told me 
that he was finishing some letters to go by the post ... I got up to take 
my leave; but he desired me, in a manner very like Dr. [Samuel?] Johnson's, 
to "keep my chair," and then continued to talk to me about the great works 
going forward in England, and my own object in this country. I find him 
well acquainted with my mother's family in Pennsylvania. [The talk then 
turning upon mines and Latrobe having mentioned the discovery of silver 
ore at Rockette in Virginia, President Washington] made several minute in- 
quiries concerning it, and then said that "it would give him real uneasiness 
should any silver or gold mines be discovered that would tempt considerable 
capital into the prosecution of that object, and that he heartily wished for his 
country that it might contain no mines but such as the plow could reach, 
excepting only coal & iron. . . ." 

Washington then excused himself, after inviting the visitor to dinner, and 
Latrobe took the occasion to "prowl" about the lawn and make a few 
sketches. When he returned to the house he found Mrs. Washington and 
Miss Custis in the hall: 



LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 77 

I introduced myself to Mrs. Washington as a friend of her nephew, and she 
immediately entered into conversation upon the prospect from the lawn, and 
presently gave me an account of her family in a good-humored free manner 
that was extremely pleasant & flattering. She retains strong remains of con- 
siderable beauty, seems to enjoy very good health, & to have a good humor. 
She has no affectation of superiority in the slightest degree, but acts com- 
pletely in the character of the mistress of the house of a respectable & opulent 
country gentleman. Her granddaughter, Miss Eleanor Custis, the only one 
of four who is unmarried, has more perfection of form, of expression, of 
color, of softness, and of firmness of mind than I have ever seen before or 
conceived consistent with mortality. She is everything that the chisel of Phidias 
aimed at but could not reach, and the soul beaming through her countenance 
and glowing in her smile is as superior to her face as mind is to matter. 

Young Lafayette with his tutor came down sometime before dinner. He 
is a young man about seventeen, of a mild, pleasant countenance, favorably 
impressing one at first sight. His figure is rather awkward. His manners are 
easy, & he has very little of the usual French air about him. He talked much, 
especially with Miss Custis, and seemed to possess wit & fluency. . . . 

Dinner was served about half after three. It had been postponed a half-hour 
in hopes of Mr. Lear's arrival from Alexandria. [At dinner, Washington 
placed Latrobe at Mrs. Washington's left; Miss Custis sat at her right, and 
the President next her.] There was very little conversation at dinner. A few 
jokes passed between the President and young Lafayette, whom he treated 
more as a child than as a guest. I felt a little embarrassed at the silent, re- 
served air that prevailed. As I drank no wine, and the President drank only 
three glasses, the party soon returned to the portico. Mr. Lear, Mr. Dandridge 
[Bartholomew Dandridge, Martha Washington's nephew and one of Wash- 
ington's secretaries], and Mr. Lear's three boys soon after arrived & helped 
out the conversation. The President retired in about three-quarters of an hour. 

Again Latrobe made a motion to leave, and once more was restrained 
and urged to stay the night. 

Coffee was brought about six o'clock. When it was removed the President, 
addressing himself to me, inquired about the state of the crops about Rich- 
mond. I told him all I had heard. A long conversation upon farming ensued, 
during which it grew dark [it was mid-July], and he then proposed going 
into the hall. He made me sit down by him & continued the conversation 
for above an hour. During that time he gave me a very minute account of 
the Hessian fly and its progress from Long Island, where it first appeared, 
through New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, part of Pennsyl- 
vania, & Maryland. It has not yet appeared in Virginia, but is daily dreaded. 



^g LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

[Washington went on to discuss Indian corn as a crop and its value as food, 
especially for the Negro farm laborers.] He conceived that should the Ne- 
groes be fed upon wheat or rye bread, they would, in order to be fit for 
the same labor, be obliged to have a considerable addition to their allowance 
of meat. But notwithstanding all this, he thought the balance of advantage 
to be against the Indian corn. 

[They then discussed plows; the President had tried many and preferred 
the heavy Rotherham plow; next came the Berkshire iron plow. Latrobe 
promised to send him one of] Mr. Richardson's ploughs of Tuckahoe, which 
he accepted with pleasure. 11 

Mrs. Washington & Miss Custis had retired early, and the President left 
the company about eight o'clock. We soon after retired to bed. There was 
no hint of supper. 

I rose with the sun & walked in the grounds near the house. The President 
came to the company in the sitting room about one-half hour past seven, 
where all the latest newspapers were laid out. He talked with Mr. Lear about 
the progress of the work at the great falls [of the Potomac, near George- 
town] and in the City of Washington. Breakfast was served up in the usual 
Virginia style. Tea, coffee, and cold broiled meat. It was soon over, and for 
an hour afterward he stood upon the steps of the west door talking to the 
company who were collected around him. The subject was chiefly the estab- 
lishment of the University at the federal city. He mentioned the offer he had 
made of giving to it all the interests he had in the city on condition that it 
should go on in a given time, and complained that, though magnificent offers 
had been made by many speculators for the same purpose, there seemed to 
be no inclination to carry them into reality. He spoke as if he felt a little 
hurt upon the subject. . . . 

Latrobe then, about ten o'clock, took his leave. The journal continues: 

Washington had something uncommonly majestic & commanding in his 
walk, his address, his figure, and his countenance. His face is characterized, 
however, more by intense & powerful thought than by quick & fiery concep- 
tion. There is a mildness about its expression, and an air of reserve in his 
manner lowers its tone still more. He is sixty-four, but appears some years 
younger, and has sufficient apparent vigor to last many years yet. He was 
frequently entirely silent for many minutes, during which time an awkward- 
ness seemed to prevail in everyone present. His answers were often short and 
sometimes approached to moroseness. He did not at any time speak with 
very remarkable fluency; perhaps the extreme correctness of his language, 



ii. This promise was to arise and plague him later. See page 285. 



LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 79 

which almost seemed studied, prevented that effect. He appeared to enjoy 
a humorous observation, and made several himself. He laughed heartily sev- 
eral times in a very good-humored manner. On the morning of my departure 
he treated me as if I had lived for many years in his house, with ease & 
attention, but I thought there was a slight air of moroseness about him as 
if something had vexed him. 

For Washington, had Horace lived at the present age, he would have writ- 
ten his celebrated ode: it is impossible to have ever read it and not to recol- 
lect in the presence of this great man the virum justum propositique tenacem, 
etc. 12 

It is interesting to compare this account with his earlier letter to Black- 
burn. Here there is no artificiality, no writing for effect, no immature 
frivolity. Instead, the prose is simple, direct, and vivid. 

But Latrobe did more than leave a striking word picture; he also drew 
a plan of Mount Vernon and sketched its river front, which looks out 
over the Potomac today much as it did then. And for good measure he 
made three sketches of the Washington household. One is a portrait of 
young Lafayette, the great French general's son, then living with the 
Washingtons while his father was imprisoned in Austria. Another a 
beautiful group shows Mrs. Washington, garbed in an old-fashioned 
gown and presiding at the tea table, with the statuesque Miss Custis 
dressed in the latest Parisian classic fashion posing with self-conscious 
grace against one of the portico pillars, like a famous Pompeiian painting 
of Medea; on the step below is a young boy, probably the child of Tobias 
Lear, Washington's secretary. This group he combined with his exterior 
sketch into a charming water color painted in Richmond soon afterward 
and apparently sent to the Bushrod Washingtons as a gift, for it has come 
down in their family. 13 

Back in Richmond, the architect took up more or less permanent resi- 
dence there, charmed by its hospitality as well as its democratic spirit. 
And, though he made several extended visits away and two professional 
tours, Richmond was his real home till the end of 1798. It was here that 
in 1796 he probably met Volney 14 and Scandella, the French radical and 



12. From the manuscript journal, vol. i, pp. 58$. Reprinted in The Latrobe Journal, 
pp. 50-63. 

13. It is now the property of Bishop H. St. George Tucker of Virginia, a descendant. 

14. See Gilbert Chinard, Volney et VAmerique, d'apres des documents inedits , . . 
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press; Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1923). 



g LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

the Italian physician-philosopher. Both men gave him a necessary intel- 
lectual and imaginative stimulus that few o the kind Virginians could 
furnish; both renewed his curiosities and sharpened his vision. 

Constantin F. C. Volney apparently included many of Latrobe's ob- 
servations in his Tableau du climat et du sol des ttats-unis d'Amerique 
. . . published in Paris in 1803, with an English translation, View of the 
Climate and Soil of the United States of America, the following year in 
London; in turn he fired Latrobe's interest in geology, and the archi- 
tect's journals and notebooks are filled with geological observations. And 
Latrobe's first American published work was a "Memoir on the Sand 
Hills of Cape Henry," printed in 1799 in the Transactions of the Amer- 
ican Philosophical Society (vol. 4, pp. 439 - 44)- 

His friendship with Scandella seems to have been more personal; Scan- 
della's inquiries about and comments on American ways stimulated La- 
trobe's own questioning and quickened his analyses. Scandella de- 
scribed Niagara Falls to him; from this vivid description Latrobe made a 
forceful water color of the falls and wrote a verse on their grandeur. One 
evening he and Scandella discussed the question of hospitality; Scandella 
complained that the famed American hospitality was merely an inevitable 
accompaniment of small population, great distances, and primitive condi- 
tions. Latrobe sat down later and wrote a long, carefully thought-out 
essay on the whole matter "in the form of a discussion with Dr. Scan- 
della." He shows the doctor that there is no reason for his criticism; that 
American hospitality, though a necessity, is also real; and that Dr. 
Scandella was wishing for the moon if he expected, stranger and for- 
eigner as he was, to be taken instantly into the bosom of a family or if 
he hoped to get from planters and soldiers intellectual conversation like 
that of professional circles in Europe. Evidently the two carried on a 
fairly lively correspondence after Scandella left Richmond, and one let- 
ter (February 22, 1798) survives, 15 addressed to Dr. Scandella at 233 
South Front Street, Philadelphia, shortly before Latrobe's first visit to 
that city. In this letter, which will be cited in another context later, there 
are a few passages of personal interest that are germane here. Latrobe 
remarks that all his practical interests suggest Philadelphia as the ideal 
location for him 



15. In the Avery Library, Columbia University. 



LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 



8l 




82 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

... as the only situation in which I ought to reside, if I reside in Amer- 
ica* an d yet, by some enchantment I find myself unable to stir from this 
state. To my own indolence I can give a very good account of this phae- 
nomenon, but not to the prudence or the little common sense I may happen 
to possess. I have not even the excuse of love to plead, whatever you may 
suppose. . . . 

You are, my dear friend, very eloquent upon the subject of the Lady who 
turned her back upon me. She is going to be married immediately, & she 
therefore did right. You never saw, &, I believe, never heard of her. Is it not 
the very sensible, witty, & lively Miss J. R whom you hint at?- I hope she 
will not use me so ill, should I ever conceive the idea of putting it into her 
power to mortify me. But I assure you, that when I so loosely rallied your 
partialities I was not more serious, than when I exposed my own. It is a 
subject on which I am not imprudent enough to be serious. I have chil- 
dren, & may therefore with more propriety than you perhaps, say "it is not 
for me to be in love" I must weigh the matter first for them & then for 
mysetf. However you will be happy to hear that your three friends Miss 
McClurg, Miss J. Randolph, & Mrs. Washington are very well, & desire, I 
am sure very sincerely, that I should assure you of their kind remembrance. 
The two latter have been most seriously ill, but are now recovered. 

With the greatest pleasure I will send to you my remarks upon slavery 
in Virginia as soon as I can transcribe them, & add whatever else occurs to 
me upon the subject. You will show your regard for me by not sparing me 
in anything in which I can at all afford you a pleasure. . . . [Postscript:] 
Could you give me a corner in your cabaret philosophique if I come to 
Philadelphia? 

Unfortunately the notes on slavery in Virginia are lost. 

Obviously Latrobe was conscious of his own basically lonely state. No 
man was less fitted to live a bachelor's life, and behind the light touch 
of the letter to Scandella there is an undoubted wistfulness. Who the 
lady was who turned her back on him we may never know, but early 
in 1798 he includes in his journal (January 17) a somewhat cryptic pas- 
sage which may provide a clue. He was at the home of the actress Mrs. 
Green, for whom he had written a comedy (to be discussed later), when 
some expression on his face seemed to surprise and interest her. He 
writes: 

Answer to Mrs. Green's question, Pray how am I to translate that look 
of yours? 



LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 83 

Ingulph me, earth! crush me, ye skies! 

My grieving soul is on the rack! 
On John she's turned her beauteous eyes! 

On me, her back. 

The name of the young lady whose cruelty could be the cause of the above 
expressive look is [veiled in Hebrew script, 16 Louise Nelson Black or Louise 
Black Nelson]. 

And there is evidence of other possible infatuations during this period. 
For Susanna Catharine Spotswood he prepared an elaborate two-volume 
book of water-color sketches with an extended text, in the guise of teach- 
ing her how to paint. The title page of the first volume is inscribed : "An 
Essay in Landscape Explained in Tinted Drawings by Benj. Henry La- 
trobe Boneval, Esquire. Richmond, Virginia, 1798." The second volume 
has no title page, but its charming postscript is dated from Philadelphia, 
April 7, 1799. In it he says, in part: 

Although this little volume has travelled with me in all my excursions . . . 
& has been my favorite, & consoling companion in solitude . . . still I have 
been unable to compleat it as I wished. A few days of leisure at Orange 
Grove would add much to its neatness & perfection of detail, and were I not 
tempted to send it to you, by the hands of one of the best & dearest friends 
I possess ... I should still trespass for a short time on your patience. 
When it is gone, I shall miss it, as I should a child . . . 

[He concludes:] I have promised you a little dissertation on perspective . . . 
It will have the additional value of giving me an opportunity of gratifying 
myself by following an employment, which, while it relaxes my own mind 
after the fatigue of business, has a chance of being acceptable & usefull to 
the friend most deserving of my respect. 

Did only artistic enthusiasm fire the loving beauty of this work? 1T 



1 6. Dr. Isaac Mendelsohn, of Columbia University, who transliterated the Hebrew, re- 
marked that the lettering was a particularly elegant eighteenth-century script. The lady in 
question cannot be further identified. 

17. Illustrated in part in Virginia Cavalcade, Autumn, 1951. Miss Susanna Catharine 
Spotswood was the daughter of Colonel John Spotswood and granddaughter of Governor 
Alexander Spotswood; she lived at the Spotswood plantation Orange Grove. Since she did 
not marry till 1801, she is probably not the person referred to in the letter to Scandella. 
Her husband was John B. Bott, M.D., a well-known doctor of the time, and in her later 
life, after her husband's death in 1824, she devoted her time to good works. She died in 
1853, and in 1857 A. B. Van Zandt, D.D., published a memoir of her, The Elect Lady, A 
Memoir of Susan Catharine Spotswood, of Petersburg, Virginia. I owe this information to 



g, LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

Several fragments in the Latrobe papers contain evidence of his inti- 
macy with the Randolphs of Tuckahoe and with the Bushrod Washing- 
tons. In the journal he notes at length a conversation with Mrs. Randolph 
and Mrs. Washington, in which Mrs. Randolph had objected to some 
of Shakespeare's language as indecent; the discussion thus started spread 
to the question of modesty in language and dress, the general standards 
of morals and manners, and the effects of novel reading. Latrobe's posi- 
tion is one in favor of relative rather than absolute standards, and he 
supports it with all kinds of historical examples based largely on things 
that had happened within the preceding fifty years or so. It is a fas- 
cinating document. 18 In that congenial circle he also amused himself 
with considerable versifying. For example, he sends his excuses to Mrs. 
Washington for not dining with her on Sunday in a prolix poem, a few 
excerpts from which will suffice: 

Dear Madam, 

If ever hominy & hog 

Stiff toddy & delightful grog 

Our buckskins set a longing, 
If e'er the rattle of the dice 
Our men of council did entice 

To Strass's * net to throng in, 
If ever billiard ball did roll 
The pride of legislator's soul 

Slap! into Radford's t pocket: 



If e'er Jack Willis ** took a card 
Or Harry Banks ft drove bargains hard 
Or Edmund *** took a fee, Ma'am 

and so on for several stanzas. Latrobe furnishes the notes: 

* Strass, is a German who keeps a Farobank & presides over the gambling 
of Richmond. He is in great vogue & countenanced by men of the first 
character. 



Mrs. Robert W. Claibornc (whose great-grandmother was a sister of Susanna Spotswood), 
Director of the Valentine Museum in Richmond, and to Mrs. Ralph Catterall, Librarian of 
the Museum. 

1 8. See Appendix for the text 



LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 85 

fRadford keeps the Eagle Tavern, & plays billiards well & successfully at 
his own table. 

** Jack Willis, a man of immense powers & size of body, & equal wit & 
good sense, the Falstaff of the age. He professes gambling. 

ft Mr. Henry Banks well known for his wit, & sense, which contrary to 
the usual use of these qualities, have contributed extremely to his worldly 
interests. 

*** Edmund Randolph, quondam Secretary of State, now a successful at- 
torney at law. 

In his poem he goes on to refer indirectly to the anger of the Dismal 
Swamp Canal directors that his own report was unfavorable to the work 
of a Mr. Capern, and finally: 

Meanwhile time still stole slyly on, 
Five long dull tedious days were gone, 

And Sunday followed after 
That day to Belvidere due, 
To music, friendship, and to you 

To chat & guiltless laughter . . . 

In sum, he had been delayed on his trip by vile weather and mistaken 
roads and could not get to Belvidere at all. He also records various verses 
at Tuckahoe, the Thomas Mann Randolph place; among them this is 
perhaps the most palatable: 

On Mrs. R[andolph} requesting each of the gentlemen 
-present to mend her a fen 

To mend a pen 
Four able men 

With might & main unite 
No wonder why: 
It was to try 

To make the Widow's write 

The Widow fair 
With gracious air 

SmiFd while the pens were making 
But each poor wight 
Till she should write 

Was in a desp'rate taking 



86 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

With fav'ring look 
The pen she took 

Which Arthur had made ready 
Alas! how sad 
The pen was bad 

And never could write freely. 

That laid aside 
The next she tried 

Was the pen which Steele did mend, Sir 
She cried and spoke 
At ev'ry stroke 

"Your pen's too soft, & bends, Sir 

Latrobe's next came 
To please the Dame 

He hoped with fond reliance 
But she took tiff 
CalPd it too stiff 

And bid the pen defiance 

The bright'ning face 
And jovial grace 

Of Bishop soon proclaimed it 
That of four men 
His well shap'd pen 

Had won the prize they aim'd at. 

But it was not only these high-placed Virginians that intrigued La- 
trobe. In Richmond he came to know well the actors of West's troupe 
and gained the friendship of Thomas West himself; the journal shows 
him their close associate. 19 Most of them were English and not too long 
resident in America to fail to understand his own nostalgias and share 
his curiosities. They were an imaginative and literate group, with the 
beguiling vanities of their calling; for him they had a basic congeniality 
as artists. 

The only theater in Richmond was an old and rather tumble-down 
building in the outskirts of the town, uncomfortable and architecturally 
uncouth, and above all ill-fitted for the elaborate scenery and the spec- 



19. See Susanne K. Sherman, "Thomas Wade West, Theatrical Impresario, 1790-99," 
William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 9, no. i (January, 1952), pp. 10-28. 



LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 87 

tacles West liked to present. West was ambitious; his performances were 
popular, but beyond that he wanted to build the drama into the center 
of Richmond life. Obviously for this a new building was necessary, and 
Latrobe who knew the theaters of England and the Continent was 
manifestly well qualified to be its architect. In his journal he says that 
he had begun the designs for the theater, hotel, and assembly rooms (in 
one building) on December i, 1797, and completed them on January 6, 
1798. Fortunately they are preserved and will be discussed later. 

In the troupe was a singer and dancer whom he found especially con- 
genialthe Mrs. Green (nee Willems) whom he addressed in the 
quatrain referred to above. In an effort to express to her his appreciation 
and also to satisfy his delight in authorship, he wrote a comedy, The 
Apology, for her benefit performance in the current 1797-8 season. On 
January 17, soon after he had finished his theater designs, he writes: 

. . . began a Comedy the idea of which was suggested in Mr. Jones's phaeton 
on my trip with him to Hansen, but had lain dormant till my desire to serve 
Mrs. Green, the excellent comedian, & the more excellent man revived it. (See 
the manuscript [lost, alas!]). Though I finished it in 26 hours, the necessary 
trouble of making fair copies & writing out the parts was very great & this is 
my first free day, on which I could think of my old habits of journalizing. . . . 

On Saturday evening (January 27, 1798) the play was performed and 
received a most varied response. The cast, in part, consisted of 

Vaucamil Turnbull 

Bob Vaucamil Tom West 

Twoshoes Sully (the American painter's father) 

Simon Care Lathy 

Louisa Mrs. J. West 

Skunk, a newspaper editor Mr. Green 

Mrs. Green, Mrs. Turnbull, and Bignall also had parts, but they are not 
specified. The Prologue "(which was written but a few hours before 
the play went on) was spoken to great applause by Mr. Green," who 
also recited an "apology" at the end. The afterpiece was Octavian. 

Apparently the performance was worse than indifferent; Latrobe was 
bitterly disappointed in it and in his journal suggests that the Wests' 
jealousy of the Greens may have had something to do with its flaws. 
Some of the actors did not know their parts and improvised absurdly. 
Several were wooden and stiff; some spoke their parts automatically 



gg LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

without any apparent understanding of the words. In the last act Sully 
did not get his cue from Bignall, who had forgotten his part, and, writes 
Latrobe, "Sully, not receiving his cue, & being unused to act, & very 
bashful, -having moreover a cold which made him hoarse as a raven 
was so embarrassed that not a word was spoken for so many minutes 
that the whole play ended there, nobody knew how or why. In Simon 
Care's last speech Lathy was so hampered by the word municipal that 
the rest of his speech was drowned in the laughter caused by his em- 
barrassment. Mrs. J. West in Louisa was very correct . . ." 

On Monday, bad weather prevented any performance; on Tuesday, 
West played one of his most popular parts, Richard III; then, in the 
night, after the play, the old playhouse burned down and with it many 
of the costumes and much of the elaborate scenery belonging to the 
companya disastrous loss to them. And for Latrobe there were un- 
pleasant repercussions. The Apology was largely a satire on the Feder- 
alists, especially Hamilton and Cobbett, who were undoubtedly lam- 
pooned as "Vaucamil" and as "Skunk, a newspaper editor." Then, too, 
there was adultery in the plot and perhaps some rather outspoken lan- 
guage, though at the end sin was punished and virtue triumphed. But 
the political implications aroused the Richmond Federalists to a storm 
of objections, and a violent newspaper controversy followed. On Janu- 
ary 31 came the first blast, a letter to the Richmond paper suggesting 
that the theater was burned by the wrath of God. In part, after express- 
ing sympathy for the Wests' losses, it read : 

Yet, sir, if I could conceive that Omnipotent Heaven ever condescended to 
regard the ordinary activities of us poor mortals, I should be led to think it 
a judgment on the house for the prostitution committed on the stage a few 
evenings ago; for certain "The Apology" of Mrs. Green was not sufficient for 
the vile, low stuff contained in that of Mr. Thing 'urn Bob, there with his 
one ey'd spectacle. Be that as it may, however . . . 

The author goes on to suggest support of Mr. West in building a new 
theater, little realizing that if the new house was built it would be from 
the designs of the terrible "Mr. Thing 'urn Bob" himself! This letter was 
answered by two others published on February 6, written, "I believe," 
says Latrobe, "the first by Mr. Boiling Robertson, the second by Mr. 
John Baker, two young gentlemen of great promise, who study the 
law under Mr. Warden." The controversy hurt the architect intensely; 



LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 89 

he was puzzled as to what to do, but wise friends persuaded him that 
the best thing was to do nothing. So ended his first and only attempt 
at the drama. 20 

Yet, despite the social meetings with the great and the pleasant time 
spent with the actors and actresses of West's troupe, Latrobe's chief in- 
terests were, first, his professional work (to be considered in the next 
chapter), and, second, the continued study of the characteristics of Amer- 
ica and Americans, to which his journals bear full witness. Flora and 
fauna, history, language, temper, costume, and manners all are graph- 
ically portrayed; Latrobe had a keen ear and an almost phonographic as 
well as photographic memory, and he was continually on the search for 
the typical or the unfamiliar. He notes that beavers, though by his time 
already extinct in Virginia, had been extremely useful; some mill dams 
were built on old beaver dams. Beavers, he says (May 12, 1796), should 
have been preserved instead of exterminated. He finds that land once 
under cultivation is already deserted and going back into pine forest 
(unmixed with any deciduous trees) . He comments on the falls in all the 
rivers, which so definitely divide the lower alluvial tidewater lands from 
the higher plateaus behind. And he was a keen observer of insects and 
natural life in general and of snakes and snake-bite antidotes (the "blood 
Wort" is the best, according to several anecdotes he cites); he makes 
note of the fact that Captain Murray at the siege of Yorktown found his 
hearing of the artillery entirely dependent on whether the weather was 
clear or cloudy. In Richmond he was fascinated by the Falls of the James 
and the ingenious weirs the fishermen had built to catch the "chad" (as 
he spells it), taking delight in their clever if primitive engineering; he 
makes numbers of rapid graphic sketches, and his pleasure carries over 
into the swift pen strokes of his drawings. 

But it is the people especially who fascinate him, and particularly 
their differences from the English. Thus: 

I have formerly observed that better English is spoken by the common 
people, even by the Negroes in Virginia than by the lower orders in any 
county in England with which I am acquainted. The little improprieties and 
peculiarities that occur seem equally divided between all classes of whites. 
The only irregularity of pronunciation which I have noticed is the broad & 



20. There is a legend that The Apology was later acted successfully in Philadelphia, but 
so far research has uncovered no evidence. 



LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 




In Maryland Historical Society 
FIGURE 4. Weir on the James River, Richmond. From the Latrobe journals. 

drawling manner of articulating the vowel i, which is lengthened to a distinct 
aw, e, or ai as every other nation pronounce these vowels . . . 

He goes on to give "A Virginia Conversation" as an example, under- 
lining the following as Americanisms : Old fellow, as a term of endear- 
ment or intimacy. / happened at Manchester. Sundown. Last evening. 
Mighty glad. Mightily opposed to it. He was raised. I'm right heartily 
glad to see you. Then he adds: 

N.B. A Virginian mighty hearty welcome, must be experienced to be under- 
stood. It includes everything the best heart can prompt, the most luxuriant 
country afford. It is that which will oblige a stranger to stop his career to the 
cautious prudent Pennsylvanians, & force him to settle among men whom he 
experiences to be liberal, friendly, & sensible. 



LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 91 

On his trip to the Appomattox he lost his way among various un- 
marked forest paths and at last found a Negro from whom he could ob- 
tain directions; he gives the passage between them at length as an ex- 
ample of the careful helpfulness he often received as well as of the pecul- 
iarities of American speech. 21 He notes a strange man who lives on noth- 
ing but tea and sugar yet has physical and procreative powers above the 
average. A few tragic vignettes of the poverty-struck and drink-ridden 
poor whites who somehow had failed to measure up to the challenge of 
the new country are included, and he comments on the fact that military 
titles captain, major, and colonel- are as common in America, as proudly 
insisted on, and as meaningless for the most part as tides of nobility in 
Poland. He became interested in the Pocahontas legend and traced as 
well as he could all her immediate descendants; he found that there had 
been at least 362 of them 239 still then alive and comments : 

It is somewhat singular that, though this family are rather proud of their 
royal Indian descent, not one of them should have preserved the names of 
their Ancestors in their own family excepting Robert Boiling, son of Colonel 
John Boiling . . . who named a son & a daughter Powhattan & Pochahontas. 
He was a man of great wit & learning. 

These notes he later expanded in a paper he read before the American 
Philosophical Society. 22 In his journal he also remarks on the extraordi- 
nary number of first-cousin marriages among the Virginia planters a 
natural result, perhaps, of their strong class feeling and of the great dis- 
tances between plantations. The Randolphs, especially, were famous for 
marrying Randolphs, and the eccentricities that occasionally appeared in 
the family have sometimes been attributed to this habit. Latrobe objects 
to such a system of close intermarriage among a few families, but not on 
genetic grounds; he says that experiments in cattle breeding seem to 



21. See Appendix. 

22. This paper he read to the Society on February 18, 1803, but it was not printed. The 
complete list of his published papers in the Transactions includes: vol. 4 (1799), "Memoir 
on the Sand Hills of Cape Henry in Virginia," pp. 439-44; vol. 5 (1802), "Drawing and 
Description of the Clupea Tyrannus and Oniscus Praegustata," pp. 77-81; vol. 6 (1809), 
"On Two Species of Sphex Inhabiting Virginia and Pennsylvania and Probably Extending 
through the United States," pp. 73-8; "First Report in Answer to the Enquiry Whether Any 
and What Improvements Have Been Made in the Construction of Steam Engines in 
America," pp. 89-99; "Account of the Freestone Quarries on the Potomac and Rappahan- 
noc[k] Rivers," pp. 283-93; "Observations on the Correspondence Relative to the Principles 
and Practice of Building in India," pp. 384-91. 



02 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

prove that close relationships between parents are no barrier to good 
children. Instead, his objections are political, for he sees the system de- 
veloping closely organized and selfish cliques; for him, society should be 
like a coat of mail, interlocked from side to side and from top to bottom, 
and he believes that the happiest marriages are between people of quite 
divergent temperaments. In Richmond he visited the courts and com- 
ments on the different types of oratory offered by James Innes, Jack 
Stewart, Edmund Randolph, John Marshall, and Bushrod Washington. 
And he was surprised at the absence of wigs, though he notes that some 
of the older men preserve the picturesque ancient types of costume or 
hair dress. Of wigs, he writes as a true radical: 

We may therefore, very fairly, I think conclude, that wherever we see wigs 
decrease or vanish in any profession, bigotry & obscurity will lessen & cease, 
and good sense and liberal principles gain ground and become general in the 
same ratio. 

And in the same radical vein, as a son of the Enlightenment and with 
the same analytical skepticism that probably kept him out of the Moravian 
ministry, he remarks, apropos of the hanging of a Negro, that it is dog- 
matic religions that are responsible for the worst possible barbarisms. 

In 1797 the tone of the journals changes. The first flush of excitement 
in discovering a new country had passed. He had met the Virginians; 
they had come to know and to accept him. There was less entertaining on 
their part and less almost frenzied note taking on his. As he settled down 
to life in Richmond, despite an increase in his professional work he had 
more time on his hands. In early June he was sent again to the Dismal 
Swamp Canal to make an official report for the directors of the canal 
company; on his return he received, on June 25, a letter from the gover- 
nor of the state announcing that Latrobe's plans for the penitentiary had 
been accepted and that he had been appointed to direct and supervise the 
construction. On June 30 he was at Lindsey's hotel in Norfolk (perhaps 
in connection with the building of the Pennock house) and while there 
had opportunities "o seeing and conversing with Commodore Barney 
[an officer in the French navy], who is, in the present uncertain state of 
politics, grown into an object of attention." 

Subsequently Latrobe was sent to Norfolk to examine the fortifications 
there and to recommend improvements and additions, 23 and he also took 

23. Sec page 255. 




Maryland Historical Society 
Benjamin Henry Latrobe as a young man. 




British Museum 
Benjamin Latrobe, the architect's father. 



Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds. From Latrobe's "An Essay in Landscape." 



PLATE i 



State Library of Virginia 





Photograph Dorothy Stroud 
Ashdown House. B. H. Latrobe, architect. General view. 




PLATE 2 



Photograph Dorothy Stroud 
Ashdown House. The porch. 



Hammerwood Lodge. Detail. 

Photograph Dorothy Stroud 




Hammerwood Lodge. B. H. Latrobe, architect. Gen- 
eral view. 

Photograph Dorothy Stroud 






Avery Library 

Somerset House, London. Sir William Chambers, 
architect. River side. 

Bank of England, London. Sir John Soane, archi- 
tect. Bank Stock Hall. 

Aver)' Library 



PLATE 3 



Old Newgate Prison, London. George Dance, Jr., 

architect. 

Avery Library 




Qid 







Latrobe Sketchbooks 



Sloop Olive Branch, of Stonington, Connecticut. 

PLATE 4 

View on the York River, Virginia. 



Latrobe Sketchbooks 





Colonel Blackburn's House, Virginia. 



View on the Appomattox River, Virginia. From Latrobe's "An Essay in Landscape." 



Latrobe Sketchbooks 

PLATE 5 

State Library of Virginia 




PLATE 6 





Clifton, the Harris House, Richmond. Latrobe's perspective. 

IFF 



Library of Congress 




PLATE 7 



Proposed Tayloe House, Washington. Latrobe's section. 

Library of Congress 



Library of Congress 

Pennock House, Norfolk, Virginia. 
Stair hall. Latrobe's perspective. 





Juliana Latrobe's Tombstone, 
Mount Holly, New Jersey. B. H. 
Latrobe, architect. General view 
and detail. 



Photographs Mr. and Mrs. John H. Heyrman 



PLATES 



Mrs. Claiborne's Tomb, New Orleans. B. H. Latrobe, 
architect; Giuseppe Franzoni, sculptor. General 
view and detail. 

Photograph, general view, Richard Koch 




Photograph, detail, Samuel Wilson, Jr. 




LATROBE IN VIRGINIA: 1796-1798 93 

the occasion to visit and sketch in the Yorktown area. He made one other 
visit to Hampton Roads in November, 1798, just before his final removal 
from Virginia, and notes that on November 2 he dined on board the 
frigate Constellation with Commodore Truxton after spending the day 
with a local builder, Miles Key, in connection with a proposed lighthouse 
at Old Point Comfort. Accordingly he and Miles Key combined to offer 
a joint bid of $3,000, but they were unsuccessful and the contract went 
to others. Sometime during this period, too, he met Jefferson for the first 
time, in Fredericksburg. 

Yet, in spite of the increasing number of duties and the various short 
trips he took, Latrobe was becoming restless. He found himself bitterly 
lonely even in the midst of Virginian hospitality. And perhaps the lady 
who "turned her back" had moved him more deeply than he knew; her 
refusal or withdrawal may have drawn his mind back over the years 
to his life in England, to his dead wife and his two children there, for 
we have seen in his letter to Scandella how important they were to him. 
Now he spends his "journalizing" time not so much on notes of Vir- 
ginian life as on reminiscences of his early days and fills his sketchbooks 
with strange and haunting visions or illustrations of Gothic tales. 

For us, this interlude is valuable, because from these notes and mem- 
ories, these anecdotes and verses, we gain much of the knowledge we 
have of his youth. He includes keen character sketches of all the mem- 
bers of the Sellon family; some of the sketches are savage, some admir- 
ing, all vivid. The scenes surrounding the death of his first wife's father, 
Dr. Sellon, have been mentioned earlier. He tells in prolix detail the 
story of Charlotte Hoissard (the young woman who ran away with her 
father's groom) and the extraordinary tale of the illiterate cobbler Tommy 
Rhodes who became the Baron de Rothe. His life in Germany with the 
learned and artistic Baron von Schachmann is described. He includes a 
number o verses that have already been cited and ends with the affect- 
ing Ode to Solitude written after his wife's death. 

And it is the same with the sketchbooks. There is a "sketch for a por- 
trait" of a graceful and handsome young woman. Is it a picture of his 
wife? or does it represent one of the girls he had found lovely in Vir- 
ginia? There is another pretty drawing of a man and a woman. The 
man seems to be intended for himself; the woman is probably his wife 
as he remembers her. And there is a whole series of fantastic sketches in 
which a storm of withheld or frustrated emotions is expressed : A ghostly 



94 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

woman on a rock in a turbulent stream the ghost of his wife? An il- 
lustration of an Indian widow for The History of Ned Evans (attrib- 
uted to Elizabeth Hervey and published in London in 1796) again the 
haunting death sense. And finally an old bearded hermit gazing out of 
a cave; before him sweep by the ghosts of a young man and a young 
woman an allegory of himself and his children ? But, whatever the sub- 
jects, there plays over these drawings a spirit of tension, of tragedy, quite 
unlike the simple clarity that distinguishes his ordinary paintings, and 
the same spirit darkens the colors. They seem the works of a different 
man from the artist who in the same book sketches the Potomac or the 
James smiling in the sun. 

For Latrobe had reached a turning point. Internal stresses were piling 
up. Virginia and Richmond came to have less and less meaning or ap- 
peal for him. He must seek other places, change his environment, get 
other work if only to preserve his integrity and his peace of mind. He 
was at the end of a chapter and, whether he realized it or not, was now 
eager to begin the next. 



CHAPTER 



Architectural Work in Virginia 
and Some Other Houses 



LATROBE'S first American building was the house for William Pennock in 
Norfolk. It was the result of a challenge: was it possible to design a 
house with a grand, well-lighted staircase at the front of the building 
and still preserve a regular elevation and a central doorway? Latrobe 
claimed that it was possible, and the Pennock house was the result. The 
drawings of it show how prophetic it was of the buildings its architect 
was to design later. And it shows as well that Latrobe was aware he was 
in a new country; for the house is not a London or even an English 
house but has instead the compactness of planning, the efficiency of cir- 
culation, and the economy of arrangement which American clients de- 
manded. And yet it also differed markedly from the usual Virginia 
houses of the time; it was a true creation. 

In 1796, or later, Latrobe made a beautiful perspective of the stair hall 
which had been the raison d'etre for the whole design. The stair starts 
up at the right of the entrance door, in the middle of the hall, and rises 
toward the front wall, sweeping up in a lovely curv.e to the second-story 
landing; it is well lighted by the second-floor windows. The rear of the 
hall extends back into a segmental niche to give an unusual sense of 
space. Beyond the stair, on the right, a wall shuts off the service stair that 
occupies the far corner of the house and leads from basement to top. 
This is conveniently related to a rear door that gives easy communica- 
tion to the slave quarters behind. Thus not only had a beautiful and in- 
viting stair hall been formed in this relatively modest house, but com- 
plete privacy of service had also been achieved. And ever after privacy 
of service remained one of the architect's chief aims in house design. 

95 



9 6 



LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 





In Library of Congress 
FIGURE 5. Pennock House, Norfolk. Plans. Redrawn from Latrobe's drawings. 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 97 

The rest of the first floor contains three rooms. The two most impor- 
tant a parlor and a dining room of beautiful proportions look out over 
the garden and the Elizabeth River to the rear; the third, the owner's 
office, occupies the front corner of the building to the left of the hall. 
In style the house is less revolutionary, though obviously controlled by 
Latrobe's passion for simplicity and elegance. The facade is severely sim- 
ple, the windows and door are beautifully proportioned punctuations in 
the plane of quiet brick, and the cornice is delicate and restrained. Inside, 
the hall perspective has a slightly Adam flavor, and the stair and hand- 
rail with the step ends uncarved and plain slim vertical balusters are 
not too unlike those in many other American houses of the time. But 
what is remarkable is the sense of space Latrobe has contrived by his 
treatment of the stair well, the walls, and the ceiling. Here, even in this 
first of his American houses, it is the sense of designed volume, of air, 
and of views up and around that give these relatively modest dimensions 
a kind of original and unforced monumental quality. Here is a mild 
prophecy of the kind of imaginative space design that was to govern so 
much of his work. 

Latrobe dreamed, much later, of a full presentation of his architectural 
work, in rather a lavish style, to be published in London. 1 It is to this 
desire that we owe the preservation of a group of his drawings now in 
the Library of Congress. A number of them are gathered together under 
the title, "Designs of Buildings in Virginia," and he prepared a title 
page. Some of the drawings are apparently completed, ready for the en- 
graver, and are rendered in water color and with careful and uniform 
border lines. There are also other drawings without borders, and some 
with no lettering whatsoever, preserved obviously in the same group for 
future redrawing or completion. A number can be identified; some seem 



i. See Fiske Kimball, "Some Architectural Designs of Benjamin Henry Latrobe," in The 
Library of Congress Journal of Current Acquisitions, vol. m, no. 3 (May, 1946), pp. 8-13. 
With regard to the proposed publication of his work, Latrobe on May u, 1816, wrote Eric 
Bollman, who was about to leave for England: "I wish exceedingly to publish some ac- 
count, in rather a splendid form, of my works. There is in Holburn a man of the name of 
Taylor [one of the famous architectural publishers, A. & J. Taylor], who deals entirely in 
architectural works. You remember my view of the Capitol. . . . The companion to it shall 
be either the President's House, or the Baltimore Cathedral, or the Bank of Pennsylvania, or 
an internal view of the House of Representatives. I will send him over the drawings this 
year . . . Will you be so good as to endeavor to see him, & try to make some bargain 
for me?" 



98 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

to be studies for buildings of which we have no other knowledge. The 
tide page is dated September 8, 1799. Besides the lettering, various minia- 
ture vignettes (two below on a lightly indicated landscape, others above 
and partly hidden by clouds) decorate the page, and there is also an al- 
legorical figure, bearing in her hand a model of the Bank of Pennsyl- 
vania. On the back is a descriptive note: 

The only two buildings which were executed from the drawings were Capt n 
Pennock's at Norfolk, and Colonel Harvie's at Richmond . . . The former 
stands on terra firma in the background to the left, the latter on the hill in 
the middle ground. The wings of Col. Harvie's house were never built, & are 
following the other buildings in the sky. Higher up among the clouds, are the 
buildings which may be easily known from the following drawings. To the 
right hovers the figure of the architect's imagination, such as she is. With the 
model of the Bank of Pennsylvania in her hand, she is leaving the rocks of 
Richmond & taking her flight to Philadelphia. 

The idea of the figure is imitated from Flaxman, the famous sculptor. 

It is all a quaint conceit, delicately rendered. 

The strangest design, dated August, 1796, is for an enormous plantation 
house called Mill Hill. Despite its size, the house is disappointing. It has 
an inconvenient English plan, with the dining room far from the kitchen 
and its services, and one entire end of the house is occupied by a great 
stair hall that seems better fitted for a ducal mansion in the shires than 
for the residence of even a wealthy Virginia plantation owner. The ex- 
terior is equally unlike Latrobe's usual manner. It is grand almost gran- 
diose in its bigness. Perhaps reminiscences of Hammerwood Lodge, his 
first independent work in England, were running through his mind; but 
this house lacks both the drama and the eccentricities of that extraordi- 
nary design. On the front Mill Hill is two stories high, but across the 
rear there is a colossal Ionic colonnade supported on the exposed arcaded 
basement wall, and back of the columns there is a large piazza or gallery. 

This design is remarkable, therefore, not only for the monumental scale 
of its colonnade but also for its unusual character; it shows that its archi- 
tect could create in more than one manner. The house may have been 
designed for one of the hills overlooking Richmond. It was never built 
it may be seen in the clouds on his title page but it is perhaps signifi- 
cant that several large Richmond hillside houses erected during the next 
three decades had porches carried by columns across the entire rear to 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 99 

take advantage of both the air and the view. With this local tradition it is 
possible that Latrobe's Mill Hill design may have had some connection. 

Completely different is the next unrealized design, dated December, 
1797 one of those without indication of owner or place. The perspective 
would seem to depict one of the Richmond promontories; it shows a 
river, probably the James, curving off into the distance below. This is a 
design for a small house of unusual plan. In the center of the main front 
there is a boldly projecting semi-octagonal bay enclosing an octagonal 
parlor 14 feet in diameter. The main entrance, at the right, leads directly 
into the stair hall in the right front corner. The large drawing room, di- 
rectly behind the stair hall, sweeps out into a segmental bay; beyond this 
a garden wall is carried back to balance the end of the stair halL The 
entire left-hand section of the building is the dining room, 1 8 by 26 feet. 
Thus the plan is essentially unsymmetrical, although the facade is sym- 
metrical in mass and a large window under a recessed arch at the left 
of the octagonal bay balances the entrance door at the right. Obviously 
Latrobe was fond of this particular design, for he drew it up with spe- 
cial care and presented it in one of his most exquisite small renderings. 

There is no indication as to the client for whom this small but delight- 
ful house was designed, yet perhaps a guess may be hazarded. In Rich- 
mond there was a small group of "octagon" houses. Before 1796, James 
Boyce had built himself, on East Leigh Street, a frame house with semi- 
octagonal ends which was later known as the MacFarlane house. Edmund 
Randolph, in 1800, had a rectangular house with semi-octagonal ends. 
Since the Edmund Randolphs were among Latrobe's close friends during 
his Virginia years, it would not have been strange for them to consult him 
about their building plans. Then, when they actually came to build, two 
years after Latrobe had left Richmond, the memory of that striking oc- 
tagonal feature in his sketch may have led them to adopt the octagonal 
ends in the house they finally built. If this building was not then handled 
by Latrobe, we have a possible reason why the Randolph name does not 
appear on the sketch in question. 

The collection also includes the design made in 1798 for Colonel John 
Harvie's Richmond house, later called Gamble Hill. It is a brilliantly 
planned formal residence with colonnaded one-story porches at the sides 
and long side wings. The wings were never built, and it may have been 
their omission that led to a quarrel between Harvie and Latrobe. Samuel 
Mordecai tells the story: "Col. Harvie wished to make some change in 



IO O LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

Latrobe's plan, to which the architect would not accede. They parted, the 
house stood unfinished for some time, when it passed into the hands of 
Colonel Robert Gamble . . . The Colonel finished it and occupied it for 
many years until his death." 2 Actually the "some time" was about a 
year, for the house was occupied in 1799. Over a decade later, after Robert 
Gamble's death, his son, apparently wishing to make some further changes 
or perhaps to complete the whole according to the original scheme, wrote 
Latrobe for the drawings; on March 28, 1811, Latrobe answered him, 
offering to have copies made. 

This Harvie-Gamble house, on Byrd Street between Third and Fourth 
and not far from the penitentiary, was on a hill that at the time com- 
manded a superb view over the James River valley. The plan shows a 
monumental entrance hall culminating at each end in semicircular niches. 
Behind are three beautiful living rooms en suite: at the left the dining 
room, 17 by 20 feet; in the center a drawing room, 20 by 25 feet, with a 
segmental projecting bay; at the right a parlor of the same size as the 
dining room. The kitchen was originally designed to be placed in the 
left-hand wing; when the wings were omitted it was probably put in the 
basement beneath the dining room, with service through the stair hall. 
Above, on the second floor, are three large bedrooms above the three 
main rooms, a dressing room, and a "gallery or ladies' drawing room" 
above the entrance hall. The whole is organized with a deceptive simplic- 
ity of arrangement that gives rise to noble and elegant interior volumes. 

On the exterior we find the expected simplicity. The building was de- 
signed to be of brick, stuccoed; a simple projecting band course marks 
the story divisions, and the upper windows, much shorter than the ones 
beneath, give a pleasant proportional harmony. There is a slight projec- 
tion to express the entrance hall and create a central motif. The delicate 
cornice consists of a simple bracketed gutter, and the hipped roof is 
broken only by the pediment over the central pavilion. For this house 
Latrobe had designed a broad and welcoming porch, with primitive 



2. In Virginia, Especially Richmond, in By-Gone Days, 2nd ed. (Richmond: West & 
Johnston, 1860), p. 97. See also Mary Wingfield Scott, Old Richmond Neighborhoods (Rich- 
mond: the author [ci95o]). Latrobe had a continuing interest in this part of Richmond, 
for he had won a lot adjoining the Harvie land in the famous Byrd lottery of 1797. He 
held it for a decade; then in 1807, when he was in dire need of cash, he wrote Orris 
Paine in Richmond (March 17) to sell it. Eventually it was purchased from Latrobe 
by Colonel Gamble himself. For octagonal houses, see Mary Wingfield Scott, Houses of Old 
Richmond (Richmond: Valentine Museum, 1941), pp. 54f. 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 



101 




In Library of Congress 

FIGURE 6. Harvie-Gamble House, Richmond. Plans. Redrawn from Latrobe's 
drawings. 

Greek Doric columns a favorite form with him which he used in Ham- 
merwood Lodge and in all the porches for these earlier American houses. 3 
Evidently that porch was never built; the actual porch shown in existing 
photographs, though of approximately equal breadth, was an undistin- 
guished and characterless intrusion on the pure clarity of the architect's 
conception. 



3. This favorite Doric order of Latrobe's seems to have been based originally on the 
"Temple" at Delos shown in volume in of James Stuart and Nicholas Revett's Antiquities of 
Athens originally published in 1794. It was also a favorite order of Revett in his few 
English works. Apparendy it never occurred to either of these architects that the omission 
of the fluting on the greater part of the shaft was merely an indication that the work had 
never been completed. 



102 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

In the collection is another study for a large, elaborate mansion which 
bears no date or identification. It shows a cross-shaped plan, one arm of 
which is a projecting semi-octagon containing a magnificent 30-foot oc- 
tagonal salon; in another wing there is a tremendous monumental stair- 
way that recalls the arrangement of Mill Hill, and in the center a dark 
niche-ended vestibule or hall. The other rooms on this floor the dining 
room and parlors are large and well planned, and upstairs the six bed- 
rooms open on a central domed hall lighted from above. It is all very 
handsome and somewhat overwhelming. 

Yet functionally the plan is hardly better than that of Mill Hill. The 
awkward entrance leading directly into the octagonal salon, the over- 
sized grand stairs, and above all the inconvenient service arrangements 
all indicate it was an early design. 

Also in the group and shown on the title page, in the clouds, with the 
other unbuilt projects, there is another design with a square plan and 
central lighting from above; it is labeled in faint pencil, "Mr. Tayloe's 
house in the Foederal City." It is interesting that at this time the archi- 
tect made a design for such a rabid Federalist as Tayloe; perhaps it was 
because of their basic difference in political ideals that the scheme was 
never carried out. Instead, when the time for actual construction came, 
Tayloe turned to a fellow Federalist, Dr. William Thornton, the first 
architect of the United States Capitol. The result was the famous Octagon, 
still standing at the corner of New York Avenue and Seventeenth Street, 
N.W. one of the most exquisite houses of its time and now the home 
of the American Institute of Architects. 

Latrobe's design, for a larger mansion than the Thornton scheme, is 
one of great originality. It has been drawn and rendered with loving 
care, as though for inclusion in his proposed publication, and the draw- 
ings include studies for all four sides of the large dining room, showing 
the furniture, the pictures, the decorations, and the beautiful triple win- 
dow at the end. At the four corners of the house, little square pavilions 
covered with curved roofs project. Between the two left-hand pavilions a 
service passage runs back to the garden and the service entrance; between 
the other two there is a Doric colonnade. The rear yard is treated with 
unusual care as a small garden with informal paths; on its axis is a three- 
arched, pedimented garden loggia which masks the stable wall; the 
stable door opens on the side street. There is one especially interesting 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 103 

feature a water closet over the service passage and opening from the 
second-floor hall. That the design is a fairly early one we may deduce 
from the fact that, in addition to this facility, carefully arranged privies 
are included in the garden and stable buildings at the rear. 

In the elevation the most unusual elements are the four projecting 
corner pavilions. Two later Philadelphia houses by Latrobe had such pa- 
vilions: Sedgeley, built in 1799; and the Wain house, 1805 to 1808. This 
repetition of a motif developed earlier is a common architectural habit 
of Latrobe's again and again he used a single idea in different designs 
until he had discovered and utilized all its possibilities. Also notable here 
is the fact that this design is one of the most highly developed of those 
with centralized plans and that the rooms, conveniently arranged, are 
placed around a two-story domed central hall, lighted by a cupola; pas- 
sage on the second floor is both by corridors outside the hall and by bal- 
conies within it. The third story rises as a square "ring" around a central 
open court, at the bottom of which is the dome and cupola over the hall. 
It is all brilliantly direct. 

Later Latrobe designed in Richmond another deep house with a cupola- 
lighted central hall, Clifton, built on Council Chamber Hill for Benjamin 
James Harris in 1808; the architect's beautiful perspective of it exists. 4 By 
this time he was living in Washington and his contacts with Virginia 
had been renewed. The front, like that of Mill Hill, has two semi- 
octagonal bays at the ends. Between them the broad wall is of compelling 
simplicity, with a single window in the center of the upper floor and a 
broad segmental-arched entrance motif below. Colonnades of three bays 
on each side lead to simple pedimented end pavilions; their small scale 
throws into exciting relief the commanding scale of the house itself. This 
central corps de logis is a deep structure; the ends show five full bays 
each, and to light the center there is a large domed cupola extending well 
above the roof. 

Clifton reveals Latrobe's delight in houses with compact, squarish plans 
and top-lighted halls, so unlike the long narrow plans of the usual Amer- 
ican house of his time. Even the Harvie-Gamble house and that for 
Dr. McClurg (discussed below) have greater depths in relation to their 
length than were common. The Pennock house was a perfect square of 
43 feet. The Harvie-Gamble house, excluding the side porticoes, had a 



4. See Scott, Old Richmond Neighborhoods. 



104 



LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 




ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 



105 




In Library of Congress 

FIGURE 7. Proposed House for Mr. Tayloe, Washington. Plans. Redrawn from 
Latrobe's drawings. 

depth of about 36 feet for a front of approximately 56 feet, and Clifton 
must have had a depth of nearly 50 feet. In large houses such depths 
bring in difficult problems of circulation and lighting, for both of which 
the central top-lighted rotunda is an obvious solution. Perhaps the desire 
for such a high interior may even have been a controlling aim in the 
development of the type. 

The two finest examples of this are the house for Senator John Pope in 
Lexington, Kentucky, 5 and Brentwood in Washington. The plan for the 
Pope house, made as late as 1811, is included with the other Virginia 
house drawings in the Library of Congress collection. It is less grand 
than his Tayloe design but perhaps more delightful, and if the building 
had been erected according to the architect's design it would have been 
the most unusual house west of the Alleghenies. Latrobe had great hopes 
for it and he produced several sketches of different arrangements, each 



5. See Clay Lancaster, "Latrobe and the John Pope House," Gazette des Beaux Arts, series 
6, vol. 29 (1946), April, pp. 213-24. 



I<>6 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

one of which was a signal to the Popes then in Washington to make 
additional suggestions, until they themselves were so confused they did 
not know where to turn. All their friends had different ideas, which 
they freely expressed; Latrobe finally wrote his clients (January 18, 1811) 
that "the more friends you consult, the further you will be from your 
project." By the end of the month, however, a plan had been settled on 
and drawings and a bill of scantlings (timber sizes) sent to the senator. 
On March i Latrobe himself wrote to Pope's builder, Asa Wilgus: 
". . . as I shall probably never see Mr. Pope's house, it is necessary that 
my house on paper & yours in solid work should go up exactly alike . . ." 

But, alas, for all Latrobe's care, Asa Wilgus must have been at heart a 
conservative, and Senator Pope was not strong enough to withstand his 
suggestions. The executed building which, much mutilated, still stands 
was quite different in appearance from what its architect had so care- 
fully drawn, although it preserved the original plan. Here, at last, La- 
trobe succeeded in introducing the English basement scheme that he had 
suggested unavailingly several times before. Entrance was in the center 
of the front, and a hall led into a central area from which the great 
stairs, well lighted by a large window in the side, ran up to the chief 
floor. On the other side of the central area was the service stair. The re- 
maining space on the ground floor was used for an office in front at the 
left, a parlor at the right, and at the rear the ample service quarters 
kitchen, wash and bake house, stores, and two rooms for servants. 

Above, the stairs brought one to the central domed hall, cupola-lighted 
a room of beautiful proportions with a great sense of space. Toward the 
front lay the drawing room (left) and the dining room (right), identical 
in shape and size, meeting in two large semicircular ends to give a little 
private "closet" at the front and a cleverly contrived niche in the circular 
hall. The dining room was served from the service stair through an 
ample, well-lighted butler's pantry; the service stair was continued up 
to the roof and was concealed by the mass of the large chimneys. The 
rear of the main floor contained three sizable bedrooms, two of them 
opening off a common vestibule. It was all most ingeniously contrived to 
give ample, beautifully shaped, and conveniently related rooms and to 
produce as well in the combination of large reception hall, drawing room, 
and dining room three volumes of a varied and almost monumental char- 
acter all in a nearly square house of relatively modest dimensions. It 
was one of the most tightly knit of all the Latrobe houses. 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 



107 




- ' I i , ip\ ' . i _. .--"- L 




In Library of Congress 
FIGURE 8. Senator Pope's House, Lexington, Ky. Latrobe's original plans. 



I0 8 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

The exterior, as the architect conceived it, was equally brilliant. He 
made two elevations, one of two stories and one of three; they are identi- 
cal except for their height. In both the ground floor was kept low, with 
windows of relatively broad proportions; the second floor the piano 
nobileby contrast was high and had very tall windows running down 
to the floor. Above, in the three-story scheme, the windows were broader 
and less high. In both schemes Latrobe's characteristically simple eaves 
treatment and a hipped roof, with heavy chimneys at the sides and a 
cupola at the center, completed facades of unusual breadth, serenity, and 
charm. 

For the entrance the architect had planned a broad low porch with 
solid brick end piers and two of his favorite primitive Greek Doric col- 
umns in amis, and over the windows he had indicated stone lintels sup- 
ported at the ends on resetted stone blocks. Neither this porch nor the 
lintels were included in the house as built, and even the proportions 
were destroyed by making all the windows the same in size. Thus, even 
without the subsequent mutilations that have resulted from the gradual 
transformation of a noble house to improvised modern apartments, the 
Pope house as built could never have been more than a sad caricature of 
what was intended. 

The best of these rotunda-type houses was Brentwood, near Washing- 
ton, built for Mayor Robert Brent in 1818 and destroyed only a few years 
ago. It stood on Seventh Street Northeast, not far from Capitol Hill, and 
its main axis was directed toward the Capitol dome. Fortunately it was 
well photographed and recorded. 6 Brentwood was more spread out than 
the houses just described, but its dominant element was still a large 
domed central salon, lighted by a cupola. Here this room no longer was 
a mere hall or distribution center but actually constituted the chief cen- 
tral reception or drawing room and formed an impressive setting for gay 
social gatherings. The front of the house was symmetrical, with a definite 
accent on centrality. It had a more formal composition than the other 
houses we have noted, for the walls carried cornices and an "attic" para- 
pet which concealed the gutters; evidently Latrobe was seeking a strong 
horizontal stress as a contrast to the accented centrality. Only the central 



6. See Harry Francis Cunningham, Joseph Arthur Younger, and J. Wilmer Smith, Meas- 
ured Drawings of Georgian Architecture in the District of Columbia (New York: Archi- 
tectural Book Publishing Co., 1914), and Joseph Arthur Younger, "Brentwood," in Archi- 
tecture, vol. 37, no. 3 (March, 1918), pp. 55-6, plates 59, 60. 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 



109 




9art Section, 
shwino stairs 




airs to rcoJL 





^ , 
(2-Siory Scheme) 

In Library of Congress 

FIGURE 9. Senator Pope's House, Lexington, Ky. Elevation and Part Section. Re- 
drawn from Latrobe's drawings. 



no 



LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 




PLAN I I /edT ? r t T l *T ELEVATION 

From Hamlin, Gree\ Revival Architecture in America 

FIGURE 10. Brentwood, Washington. Plans, Elevation, Section. 

portion of the house was two stories high, with two bedrooms in front 
and one behind the rotunda. The one-story wings contained, on the left, 
the dining room and service areas; on the right, a parlor, a drawing room, 
and an anteroom and two bedrooms en suite. These wings extended back 
of the main mass of the house to create a little symmetrical court, over- 
looked by a colonnaded porch and warmed by the eastern sun to make 
an ideal place for a flower garden. Corridors led back on either side from 
the entrance hall to the colonnade, and by means of wide doors the ro- 
tunda cross axis carried through into the drawing room at the right and 
on the other side penetrated the dining room. It was a superb composi- 
tion, full of subtleties generating varied, interesting, and composed in- 
terior vistas. 

After Latrobe left Richmond at the end of 1798 his connection with 
Richmond houses by no means ceased. There is, for instance, the fine 
house for Dr. James McClurg at Grace and Sixth streets. On April 16, 
1804, Latrobe writes the distinguished doctor, "I thank you sincerely for 
the confidence you have placed in me," and goes on to request certain 
particulars of the lot; in the meanwhile, he says, he will study the prob- 
lem as far as he can without them. The house was designed during the 
summer; obviously the information he needed had been forthcoming. 
No drawings of this house have thus far come to light and there is 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA III 

therefore no proof that the house Dr. McClurg erected in 1805 was built 
from Latrobe's design, although the beauty of the proportions suggests the 
possibility. Externally it was of a rather conventional five-bay type but 
so was Mr. Pennock's house. Certainly the spirit of the delicate cornice 
and the hipped roof might well have been Latrobe's, though the flat 
arches over the windows, with their exquisitely detailed keyblocks, look 
more like the work of a skilled local craftsman than like the simple win- 
dow penetrations or stone lintels preferred by the architect. If this house 
was built from Latrobe's plans it is unlikely that he superintended it, for 
he seems never to have returned to Richmond until the Burr trial in the 
summer of 1807. These arches, then, may have been additions which the 
builder considered necessary to complete the simple rectangular openings 
that were probably shown on the drawings. 7 

While he was working on the Pope house in 1811 Latrobe was also 
busy with another important residence in Virginia Long Branch for 
Robert Carter Burwell. 8 Burwell had considered building a house and 
apparently had been in contact with some unknown local builder-archi- 
tect, but on meeting Latrobe he suddenly realized that a real architect's 
advice might be helpful. Latrobe wrote him (April 26, 1811) : "Thank 
you for remembrance of our meeting at Mr. Page's. ... If your foun- 
dations are not yet laid ... I shall be happy to assist you." Two months 
later (July 6) he wrote again: "The plan you have enclosed is infinitely 
a better one than almost any other which I have seen adopted in Virginia, 
& the house would be a good one without any alteration." Yet here again 
we find him insisting on those qualities of privacy and of efficient serv- 
ice for which he always strove: "The great fault of your plan is want of 
private communication for your family . . . Your only staircase fronts 
the only external door. . . . Not a vessel, or nurse or servant can approach 
but through the hall . . . Another fault is that the dining room & cham- 



7. A photograph of the house is shown in Scott, Old Richmond Neighborhoods, supra. 
In it we see Latrobe's favorite band -course story division, but this was also frequent in 
buildings by others. In addition it shows a Greek Ionic porch, which Miss Scott feels is an 
addition of the Greek Revival 1830*5. Latrobe, however, had used the Greek Ionic in the 
Bank of Pennsylvania design as early as 1798, and there is at least a possibility that he used 
the same order for this house. 

8. Latrobe had been in touch two years earlier with another Burwell, Congressman Wil- 
liam Burwell, in connection with the design of a house; in a letter enclosing several letters 
of introduction to Philadelphia friends (June 30, 1809) he adds, "I will not forget your 
piazza." 



112 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

her are on the north side . . . How far are you advanced? ... Is it pos- 
sible to modify your plan ... I will immediately . . . take it regularly 
in hand . . . and send you my ideas in a drawing ... Is your house 
brick or stone?" Presumably Burwell's builder had already begun his 
work had perhaps laid the foundations or even started carrying up the 
external walls. Latrobe sent on his final drawings in the middle of Au- 
gust, 1811; apparently they went astray, for on October 31 he wrote that 
he was sending copies of the drawings by letter mail so that there would 
be less danger of loss. With this evidence as to Latrobe's work, we can 
now turn to the house itself, which still stands with little alteration save 
the introduction of much trim of later periods. 9 

Long Branch has two-story pedimented porticoes at front and rear, 
and the porch behind the front colonnade is recessed to give greater pro- 
tection and a greater sense of space. Obviously much of the plan may be 
due to Burwell's local builder-architect; almost four months went by 
from the time when Latrobe first heard of the project till the day when 
he first sent his drawings, and another two before copies of the drawings 
were forwarded and supposedly arrived. If construction was going on 
during this period, we may assume that at least the lower parts of all the 
exterior walls were well under way before Burwell received the archi- 
tect's designs. Moreover, Latrobe states twice his general approval of the 
original scheme; his objections were largely confined to the lack of suffi- 
cient privacy and efficient circulation. The basic mass of the house, then 
save perhaps its height would conform to the original foundations; we 
should look to Latrobe only for details, perhaps for the handling of the 
roof and the colonnades and for any internal plan variations to give bet- 
ter communication. 

The actual building bears this out. The house now has two exterior 
doors instead of the one Latrobe cites, yet the window widths and ar- 
rangements are almost completely "normal" and without any evidence of 
the broad concentrated wall surfaces and the tripled or otherwise unusual 
windows which the architect preferred. But the house has great distinc- 
tion. It has the usual thin projecting eaves treatment that Latrobe always 
chose in preference to the conventional classic cornice; it has a hipped 

9. I owe much of this information to Mr. Alexander Mackay-Smith, president of the 
Clarke County Historical Association, who generously sent me plans and photographs of the 
house. 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 113 

roof with a central railed deck, something like his treatment of Adena 
in Chillicothe, Ohio, to be considered later; and it has a delicate glazed 
cupola, which originally may have been intended to light the upper part 
of the stairs. 

Though now enclosed and much altered, there was a large open loggia 
facing the south at the end of the house proper and fronting the one- 
story flat-roofed wing. Its long south front at first consisted of four brick 
arches. There was a brick cornice above them, and the railing of the flat 
roof evidently was originally intended to have brick piers above the lower 
arcade piers, probably with simple panels of wood or iron railings be- 
tween; as seen today, however, either because the builder misunderstood 
the intention or through later changes, intermediate railing piers have 
been introduced and the railing panels omitted to produce queerly awk- 
ward pseudo battlements. The first intention is clear from the treatment 
still existing on the other side of the wing. 

The two great porticoes are a more serious problem in attribution, for 
they differ greatly in proportion and in spirit. The rear Doric portico is 
broad, with widely spaced columns; it reminds one slightly of the por- 
tico of Madison's Montpelier, near Charlottesville, the character of which 
is often credited to Jefferson's suggestions. The entrance portico, on the 
other hand, is much narrower and, with its recessed porch, in a sense 
more "architectural"; it uses Greek Ionic capitals. Actually, in relation 
to the plan, this difference between the two porticoes seems entirely nat- 
ural, even inevitable, and it may well be that it resulted from the adjust- 
ment of certain work already done to the plans Latrobe was making; it 
results in a marked variation in atmosphere that is not unattractive and 
may express merely the normal differences between an entrance and a 
garden front. 

In the plan the introduction of a second flight of service stairs, with 
the subdivisions dependent on it, is obviously Latrobe's. So, too, it would 
seem, is the planning of the entire central section the recessed porch, the 
ample vestibule, the curve-ended stair halland on the second floor the 
remarkably monumental treatment of the upper floor hall. In its basic 
space arrangements the whole bears a certain resemblance to the plan 
of the Harvie-Gamble house, though here at Long Branch the stair is in 
a different place and the solution is simpler in details. But it is the spirit 
of the whole- the development of beautifully related volumes, the sense 



LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 





Courtesy Alexander Mackay-Smith 

FIGURE ir. Burwell House, Long Branch, Clarke County, Va. From a measured 
drawing. 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 1 15 

of great designed space which in this case is particularly characteristic 
of Latrobe's architectural ideals. 

About 1845 Long Branch was almost completely retrimmed, and other 
alterations were made. The piazza-loggia was enclosed, square-headed 
windows completely different in proportion and pane size from the 
earlier windows in the house replaced the open arches, and it may be 
that the quaint but incongruous "battlement" treatment dates from this 
time. Apparently the entire main stair was reconstructed also, and Corin- 
thianesque Greek Revival columns of a common Lafever type supplanted 
the earlier supports. At present the effect is grand and harmonious in it- 
self, but it is not the strong yet delicate effect Latrobe would undoubtedly 
have sought. New mantels and door trims, all characteristic of the often 
heavy taste of the provincial late Greek Revival, were installed at the 
same time. Fortunately, however, in the southeast corner bedroom one 
of the original mantels remains the simplest kind of marble mantel, 
rather small in dimensions and of a type made in large numbers by the 
Traquair firm in Philadelphia. There is a low chair rail in the room, 
and all the walls above are covered by a superb French landscape paper 
which shows the elegance and the restrained lavishness that both Bur- 
well and Latrobe envisaged. Long Branch, as one of the few existing 
houses Latrobe is known to have designed, 10 is an important monument 
in American architecture. 

These houses are especially interesting as evidence of the way in which 
Latrobe's mind went about its creative task, through the repeated use of 
certain concepts both general and particular until their utmost possi- 
bilities had been exhausted. Thus we can see the earlier octagonal bays of 
the front of Mill Hill achieving an expression of complete and final per- 
fection in Clifton a decade later; we find the concept of a central or ro- 
tunda plan appearing in an embryonic form in the complicated and con- 
fused plan of Mill Hill and evolving gradually through the untitled 
sketch into the monumentality and command of the Tayloe design, the 
ingenious perfection of the design for Senator Pope, and at last the great 
salon of Brentwood. Similarly the overweening end stairs of Mill Hill 
receive a chastened expression in the untitled sketch and yield finally to 



10. Others are Adena, in Chillicothc; the Pope house in Lexington, today almost unrecog- 
nizable because of changes, mutilations, and additions; and the Decatur house in Wash- 
ington. 



Il6 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

the more functional and economic expressions o the later houses; just 
so, the apse-ended rooms of the Pope house are used in a much more re- 
fined and delicate manner in the drawing room and dining room of the 
design for the commandant's house at the Pittsburgh arsenal in 1814. 
And all of this impresses on one the extreme importance of the house 
for Captain William Pennock in Norfolk, Latrobe's first commission in 
the United States. It is a revolutionary work; in it so many of the quali- 
ties of his best later work already appear the curve-ended rooms, the 
efficient handling of the service requirements, the architectural harmonies 
of volumes of differing but related shapes and sizes, the originality of 
the stair and stair hall, the love for compact arrangements. It was his 
first American building, but it was also a declaration of independence 
alike from English house standards and from the American colonial con- 
ventions; the house was a masterpiece of usefulness disciplined and shaped 
into beauty. 

Also among the Library of Congress drawings are a plan and an ele- 
vation for an unknown church; there is no label or date. The church is 
long and narrow, with posts that seem to indicate a gallery. No stairs to 
the balcony are drawn, but apparently they were to have been placed in 
the towers that flank the porch, where there is space for them. The plan 
bears other evidences, too, of never having been completed. Since a cen- 
tral pulpit is shown, with an altar behind it, the church was probably 
Episcopalian. 

If the plan is remarkable in the fact that it reveals a wide and open 
interior entirely unlike the usual Wren-Gibbs types that had been popular 
in America, the elevation is even more startling. It shows a relatively 
low, wide front, with a porch recessed between low towers; two widely 
spaced columns of Latrobe's favorite primitive Greek Doric type here, 
however, made strangely slimsupport a horizontal entablature. There is 
no pediment or visible roof; only a Latin inscription, Deo Optimo 
Maximo, decorates the sober entablature. The towers square below and 
cylindrical above the entablature in a way presage those he was to em- 
ploy afterward in the Cathedral of Baltimore. They may owe something 
to his memory of St. Sulpice in Paris. The river seen at the right of the 
elevation suggests a Richmond site. It seems likely that this was a pre- 
liminary sketch for the rebuilding of Richmond's most famous Colonial 
church, St. John's, where Patrick Henry delivered his fiery "Give me 
liberty or give me death." The section of Richmond in which it was 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 117 

built was growing rapidly at the end of the eighteenth century, and 
there was considerable agitation in the parish for erecting a new and 
larger church. 11 

The second section of Latrobe's proposed publication of his works was 
evidently to contain his drawings for a theater, combined with assembly 
rooms and a hotel, for Richmond. This delightful design (already re- 
ferred to) strangely enough was completed less than a month before the 
old theater burned down in 1798. But the building itself was obviously 
beyond the resources of Richmond at the time and was never erected. 

Latrobe's design is remarkable for its time. The three parts are care- 
fully differentiated on the exterior, the assembly rooms and the hotel sec- 
tion being expressed as pedimented end pavilions and the theater front 
projecting in a bold sweep between them. Entrance to the hotel and to 
the assembly rooms is arranged separately on the two sides of the build- 
ing to permit the development of dignified entrance doors to each part 
without confusing the accent on the theater. The two sides, moreover, 
are treated differently to express the separate functions the hotel facade 
unmistakable with the small rectangular windows of its bedrooms, the 
assembly-room section distinguished by the tall arched windows of its 
great rooms. The entrances differ, too: the hotel has a wide, low, in- 
viting approach under a broad segmental arch; the assembly rooms are 
entered through a doorway of a more elegant and domestic character 
achieved by a simple semicircular arch with side- and fanlights. On both 
sides these approaches lead to the centrally located staircases, placed 
against the theater walls; it was probably Latrobe's intention to light the 
staircases from above with skylights. 

On the hotel side to the right of the theater the ground floor is oc- 
cupied chiefly by the great dining room and the public parlors, a coffee 
room, and sitting rooms; a coffee bar (on the coffee-room side of the en- 
trance) and a liquor bar (on the dining-room side) are most ingeniously 
combined with the entrance vestibule; the kitchen and service areas are 
in the basement. No office as such is indicated, but the entrance is well 
controlled from the bars on either side. The whole is far in advance of 
the usual taverns and hotels of its time in the beauty of its rooms and 
the privacy of its chambers. Its greatest lack seems to be the omission 
of any service stair running through completely from the basement serv- 



ii. I am grateful to Miss Mary Wingfield Scott, of Richmond, for this information. 



Il8 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

ice areas to all the floors, although this could easily have been furnished 
without appreciable changes in the plan. 

The chief feature of the assembly room section is the superb ballroom, 
52 by 26 feet, which occupies the left end of the principal floor. Charm- 
ingly proportioned cardrooms and supper rooms occupy the rest of this 
floor; beneath are the service rooms, more supper rooms, and three 
chambers; above are three more chambers. On this side a service stair 
gives completely private service to all floors. 

In these drawings Latrobe included an exquisitely rendered perspective 
of the ballroom which reveals graphically the beauty of its proportions, 
its scale, and its detail. Had the building been erected this would have 
been the outstanding American interior of its day. It is covered with a 
segmental plaster barrel vault with a semi-dome over the niche that 
ends the room and is lighted by a range of arched windows with mirror 
panels across on the opposite side; above the mirror panels rise rich but sim- 
ply detailed gilded reliefs like girandoles, patently of Adam inspiration. 
The walls have no cornices; instead there is a decorated band crowned 
by a single molding of rather flat profile, in excellent scale with the ribs 
of the arched ceiling. This drawing is particularly valuable, not only for 
its great beauty qua drawing but also because it is a rare expression of 
its maker's artistic ideals and of the influences that had played upon him. 
The Adam details are only such as had become the common vernacular 
of English architects of the 1790*5, and the whole effect is different in 
atmosphere from the average Adam interior; there is a certain direct 
clarity in the whole which has other than Adam implications. In fact, it 
bears a distinct resemblance to the Grand Subscription Room in Brooks's 
Club in London by Holland, which was opened in I788. 12 Latrobe had 
probably seen this room, for Brooks's was definitely a Whig or radical 
club and one to which Latrobe's political associations in London might 
well have brought him. Charles James Fox was a famous member and 
an intimate friend of Holland's and, as we have seen, an acquaintance 
and even a sort of patron of Latrobe a few years earlier. Memories of that 
clear, serene, yet lavish room in London were conceivably at the back 
of his mind when he laid out this exquisite drawing. 

Yet the Richmond ballroom is not a copy; it is a new creation. Though 



12. See Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland, 1745-1806 (London: Art and Technics, 1950), 
especially p. 19. 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 1 19 

it owes something to what Latrobe had known in London, the recollec- 
tions emerge re-created in accordance with Latrobe's own feeling for 
form and restraint and space. And the entire spirit of the exterior is as 
unlike Holland as can be imagined. Not a pilaster, not an excess mold- 
ing clouds the simplicity of the brick, and the cornice is reduced to a 
narrow fascia on the projecting eaves. Aside from a discreet use of sunken 
horizontal panels, there is only the simple strength of the plain rectangu- 
lar openings and the powerful recessed arches of the arcade which 
marches around the curved theater front. 

It is the theater itself that is the climax of the design. The brilliant 
use of intersecting circular curves to give greater depth to the boxes and 
the gallery opposite the stage and incidentally longer and roomier lob- 
bieswould appear to be unique at the time. Equally remarkable is the 
interior, which like the plan is apparently without precedent. The ceiling 
over the auditorium proper is a shallow half dome. On either side, the 
fronts of the stage boxes are brought out toward the center sufficiently 
to create a narrow vertical plane, and this is carried across from side to 
side as a low, paneled, segmental arch, with a slightly conical coffered 
ceiling behind over the forestage and running back to the proscenium 
opening. This ceiling and the fronts of the side boxes form the only 
architectural "proscenium arch," for the opening of the stage runs clear 
from one side to the other and the lunette beneath the segmental ceiling 
is filled with drapery probably intended to be a permanent valance 
gathered up to a great American eagle in the center. An examination of 
plates of late-eighteenth-century theaters in England, France, Germany, 
and Italy reveals not a single scheme of this type; only a decade or more 
later do the nearest approaches to such a simplicity of ceiling design, 
so visually satisfactory, so definitely focused on the stage, appear in Euro- 
pean examples. 13 Even Ledoux's famous theater for Aries has a colossal 
proscenium arch of heavily rusticated masonry. 

Both the stairs and the exits may be criticized. There is a separate 
staircase to the gallery (an early example of an almost uniform American 



13. Thus Smirke's Co vent Garden in London dates from 1808-9, and Benjamin Wyatt's 
Drury Lane was built in 1811-12. The typical French and Italian theaters of the time 
usually strove for some sort of domical or circular treatment of the auditorium ceiling, or 
else as in the theater at Versailles, by J. A. Gabriel for a heavily architectural prosce- 
nium. The earlier Drury Lane by Robert Adam (1773) had straight sides, a polygonal plan 
opposite the stage, and a flat painted ceiling. 



I2O LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

practice later), but the boxes can be approached only by stairs asymmet- 
rically and rather casually placed and, according to modern standards, in- 
adequate in size. The "pit" exit is also congested and bottlenecked; in a 
panic this theater would probably have been as lethal as the Richmond 
theater that was built (not by Latrobe) and destroyed by fire with such 
a tragic loss of life in December, 1811. Nevertheless, in form and elegant 
simplicity of treatment the entire composition is extraordinary and in 
advance of its time. Had it been built it would have given Richmond 
not only a ballroom the equal (except in size) of any in England but 
also a theater interior simpler, finer, and more distinguished as a unit 
than almost any standing anywhere in Europe in 1797. 

The drawings Latrobe made for this project are delightful. On the 
title page there is a genre picture representing, he notes, nearly all the 
theatrical properties of the current Richmond company of players, and 
on an incompleted contents page there is a charming headpiece quaintly 
entitled "Tragedy begging, and Farce snatching the mask from Com- 
edy." The sections of the theater itself are lively, not only because of the 
architecture they so graphically reveal but also because of the imaginative 
additions the architect made to give them scale a painter, standing 
on a complicated scaffold plank, most peculiarly supported, painting the 
box-front panel; men apparently beginning to drape the box fronts for 
some special occasion; two men carrying a ladder. And the stage set 
depicted within the proscenium is impressive the interior of a large 
primitive Greek Doric building looking out through columns to a dis- 
tant landscape. The antae of the building are represented with huge, 
outcurving concave capitals, and the whole has a deeply evocative atmos- 
phere the romance of the ancient, the greatness of scale of the monu- 
mental. It would be a great play and great acting that would be worthy 
of that set. 

The last great work of Latrobe's Virginia career, and in many ways 
the most important, was the Richmond penitentiary. Jefferson's deep in- 
terest in a more humane penology is well known, and it was fitting that 
just about the time of Latrobe's arrival in America the state of Virginia 
decided to build a new prison in which those ideals could be expressed. 
There was a competition for its design and on June 25, 1797 (as previ- 
ously noted), he was informed by the governor that his plan had been 
awarded the premium and that he had been appointed to design and 
supervise the construction of the prison. Early in the construction La- 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 121 

trobe moved to Quarrier's Court, at the foot of Seventh Street, on the 
canal bank, to be nearer the work; there he had both his office and his 
dwelling. In March, 1798, he made his first visit to Philadelphia men- 
tioned in the letter to Scandella cited in the preceding chapter chiefly, 
he writes the prison commissioner (March 5, 1798), to study the then 
famous Philadelphia vaulted prison; 14 from the summer of 1797 till his 
removal to Philadelphia the prison, slowly rising on a bluff overlooking 
the James, was his most compelling interest. 

Though altered and added to many times and long since replaced, for 
nearly a century the Richmond penitentiary was a prominent landmark 
which shows strikingly in many of the existing early views of the city. 15 
Furthermore, Latrobe's own drawings (perhaps those submitted in the 
original competition) still exist, and when M, Demetz and Abel Blouet 
were sent to the United States by the French government in 1835 to 
study the country's prisons, they carefully recorded the Richmond peni- 
tentiary as one of them; in their published report there is a rather 
sketchy perspective view and a carefully detailed plan. 16 Fortunately, 
therefore, we are able to gain a clear idea of Latrobe's complex building 
and to judge something of its fate in later years. 

In general there is a striking similarity between the structure shown 
on the Latrobe drawings and what the French visitors recorded. The 
scheme consists of a large semicircular court, the cells vaulted and in 
three stories forming the outer circumference; thus every cell door is 
equally visible from one point in the center. (In the plan there is no 
suggestion of color segregation.) The straight side of the semicircle is 
closed by a wall, with the keeper's residence at its center the point of 
maximum visibility. In front of this is a forecourt, closed at the sides with 



14. This letter is in the Dreer Collection at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I am 
grateful to Mr. Charles Peterson, of the National Park Service, for bringing it to my 
attention. 

For Jefferson's inspiration in his advanced prison design see Howard C. Rice, Jr., "A 
French Source of Jefferson's Plan for the Prison at Richmond," which reproduces the plan 
by P.-G. Bugniet for a solitary confinement prison in 1765, and also the other sections, 
"Early Prisons," "Latrobe Comes to Philadelphia, 1798," "Walnut Street Prison, 1774-75," 
and "Virginia Penitentiary, 1797," all in "American Notes," Journal of the Society of 
Architectural Historians, vol. 12, no. 4 (December, 1953). 

15. The last remnant, by then surrounded with later shops and cell blocks, was not 
removed till 1927. 

1 6. M. Demetz and Abel Blouet, Rapports a Monsieur Je Comte de Montalivct sur les 
penitenciers des fitats-Unis (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1837), pp. 42ff. 



I2 2 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

blocks of building containing at the left an infirmary for men and at the 
right a woman's prison and infirmary; a wall encloses this court at the 
front and is pierced by a capacious guardhouse, which provides entrance 
to the prison through a wide, low, semicircular arch of great expressive 
power. The drawings show lower-floor walls of rough polygonal stone, 
with brick above. All the windows are arched, some are set back in 
arched recesses, and there is the usual thin eaves cornice which Latrobe 
loved. The guardhouse has a flat roof, but all the other roofs are low in 
slope and either gabled or hipped. Accented pavilions mark the corners 
of the main court and the entrance court, and there is a cupola over the 
keeper's house. The whole forms a visual composition that perfectly ex- 
presses the plan and, through its long ranges of arcades, its heavy rough- 
stone lower walls, and the rather sinister power of the great semicircular 
entrance, seems to have just the character of combined severity and hu- 
manity that Jefferson's penology envisaged. 

Latrobe drew his plans for construction in two stages, the main court 
to be built first and the forecourt later. Apparently, however, the entire 
prison was erected at one and the same time according to the enlarged 
plan. The central buildingthe keeper's house was burned in 1823, and 
after the fire the keeper's residence was rebuilt over the guardhouse. The 
building accounts, preserved in the State Library of Virginia, definitely 
indicate this change. At this time, too, the wall between the two courts 
was eliminated to give the prisoners more space and to simplify super- 
vision. 

By the 1830'$, when Blouet drew his plan and view, many changes 
had been made. The state was then, Demetz reports, running the prison 
on a combination of the Pennsylvania solitary confinement system and 
the Auburn system of work in common. Also, the prison population 
had increased. 17 Large shops had been built behind the prison, and a 
new enclosure wall had been constructed around them. 

Some of the details of the Latrobe design are of special interest. Ven- 
tilation of the entire scheme was assured by substituting for one cell on 
each floor, on the main axis, an open barred arcade and by creating open, 
barred, arcaded loggias on the lower floors of the infirmary and women's 
prison wings. The cells were entered from cantilevered balconies around 

17. The prison was designed for a maximum of two hundred inmates. By 1820 the 
prison population had already exceeded that figure. 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 123 

the semicircle; stairs evidently of stone were placed conveniently on each 
side, with turnkeys' rooms controlling them on each floor. A certain num- 
ber of dark cells were provided for punishment purposes; instead of 
barred windows they had only crooked passages through the walls for 
ventilation. But, quite in line with the ideas of modern penology, Latrobe 
also furnished on each floor dormitories for three, five, or seven reformed 
prisoners to give them the advantage of some social converse. 

In the building as Demetz and Blouet found it there were primitive 
individual water closets in each cell. Latrobe's drawings show not these 
but carefully grouped privies, though it is possible that the obvious diffi- 
culties in supervision of the prisoners on their frequent trips outside the 
cells may have suggested the inclusion of the individual water closets at 
the time of construction. Blouet's plan reveals, too, that because of the 
increasing prisoner population all the old carefully placed stairs Latrobe 
had shown had been removed to give more cell space and had been super- 
seded by manifestly improvised wooden stairways in the court. 

The French prison experts found much to criticize in the Richmond 
penitentiary. They noted that not only the dark cells but real under- 
ground dungeons, dank and wet, were used for punishment; of the 
latter there is no trace in the Latrobe designs, and they undoubtedly were 
added later when Jefferson's noble ideals had been at least partly for- 
gotten. They reported that the cells were cold in winter with only 
wooden doors to the outside court air and that frozen hands and feet 
had occurred. No trace was found of Latrobe's dormitories; these had 
all been divided into cells. They objected to the fact that the cell win- 
dows overlooked the outside world and remarked that for this reason 
all the ground-floor cell windows had been blocked up except for a 
ventilation hole, so that these, too, were almost dark; and they criticized 
the close connection of the cells to the inner court. Objection was also 
taken to the character of the building, in that its exterior appearance 
lacked the "severity fitting to a prison." But here again Latrobe seems to 
have almost perfectly expressed the ideals which Jefferson had enunciated 
and which the state of Virginia in 1797 had sought to enshrine. For the 
cornerstone Latrobe himself composed the inscription, which is eloquent 
of those ideals: 18 



1 8. Manuscript journal, July 24, 1797. 



LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

The Legislature 

of the Commonwealth of Virginia 
having abolished the antient sanguinary criminal code 

The first stone of an Edifice 
The Monument of that Wisdom 
which should reform while it punishes the Criminal 

was laid on the 7th day of August 
in the year 1797, and of American Independence the 22nd 

by J n Wood Esq. Governor 
Gr. Master of Masons 

Council, Deputy, etc. 
Lodges No. 10-19 

As a building designed for such a purpose, the character of the Latrobe 
design seems almost perfect. There is a sense of enclosure; there is a 
single, solemn entrance; yet the ranked arcades and the scale of it all 
make one realize it is an enclosure for human beings. It is at the oppo- 
site extreme from the brutal rustication, the unbroken walls, the ironic 
false windows of George Dance's famous prison in London, which seems 
to groan, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." Like Jefferson's con- 
cepts, Latrobe's building emphasized instead hope and reform. 

As Latrobe designed it the building was a unique contribution to 
American architecture. It was the country's first large prison conceived 
architecturally. It embodied penological concepts that for their time were 
imaginative and advanced. And in its exterior of ranked arches, simple 
roofs, and stark entrance it can only be paralleled by some of the work 
of Claude Nicolas Ledoux. Memories of Ledoux's work in Paris might 
well have remained with him, to emerge re-formed and re-expressed 
in such of his designs as the Richmond theater and the penitentiary. 19 

Yet, despite the size of this important government commission, La- 
trobe's professional experience with it was not happy. He was embroiled 
in constant petty disputes. The superintendent in charge, Callis, ques- 
tioned his estimates and his certificates and complained that the center- 
ing for the great entrance arch was unduly costly. Latrobe was even com- 
pelled, over his own bitter protests, to cut one of his certificates for pay- 

19. For various early views of the prison see Alexander Wilbourne Weddell, Richmond, 
Virginia, in Old Prints, 1737-1887, published under the auspices of the Richmond Academy 
of Arts (Richmond [etc.] : Johnson, 1932). 



ARCHITECTURAL WORK IN VIRGINIA 125 

ment to the head carpenter, Shortis, by eleven pounds. (It is interesting 
to note that the building accounts at this date are in both pounds and 
dollars sometimes the one, sometimes the other thus complicating the 
architect's work.) And for all this he was grudgingly paid, for the state 
authorities refused to honor the agreement with him which they had al- 
ready made. 20 It was a dire portent a prophecy of much that lay ahead 
of him in his efforts to establish in America a strong architectural pro- 
fession, which alone could be depended on to give the young country a 
creative architecture worthy of its promise. He tells the story later in a 
long letter to his pupil, Robert Mills (July 12, 1806) , 21 in which he has 
been advising Mills with regard to the professional attitude he should 
take in connection with the design and construction of a proposed prison 
for South Carolina. Latrobe has particularly insisted on the necessity of 
a clear written arrangement covering the fee to be received for the work, 
and he goes on: 

Some years ago I resided in Virginia. My object was not to live by my pro- 
fession. The penitentiary law passed during that time. I was applied to for a 
design. No one there could have the same means of information as myself, for 
independently of my general professional character I had been surveyor of the 
police in the districts of London, & had not only erected the buildings belong- 
ing to that branch of the government of the metropolis but necessarily acquired 
a knowledge of all that others had done in the erection & improvement of 
prisons. My design was adopted. I stated the terms on which I would execute 
it, 5 p. cent on the expenditure. The Executive Counsel [sic] made no objec- 
tion. At the end of a year, when the work was considerably advanced, I re- 
quested a payment on account. I was directed to state my acct. I did so, but 
before I could present it, the individuals of the council with most of whom I 
was in habits of friendship, advised me not to adhere to my charge of 5 p. cent 
for it would not be allowed. After a great deal of most unpleasant wrangling, 
I was then* offered 1000 dollars or nothing for my services for 15 months in the 
actual direction of the work, & a salary for the future of 666.67$ p. annum. My 



20. It is significant that in the prison accounts as preserved there is not a single item 
dealing with the architect's fee. In other respects they are so complete even to vouchers 
for brick and timber and arch centerings that this absence cannot be accidental. Perhaps 
the commissioners were ashamed of then- actions. It is interesting to note that Colonel 
Harvie, for whom Latrobe designed the house mentioned earlier, supplied most of the 
brick (some of which came from England as ballast) and that Orris Paine, who later 
became a close friend of the architect, was the dealer from whom the lime was bought. 

21. See Appendix. 



126 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

actual expenses could not be defrayed by this sum, but my reputation was 
engaged, & after much most degrading negotiation, I was persuaded by several 
of my friends not to ruin the work by quitting it, but at all events to carry it 
on so far as to leave a proof of my talents and knowledge of the subject to my 
successors. I therefore continued in the service of the state, to my infinite det- 
riment, for another season, when I finally quitted it, disgusted & irritated at 
the treatment I received. The work was afterward continued by a very worthy 
man, a Millwright who has most materially injured the design by his altera- 
tions. Had I not been able to live independently of my profession, I must 
have starved in conducting this work. 

My subsequent experience of what is to be expected from public bodies has 
not differed from that which I gained in Virginia. . . . 

Thus this, his first public building in America, became for him a bitter 
professional frustration. Though that was the way architectural genius 
was welcomed in Virginia, would he not find Philadelphia more under- 
standing? 



CHAPTER 



Philadelphia at Last 



LATROBE all through his pleasant but not particularly profitable residence 
in Virginia had been gradually gaining the realization that his profes- 
sional future must be sought in Philadelphia. Of New England he had 
little direct knowledge; Boston in the 1790*5 was only on the threshold of 
its later economic and cultural growth. New York, too, which he was 
soon to know better, was but slowly climbing out of its wartime leth- 
argy and was still repairing the damages from its occupation by the British 
and the great fire of 1776. But Philadelphia, the capital of the United 
States in more ways than governmental, was the largest and wealthiest 
city in the country and the undoubted cultural center of the young na- 
tion. It was here that Volney and Scandella resided; it was here that a 
considerable group of refugees from the French Revolution were gath- 
ered; and Philadelphia moreover was the seat of the American Philo- 
sophical Society. 

After the warm but hardly intellectual hospitality of Virginia its citi- 
zens almost entirely devoted to farming, to politics and the law, and to 
gaming and drinking Latrobe must have craved a society more under- 
standing of both his scientific and his aesthetic interests. He had given 
Richmond of his best, yet this had been received only fragmentarily and 
with an almost total lack of appreciation. To Philadelphia he was also 
drawn by family ties; for his uncle Frederick Antes, of Revolutionary 
fame, was still alive and several members of his mother's family were 
important people in Pennsylvania. We find him writing in February, 
1798, the long, affectionate, and revealing letter to Dr. Scandella noted 
earlier. He sends with it designs he has made for a "hermitage*' for 
Volney; he only wishes that he could be close to such inspiring company: 

127 



128 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

There is nothing I so much desire as to make one of the garqons philosophes, 
who live harmoniously together under one roof et qui samusent a batir de$ 
chateaux d'Espagne. . . . 

We have at present here, a Mr. Palmer, with whom you dined at Caleb 
Lownes. He took it into his head that your name was Latrobe. I am willing 
to agree with the change, provided you let me have your head & your heart 
into the bargain. He is a plain sensible man, who has taken great pains to 
prepare his mind for cultivation by the eradication of prejudices. We are grown 
well acquainted without any introduction but the accidental discovery of his 
having seen you. Should he return to Philadelphia, I intend to accompany 
him. He informs me that it is the intention of the Quakers to erect a very 
large school, in which not only the rudiments of literature, but also a great 
variety of mechanical trades are to be taught. Such an institution would re- 
quire a building large enough to encourage me to remove to Philadelphia were 
I employed and liberally paid, that is, were I paid so much, that I could em- 
ploy all my personal income independent of my professional emoluments in 
my own way: Books, instruments, etc., etc. You would oblige me much by 
making an inquiry which you might feel yourself at liberty to do of Mr. 
Lownes. You see self interest will intrude itself into the intercourse of friend- 
ship, but believe me my wish to be nearer to you is so intimately connected 
with a wish to go to Philadelphia, that I scarce know how to separate them. 

Finally, in April, he left Richmond on his first visit to Philadelphia 
with the hope of becoming the architect of a new Quaker school there 
and also to study the prison. It proved a momentous step, for, although 
the plans for the school came to naught, the visit determined his future 
in many ways. He came to Philadelphia a man still almost unknown pro- 
fessionally, a widower lonely despite his Virginia friends, a man who 
notwithstanding his two years in the country still felt himself somehow 
an outsider, an observer for he had laid down few roots. Two years 
later, through his work in Philadelphia, he had acquired a wide reputa- 
tion as engineer and as architect, and he was on the verge of a happy 
marriage; no longer an outsider, he had become definitely a citizen of the 
United States, with a commitment entire and devoted. And he had begun 
to enter the business world, to put his capital to work, in ways that were 
to open out into strange fields. 

The Philadelphia he found in the spring of 1798 was in some respects 
a shock to him. It was there that the Federalist-democratic schism was 
most passionate; there "society" was controllingly anti-French and anti- 
liberal, and John Adams was feeding the fires by his violent attacks not 



PHILADELPHIA AT LAST 129 

only on the entire French nation but even on liberals like the scientist 
Dr. Priestley picking out Latrobe's friend Volney for a particularly 
virulent assault. Latrobe was acutely conscious of the tension. In his 
journal (April 19, 1798) after his return to Richmond he wrote: 

Political fanaticism was, during my residence at Philadelphia, at its acme. 
The communications from our envoys in Paris, the stories about XYZ and the 
lady, etc., were fresh upon the carpet. ... To be civilly received by the fash- 
ionable people, and to be invited to the President's, it is necessary to visit the 
British ambassador. To be on terms [of friendship(?)] with Chevalier d'Yrujo, 
or General Kosciusko even, is to be a marked democrat, unfit for the company 
of the lovers of order and good government. This I saw. Many of my Vir- 
ginia friends say I must be mistaken. 

But he saw truly. War with France seemed imminent; the Alien and 
Sedition Laws, passed that very year, only put the final governmental 
approval on a popular hysteria that lumped together all Frenchmen as 
atheists and murderers. The group of French refugees and American in- 
tellectuals who gathered at Moreau de St. Mery's famous bookshop were 
increasingly fearful and uncertain; they were all suspect. The bitterness 
of the Philadelphia Federalist press knew no bounds; the frivolity and 
maliciousness of its attacks must be read to be believed. The prevailing 
atmosphere of fear, hate, and hostility to anything new or liberal has not 
been matched again in the United States until recent years. Gallatin and 
Jefferson were pictured as devils, as almost treasonable, as men inimical 
to what today would be called the "American way." William Cobbett's 
Porcupines Gazette was but the most violent in its abuse and Cobbett 
could write. 

Latrobe, with his French name, was not spared, and even later when 
he had established himself in Philadelphia he was referred to with the 
manifest aim of denigration as a "French" engineer. Cobbett, of course, 
knew better than to assail him as French; but the fact that Latrobe had 
come from Richmond, where the democrats were strong, was enough 
to make him the target for a contemptuous note. On April 3, 1798, Por- 
cupine's Gazette carried the following taunt: 

At Sans-culotte Richmond, the metropolis of Negro-land, alias the Ancient 
Dominion, alias Virginia, there was, some time ago, a farce acted for the benefit 
of a girl by the name of Willems, whose awkward gait and gawky voice for- 
merly contributed to the ridicule of the people of Philadelphia. 



I^O LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

The farce was called the Apology; it was intended to satirize me and Mr. 
Alexander Hamilton (I am always put in good company), and some other 
friends of the federal Government. The thing is said to be the most detestably 
dull that ever was mouthed by strollers. The author is one La Trobe, the son 
of an old seditious dissenter; and I am informed that he is now employed in 
the erecting of a Penitentiary House, of which he is very likely to be the first 
tenant. 

In short, the farce was acted, and the very next night the playhouse was 
burnt downl I have not heard whether it was by lightning or not. 

This was only the first of the Federalist attacks upon him which were to 
endanger his prospects for many years to come. 

Yet in Philadelphia the foundations of his success were also laid. 
Among the letters of introduction he had brought with him was one to 
the president of the Bank of Pennsylvania, Samuel M. Fox. As they 
dined together, Fox told Latrobe of the bank's building prospects, and 
Latrobe made for him then and there a little sketch of what he thought 
would be suitable. Shortly after this, on April 17, he left Philadelphia 
and returned to Richmond, deeply disappointed, no doubt, at the failure 
of his Philadelphia hopes. 

In the course of this initial Philadelphia trip he made his first acquaint- 
ance with the United States Capitol, with which he was later to be so 
intimately connected. On his way from Richmond he passed through 
Washington; there he was introduced to Dr. William Thornton by their 
mutual acquaintance William McClure, and Thornton escorted him over 
the building as it then stood. On his return he stopped again in Wash- 
ington and wandered around the building by himself. Though he noted 
certain reservations, he was deeply impressed and jotted down in his 
journal (April 27, 1798) : "The Capitol in the federal city, though . . . 
it is faulty in external detail, is one of the first designs of modern times. 
As I shall receive a plan of it from either Dr. Thornton or Mr. Volney, 
I mean to devote a particular discussion to it at my leisure." Unfortu- 
nately there is no record of this "particular discussion" in the existing 
papers. 

At that time the external walls of the north (Senate) wing were com- 
plete, and much had been accomplished within. The area on the south 
was a maze of foundation walls, outlining the oval House of Representa- 
tives. In the central part the foundations were in an even more confused 
state, as a result of the controversies between Thornton and his assistant 



PHILADELPHIA AT LAST 13! 

Hallet about what the final plan was to be. Yet there was enough to 
make clear, to Latrobe's trained eye, the great size, the monumental plan, 
the daringly bold conception. 1 

The "faults" that Latrobe found in its exterior detail lay in the basically 
English Palladian treatment of its pilastered facade and the appearance 
of many touches of late Baroque detail, like the wreaths around the win- 
dows and the general pattern of the rustications and moldings. These 
were all in the Sir William Chambers veinfar indeed from the quiet 
surfaces, the restraint, and the power which Latrobe himself loved. Yet 
here was America making its boldest architectural statement, setting out 
in stone and mortar a striking expression of its faith; Latrobe admired 
the faith and the grandeur of the expression, though some of the terms 
seemed to him old-fashioned. 

Architecturally alert in Philadelphia too, he comments on the white 
marble columns of the First Bank of the United States (by Samuel 
Blodgett) which gleamed in new brilliance on Second Street: 

Talk to an Englishman of white marble columns . . . thirty feet high, and 
he is astonished at the magnificence of such columns. In London indeed such 
columns would not only be magnificent, but really valuable. ... As nine- 
tenths of our American, even our Virginian ideas and prejudices, are English, 
a very large proportion of the admiration . . . bestowed upon the said marble 
columns has been bestowed upon the material, white marble. Now it happens 
to be a fact that any other material besides white marble was not to be easily 
procured at Philadelphia. And so common is its use that the steps to the 
meanest house and cheeks to cellar doors are frequently made of it. ... 

The white marble columns of the bank are full of bluish and yellowish veins, 
but they have, notwithstanding, a very beautiful appearance. Sufficient atten- 
tion has not been paid to the successive heights of the blocks, nor are the joints 
level. The plain workmanship has been well executed. The sculpture is not 
good. 2 

One other building in Philadelphia impressed him with wonder more 
than admiration the mad huge house L'Enfant had designed for Robert 



1. See Wells Bennett and Fiske Kimball, "William Thornton and the Designs of the 
United States Capitol," Art Studies, vol. i (1923); Wells Bennett, "Stephen Hallet and 
His Designs for the United States Capitol, 1791-94," Journal of the American Institute of 
Architects, vol. 4 (1916), pp. 290-95, 324-30, 376-83, 411-18; Glenn Brown, History of 
the United States Capitol (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1900-1903). 

2. The Journal of Latrobe, with an introduction by J. H. B. Latrobe (New York: Apple- 
ton, 1905), pp. 83f. 



132 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

Morris, which stood unfinished as a result of its owner's bankruptcy. 
Fascinated, Latrobe writes: 

I went several times to the spot and gazed upon it with astonishment before 
I could form any conception o its composition. It singularly made me wish 
to make a drawing of it, but the very bad weather prevented me. It is impos- 
sible to decide which of the two is the madder, the architect or his employer. 
Both of them have been ruined by it. 

Either then or later, he made several sketches of its details and a general 
plan of its enormous exterior walls, nearly 120 by 60 feet; these, together 
with the existing engravings and the descriptions, explain his amaze- 
ment, A few of Latrobe's own devastating comments give an interesting 
picture both of the building and of his own taste: 

The windows ... are cased in white marble with mouldings, architraves, and 
sculpture mixed up in the oddest and most inelegant manner imaginable; all 
the proportions are bad, all the horizontal and perpendicular lines broken to 
pieces, the whole mass giving the idea of the reign of Louis XIII in France or 
James I in England. ... In the south front are two angle porches. The angle 
porches are irresistibly laughable things, and violently ugly. . . . There is a 
profusion of wretched sculpture. . . . The capitals of the columns are of the 

worst taste. They are a sort of composite and resemble those of at 

Rome, the production of the worst times of the art. 

Just as earlier he had been blind to the Early Renaissance of Silesia, so 
now he could feel nothing but astonishment and disgust at this almost 
surrealist unfinished pile which, had it been completed, would have been 
unique among American houses. 

His Philadelphia trip, therefore, was grist to his mill. He returned, to 
Richmond with new and wider visions of his adopted country, its build- 
ing materials, its architectural hopes and achievements. And in Wash- 
ington he had had his first glimpse of the city and the building that to- 
gether were to engross him for so many years of his still undreamed 
future. 

Seven months later, in November, he received a letter from Fox. La- 
trobe was informed that his design for the Bank of Pennsylvania had been 
approved, that he had been appointed architect, and that he should re- 
turn to Philadelphia as soon as possible because construction would begin 
immediately. Here, at last, was his great chance for the scheme he had 



PHILADELPHIA AT LAST 133 

sketched was revolutionary. Now Philadelphia would be able to judge 
what his capabilities really were; moreover, this opportunity came to him 
from solid citizens, highly placed both socially and financially. He hur- 
riedly made his plans and said farewell to his Virginia friends, and De- 
cember saw him at last ensconced in Philadelphia as the architect of the 
most important private building project of the day. 

Personally, however, there were serious gaps in the Philadelphia to 
which he returned, for the two friends to whose conversation he had 
most eagerly looked forward were no longer there; Volney and Scan- 
della were gone. Both had been frightened by the Alien and Sedition 
laws Volney especially, for he had been in constant correspondence with 
the French government; Scandella because he realized that, if President 
Adams had bitterly attacked as innocent a person as the famous Dr. 
Priestley, his own freedom (libertarian and radical that he was) might 
be in jeopardy. Volney had fled to France in the autumn. Scandella had 
gone to New York to seek ocean passage, but as he traversed the Jersey 
marshes on his way from Philadelphia, where yellow fever had been 
rampant that summer, he felt the dread symptoms. He arrived in New 
York desperately ill, tried in vain to get a room at the Tontine Coffee 
House, and was mercifully taken in by a Philadelphia acquaintance, 
Elihu Hubbard Smith, at his apartment in 45 Pine Street. There, in a 
strange city, he died on September 17. Four days later his hospitable 
friend followed him, struck down himself by the same disease. 3 

Yet an earlier acquaintance with these two brilliant foreigners contin- 
ued to be beneficial to Latrobe. It was to them that he had sent most of 
his observations on natural history and on geology, and it was probably 
through them that his scientific work came to the attention of the Amer- 
ican Philosophical Society. In the winter of 1798 he sent to the Society 
the first of his formal papers, "Memoir on the Sand Hills of Cape 
Henry." Its receipt is acknowledged in the Transactions of December 21 ; 
on December 27 it was reported as worthy of publication, and Latrobe 
agreed to furnish an etched illustration. Seven months later (July 19, 
1799) "Ben. Henry Latrobe, Engineer," was duly elected to full member- 
ship, and from then on, as long as he was in Philadelphia, he was a 
constant attendant at American Philosophical Society meetings. For two 
years, 1800 to 1802, he was on its council. He served on several impor- 

3. Harry R. Warfcl, Charles BrocJtfen Brown . . . (Gainesville, Fla.: University of 
Florida Press, 1949), pp. 118-22. 



134 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

tant committees and submitted a number o papers, notably one on the 
steam engine (May 20, 1803), his account of the descendants of Poca- 
hontas (February 18, 1803) mentioned earlier, and a paper "On Building 
Stone made use of in Washington" (February 20, 1807). Among these 
aristocrats of American learning Latrobe found his rightful place, and 
over a long period of professional confusion and financial worry his 
membership in the Society must have been to him a continual source of 
satisfaction; here at least his talents were fully appreciated. 

His first years in Philadelphia were busy and encouraging. His design 
of the Bank of Pennsylvania and the water system of Philadelphia estab- 
lished him as the most accomplished and imaginative of the architects and 
engineers in the United States. But this period after he moved to the city 
in 1798, a widower all but unknown save to the few to whom he had 
carried letters of introduction, brought him another advantage which in 
the long run may have been even more important. His personal charm, 
to which his life itself bears witness, won him rapidly the friendship and 
confidence of many of the most influential families in Philadelphia 
especially those who constituted the financial and commercial rather than 
the political elite. 

Meanwhile he was leading a professional life of frenzied activity. Sud- 
denly he found himself not only the architect of an expensive, monu- 
mental building the Bank of Pennsylvania but also the engineer in 
charge of the Philadelphia water supply; and other clients came, too. He 
had to set up an office and to arrange for the purchase of the steam en- 
gines and pumps for the water supply, and both of these undertakings 
had eventful consequences. He employed in his office several persons 
who were to be important to him some disastrously. Frederick Graff 
(1774-1 847),* the engineer who became famous later on his own account, 
was at the beginning his clerk of the works on the bank and later the 
chief draftsman on the waterworks, receiving there a basic engineering 
training of the greatest value to him and to the country. A Frenchman, 
Breillat, is also mentioned as a draftsman at this time. But perhaps the 
most useful member of his staff was the draftsman Adam Traquair, the 
son of a well-known Philadelphia sculptor and marble worker, James 
Traquair, who sold busts of famous Americans on an almost mass-pro- 

,4. His grandfather, Jacob Graft came to Philadelphia from Hildesheim in 1741 and 
ran a brickyard. Jacob Graff, Jr., Frederick's father, was a builder. 



PHILADELPHIA AT LAST 135 

duction basis, employing several young sculptors in the process; the fa- 
ther also made marble mantels, as his son did after him, and from the 
Traquairs the architect later obtained many of the mantelpieces for the 
Capitol and the Presidents House. Latrobe retained a close friendship 
with this employee long after they had separated, and when Latrobe 
moved to Washington Traquair remained a faithful agent to watch over 
his interests in Philadelphia. Lastly, Latrobe employed as his clerk one 
John Barber, in whom he reposed an unwarranted confidence. In the 
summer of 1800, when the architect was away on his wedding trip, 
Barber absconded, taking with him a considerable sum of money and all 
ti *. most valuable office and personal papers. He was never captured; he 
simply vanished. And this loss was a catastrophe. Exactly what the 
papers were it is impossible to say, but their removal involved Latrobe 
in untold anxiety, much threatened litigation, and actual money losses of 
several thousand dollars. It was a bitter blow. 

Some of this trouble was probably connected with the confused prob- 
lem of the waterworks financing. But if the waterworks job brought 
worry with it, it also brought valuable contacts. Latrobe's scheme was 
based on the use of two large steam-driven pumps. There was but one 
source for such pumps Nicholas Roosevelt, the extraordinary New York 
inventor, promoter, and charming gentleman, who at that time was the 
only steam-engine builder of any consequence in the country. Latrobe 
therefore set out for New York to see him, in the bright October days 
of 1799; we can follow his course through sketches he made en route. 
He went through Scotch Plains and Springfield on October 16; two days 
later he was making sketches of the Falls of the Passaic, fascinated not 
only by the grandeur of the natural scenery the vertical crags and the 
rushing water but also by the evidences of L'Enfant's work there, for 
the French architect had built a powder magazine in a cave (which La- 
trobe sketched), had developed a grandiose scheme for diverting the 
stream and constructing a canal, and had also prepared a plan for the 
city. Latrobe tried to find the remaining fragments of the abandoned 
scheme. From there he went to Laurel Hill, Roosevelt's place near 
Newark, to Roosevelt's engine plant the Soho Works, named after the 
Boulton & Watt factory in England at Belleville, New Jersey, and then 
on to New York. Before he returned the two men had drawn up and 
signed a contract for the engines; but, still more important, Latrobe had 



LAraOBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

gained a new friendundoubtedly his most intimate associate in all the 
early American years. 

Nicholas Roosevelt remains a baffling and fascinating personality. He 
was born in New York in 1767, the son of Jacobus, a prosperous gold- 
smith, and his early acquaintance with metals and the techniques of 
working them contributed not a little to his future career. But goldsmith- 
ing itself was too tame a career for him. He received an excellent gen- 
eral education and showed his delight in machinery even as a child; dur- 
ing the British occupation of New York, when the Roosevelts were liv- 
ing at Esopus, he claimed to have made a model boat operated by spring- 
driven paddle wheels. 5 Later he secured a patent on the use of paddle 
wheels for steamboats, but it was never tested in court. As a young man 
he had gone into the manufacture of steam engines in partnership with 
J. Smallman, an English-trained engineer for many years a foreman for 
Boulton & Watt, and by the time of Latrobe's visit he was acknowledged 
as the master engine builder in the country; only later was his supremacy 
to be challenged by Oliver Evans of Philadelphia and others. 6 Engine 
building, however, was but one of Roosevelt's interests. He became a 
speculator in land and in mineral resources; he had enormous paper assets 
and great actual debts. With a partner, Jacob Mark (or Marks), he tried 
in 1797 to obtain from Congress a monopoly in copper prospecting and 
mining in the United States, and in 1799 he was the proprietor of the 
famous Schuyler copper mine on the Passaic River in New Jersey a mine 
that could be worked only because it was kept water-free by a steam 
pump which he had built. 

Through his wide speculations and his reputation as an inventor, 
Roosevelt had become closely associated with Robert R. Livingston, "the 
Chancellor," and together, in 1797, they worked on the application of 
steam power to boats. Their first model, constructed in 1798, refused to 
run at a practical speed; it had an elaborate system of propulsion (de- 
vised by Livingston) consisting of a submerged box into which water 



5. In an affidavit attached to his patent application, reprinted in John H. B. Latrobe's 
A Lost Chapter in the History of the Steamboat, Fund Publication 5 (Baltimore: Maryland 
Historical Society, 1871). The experiment was made near the house of Joseph Oosterhaudt, 
"four miles above Esopus." 

. 6. Steam engines of a crude type had become fairly common in the United States by 
1790, especially for pumping. -The greater number were imported. See J. Leander Bishop, 
A History of American Manufacture from 1608 to 1860 (Philadelphia: Young; London: 
Sampson Low & Co., 1864). 



PHILADELPHIA AT LAST 137 

was to be received from ahead and ejected aft by means of steam-driven 
horizontal water wheels. Roosevelt tried to get Livingston to adopt his 
system of side paddle wheels, but Livingston, who was furnishing the 
money, refused. Finally, years later, Fulton came into the picture, and 
it is claimed that Livingston conveyed to him the idea of the Roosevelt 
side wheels; he used these to propel the Clermont? Livingston, Roosevelt, 
Stevens, and Fulton were all "in" on these early steamboat efforts, some- 
times in close co-operation, sometimes in open hostility. 

Into this net of crisscrossing interests Latrobe, through his friendship 
with Roosevelt, was eventually drawn, just as, almost from the begin- 
ning, he was drawn into the tangle of Roosevelt's confused and optimis- 
tic financial concerns. One instance of this occurred when Philadelphia 
wanted some surety that Roosevelt would complete his contract for the 
waterworks engines. To use engines was revolutionary enough, but what 
if Roosevelt defaulted on his contract through accident, bankruptcy, or 
the plain visionary character of the scheme?. When Roosevelt offered his 
lease on the Schuyler copper mine as his bond, the Councils the two 
governing bodies that together ruled Philadelphia were still hesitant, 
because the mine was not then being worked. Latrobe reported favorably 
on the mine and a year later enlarged his report into a pamphlet, Amer- 
ican Coffer Mines (1800), addressed to the Committee of Commerce 
and Manufactures of the United States Congress, in support of a petition 
by Roosevelt and his associates (probably Staudinger, an English-trained 
engineer, Smallman, and Jacob Mark) for an act of incorporation of a 
mine and metal company. Then, too, in 1797 Congress had authorized 
the building of a number of large warships the "74*5" to be as heavily 
armed and well built as the best that England or France could construct. 
They were to have coppered bottoms, and Roosevelt had received the 
order for the sheet copper. Here also Latrobe later found himself dis- 
astrously involved, for he had freely signed notes for large amounts in 
connection with prepayments to Roosevelt. 

Yet at the time of their first meeting all was glowing hope; the pros- 
pects of future demands for the services of both men seemed boundless. 
Steam was to conquer the world, American copper was to supersede 



7. The fascinating story of the development of the steamboat is interestingly and color- 
fully told by James Thomas Fiexner in Steamboats Come True . . . (New York: Viking, 
1944). For Roosevelt's patent on paddle wheels, another extraordinary story, see the "lost 
chapter" on the steamboat by John H. B. Latrobe cited in footnote 6. 



138 LAXROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

English copper, the prosperity of the new country was to be expressed 
in numberless beautiful buildings and great engineering schemes. The 
future was rosy. 

And more than this common faith drew the two young men (Latrobe 
was thirty-four and Roosevelt thirty-one) together. Both were mercurial, 
emotional, optimistic. Both had a need for affection that their ordinary 
business associates could not satisfy. Both were brilliantly imaginative, 
and both had felt that crushing sense of frustration or despair which 
comes when the brightest visions, the greatest talents, and the widest gen- 
erosities are received with misunderstanding, scorn, or open hostility. For 
years they remained the closest of friends, and Latrobe's letters even 
when sharply critical of his friend's unwisdom or impracticality -usually 
end with the warmest, least conventional subscripts. 8 

The year 1798 brought to Latrobe another acquaintance who was to be 
of fateful importance to himJustus Erich Bollmann (1769-1821), known 
in America as Eric Bollman, whose track we have already crossed. Boll- 
man had been Mme de StaePs agent in helping to get her little band of 
refugees out of France and to safety in England in 1792. Then, two years 
later, after he had traveled widely around Germany and Austria, osten- 
sibly on business but probably in the interests of French refugees, came 
his audacious, vain, but so nearly successful attempt (November 5, 1794) 
to liberate Lafayette from his Austrian prison at Olmutz. He and his 
colleague Francis Kinloch Huger of South Carolina, whom he had met 
in Vienna, were both arrested but set free in July, 1795. Most of the 
money for this extraordinary coup had come from Americans, through a 
Mr. and Mrs. Church in London. After the failure of the scheme it was 
natural for Bollman to think of coming to the United States, where his 
attempt to free the famous friend of America would, he thought, guar- 
antee him a brilliant future. As a German compatriot said of him, on 
meeting him in London, he "is an amiable man, possessing imagination, 
and is very clever, but he is light-hearted and not accustomed to work 
continuously." Bollman sailed for America in October, 1795, and arrived 
in New York on New Year's Day, 1796. There he met Roosevelt, became 
interested in his steam engines, and then proceeded to Philadelphia. He 



8. Two characteristic examples: "In the meantime, if there is anything certain under 
heaven, it is that you hold the first place in our esteem, good opinion, & friendship. Mrs. 
Latrobe joins in affectionate respect with yours, B. H. Latrobe" (December 17, 1804); 
"Heaven bless you my dear friend, Yours affectionately, B. H. Latrobe" (July i, 1805). 



PHILADELPHIA AT LAST 139 

had a letter to Alexander Hamilton, who sent him on to Mount Vernon; 
here he found young Lafayette solicitous that something more be done 
to aid his imprisoned father, and apparently Bollman pressed the matter. 
Washington himself was prophetically suspicious of him from the begin- 
ning and wrote Hamilton (May 8, 1796) that Bollman "will be found 
a troublesome guest among us." 9 

We do not know when Latrobe first met Bollman; it may even have 
been in London, in 1792, when Bollman was staying there with Talley- 
rand, or possibly it was in Virginia in 1796 or 1797. The first definite 
news we have of him in the existing Latrobe papers is in the summer of 
1799, and it reveals them as already good friends. There was yellow fever 
in Philadelphia again that summer not so devastating a scourge as the 
year before but violent enough to send many out of town. Among those 
who left were Bollman and Latrobe, who joined in taking a house (or 
part of a house) together in near-by Germantown. When they left it at 
the beginning of October, there was a dispute about the rent with the 
landlord, Creider; they refused to pay the total, and Creider kept La- 
trobe's horse as security. Bollman, who evidently felt in some way respon- 
sible, contrived somehow to get hold of the horse (he was always a be- 
liever in direct action) and returned it to Latrobe. Creider sued La- 
trobe for its value, and the suit dragged on for almost a decade. Nearly 
nine years later Latrobe wrote to Thomas Ross, his lawyer in Philadelphia 
(January 9, 1808): "I never dreamed that Creider's old affair was yet 
alive. It is now near 9 years ago, & all the witnesses are dead and absent; 
or worse than either. My servant is dead. Bollman is God knows where. 
Bollman is going to the Devil [this was after Bollman's involvement in 
the Burr conspiracy]. The constable who replevined [the horse] was dead 
drunk, and almost killed the horse in riding him home. ... I can only 
beg you to accommodate the matter as much as possible for my interest." 
Bollman seemed to have a genius for involving his friends and associates 
in difficulties, yet so great was his charm that he succeeded in winning 
back the friendship of almost all those he had innocently or carelessly 
wronged. 

In 1799 Bollman was still at the summit of his American career. With 
his brother Ludwig (or Lewis) he had opened a wide-spreading export- 



9. Fritz Redlich, Eric Bottmann and Studies in Banking, in the series Essays in American 
Economic History (New York: Steciiert [01944]). 



;M O LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

import house with notable correspondents abroad; in England, for ex- 
ample, it was the famous house of Baring which backed them, and in 
Germany they had friends of equal importance. Their business flourished, 
and they broadened it recklessly. This was during the English-French 
war, when American shipowners and businessmen were piling up for- 
tunes as neutral traders. The Bollmans bought in Germany and sold in 
England or the United States; they bought in England and sold on the 
Continent or in America. This three-sided trade collected fat profits at 
each apex of the triangle, and to the adventurous Bollmans every profit 
gained was the signal for more extensive speculative plunges. While this 
neutral trade lasted the firm was opulent, but when the Peace of Amiens 
was signed in 1802 the bottom fell out and the firm crashed in a spectac- 
ular bankruptcy that involved even Latrobe, as we shall see. 

One other acquaintance Latrobe made in these early years with 
Charles Willson Peale was significant, for the Peales painted the two 
best portraits of Latrobe that we possess. 10 Moreover, just as in the case of 
Roosevelt though on a less emotional level in Peale Latrobe found a 
man with many characteristics like his own. Both were artist-scientists; 
both were deeply curious about natural phenomena and at the same time 
devoted to the aesthetically creative. Both, like Jefferson, were excited by 
the new possibilities that invention offered for increasing efficiency, for 
making processes easier. From machines for taking silhouettes to devices 
for excavating and handling a mammoth's skeleton, and to arrangements 
for projecting changing lights on moving scenes, Peale's restless mind 
wandered, taking suggestions, improving upon them, and developing 
them into instruments of practical usefulness. Among the devices he de- 
veloped, probably the most important was the polygraph. This was a 
highly organized kind of pantograph arranged so that copies replicas 
of letters and documents could be made at the same time that the origi- 
nal was being written. It had first been devised by an English inventor, 
Harrington, a visitor to Philadelphia, but it was refined, popularized, and 
sold by Peale. Over a period of years Peale was at work improving the 
first crude models and welcoming suggestions from its users. Latrobe 
was one of the first owners of the polygraph, obtaining it apparently in 



io. The earlier, probably painted in Philadelphia between 1800 and 1805, and possibly 
a wedding portrait, was by Charles Willson Peale. The later, which shows a much more 
mature face the face of one who has suffered much and may date from 1816, has been 
attributed to Rembrandt Peale by the elder Peale's biographer, Charles Sellers. 



PHILADELPHIA AT LAST 14! 

September, 1803; it was through Latrobe that Jefferson obtained his own, 
and it is partly because o the polygraph that we now possess such full 
records of the correspondence of both men. 

Thus the early Philadelphia years of Latrobe were immensely reward- 
ing to him. By the end of this period he had close friends in the worlds 
of finance, of invention, and of art. He was a Fellow of the American 
Philosophical Society. His charm, his knowledge, the wide scope of his 
mind these were all becoming ever more widely appreciated. And in 
Nicholas Roosevelt he had found his first really intimate American friend 
a man who for years was to be closely associated with him and was to 
bring him much happiness and much pain in the time to come. 

But a still more important relationship dates from this period a rela- 
tionship that made his hardships tolerable and his triumphs doubly worth 
while for he found the perfect wife. 

Among the important families he had met were the Hazlehursts. Isaac 
Hazlehurst and his brother Robert had a general mercantile business 
export, import, and credit. The brothers had come from Manchester, 
England, where Isaac was born in 1742 and Robert in 1754. How Latrobe 
met them is unknown; it was very likely through Samuel Fox. Isaac had 
prospered in the import and export business he had set up in Philadel- 
phia and had accumulated a sizable capital. When Latrobe became ac- 
quainted with him, he was less rich than he had been; for in the Revolu- 
tion he had been a patriot, to his cost. As a close friend and associate of 
Robert Morris, he had thrown into the struggle the greater part of his 
funds and had been one of the signers of Colonial notes. Robert Morris 
had crashed in a disastrous bankruptcy, and his fall had brought hard- 
ship, failure, and poverty to his associates, Isaac Hazlehurst among them. 
But the Hazlehursts rose supreme over the troubles; their strong com- 
mercial connections with the other states especially South Carolina, 
where Robert and his son had settled as well as with European exporters 
saved them from bankruptcy. Isaac and his family could still live a life 
of gentlemanly comfort, and he maintained not only a large house in 
Philadelphia but also a more than comfortable estate, Clover Hill, across 
the Delaware at Mount Holly, New Jersey. 11 With all the Hazlehursts 
Latrobe was soon on terms of close intimacy. 



ii. On February 27, 1769, Isaac had married Joanna (or Juliana, as she was more 
frequently called) Purviance (1741-1804), of a fine Philadelphia family; their son Andrew 



!42 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

Mary Elizabeth Hazlehurst (1771-1841) was the daughter of Isaac 
Hazlehurst, and between her and the young architect a growing affection 
sprang up and ripened. During 1799, one gathers, much of his leisure 
was spent with the family, and Mary and he gradually grew more and 
more attached, while her father and Latrobe developed a mutual respect 
and affection that made their relationship much closer than the usual one 
between a son and father-in-law. Finally the couple were married on 
May 2, 1800, at the father's Philadelphia house, by the Right Reverend 
Dr. White, the Episcopal bishop. The marriage was obviously as warmly 
welcomed by all the Hazlehursts as by the bride and groom themselves. 

It is impossible to stress too strongly the importance of this event and 
its consequences. The pair seem to have been ideally fitted for each 
other. Mary was the architect's constant helper, his constant inspiration; 
she understood him as few others did knew his moods of elation and 
of depression, understood the strains behind his occasional outbreaks of 
tactless directness, and gave herself heartily and wholly to being his 
"helpmeet" in the fine old sense, his companion, and his love. 

This was not the easiest of lifetime tasks for a woman to assume. The 
wife of any artist has a difficult time under the best of circumstances, and 
here was an artist of the greatest creative talent who was also profession- 
ally a revolutionary and was trying to establish architecture as a high and 
respected profession in a country which still thought of building largely 
in terms of the contractor-designer a country widely permeated with a 
kind of basic anti-aestheticism. John Adams had well expressed this 
trend; he dreaded the time when Americans would become interested in 
the fine arts. 12 Yet only a few years after Adams's presidency we find La- 



married his Baltimore cousin Frances Purviance, who was the daughter of Robert Purviance, 
Collector of the Port of Baltimore. The other children were Robert, Samuel, John, Richard, 
Isaac, and a daughter, Mary Elizabeth. 

12. Adams's letters to his wife see Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife 
Abigail Adams . . . (New York: Kurd and Houghton,' 1876) often give expression to 
this feeling. Examples include the following: 

In 1778 (p. 334): "My dear countrymen! how shall I persuade you to avoid the plague 
of Europe! Luxury has as many and as bewitching charms on your side of the ocean as 
on this; and luxury, wherever she goes, effaces from human nature the image of the 
Divinity. If I had power I would forever banish and exclude from America all gold, 
silver, precious stones, alabaster, marble, silk, velvet, and lace.** 

In 1780 (p. 381), after a walk through the gardens of Versailles: "It is not indeed 
the fine arts which our country requires; the useful, the mechanic arts are those which 
we have occasion for in a young country as yet simple and not far advanced in luxury, 



PHILADELPHIA AT LAST 143 

trobe pleading for and winning sculpture for the United States Capitol. 
Politically and socially Latrobe cherished firmly held ideas often un- 
popular ones and he was a man who had already been immersed in 
bitter controversy and was destined to be so enmeshed all his life. Here, 
too, was an artist and a scholar of the broadest capacity, a linguist, a man 
who was at least a theoretical musician and one who knew Hebrew, 
Greek, Latin, and most of the important western European languages. 
His was a cultural equipment that few in America could share, and this 
contributed to the feeling of isolation he had experienced. All of that 
feeling disappeared in the complete companionship that grew up be- 
tween him and Mary Hazlehurst. 

Physically, too, Latrobe needed the kind of home center and the kind 
of care that only marriage could offer. Tall and muscularly powerful 
though he was, he was never a robust person. He was subject to and 
periodically incapacitated by attacks of nervous indigestion and the vari- 
ous malarial fevers going around. A glutton for work, he was almost 
destroyed by overwork. At the death of his first wife he had had a serious 
nervous breakdown; later, when the Fulton-Livingston-Roosevelt-Latrobe 
steamship partnership collapsed in Pittsburgh in 1815, he had another al- 
most like it he became listless, could not concentrate, could not even 
read. It was Mary who rescued him then, with what sympathy and under- 
standing only the imagination can picture. It was she who wrote to ac- 
quaintances in Washington, without her husband's knowledge; it was 
she who roused his friends to procure his second appointment as archi- 
tect of the Capitol, and with this his spirits rose and he went on, again 
triumphant. 

Nor was her value merely that of nurse and friend and lover. Socially 
as well she was an enormous asset. Brought up in the best Philadelphia 
society, she knew the ways of the great world of her time. She had an 
excellent singing voice, in talk she was warm and witty, and her con- 
versation formed an admirable complement to his more exuberant and 
imaginative discourse. Later, in Washington, their house became one of 



although perhaps much too far for her age and character. . . . My sons ought to study 
mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, 
commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, 
music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." 

Adams's implied concept of the fine arts as unnecessary luxuries is characteristic. I owe 
this reference to Mr. Wayne Andrews of the New-York Historical Society. 



I44 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

the well-known salons of its time, largely through Mary's magnetic pres- 
ence and her social skill. 

On the eve of his marriage Latrobe had taken and furnished a house 
in Philadelphia, but Isaac Hazlehurst and his wife were loath to part 
with their daughter and for six months the young people lived with the 
Hazlehursts at Clover Hill. On their wedding trip they went to New 
York; altogether they were gone almost six weeks. On the way they 
visited Newark, where at the Roosevelt home, Laurel Hill, Latrobe in- 
troduced his bride to his closest friend. They went on to Paterson 
(May 28, 1800) and he showed her the thrilling sight of the Falls of 
the Passaic. We know they were in New York on the fourth of June, 
and from there they visited Gouverneur Morris at Morrisania. After an- 
other short stay with Nicholas Roosevelt at Laurel Hill, they returned 
to Philadelphia on June 14, for two weeks, and then rejoined the Hazle- 
hursts at Clover Hill on the first of July. It was an exciting and reward- 
ing trip for both bride and groom. She for the first time traveled away 
from her family and was warmly welcomed at Laurel Hill and elsewhere. 
He had the personal joy of being a tender and enthusiastic guide and the 
professional satisfaction of seeing Roosevelt's great engines for the Phila- 
delphia waterworks well under way. Then the Latrobes had the pleasure 
of two weeks alone in Philadelphia (probably at the house he had taken 
for them), savoring their life together as he worked hard at the Bank 
of Pennsylvania drawings and the details of the waterworks. 

His wife early appreciated that there was a lingering gap in the com- 
pleteness of her husband's life. His two children, Lydia and Henry, were 
still in England and it had been more than four years since he had seen 
them. She insisted that they be brought over as soon as possible in 
fact, she had made this a condition of their marriage. It was a daring 
and a generous impulse, and the necessary preliminary steps must have 
been taken at once, for mail to England was slow and passages back from 
England were long. Through the instrumentality of the ever helpful 
Christian Latrobe the matter was settled, and in October the children 
arrived, brought over in the charge of one of the Markoe family who 
luckily was returning to Philadelphia at the time. The two halves of 
Latrobe's life in England and in America were at last united. 

The experiment was as successful as it was generous. Seventeen years 
later, after Henry's premature death in New Orleans, Latrobe wrote to 



PHILADELPHIA AT LAST 145 

Henry's aunt, Miss Sellon, a long letter (November 15, 1817) full not 
only of his grief but of his love and admiration for his second wife: 

Of my wife I can only say that when I married her, her wit, her accomplish- 
ments, & her elegant person placed her at the head of the best society of her 
age in Philadelphia, but the kindness & benevolence of her heart gave her a 
much more exalted character, and when I took her from amidst the numerous 
poor neighbors around her father's estate in New Jersey, a scene occurred 
which I shall not easily forget, so much was her departure regretted. With 
such a step-mother, no apprehensions of neglect or severity could find room, 
and in fact, from the first hour of their meeting, litde Henry [then seven] 
attached himself to her with peculiar fondness, while the approaches of Lydia 
were more cold and tardy. From that moment an affection grew up between 
Henry and his new mother, that had more of freedom and less of the constraint 
of duty, than might possibly have subsisted between a mother and a child. . . . 
To [her own children], acting without deliberation, she is as we all are, some- 
times hasty, & always unceremonious, while to Lydia and Henry she mixed 
the truest affection, with much more consideration of their own wishes and 
feelings. . . . With him [Henry] she scolded, she wept, & she laughed & railed 
without restraint, and her correspondence with Henry in New Orleans, while 
it would do honor to the first pens of the age, was, in the course of our 
numerous vexations of the last four years, a never failing refuge to her in her 
most moody dispositions, & under her severest trials. 

Latrobe's first visit to Philadelphia in the spring of 1798 and his final 
removal there in the early winter of the same year were therefore epochal 
for his career. In Pennsylvania, after all sorts of tentative beginnings in 
Virginia, he achieved a definite foundation for his life. Before unknown, 
now he had nation-wide fame. In Richmond a centerless wanderer, here 
he became a happily married man with a brilliant wife. All the founda- 
tions of his American future had now been laid and promised fair. 



CHAPTER 

8 



Architect and Engineer in Philadelphia 



MANY of the difficulties Latrobe had faced in establishing his career were 
innate both in his own personality and in the conditions of the time; 
but his own too informal business methods and the political passions of 
the period were not the only barriers over which he had to climb in 
Philadelphia. Even more important was the fact that of all American 
cities this was the one in which the old system of builder design was 
most powerful. The Carpenters Company of Philadelphia was a strong, 
arrogant organization, assiduous in its attacks on everything that threat- 
ened its hold on the building industry. It had produced two great evils: 
first, a system that was by nature conservative in both taste and construc- 
tion; second, the fallacious idea that design costs nothing, for the design 
costs were hidden in the total contract payments. Even good businessmen 
could not realize that the prevailing system opened the way to enormous 
abuses and was as uneconomic as it was deceptive. 

This condition made Latrobe's practice difficult. The opposition of the 
Carpenters Company to his own ideal of complete architectural services 
was constant. People admired his work and then, to avoid his fees, went 
to a member of the Carpenters Company for their own houses. When 
daring innovators commissioned him, they always protested his bills; 
what they paid seemed to them almost a gift rather than a payment for 
services, and again and again he was forced to accept a pittance or to 
endure endless delays in getting his final amounts. 

The idea that full architectural services were an unnecessary luxury 
oftened bedeviled his later practice; it was but one of the hardships faced 
by a man ahead of his time who was giving his life to the task of mold- 
ing the world more closely to his ideals and making it aware of the 
potentialities for better and more efficient living and working that it 

146 



ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER IN PHILADELPHIA 147 

could possess by merely, so to speak, stretching out its hand. And Phila- 
delphia brought these paradoxes particularly to the front; for, though 
without a doubt it was the cultural capital of the country, it was also a 
town permeated with a kind of traditional smugness. It was successful, 
and knew it; it was wealthy, and knew it; it had many of the finest build- 
ings in the country, and knew that too. Why change the system under 
which these buildings had been erected? 

And the system was strongly entrenched. The Carpenters Company of 
Philadelphia was a true guild. Its secrecy, its controlled prices, and its 
guild traditions of form and detail were all willingly subscribed to by the 
wealthiest and most powerful builder-designers in the city. Its Price 
Boo^ published as late as 1784, contains typical details of dormers, 
windows, cornices, and mantels, all of which go back in style to the 
later Georgian Colonial; even the work of the Adam brothers had made 
but little dent on this impervious surface of traditional forms. And, five 
whole years after the completion of the Bank of Pennsylvania, Owen 
Biddle's The Young Carpenter's Assistant, published in 1805, which 
boasts on its title page that it was approved by the Carpenters Company 
(of which its author was a member), contains scarcely a hint save per- 
haps for a slight attentuation of proportions in doors and door trims of 
the changes in architectural style that were already under way. 

This guild system naturally guaranteed a generally high level in build- 
ing standards and a general over-all adequacy of design. The fragments 
of Philadelphia that remain to us from the last decade of the eighteenth 
and first fifteen years or so of the nineteenth century reveal that har- 
monious but backward character; repeatedly the forms used in some of 
these remaining buildings would lead the unwary scholar to date them 
twenty years earlier than their actual erection, so persistent and all- 
pervasive was the guild conservatism. And to this whole system the work 
of Latrobe was a ringing challenge. 

Of course in the long run the architect system was bound to win out. 
It permitted experiment and novelty as the other system never could; 



i. The secrecy of the guild is illustrated by the fact that in 1817, when Jefferson asked 
Latrobe to send him a copy of the Philadelphia price book (in connection with the build- 
ing of the University of Virginia), he was unable to obtain it and was forced to send a 
Pittsburgh price book instead. In his letter to Jefferson (December 6, 1817) he notes that 
the Philadelphia price book is a secret document available only to the Carpenters Company 
and encloses a letter of Thackara, the plasterer, as proof. 



148 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

it was flexible; it centralized the design and executive authority in one 
person; and it completely removed the architect from financial involve- 
ment in the work and enabled him to bring to bear on any question a 
mind completely free from economic pressure. But final victory was only 
to come after Latrobe's death, for the earlier system yielded ground 
slowly. It attempted to rejuvenate its products by wholesale copying of 
the style and the details developed by free architects. Undoubtedly it 
still had a definite function to fulfill; for the amount of building re- 
quired in the rapidly growing cities of the early decades of the nine- 
teenth century was far greater than could be handled by the relatively 
few trained architects, and it was a happy circumstance for Philadelphia 
that the Carpenters Company could keep the general level of building 
as high as it was and thus, by such copying, slowly popularize the new 
forms even when the copies were in themselves inept or unthinking. 

Yet to Latrobe, eager to take advantage of his new fame by widening 
his practice, the opposition of the Carpenters Company was a hardship. 
Later he had more work of more kinds than he could take care of, but 
in 1800 to 1803 newly married, with a growing family and a high social 
position that entailed a relatively expensive standard of living he was 
prepared, and eager, for more commissions than he could get. The prob- 
lem in Philadelphia was continually troublesome. As late as January 23, 
1812, in a letter to Joseph Delaplaine, the Philadelphia publisher, who 
had asked him to write a book on architecture for the firm to publish, 
he broke out in bitterness: 

. . . For my professional reputation I should have done enough had I only 
built the Bank of Pennsylvania and supplied the city with water. ... As to 
the Carpenters Company, I do not thank that body, however much I respect 
individuals, for their praise. It is not their fault that I have maintained my 
professional character and standing. They have done me the honor to copy and 
to disgrace by their application almost all my designs from a moulding to a 
plan of a whole building. ... I have changed the taste of a whole city. My 
very follies and faults and whims have been mimicked, and yet there is not 
a single instance in which I have been consulted in which some carpenter has 
not counteracted me. ... If I write at all, it must be for men of sense, and 
of some science. 

Latrobe was thoroughly aware of the historical basis for the system. 
For instance, in a letter to his brother Christian (November 4, 1804) he 
says: 



ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER IN PHILADELPHIA 149 

You are probably right in the difference you imagine that there is between 
doing business here & in England in my profession. Had I in England, exe- 
cuted what I have here, I should now be able to sit down quietly & enjoy 
otium cum dignitate. But in England the crowd of those whose talents are 
superior to mine is so great, that I should never perhaps have elbowed through 
them. Here I am the only successful Architect & Engineer. I have had to break 
the ice for my successors, & what was more difficult to destroy the prejudices 
the villainous Quacks in whose hands the public works have hitherto been, 
had raised against me. There, in fact lay my greatest difficulty. 

Nearly two years later (July 12, 1806), in a long letter of advice to his 
pupil Robert Mills (who had gone to Charleston, South Carolina, in an 
abortive effort to establish himself in practice there), he writes: 

The profession of architecture [which Latrobe had earlier in the letter termed 
"a liberal profession"] has been hitherto in the hands of two sets of men. The 
first, of those who from travelling or from books have acquired some knowl- 
edge of the theory of the art, but know nothing of its practice the second 
of those who know nothing but the practice, and whose early life being spent 
in labor, & in the habits of a laborious life, have no opportunity of acquiring 
the theory. The complaisance of these two sets of men to each other, renders 
it difficult for the Architect to get in between them, for the Building mechanic 
finds his account in the ignorance of the gentleman-architect; as the latter 
does in the submissive deportment which interest dictates to the former. . . . 

He goes on to criticize Mills adversely for tamely accepting clients' sug- 
gestions which jeopardize the integrity of his designs, and continues: 

It will be answered, "If you are paid for your designs & directions, he that 
expends his money on the building has an undoubted right to build what he 
'pleases.' " If you are paid!! I ask in the first place, are you paid? Nol The 
custom of all Europe has decided that 5 p cent on the cost of a building, with 
all personal expenses incurred, shall be the pay of the Architect. This is just 
as much as is charged by a Merchant for the transaction of business, expedited 
often in a few minutes by the labor of a Clerk: while the Architect must 
watch the daily progress of the work perhaps for years, pay all his clerkhire, 
& repay to himself the expense of an education greatly more costly than that 
of a merchant. 

Then he tells the sad tale of his experience in getting paid for the Rich- 
mond penitentiary referred to earlier. 2 

2. Additional excerpts from the letter are given in the Appendix, 



150 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

There was one other difficulty that faced architects attempting to work 
in Philadelphia in harmony with the Carpenters Company the matter 
of superintendence. Contractors would build from architects' plans, but 
only if the authority for the detailing and the supervision of construction 
was handed over to them. Latrobe tried this method once with disas- 
trous result in Sedgeley, and he warns a subsequent client. Wain, against 
it in a letter (April i, 1805) about his proposed house: 

As to the superintendence of the building, I mean, merely, if I used that 
phrase, that which is a thing of course in Europe, namely the furnishing of 
drawings for the whole detail as the building progresses. Otherwise the archi- 
tect becomes responsible in reputation for all the whims, the blunders, many 
of them perhaps expensive, of the various mechanics who execute. It is unfor- 
tunate for the profession that here the department of design & direction is not 
separate from that of execution, by which means, especially in the erection of 
Mr. Crammond's house on the Schuylkill I have been disgraced both by the 
deformity & expense of some parts of the building, because, after giving the 
first general design, I had no further concern with it. 

And other later letters take up the same theme. 

Nevertheless the architect found clients in Philadelphia besides the 
Bank of Pennsylvania few at first, but in increasing numbers as time 
went on and the advantages of full architectural services gradually be- 
came evident. One of the first was Edward Shippen Burd, for whom 
Latrobe designed a large house on Chestnut at Ninth Street; it dates from 
1801-2, according to a list of Latrobe's works which he sent to Robert 
Goodloe Harper (January 12, 1816). Old photographs show it as an al- 
most arrogant challenge to the prevailing Philadelphia conservatism. Its 
motifs were familiar enough arched windows under recessed brick 
arches, a Palladian window above a fanlight entrance door but it is the 
way in which they are put together that shows the architect's hand. The 
central, three-bay, three-story body of the house is flanked by one-story 
wings, topped by a thin marble coping that aligns with the second-floor 
windows. The main cornice is thin almost meager -as though to call 
no attention at all from the basic geometry of the whole and the power 
of its red brick walls. Power indeed is instinctive in every line, and the 
three-sided marble steps that sweep so boldly up to the door compose 
magnificently with the masses of the side wings. The Burd house is a 
strong chord of simple, clearly related notes struck with convincing au- 



ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER IN PHILADELPHIA 15! 

thority. This is the most London-like of all Latrobe's American houses 
nowhere else did he so severely restrict his window areas and it bears a 
close relationship in form and details to the Admiralty Building in Lon- 
don which Cockerell planned while the young architect was one of his 
most important designers and on which Latrobe undoubtedly worked. 

Another early house was Sedgeley, the William Crammond house (al- 
ready mentioned), which stood just outside the town on the banks of the 
Schuylkill. Here again Latrobe was revolutionary, for the house was 
Gothic the first American example of the Gothic Revival in house de- 
sign. It was, in fact, Latrobe's first domestic commission in Philadelphia, 
and the controversy it aroused may have turned his mind back to quieter, 
more classic types for his future houses, though it could not entirely de- 
stroy the romantic appeal that Gothic held for him, as we shall see. The 
house is known to us today only through engravings, for it has long since 
disappeared. Like all the architect's work, it was basically geometric in 
scheme. The structure itself was a simple rectangle with a hipped roof, 
apparently a variation of the typical five-bay house; around this was a 
one-story porch, open and airy on the front and the flanks but at the 
corners emphasized by square masonry pavilions pierced with arched 
openings. Perhaps memories of the corner pavilions of many English 
Jacobean houses, such as Wollaton Hall, lay behind his use of these 
corner motifs. In classic guise they had already appeared in the designs 
for the Tayloe house mentioned earlier. The openings in these pavilions 
were topped with pointed arches. The porch posts were of a simplified 
Batty Langley Gothic type, and there were Tudor drip molds over the 
windows of the main house* The cornices were Gothic in profile as well; 
that is as far as the "Gothic" went. The house, though it aroused en- 
thusiasm on the part of some Philadelphians, never pleased its designer. 
And rightly so; for at its best it was a piece of superficial design that 
was merely novel and at its worst an awkward attempt to marry in- 
compatible elements. Of that triumphant integration of use, structure, 
and beauty which is so evident in Latrobe's best work there is hardly a 
trace. 

Sedgeley was a bitter lesson to him. As we have seen, he claimed that in 
execution it was butchered and its details were caricatured, but it is 
doubtful whether it could have been a great success even if he had had 
the complete detailing and superintendence in his own hands; for La- 
trobe's Gothic, though sometimes picturesque, was never solidly based on 



JM LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

a knowledge o the idiom and often showed itself awkward and crude. 
Yet Sedgeley is important in the history of Philadelphia, because it was 
the first of its type and because like the Bank of Pennsylvania and the 
waterworks it was unprecedented. 

One of the earliest of Philadelphia's red-brick rows was also Latrobe's. 
Built between 1800 and 1802 for Joseph Sansom, the great real-estate 
magnate, it ran along Walnut Street between Sixth and Seventh Streets 
fairly far out of town for its time. Latrobe mentions the row in a letter 
(February 10, 1814) to Richard Dale and William Wilmer of Philadel- 
phia, who wanted him to design for them a building for Washington 
Hall. Warning his correspondents that they have seriously underesti- 
mated the costs, he writes: "In 1800, when Sansom's row in Walnut Street 
was built, I had the best means of ascertaining the actual cost- $4.87% 
p. superficial foot. . . . These houses were built in the most economical 
manner for sale. . . ." Though simple, the houses had doors of distin- 
guished detail and excellent proportions, and they set a standard of gen- 
eral amenity for much future Philadelphia building; but they were not 
an important commission, and one hazards the guess that they brought 
in only a small fee. 

Another project of this period, though it was never built a house for 
the British minister, Liston is eloquent of Latrobe's search for simple 
geometrical forms. 3 The sketches show a cross-shaped main-floor plan over 
a square basement, crowned by a cylindrical upper floor; obviously a 
dome was intended above this. The plans display a remarkable mastery 
not only in the development of exciting room shapes but also in the 
achieving of a workable and convenient arrangement of the whole. It is 
a tour de force; nevertheless it is a true building design and not merely 
a paper fantasy, and the structural thinking is sound. 4 

But it was the Bank of Pennsylvania, the building that had originally 
brought him to Philadelphia, which held the greatest import for his 
career and for the future of American architecture. Begun at the end of 

3. This design is reproduced in Fiske Kimball, Domestic Architecture of the American 
Colonies and of the Early Republic (New York: Scribner's, 1922). 

4. In the letter to Dr. Scandella mentioned earlier Latrobe notes his work on the 
hermitage for the garcons phftosophiques Vblney and his friends. This, too, according to 
Volney's wishes, was to have been a circular house. Perhaps the idea had been bubbling 
away in Latrobe's mind ever since, until in this house for the British minister there came 
the perfect opportunity of expressing it in different terms. 



ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER IN PHILADELPHIA 




'5 ECOND-fLOORrPtAN 




- FLOOR.- PLAN - 

In Historical Society o Pennsylvania 

FIGURE 12. Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Plans. Redrawn from Latrobe's 
drawings. 

1798 and complete by the summer of 1800, it was a landmark in the 
architecture of the United States. It was the country's first Greek Revival 
structure and also the first building in which masonry vaults were used 
integrally as a major means for achieving architectural effect* 5 And in- 
contestably it was a beautiful structure, the destruction of which by the 
government in the i86Vs is one of the tragedies of Philadelphia's long 
history of apathy toward its important monuments. 

The building had a rare simplicity, of which the exterior was a direct 
statement. A central square block was lengthened by two rectangular 



5. It was not the first large masonry-vaulted building in the country, however. That 
honor, so far as we know today, belongs to the old Philadelphia jail, built shortly before 
the Revolution as a fireproof and escape-proof structure. 



Jf - 4 LA1ROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

wings, each with a portico at its end; above the central block rose the 
stepped stages of the shallow domed roof and a simply detailed cupola 
with large glass areas to light the space within. Four little stone lodges 
at the corners of the lot recalled the corner pavilions of the Tayloe de- 
sign. It was all in all a composition of distinguished visual richness pro- 
duced by a fundamentally simple geometry. 

That form arose naturally from the plan. The nexus of the whole was 
the great central banking room, a circular space roofed with a brick dome 
and lighted by large windows on the cross axis and by the cupola crown- 
ing the whole. In one of the long ends was the entrance, through a 
barrel-vaulted vestibule, with offices on either side; above this was the 
money and security vault. On the other end was the stockholders' room, 
and above it the directors' room, both roofed with ingenious cross vaults, 
the upper room receiving its chief light from a skylight. For the needs of 
the time it was a simple and workable plan. One portico was the porch 
used by the public; the other, facing a little gardened area, served as 
the approach for the bank officials; in the center was the banking room 
where the public and the bank staff had their chief dealings. 

Moreover, the spaces developed by this simple functional plan were 
beautiful both as units and in relation to one another. Their internal 
volumes, conditioned by the vaulted ceilings, were gracious and strong, 
and the almost stripped character of the detail only added to the total 
effect by emphasizing these shapes. Thus the vestibule had a strong di- 
rectional sense, and the curved ends of the stockholders' and directors' 
rooms repeated in feeling the curves of the shallow groined vaults. Even 
in the climax, the banking room itself, there was the same reticence of 
detail. There were corner niches without impost moldings or archivolts; 
in shape and size they repeated the door recesses and the windows on 
the chief cross axes. Above these there was a frieze of delicately recessed 
panels with slightly raised frames; then, higher still, the impost for the 
dome, simplified into a raised band supporting a single projecting cap 
mold. The segmental dome had coffers sunk just far enough to create 
delicate lines of light and shade which made evident and emphasized 
the domical form. 

Fortunately we know, from a long letter Latrobe wrote to Samuel Fox 
(July 8, 1805) when the plaster was sufficiently dry and the whole suffi- 
ciently settled for the final interior decoration to be applied, that the 
color scheme he planned for the interior had the same quality of restraint 



ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER IN PHILADELPHIA 155 

and precision. The banking-room walls were to be "pale but warm oker 
or straw/' but a white bead was to outline the niches. The margins of the 
panels above were to be white, with the panels themselves a lighter straw 
color. He noted that "if the white is unmixed it will have a bluish cast." 
The frieze beneath the dome was to be white, slightly blued, bearing a 
painted Greek fret of a dark russet color. He advised that a sample should 
be tried in place, and added: "I have tried this Greek method of painting 
myself . . . and have always been struck with the beauty of the contrast 
and relief produced by it." The marble he wished left unpainted, and the 
dome itself was to have the ribs between the coffers pale blue, with the 
moldings and field of the coffers themselves like the wall panels be- 
neath; the interior of the cupola above was to be either white or stone 
color. The entrance vestibule was to be a warm brown with a ceiling of 
white, pale blue, and red; and the directors' room and the president's 
room were both to have gray walls, with a pale-blue ceiling and the orna- 
mented bands a light red, carrying ornaments of yellowish white. 

How much of this scheme was adopted it is impossible to say, but La- 
trobe's recommendations reveal the clarity, the subtle harmonies, and the 
occasional accents he had in mind. For him the spirit of the forms had 
to be echoed in the spirit of the colors applied to them. These notes also 
show his fear that much that he advocated might seem strange to con- 
servative Philadelphia. We trust that Samuel Fox took his advice and 
that the bank stood a monument to his color sense as well as his struc- 
tural and creative genius. 

It is interesting to speculate on the sources for the particular character 
of graceful and powerful austerity which Latrobe expressed with such 
skill in this building and which came to be the ruling characteristic 
of his best work. In 1792 Soane had completed the first of the great halls 
of the Bank of England the bank-stock hall and in it appeared many 
of the vaults with simplified detail which were the hallmarks of his 
later style. 

In addition to Soane, there is another possible source of inspiration for 
the Bank of Pennsylvania the work of Robert and James Adam. The 
unmolded niche is common alike in the work of the Adams and in that 
of Latrobe, as is the use of segmental arches and ceilings and of rec- 
tangular wall panels to contrast with curve-headed openings, but the 
way in which Latrobe used these motifs is quite different from that em- 
ployed by the Adam brothers. Latrobe was fond of direct structural 



156 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

relationships and a simple continuity of major elements; the Adams, on 
the other hand, preferred a more complicated counterpoint of alternation 
and contrast. And, when one examines the moldings and the detail, the 
differences between Latrobe and the Adam brothers become much more 
striking, for in these matters Latrobe's own taste for simple and Greek- 
inspired forms was supreme. 

The entire Bank of Pennsylvania, in detail as in plan and structure, 
was in fact a true creation bearing everywhere its designer's imprint. 
What he had seen in London before his departure, like what he had seen 
in Europe, undoubtedly remained with him, for his architectural mem- 
ory was prodigious. Yet from that background, as from a rich and fertile 
soil, his own style grew as something entirely new. What Latrobe de- 
signed was his own; it was permeated with the geometricizing spirit of 
his time and was expressed with a power and a restraint then entirely 
unknown elsewhere in America. 

The end porticoes are Greek Ionic. They are based on the simple type 
of Greek Ionic (as illustrated by Stuart and Revett) seen in the now- 
lost Temple on the Ilissus. How closely Latrobe's design followed the 
famous plate it is impossible to tell, but it is significant that even here 
he was detailing "out of his own head"; for most of his books, as has 
been noted, had been captured by the French and had never reached 
him in America, and later he boasted that he had designed the bank 
with no reference whatsoever to books. 

In construction the bank was remarkable. Reversed arches below grade 
distributed the heavy pier loads to continuous foundations. The groined 
vaults over the smaller rooms helped to concentrate the loads and thrusts 
at points where heavy masonry masses could receive them. The major 
dome itself, 44'-6" in diameter, was of brick 24" thick in its lower portion 
and i '-4" thick above. It was received on a marble impost, and to en- 
close the oculus beneath the cupola another bold course of marble was 
used. The thrust was taken care of by two heavy iron bands around the 
marble impost; since the dome was segmental, this was the level of maxi- 
mum thrust, and, to give still greater rigidity, the level was raised only 
slightly above that of the vault ridges of the rooms at either end. It was 
a project boldly conceived and boldly executed, and apparently it stood 
without movement or damage until it was taken down in the i86o's. 6 

6. On July 16, 1805, however, Latrobe wrote Fox, reminding him that the large marble 
slab forming the northwest corner of the covering of the dome was replaced in the spring 



ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER IN PHILADELPHIA 157 

Thus the first monumental building by Latrobe can justly be called a 
masterpiece. In the new country it was the first building to be erected 
in which the structural concept, the plan conceived as a functional agent, 
and the effect both inside and out were completely integrated, completely 
harmonious. It was also a declaration of architectural independence, and 
it proved that design by a well-trained architect could go far beyond the 
ordinary usages of the time; its almost universal welcome proved, too, 
that the best popular taste of the period was ready and even eager for 
this kind of new vision. Latrobe always liked the building and felt that 
in it, through the co-operation of his sympathetic client, he had achieved 
a kind of success he was seldom permitted elsewhere. In his journal long 
years later he noted: 

Walking up Second Street I observed two French officers standing opposite the 
building and looking at it without saying a word. I stepped into Black's shop 
and stood close to them. After some time one of them exclaimed several times, 
"Cest si beau, et si simple!" He said no more and stood for a few minutes 
longer before he walked away with his companion. I do not recollect anything 
that has happened that has given me so much particular satisfaction. 7 

Another major project that kept Latrobe busy at this time was the city 
waterworks. The evil taste and odor of Philadelphia water was notorious, 
the dangers to health were recognized by all, and nothing had been 
done to remedy the situation. Philadelphia, the metropolis of the nation, 
the home of culture and science, still depended on shallow wells. Latrobe 
had been acutely conscious of the condition during his spring visit. On 
April 29, 1798, Latrobe writes in his journal: 

The soil consists of a Bed of Clay of different depth from 10 to 30 feet. It is 
excellent brick earth, being very smooth, & free, below the surface, from stone 
or gravel. Below this bed of clay is universally a stratum of sand. In sand runs 
a stratum of water . . . suppose that the waters of the two rivers unite through 
this sand stratum, which serves as a filtering bed. . . . The houses being 
much crowded, and the situation flat, without subterraneous sewers to carry 
off the filth, every house has its privy and its drains which lodge their sup- 



of 1804. Apparently it had been cracked by frost. In the same letter he finds that damage 
to the interior plaster (about which Fox had evidently complained) was caused by the 
fact that after the dome was completed in June, 1800, frost set in before the marble 
covering was finally installed. 

7. The Journal of Latrobe, with an introduction by J. H. B. Latrobe (New York: Apple- 
ton, 1905). 



158 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

plies in one bog hole, sunk into the ground at different depths. Many of them 
are pierced to the sand, and as those which are sunk thus low, never fill up, 
there is a strong temptation to incur the expense of digging them so deep at 
first, to save the trouble and noisomeness of emptying them. 

He also notes that the water is still good in pumps around large public 
buildings which have open squares around them, that "all the houses 
on the skirts of the town from pth to nth streets have admirable water, 
as yet" and that the water in crowded places tastes as if it contained 
putrid matter. He concludes: 

The great scheme of bringing the water of the Schuylkill to Philadelphia to 
supply the city now becomes an object of immense importance, though it is at 
present neglected from failure of the funds. The evil, however, which it is 
intended collaterally to correct is so serious and of such magnitude as to call 
loudly upon all who are inhabitants of Philadelphia for their utmost exertions 
to complete it. 

The time of Latrobe's coming to Philadelphia was therefore propitious, 
for this engineering problem was in everyone's mind. An important 
group in town had long since planned to build a canal from the Schuyl- 
kill, above its falls north of the city, across to the Delaware. The com- 
pany was incorporated in 1792 under the name of the Delaware and 
Schuylkill Canal Navigation. As a by-product the company proposed to 
build a gravity aqueduct some four miles long to bring the Schuylkill 
water into Philadelphia, where a reservoir could serve as a distributing 
center. The scheme sounded promising, but it had manifest difficulties. 
The length of the aqueduct required, the rolling terrain it would pass 
over, the achieving of a sufficient head once the water had arrived in 
town, and even the question of whether there was enough flow to per- 
mit the triple division of the system into canal, aqueduct, and the exist- 
ing river bed were all problems to which the supporters of the scheme 
had no really convincing answers. It was to these that Latrobe now de- 
voted his imagination and his engineering skill, and he soon arrived at 
his solution one both revolutionary and efficient. Why not, he reasoned, 
take the water from the Schuylkill at the city itself? A settling basin 
could be built at the river bank; water could be taken from this through 
a tunnel to a well from which it would be pumped up, by steam power, 
to a second, higher aqueduct that would lead to Centre Square; there a 
second steam pump would raise it to a water tank high enough to guar- 



ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER IN PHILADELPHIA 159 

antee a proper gravity flow wherever it was needed. This basically simple 
scheme he embodied in a report, View of the Practicability and Means 
of Supplying the City of Philadelphia with Wholesome Water, in a 
letter to John Miller, Esq., from B. Henry Latrobe, engineer, Decem- 
ber 29, 1798 (Philadelphia: Zachariah Poulson, Jr., 1799). The date shows 
the extreme rapidity with which Latrobe worked when he was smitten 
with an idea; for the letter, which describes a system almost precisely 
like the one executed, was sent less than two months after his arrival in 
the city, at a time when he must have been rushed with the drawings 
for the bank. 

The whole matter was brought to a head when the citizens of Phila- 
delphia, together with the managers of the Marine and City hospitals 
and also the Delaware and Schuylkill Canal Navigation company, peti- 
tioned the Pennsylvania legislature for help. A committee of the state 
senate approved granting some aid and proposed the mortgaging of the 
abandoned President's house in Philadelphia and the placing of a tax on 
auctions to purchase a thousand shares of the canal company stock at 
two hundred dollars each; this would permit the canal and aqueduct 
scheme to go ahead. But in the meantime the city itself was at last tak- 
ing action, and eventually its energetic activity forestalled the scheme of 
building the canal and aqueduct with state help. As a result of Latrobe's 
letter, the committee set up by the Councils (the governing body of the 
town) appointed him engineer of the project to replace Mr. Huntley, 
who had been a supporter of the earlier canal scheme. This move was 
like shoving a stick into a hornet's nest; controversy raged and became 
bitterly personal. The canal company's supporters were many and im- 
portant, and now their chance of completing their great scheme was 
being snatched from their hands. 

Latrobe's plan was published by order of the "watering committee" 
of the Councils. Then followed at once Remarks on a Second Publi- 
cation of B. Henry Latrobe, engineer, Said to be Printed by Order of the 
Committee of the Councils; and Distributed among the Members of the 
Legislature [Philadelphia], 1799. The author of the pamphlet is said to 
have been the Reverend Dr. William Smith, and he sails into his attack 
with all the weapons that satire and personal innuendo could furnish. 
He claims that Latrobe's publication misrepresented the canal company 
and maliciously set out to bring its efforts to naught. He takes special 
umbrage at the imaginative aspects of the Latrobe proposal, which, he 



l6o LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

claims, is "a confused and enormously expensive project of 'aerial Castles' 
and elevated Reservoirs of different stories [obviously a reference to the 
double-stage pumping of the Latrobe scheme]. Fountains, Baths, etc." Of 
Latrobe's skill he writes that his "professional abilities [are] yet unknown, 
and untried, so far as the history of anything in his works in America 
has come to the public knowledge." Latrobe had claimed that the freez- 
ing of the canal might endanger the city's water supply; Smith merely 
states that water enough runs under the ice, and he objects to the fact 
that Latrobe quotes such foreign engineers as Bernoulli, Belidor, and 
Kaestner in support of his theories. Latrobe had found the estimate 
made by one Sambourne for the extra steam pumping that the canal 
scheme might necessitate in times of drought to be absurdly low; Smith 
ridicules Latrobe's criticism. The completion of the canal, Smith feels, 
"would give the death blow to all Mr. L's romantic and expensive proj- 
ects, as well as to the emoluments and honours contemplated for him, 
from the projection and execution of a greater work than the Canal." 
Then he descends to the most vulgar personal remarks, intimates that 
Latrobe drinks too much and has too large a throat capacity, and ends 
with an extravagant climax: "If then he wishes to save his character and 
not become a felo de se (no matter whether the advice comes from a 
merchant or divine?) let him write no more, or strive to write HJ(e a gen- 
tleman, and a man of science and consistency'' It is all typical not only 
of the literary quality of much controversial writing at the time but also 
o the prevailing spirit of many of the attacks upon Latrobe and his 
waterworks plans. 

For months the discussion continued heatedly, even after construction 
according to the Latrobe plan had begun. As late as July 31, 1800, for 
instance, a letter to the Philadelphia Gazette calls the scheme a "ridicu- 
lous project" and expresses a hope "that the good people of my native 
city will no longer be duped by such chimaeras, but that they will turn 
out of Councils those men who have actively or, by suffering themselves 
to be duped by others, passively contributed to saddle the city with an 
unheard-of expense to accomplish that which, when finished, will be a 
public nuisance, and the probable cause of general calamity to our city, 
to wit: a reliance upon steam-engines in the proper supply of water. They 
are machines of all machinery the least to be relied on, subject to casual- 
ties and accidents of every kind." 



ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER IN PHILADELPHIA l6l 

Eventually the supporters of Latrobe and of city instead of state action 
won out. On February 9, 1799, the Councils authorized an address to the 
citizens asking for their assistance. Two days later they pledged all the 
estates of the Corporation except the High Street Bridge and Ferry to 
pay interest and amortization on a public loan of $150,000. Later still 
another $50,000 for expenses was raised by direct taxation. Work began 
almost at once; ground was broken on Chestnut Street on March 12, and 
contracts were let to John Huston for the approach canal and basin, to 
John Lewis for the lower tunnel, and to Timothy Caldwell for the ver- 
tical well at the lower pump house. The upper aqueduct was built by 
Thomas Vickers; on May 2 the first brick was laid on the three-arched 
portion that carried the water across a gully in Chestnut Street. The 
foundations of the central pump house were started on June 18, and the 
first pipes (of wood) were laid at the same time. 

One is amazed at the speed with which the working drawings of this 
important work were made. Latrobe's chief draftsman on the waterworks 
project was Frederick Graff, later a famous engineer and the designer 
of the second Philadelphia waterworks some twenty years afterward. 
Latrobe chose well; existing drawings by Graff in the Historical Society 
of Pennsylvania and the Franklin Institute show a marked talent. In 
1804 Latrobe, in writing to William Loughton Smith at Charleston, rec- 
ommended Graff highly for the position of engineer in charge of the 
Catawba Canal in South Carolina and referred to him as "the first of my 
eleves." But the chief drawings were made, or at least finished, by La- 
trobe himself; they are examples of the exquisite engineering drafting 
that was developed in England largely by Smeaton in the eighteenth 
century. Yet they are more; there is in them the inevitable touch of 
Latrobe the artist, and in color, values, and the rendering of the rocks, 
the timber, and the water they are rare specimens of clarity and definite- 
ness in working drawings even the layman cannot fail to realize their 
import. 

Despite such evidences of professional skill, however, the attacks on 
Latrobe continued all through the construction period. Here, in connec- 
tion with this premier American enterprise, the first major engineering 
work he had had an opportunity to undertake, he found himself the un- 
willing center of a violent controversy an experience, alas, that was 
often to be repeated. Around him swirled all the eddies of contradictory 
political and economic currents. To many Latrobe was "that damned 



1 62 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

Frenchman"; to others he was a scatterbrained visionary. And at the 
heart of the contention was the continuing hostility of the Delaware and 
Schuylkill Canal Navigation stockholders, who saw the fruit of years of 
planning taken from their hands who saw this stranger, this foreigner, 
employed to be chief engineer of a project they had initiated who saw 
growing into actuality a water-supply system that had no need for their 
dreamed-of canal. 8 Even petty sabotage was indulged in. Only the fact 
that Latrobe's backers held firm and the Councils refused to be budged 
made possible the completion of the work. 

And opposition appeared within the ranks of the watering committee 
itself. One of its most assiduous members was the well-known Quaker 
Thomas Cope, an enthusiastic Federalist and a very model of rectitude, 
with a whole-souled devotion to the interests of Philadelphia. He had 
been appointed a committee of one to take care of the detailed supervision 
of the project. At first he welcomed the Latrobe plan; but though he 
could grasp its daring he could understand neither the mind and the 
temperament that created it nor the difficulties that unforeseen condi- 
tions might produce. Latrobe, full of enthusiasm, was undoubtedly over- 
optimistic both about dates of completion and total costs; his estimates 
had already been exceeded when the system was far from complete. To 
Cope's factual mind the designer's optimism could only appear to be 
conscious dishonesty, artfully calculated to lead the city into terrific ex- 
penditures for the engineer's sole benefit. 

Then in July, 1800, two months after Latrobe's visit to Roosevelt on 
his wedding trip, Cope in his official capacity also visited the Soho works 
to find out the actual state of the engines. Since Latrobe had told the 
eager committee these could be expected any day, Cope was shocked to 
discover that much still remained to be done on them. Roosevelt, with his 
customary charm, won Cope's confidence completely, asserting that La- 
trobe surely knew the exact state of affairs and thus leading Cope to the 
conclusion that the designer's statements to the committee had been con- 
sciously false. But Roosevelt went even further; he told Cope that La- 



8. After the company's failure to obtain sufficient funds in 1798-9 and the replacement 
of its proposed aqueduct by the Latrobe scheme, it remained dormant for nearly thirty 
years. Eventually, however, in 1836, it used its charter to begin a canal from the Schuylkill 
to the Delaware in the southern suburbs of the city, not too far from the Navy Yard. The 
engineer was Samuel Kneass. The last recorded meeting of the company was January 18, 
1842. (Minute books of the company in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.) 



ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER IN PHILADELPHIA 163 

trobe and he were partners in the independent use of the extra power of 
the lower engine. The whole scheme therefore appeared to Cope as a 
shrewd plan devised by a dishonest engineer to line his own pockets. 
And, furthering this view (though perhaps unconsciously), Roosevelt 
complained that his own costs were far exceeding the contract amounts. 

Of course Cope could not know how Latrobe had become involved in 
Roosevelt's devious financial problems (a story that will be told in the 
following chapter) ; seeing the designer only as an accomplished villain, 
on his return to Philadelphia he became Latrobe's undying foe. Again 
and again he urged that the committee discharge its engineer, and to 
Poulson's American Daily Advertiser he sent several letters (signed 
"Machine") violently attacking Latrobe's competence and rectitude. But 
the watering committee continued firm in its support of the engineer, 
and the work went on. 

But worse was to follow. Cope in his diary 9 (August 13, 1800) refers 
to Latrobe's two assistants Breillat and Barber as villains. With regard 
to the second he was undoubtedly correct, as the architect was soon to 
learn to his cost. And by March, 1801, Cope had discovered that for a 
period of three months the payrolls of John Grimes, one of the subcon- 
tractors, had been padded in favor of a former servant of Latrobe's, one 
Canin. Grimes said this had been done at the request of the architect. 
Cope's suspicious mind at once reconstructed the motive a plan on the 
part of the engineer to discharge, at the city's expense, a debt to an old 
employee. Cope spoke to Latrobe on the subject, and Latrobe's agitation 
and apparent evasions were to him evidence enough of guilt. The circum- 
stantial evidence was damning, but it depended solely on one man's 
word; Canin could equally well have been the villain, working hand in 
glove with someone in Latrobe's office perhaps Breillat or Barber. If 
Canin had been discharged by Latrobe for cause (which may well have 
been the case), this arrangement could have been his revenge. But one 
thing seems certain no money from the payroll padding got to Latrobe! 
Cope dutifully brought the matter before the full watering committee; 

9. A transcript of the diary of Thomas P. Cope from 1800 to 1803, prepared by Mrs. 
George W. Emlen, was most generously put by her at my disposal. The whole is a fas- 
cinating document, for Cope has recorded vividly not only his side of this controversy but 
also interesting travels through Pennsylvania, New York, and parts of New England, in 
addition to thoughtful comments on ethics and metaphysics which reveal wide reading. 
It all gives a clear picture of Quaker life and of the thoughts and feelings of a confirmed 
Federalist and anti-Jacobin at a time of changing public opinion. 



j64 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

again it refused to believe his interpretation and, under the leadership of 
Samuel Fox and Thomas Parker (always Latrobe's good friends), con- 
tinued its support of the engineer. 

Cope twice offered strong minority reports recommending Latrobe's 
instant dismissal; the committee not only refused to accept these but 
voted that they be expunged from the committee records. Yet it also re- 
fused to accept Cope's resignation as its supervising committee of one! 
To the virtuous Quaker the whole affair was unexplainable except as an- 
other example of Latrobe's inexplicable and (in his view) reprehensible 
influence. 

Toward the end of 1800 Cope had become disillusioned about Roose- 
velt, too. He was given to understand that both Roosevelt and Latrobe 
were in desperate financial difficulty, and to him careful and successful 
financier that he was this was but one more count in the indictment 
against them. Meanwhile the architect-engineer continued to puzzle and 
distress him. Latrobe, with the strange and naive innocence in personal 
relationships that so often characterized his actions, made several friendly 
calls on Cope and wrote him a number of cordial letters, climaxing them 
finally by asking him for a loan. For the inflexible financier such be- 
havior could not be what it seemed; it must be merely another "scheme," 
an infernally clever attempt to twine the meshes of ambition around an- 
other victim. But against the waterworks plan itself Cope had no com- 
plaints save its cost, and after a preliminary test of the lower engine had 
proved that the system was actually going to work he was as pleased as 
the designer himself. 

The last act in this drama of complete personal misunderstanding was 
again characteristic of those involved. When the system was finally com- 
pleted and in operation, Latrobe sent the committee a full report on what 
he considered the best form for the contract to be entered into with the 
subscribers to the water service. Cope was astounded; surely the com- 
mittee required no such advice from the designer. What could have led 
him to give it? The answer, for Cope, could only be that it was an in- 
sidious move to make the city engage Latrobe as its permanent engineer, 
and another black mark was set down against the engineer; he little 
realized how time and again Latrobe offered suggestions, gratis, out of 
interest in his work and in his country's development. At last in Sep- 
tember, 1801, Cope refused to continue any longer as a member of the 
Councils; he had given, he felt, too much time and effort, and though 



ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER IN PHILADELPHIA 165 

his services had been used gratefully his advice had been spurned. Yet 
as almost his final move he voiced his opinion in another letter to 
Poulson's paper (published on November 7) and wrote in his diary: 
"This will probably be the last of the controversy, as it must fix his [La- 
trobe's] character with every man of candour & common discernment." 
Latrobe by this time had already gone to the Susquehanna, and the at- 
tack remained unanswered. 

Much of Cope's hostility to the engineer came from the mounting costs 
of the project. He did not realize that some of these could not have been 
foreseen and that the construction itself presented unexpected problems. 
The lower tunnel, for example, had to be driven through rock; the ver- 
tical well also entailed largely rock excavation. Then there were troubles 
with pipes. Like all the pipes of early American water-supply systems, 
these consisted of bored-out tree trunks or timber baulks. Perversely, too, 
many of them rotted even before the system was completed. Metal and 
terra-cotta pipes were proposed by hopeful inventors or manufacturers, 
but they were then economically impossible; wood pipes were inevitable 
in spite of their disadvantages, and the well-seasoned ones lasted once 
the water was let into them. Much later (November 8, 1812) Latrobe 
wrote to his son Henry, then in New Orleans superintending the building 
of the waterworks there: "If your suction pipe will lay one year with- 
out rotting, it is well . . . Our pipes in Philadelphia rotted in three 
months, being the time they were kept empty, & when the water was 
let in, it drove out a volume of carbonated hydrogen gas and poisoned 
a whole neighborhood . . ." 

Nevertheless the work went on with surprising speed. The two pump 
houses rose in their simple grandeur, and by the beginning of 1801 the 
whole was substantially complete. On the night of January 26, Latrobe 
with a workman and three friends Bollman and Roosevelt were prob- 
ably two of them, and perhaps Fox was the third went down to the 
new buildings and lighted the fires under the boilers. Latrobe had or- 
dered the hydrants in the streets to be left open. Little by little the steam 
pressure rose; the pumps were started early the next morning, and when 
Philadelphia awoke water was flowing down the gutters in bright, clear 
streams. The system worked. 10 

10. The popular interest in the project is well shown by a letter (in the Historical 
Society of Pennsylvania) from Joseph Parker Norris to Charles Thomson at Norristown, 
dated January 7, 1801. A portion of it reads: 



1 66 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

And the success of the enterprise was the signal for great civic rejoic- 
ing, for by this one dramatic morning event Latrobe's plan was com- 
pletely vindicated and Philadelphia at last had pure water. Latrobe was 
hailed as a genius; his national reputation as an engineer was now se- 
cure, as the slightly later completion of the Bank of Pennsylvania assured 
his reputation as an architect. 

Architecturally the buildings of the waterworks were significant. The 
lower engine house was of the utmost simplicity, but its proportions were 
beautiful and in its simple arched openings and undecorated walls there 
was a new note in American building a strong, almost ascetic grace. 
The upper pump house on Centre Square (where the City Hall now 
uplifts its arrogant and awkward power) was quite different in charac- 
ter. The necessity for a raised storage tank to give sufficient head sug- 
gested a high circular drum; this was covered by a dome, and the smoke- 
stack was led up centrally from the boiler to end at an oculus in the 
dome, so that the smoke rose from the dome as from an altar. The 
machinery half in a basement was covered by a square structure that 
supported the drum and dome; this also enclosed the offices and was 
entered through a recessed portico of two Greek Doric columns. Thus 
a simple, strictly geometrical composition was created hemisphere on 
cylinder on cube again a striking innovation in the country at the time. 
Its basis was the function of the building; its flavor might be called 
distantly Byzantine, though any thought of any past style was probably 
entirely absent from its designer's mind. The moldings were simple 
and classic; only in the portico did a "style" as such definitely appear, 
and that style was Greek-inspired. Thus again Latrobe was treading a 
new path. 

This little building was a famous landmark in the city until its de- 
struction in 1827, some dozen years after the building of the enlarged 
waterworks system at Fairmount. The square in which it stood was 
prettily planted, and what is said to have been America's first decorative 



"Dear Sir, It was with much pleasure I received yours of this date as it informed me 
of your continuing to recover your former health a blessing which I sincerely hope may 
be long continued you 

"The lower engine of the Water Works is now compleatcd and has filled the tunnel 
about 5 or 6 feet the Center One will not be ready in less than 2 or 3 weeks but I 
presume it will be sometime before the Citizens will be reconciled to buying their Water 
The engine which has been in operation is said to perform wonderfully well . . ,** 



ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER IN PHILADELPHIA 167 

fountain to be built with public funds was erected there in 1809. As its 
chief feature this had a wooden figure of a nymph, carved by William 
Rush; xl she held a swan, and from its upturned head gushed the jet. 
A famous painting by Krimmel shows us the fountain and the pump 
house as the center of gaiety on the Fourth of July in 1812, so completely 
had this gracious structure built itself into the heart of Philadelphia. 



ii. Here was one result of Latrobe's much-criticized suggestion for fountains. For its 
carving, we learn from the reports of the watering committee, Rush received $200. 



CHAPTER 



The Unrelenting Web 



DURING these years, professionally and personally so bright, another note 
begins to sound, a dull clang, resounding more and more menacingly, 
building up gradually to become almost the sound o doom itself. It is 
the noise of the want of money; it is the sound of creditors and of legal 
processes; it is the clangor of a sort of financial fate which dogged La- 
trobe, threatened his very freedom. It never ceased to toll through the 
rest of his life. 

And it all grew up so innocently. Its roots were in generosity and 
friendship as much as in a lack of financial imagination or in financial 
ineptitude, and it began with his two closest friends, Nicholas Roosevelt 
and Eric B oilman. For them, too, it came as blamelessly as for Latrobe 
himself, though the main stupidities were theirs. They all had in com- 
mon an incurable optimism coupled with a nai've belief in the innocence 
of mankind. But part of the cause of their joint disasters lay in plain 
bad fortune; for the times were still unstable, both within the country 
and outside, and there was not yet in the United States an integrated 
banking system to cushion financial blows. 

To understand the web that ensnared Latrobe one must realize these 
precarious conditions. All of American business was floating on a sea of 
paper mainly personal notes, endorsed by people of supposed property. 
One protested note might send a hundred others to the waste basket; 
endorsers became liable and were themselves perhaps drawn into bank- 
ruptcy. It was a house of cards on a slippery table, and any change of 
financial atmosphere or international policy might be the breath that sent 
the whole to ruin. 

The weaving of the web began simply enough. President Adams was a 
big-navy man, and under his leadership Congress had authorized the 

168 



THE UNRELENTING WEB 169 

construction of four great frigates the "74'$" to be the equal of any in 
jhe navies of England or France. Roosevelt, because of his lease on the 
Schuyler copper mine, received the contract for the sheet copper for their 
bottoms. To produce this required more capital than Roosevelt possessed, 
and as part of the contract the Navy Department advanced him large 
sums against his notes; these Latrobe on his first visit to Roosevelt, in 
his enthusiastic discovery of a new and congenial friend, had blithely 
endorsed. Similarly, in the matter of supplying steam engines for Phila- 
delphia Roosevelt lacked working capital. Not only was he forced to 
mortgage his engine works to the city in lieu of a bond for the comple- 
tion of the contract * a mortgage that was only finally discharged and 
returned to him in 1806 but the Corporation of the City of Philadelphia, 
like the Navy Department, advanced considerable sums to him on his 
notes, again endorsed by Latrobe. To back these endorsements, Latrobe's 
wealth lay chiefly in his Pennsylvania lands, together with other real 
estate he had bought on speculation since his arrival in the United States. 

The solvency of this credit multiplication, of course, depended not 
merely on the completion of the two contracts but at least in part on the 
continued business and professional success of both Roosevelt and La- 
trobe. Of Roosevelt's career more will appear later; of Latrobe's enough 
has been said in the last chapter to show that the architectural conditions 
in Philadelphia militated strongly against his obtaining there the com- 
missions his genius warranted. Actually, for a period after the comple- 
tion of the Bank of Pennsylvania and the waterworks, he had not a 
thing to do and he was newly married. Roosevelt, as well, was for the 
moment without work. 

And worse things were to follow, for when Jefferson and the new 
Republican Congress came into power in March, 1801, work on the 
"74's" was abandoned and all the Navy contracts on them were canceled. 
Chancellor Livingston, Roosevelt's friend and collaborator in early steam- 
boat experiments, was obviously worried. On June 13, 1801, he wrote to 
Secretary of State James Madison recommending Latrobe and Roosevelt 



i. Even in the original engine works, called the Soho works, at what is now Belleville, 
N.J., near Newark, Roosevelt had been compelled to call in outside capital. The mortgage 
is made out in the names of Roosevelt, Jacob Mark and Rosetta his wife, and John 
Speyer and Catherine his wife. Jacob Mark was Roosevelt's partner in many enterprises, 
became a good friend of the Latrobes, and served as Latrobe's agent in many purchases 
made for his Washington buildings. 



J^Q LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

as competent engineers who had made great improvements in the Watt 
engine by using two air pumps instead o one. 2 He suggested that if the 
minting o money were done by steam power the coins produced would 
be more regular and less subject to counterfeiting. He hoped that La- 
trobe and Roosevelt would not leave the country, though since finishing 
the Philadelphia waterworks they had had nothing to do. Madison prob- 
ably showed this letter to Jefferson, and it again may have brought La- 
trobe into his mind and helped toward the valuable future appoint- 
ments that Jefferson bestowed on Latrobe. 

Here, then, were these two men, jobless for the moment and indebted 
to the Navy Department (which had paid nothing on its contract for 
the undelivered copper) and to the City of Philadelphia (which, for 
various reasons, had delayed its payments) for large sums of money, 
backed on Roosevelt's side by nothing and on Latrobe's by his entire 
personal land holdings. Who suffered the more may well be anticipated. 

The Navy copper affair dragged on for years. It was a source of ter- 
rific worry to Latrobe until Roosevelt, sometime between 1806 and 1810, 
assumed the entire debt and Latrobe was cleared of responsibility. Not 
till February, 1813, did Roosevelt finally clear himself by pledging land 
holdings worth $5O,ooo. 3 But with the Philadelphia waterworks it was 
otherwise, for there Latrobe was involved professionally and, contrary to 
his best judgment, financially as well. The story is peculiar, and at the 
heart of it is the city's strange contract wifii Roosevelt. To allow for the 
growth of Philadelphia, the power of the pumping plant had to be de- 
signed far in excess of immediate needs. This excess power was concen- 
trated in the lower of the two engines. Here Roosevelt, with characteris- 
tic optimism, saw an opportunity for great individual profits, and the 
contract specified that this excess power, together with land adjacent to 
the pumping station, should be leased to Roosevelt for forty-two years. 
Roosevelt agreed to supply the city with 1,000,000 gallons a day for $3,000 
a year for each engine and to supply any larger amounts up to 3,000,000 
gallons at half that figure. In return Roosevelt was to pay a sliding 
scale of rent for the leased extra power and the land for each of the 
first seven years, $500; for each of the second seven, $800; for each of the 
third seven, $1,000; and for each of the remaining twenty-one years, 

2. la the Livingston papers in the New-York Historical Society. 

3. See page 375. 



THE UNRELENTING WEB 171 

$1,800. On the leased land Roosevelt built a metal rolling and slitting 
mill, run by the lower engine's surplus power. At first Latrobe had 
nothing to do with all of this, save as a regular professional adviser; but 
by midsummer, 1800, Roosevelt, in gratitude to the architect for his ad- 
vice and the endorsement of his own notes, considered Latrobe his in- 
formal partner. 

Trouble arose almost immediately. The costs for the waterworks far 
exceeded the original estimate of $127,000; by 1806 the total costs levied 
against the project were $349,016.50, Of this Latrobe's fee represented 
$6,358, plus an extra $1,050 voted to him by the Councils on February 20, 
1805, making a total of $7,408. John Davis, the clerk of the works se- 
lected by Latrobe, up through 1803 had received $4,191. The wooden 
boiler for the lower engine leaked and was insufficient to maintain pres- 
sure; two men had been suffocated in repairing it. A second boiler was 
installed and later replaced by the city with a cast-iron boiler made by 
Large & Smallman. The pump power was found to be erratic; sometimes 
there was a plethora of water, sometimes a drought. In 1805 the city 
refused to pay its agreed fee for the water on the ground of non-compli- 
ance with the contract, and the rolling and slitting mill was not yet making 
the profits Roosevelt had expected. Meanwhile, sometime in 1801, Roose- 
velt, cashless as always and needing more capital to carry on the works, 
turned to Eric Bollman, whom he had known ever since Bollman's arrival 
in the United States. 4 Bollman at this time was at the height of his meteoric 
financial career, and in attaching him to the enterprise Roosevelt thought 
he had guaranteed its success. Since Bollman agreed with Roosevelt that the 
anticipated success of the metal-rolling plant would be largely due to La- 
trobe primarily because of his skill and imagination but also because he 
had endorsed Roosevelt's notes they decided to make him a full partner 
with a one-third interest, although he had put up no capital. Of course 
from the strictly professional point of view Latrobe should have refused 
the offer, but here were two intimate friends importunately urging him 
to share with them. Reluctantly he accepted. Another strand of the web 
was encircling him. 

And that strand was tough. Latrobe had received $7,000 as his total 
professional fee for the design of the waterworks. Against this stood the 
Roosevelt notes, for much more than that, which he had endorsed. Roose- 

4. See page 138. 



I72 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

velt and the city were at loggerheads, and Roosevelt was too busy devis- 
ing more mercurial schemes to spend the necessary time in Philadelphia 
to straighten things out. Matters went from bad to worse. The watering 
committee, reporting for 1803, stated: "Although considerable efforts 
were made towards a settlement of the accounts and concerns existing 
between Nicholas J. Roosevelt and the corporation [of the city], and for 
the establishment of the relation, which is hereafter to exist between 
them, upon simple and equitable terms, yet they have not been able 
at this time to arrive at any conclusion in this part of the business." A 
year later they repeated: "Your committee have not yet been able to 
make a settlement of the accounts and concerns with Nicholas J. Roose- 
velt." Meanwhile the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, had suddenly stopped 
the enormous profits of the neutral trade which had been the mainstay 
of Bollman & Company, and the firm had crashed in a spectacular fail- 
ure. Bollman's interest in the rolling mill was taken over by William 
Crammond, Latrobe's old client of Sedgeley; later Roosevelt's former 
partner Smallman and Samuel Mifflin, the industrialist son of Thomas 
Miffin (one-time Governor of Pennsylvania), were also brought in, 
the agent Mifflin taking actual charge of operating the lower engine and 
running the iron mill. Crammond had discounted the Roosevelt notes to 
the corporation of the city and later had sold them to the New York 
financiers Corps & Casey, who in turn, hopeless of obtaining a single cent 
from Roosevelt, brought pressure on the architect for payment. Even 
Latrobe himself did not know how much was involved, and he wrote 
repeatedly to Roosevelt in vain, asking for the details; it was only from 
Corps himself that he finally learned he was their debtor- if Roosevelt 
could not come through to the extent of $20,700! And Roosevelt could 
not be counted on; in March, 1805, he had written the Councils that he 
had lost $47,000 by his contract to build the engines. 5 

On December i, 1803, Latrobe had written Corps & Casey for details 
of their claims; nearly two weeks later (December 13) he writes Roose- 
velt about the matter: 

I need not assure you that my attachment to you, whatever may be the differ- 
ence of our opinion, remains unaltered, through all the disappointments, suf- 

5. John T. Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Everts, 
1884), p. 519. 



THE UNRELENTING WEB 173 

ferings and apprehensions for the future that have attended our connexion, 
and to which I see no end. 

A passage follows deprecating and regretting his own connection with 
Bollman and Roosevelt in the workings of the rolling mill and stating that 
any new partners, now that Bollman is out, must be bound by the same 
conditions as the old. He goes on, with regard to Corps & Casey: 

I have declined in the letter I have written to them giving any answer until I 
shall have copies of all the papers under which I may be liable to them. . . . 
And here the bills retained by them will come into question & all the evils 
which I formerly predicted, and of which you made so light will come into 
view. What they may amount to, and how they will influence a man like 
myself, whose infant family is likely to become numerous, you, where so 
alive to your own situation, will no doubt be well able to anticipate. 

The most distressing circumstance in anything that can be said or written 
to you on this subject is, that you appear to consider it, (as it certainly has 
been between you and me, as friends,) as a matter not of business, of figures, 
& of calculation but of sentiment, when treating with others, who never felt, 
or pretended to feel friendship for you. The disinterested and lumping setde- 
ments of mutual confidence and generosity, have always been expected by you 
from men, whom you must have known well enough, to have looked for 
nothing from them but mercantile exactness, and whom you could not pos- 
sibly believe to have any reasonable motive to depart from the usual method 
of settling money concerns. Among these I reckon Bollman. Believe me with 
sincere affection yours truly. B. Henry Latrobe. 

In another ten days he writes Roosevelt again asking him what he has 
done under the power of Attorney; he himself has had no answer from 
Corps & Casey. Again he ends on a personal note: "Mrs. Latrobe unites 
with me in sincere affection for you and Mrs. Marks [sic]." It was Feb- 
ruary 6, 1804, before Latrobe learned the amount of his obligations to 
Corps & Casey. Mr. Corps was then in Washington, and Latrobe was 
to see him that evening. Evidently the whole business continued to drag 
on, as did the negotiations with the city for a new lease and a settlement 
of its controversy with Roosevelt, for nothing important concerning it is 
mentioned until November 2, 1804, when in another letter to Roosevelt 
possible drastic action is indirectly suggested by Latrobe: 

I assure you that I know as little about the negotiations with the corporation 
as you do. I have seen Mr. Mifflin [Roosevelt's agent] only twice in these 



174 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

three months* He then told me that Stephen Girard, who carried on the nego- 
tiations on the part of the Corporation, carefully avoided committing himself 
on any proposal. My opinion is that nothing short of withholding the water 
will bring the matter to an issue. . . . The supreme court will inevitably have 
to decide them all [the points of controversy] on an action for withholding the 
water. . . . 

In respect to Corps & Casey, the matter is so simple, that your mode of 
treating it always surprises me. I became your security for bills of a large 
amount. I had no interest but that of my reputation & friendship in the com- 
pletion of your contract with the corporation. The bills were protested. By an 
arrangement with the Navy Department the security was changed as to the 
persons who held it & ruin was postponed. That ruin must one day or other 
fall upon the drawer & acceptor. The only indemnification I hold is the share 
in the works. We shall see what it is worth when our partners state their 
accounts. I am in their power. I cannot even give away my share because it is 
mortgaged. There was some comfort while the Bankrupt law existed. That 
is repealed. It is a fearful abyss to look into. But a bachelor need not care 
about it. 

A few weeks later a new note appears in the correspondence. Roosevelt 
had written Mrs. Latrobe that he had fallen in love with Lydia. Of that, 
more later. But Latrobe ends his current letter: "In the meantime, if 
there is anything certain under heaven, it is that you hold the first place 
in our esteem, good opinion & friendship." 

In January, 1805, the negotiations with the corporation remaining fruit- 
less, Latrobe writes Roosevelt: "If you were to manage the business your- 
self with the corporation I should not doubt of a successful event. But 
I have not the same confidence in our Lawyers . . ." Why was Roose- 
velt so reluctant to undertake these things himself? On July i, concern- 
ing the matter, Latrobe writes that he cannot come to Philadelphia, "so 
that you and Mifflin must do as you can. I fear you will at best make a 
bad hand of it. You should in the mean time keep possession, & speak 
a high toned language threatening the worst if a speedy decision be not 
obtained." 

In July, Roosevelt with his customary optimism writes proposing the 
sale of the lease to the corporation for $35,000. Latrobe questions the pos- 
sibility o such a transaction but asks if he should send Mifflin his power 
of attorney. On August 21, Latrobe writes again discussing with Roose- 
velt the real value of the lease: 



THE UNRELENTING WEB 175 

By our lease, the corporation are at its expiration to pay for all permanent im- 
provements at a valuation. Therefore if we now sell, we ought to receive in 
addition to this value of permanent improvements the value of the extra power 
for 40 years about. I suppose the permanent improvements to be worth at 
least $10,000. What then is the value of the other item? ... As to MifHin, I 
dread writing to him, plagued as he is with Crammond. I have heard once 
or twice from Bollman lately on business. This man distresses me exceedingly. 
I have a long, & most eloquent defense of his conduct moral & mercantile. His 
talents are astonishing. I wish his heart were to be trusted. 

Later, writing to Bollman, Latrobe says of Crammond, who with Small- 
man and Mifflin had taken over Bollman's share of the waterworks when 
Bollman & Company failed: "As to Crammond, his opinions, liberally 
laid before me, have had no weight. ... I believe insolvency may be out- 
done in criminality by actions that receive applause among us. Cram- 
mond can furnish examples." Perhaps his sale of Roosevelt's notes with 
Latrobe's endorsements to Corps & Casey was one such instance. 

But matters were coming rapidly to a climax; in true tragic fashion vio- 
lence stepped in. Roosevelt had taken Latrobe's suggestions literally and 
had turned off the water for three hours. About the same time there was a 
serious fire in Philadelphia. Latrobe wrote Roosevelt almost in panic, on 
September 24, 1805: "I hear . . . that the spread of the fire was owing 
to the withholding of the water. I hope this representation is not 
true. . . ." Roosevelt hastened to reassure him on this point, but La- 
trobe's answer of September 26 seems to indicate that Roosevelt had 
threatened to blow up the engines unless his asking price for the lease, 
$35,000, was accepted. Evidently he had made such a threat, for the 
Councils had immediately secured a writ against him. Roosevelt fool- 
ishly locked the gates against the sheriff. The city was enraged; a mob, 
led by the sheriff himself, charged the waterworks, broke open the locks, 
threw out Roosevelt and the men working under him, turned the whole 
works over to municipal operation, and replaced Davis and MifSin with 
Graff as manager. It was an ugly business from every point of view, and 
it redounded to the credit of neither party, but that the watering com- 
mittee's ire was not directed against the designer of the system is shown 
by its appointment of the new manager a man who had been Latrobe's 
chief assistant on the project and was still his close friend. 

Yet it is also true that the watering committee had as little legal right 
to possession as Roosevelt had had in his highhanded defiance of the 



176 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

writ. Some accommodation finally had to be made, if only to guarantee 
the continued operation of the system. The city had been put in a posi- 
tion where to be assured of its water supply it had to buy Roosevelt's 
lease. Roosevelt, on the other hand, was now powerless to do anything 
but sell. By his ill-timed, impulsive actions he had lost whatever respect 
and influence he had enjoyed before, and he had no capital to fight the 
matter further; the price his syndicate received -$15,000, with a few ad- 
ditional sums reflects these two facts. The total, less than half what he 
had asked, was actually, according to the report of the watering com- 
mittee (which tactfully makes no reference to the riot), $i5,886. 6 

Where did this leave Latrobe? Theoretically he stood to gain a third 
of the value of the sale to counterbalance the $20,700 debt to Corps & 
Casey. In reality things worked out differently. The syndicate still had 
many outstanding debts to pay, and Mifflin was supposed to take care 
of them. Crammond and Mifflin were entitled to Bollman's third between 
them; the other third was Roosevelt's. From Crammond Latrobe could 
expect no consideration; in fact, Bollman had entered on the account 
of Bollman & Company a claim on Latrobe for several hundred dollars 
that Latrobe's absconding clerk, John Barber, had stolen, and Latrobe had 
had difficulties in removing this absurd claim. Naturally the New York 



6. The Annual Reports of the Watering Committee (at the Historical Society of Penn- 
sylvania) are fascinating documents. They should put to rest at once the still popularly 
believed canard started by Mencken, who has spent many years trying to kill it, that 
bathing was considered immoral in the early United States and that bathrooms were non- 
existent till the 1 840*5. The Report lists the numbers of subscribers to the water system 
for each year and, since private baths for a period paid a special rental, gives these sep- 
arately. Thus the first year 63 houses, 4 businesses, and one sugar refinery paid water 
rents, whereas in 1805 there were 685 houses on the system and the next year 848. At 
some later date the special rate for baths was introduced; these climbed rapidly in number. 
In 1815, when 2,883 dwellings paid rentals, 228 (nearly 10 per cent) had bathrooms, and 
in 1819 the number of baths had climbed to 380, twelve of them located in houses beyond 
the city limits. The 1819 receipts for water rents amounted to $24,884. When the Fairmount 
works, which supplemented and later replaced the original Latrobe-designed plant, were 
changed from steam power to water power in 1819, the city was forced to buy the entire 
water rights at this point. These were held by the Schuylkill Navigation Company, char- 
tered in 1812 to improve the river channels and to build canals where necessary. With 
the development of the use of anthracite coal, the company's earnings grew to unexpected 
levels, for the Schuylkill and its canals offered the most economical route from the coal 
fields to the city. Ironically the price the company received for the water rights purchased 
in 1819 was $150,000, nearly ten times what the city had paid Roosevelt and his associates. 
Latrobe and Roosevelt only achieved, from all their actual contributions, near ruin. 



THE UNRELENTING WEB 177 

group headed by Roosevelt hastened to realize as much as it could while 
it could. 

The final sales contract was closed early in January, 1806, and on 
February 20 Latrobe wrote to Roosevelt begging for some share in the 
liquidation. He summarizes his debts and says that he has consulted a 
lawyer as to the advisability of declaring himself insolvent and that he 
is even threatened with arrest for Philadelphia debts of $950. First of all, 
he wants two-thirds of the Corps & Casey claim removed as we have 
seen, this was solely the result of his backing of Roosevelt. The Chesa- 
peake and Delaware Canal notes with which his salary on that develop- 
ment was paid were no longer accepted anywhere. To prevent his arrest, 
he says, 

it occurred to me that if of the money due from the corporation I could have 
obtained 1300 dollars, I could discharge all my personal debts, & be free from 
detention here. For you must understand that my stay in Philadelphia is not 
voluntary, & that an attempt to leave would be fatal to me. . . . 

As security that this sum together with 700 Dollars already advanced by 
you should be applied to the object of liquidating my debts as your security, 
I proposed to give my personal bond conditioned as the case requires and as 
security real estate in Delaware, in the city of Richmond Virginia & in Penn- 
sylvania to the amount which I believe I could do by regular Mortgage or by 
a Judgment. . . . [What an expression both of Latrobe's dire need and of his 
business naivete as though such a bond would be required of him either by 
right or by law, when the payments it suggests are actually due him legally! 
The result would have been that his remaining assets would have been heavily 
mortgaged to the very man for whose benefit the debts had been unwarily 
assumed.] 

I have however learned that Mr. Mark [ever the prompt businessman] took 
with him to New York 3000 $ cash [of the city settlement] . ... In common 
course it ought to be applied to the reduction of our debt but such are my 
necessities, that I cannot help think that it would be equally just to relieve 
with part of it my present necessities in the manner I hope. 

Then the same day he writes another letter to Roosevelt, complaining 
that Roosevelt's answer to an earlier letter was full of insults and prac- 
tically insane! And on March 8 he writes Jacob Mark urging him to 
explain to Roosevelt the facts of the entire case. In the meantime, Roose- 
velt had associated Latrobe with him in a speculative purchase of New 
Jersey salt-meadow land. This had been done without investment by 



178 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

Latrobe as an expression of gratitude; on April 8, 1806, Latrobe writes 
him that any profits from the deal should be applied to reducing the 
Navy debt; he, Latrobe, had invested nothing and desires nothing. 

But all was of no avail; the debts, the lack of income, the threatened 
arrests and judgments remained. Philadelphia had proved itself far from 
grateful; the architect's early heady prospects there had been fool's gold. 
Latrobe had had enough of it; now he wanted to move to Washington, 
to which his professional position as Surveyor of the Public Buildings 
called him. Isaac Hazlehurst, his father-in-law, evidently objected to the 
move; to explain the necessity of going, Latrobe wrote him on July 19, 
1806, about his present position: 

But it is well known that two months after my marriage, Barber's conduct 
involved me in such a manner that I have paid the last of the burthens he 
threw upon me only this spring. His delinquency exceeded 6000 $. The 
necessary interest which devolved to me in the rolling works, the failure of 
Bollman, the transfer of all personal concerns with me, as an individual, both 
as debtor and creditor, to me as a partner in the concern, has cost me $7000. 
... I have made good all deficiencies excepting to you partly by the observ- 
ance of the most rigid oeconomy in my domestic & personal expenses, partly 
by the private sale I might say, the sacrifice of my patrimony of lands in this 
state. All this is now past. . . . But from the end of 1802 to the middle of 
1804, I, in fact, was little better off than the dogs who relied upon what fell 
from the rich man's table. I had nothing but scraps and leavings, & have 
often spent my last dollar in the market, when I did not know where to get 
another. . . . 

And in another letter to Hazlehurst two days later: 

And when the Canal [the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, of which more 
will be said later] was finally suspended, I came to Philadelphia "to begin 
life anew." . . . [But the prospects are bad.] As to private business, I shall 
get none. There are now building in this city two capital houses by the 
Fishers, who call themselves my friends. Do they employ me? John Dorsey 
has now no less than 15 plans now in progress of execution, because he 
charges nothing for them. The public affront put upon me as a professional 
man, in the erection of the Academy of Art from the design of John Dorsey, 
by a vote of all the men who pretend to patronize the arts in this city, would 
have driven any Artist from it, but one held by the strongest family ties and 
affections. . . . 

I cannot in any emergency, lay down & die quietly . . 



THE UNRELENTING WEB 179 

Latrobe was bitter, and justifiably so. As an architect Philadelphia re- 
garded him not; in his role as engineer, fate had seen to it that the 
waterworks project had cost him $7,000 more than he had received as a 
fee. 

He had, it is true, temporarily cleared himself by the sacrifice of most 
of what he owned, most of the capital that before had been his main- 
stay; but even then the web was not broken, the outstanding debts 
against the old syndicate and the rolling mill continued to vex. A contro- 
versy arose between Latrobe and MifSin (the titular agent of the works) 
as to who should meet these debts. Mifflin claimed he had no authority 
to pay anything after the date of the sale to the city; the creditors leaped 
upon Latrobe as a man of substance though of how little they did not 
dream. 

At last, in despair, he writes to Richard Peters of Philadelphia (Febru- 
ary 14, 1807), asking him to arbitrate all the matters relative to the 
syndicate and Mifflin. In his letter he summarizes the story and adds 
another detail: 

I had in fact ceased to be a partner in the first six months [of the rolling-mill 
company] . . . having given Mr. Roosevelt a power of attorney under which 
he conveyed my share, as well as his own, to Messers Corps & Casey [obviously 
as additional security on the old notes]. ... As this was for very good reasons 
not published [I was being held to account]. . . . The dispute of the partner- 
ship having risen to great heights about the time of Bollman's failure both 
parties agreed to leave them [the matters at issue] to my decision. They were 
satisfied with the award I made. . . . Under this award Crammond & Mifflin 
became partners. ... In the latter end of 1805, the corporation having with- 
held all compensation for the supply of water ... we determined to get rid 
of the concern. ... At last a price was agreed to be received . . . and it was 
agreed that Mr. Mifflin should receive [all amounts due] and pay all debts 
outstanding. ... I have no business to enquire why the outstanding debts 
were not paid . . . 

Some months later MifSin finally paid, and the disastrous incident was 
closed. On February 14, Latrobe also wrote to President Jefferson in con- 
nection with a possible increase in his government salary. He states that 
his professional life has cost him, thus far, $15,000 of his patrimony. If 
he were to move to Washington he must be promised real security. 

That, then, is how the waterworks were built. Six years and more 
from the time when the clear water first flowed sparkling down the 



l8o LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

Philadelphia gutters, Latrobe was at last rid of the whole affair. It had 
brought both Roosevelt and himself to the brink of ruin and disgrace, 
and Latrobe had broken free of the web only by the sacrifice of most of 
his capital. From that time on, he was no longer a comparatively well- 
to-do man who could (as he had written to Scandella in 1798) spend 
his professional income on books and instruments. After 1807 he was a 
professional man in all seriousness, dependent on his professional income 
for the nourishing of his growing family and for supporting the style 
of living expected of one in his station in life. Such was his reward for 
his brilliantly conceived and swiftly executed design for the waterworks, 
such the price paid for his professional skill. It is a depressing picture 
but one not entirely unparalleled either then or later. The city of Phila- 
delphia was the gainer, of course; it had the waterworks and for a 
fraction of their cost! 



CHAPTER 
10 



Professional Struggles: 1802-1807 



THE first eight years of Latrobe's second marriage were strangely com- 
pounded of professional success and financial failure. Of the happiness 
that his marriage brought it is impossible to speak too strongly; Mary 
Elizabeth afforded him a kind of companionship and emotional security 
he had never known before. In addition to her gentleness and generosity 
she had the talent of the creative homemaker. As Latrobe wrote to his 
brother Christian (May 16, 1805) : "She is besides one of those women 
who without expense have the art of making everything that belongs to 
them wear the appearance of exquisite taste. Cleanliness & order reign 
from my Garret to the cellar, & I am myself surprised at the unseen Art 
by which all is produced." 

Their first child, a daughter named Juliana after Mrs. Latrobe's mother, 
was born June 9, 1801, and died of "summer complaint" on August 7 of 
the same year at Clover Hill, the Hazlehurst estate at Mount Holly, New 
Jersey. The monument Latrobe designed for her still stands, exquisite in 
its simplicity. Yet in those days of heavy infant mortality the Latrobes 
were unusually fortunate. Their second child, christened John Hazlehurst 
after a recently dead maternal uncle and Boneval for his father's ances- 
tor, was born on May 4, 1803, and lived till 1891. A daughter, named 
Juliana like her dead sister but generally known as Julia, followed on 
July 17, 1804, and then on December 19, 1806, there came another son 
(who died in 1878) named Benjamin Henry for his father. (A third 
daughter, Mary Agnes, born November 5, 1805, had died in infancy.) 
John H. B. Latrobe, a bright, talented youth, was for a time his father's 
able draftsman; later, after the architect's death, he switched to the law, 
became one of Baltimore's most respected lawyers and financiers, and 
was deeply interested in the colonization of Negroes. During most of his 

181 



X 8 2 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

life he was general counsel of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and he 
went to Russia to represent the Winans railroad interests in the new 
Russian railroads. But he remained part architect and artist all his life 
and in his hundreds of accurate water colors he handed down something 
of the technique and the vision he had learned from his father. 1 Ben was 
also interested in railroads; scarcely more than a child at the time of his 
father's death, he followed his elder brother into the law but later took 
up engineering and became one of the notable railroad engineers of the 
country, known especially for his magnificent viaducts for the Baltimore 
& Ohio Railroad between Baltimore and Washington and also for his 
layout of its western lines from Cumberland to Wheeling. The two sons 
were a remarkable pair, and it is interesting to see how they carried on 
many of the talents of their fatherimagination, skill in delineation, en- 
gineering ability, and interest in technical progress. There were also, of 
course, Lydia and Henry, who in the earlier days of the marriage were 
the children in the home, as contrasted with the infants. Later, as the 
new family grew, they were sent to boarding schools, at least for part 
of the time. 

The Latrobes, ensconced in their new Philadelphia home with a cook, 
a chambermaid, and a manservant (as Mary later described the house- 
hold) 2 and with the Bank of Pennsylvania and the waterworks ap- 
proaching completion, looked forward to a bright future. Happily, too, 
in Clover Hill at Mount Holly they had almost a second home and were 
often there on visits, sometimes extended ones; the proud Hazlehurst 
grandparents indeed were always ready to receive a child or two if the 
parents wished or were compelled to be away. 

With the summer of 1801, however, when the bank and the water- 
works were completed, no further work was in sight. It was a worri- 
some period, for Latrobe had a position to preserve if he wished to make 
his way in purse-conscious Philadelphia; but by fall a providential en- 
gineering job saved them. This was a survey of navigation on the Susque- 

1. See John E. Semmes, John H. B. Latrobe and His Times, 1803-1891 (Baltimore: 
Remington [01917]). This is an extremely interesting account, though marred by occa- 
sional minor inaccuracies. A large collection of John H. B.'s water colors is in the Mary- 
land Historical Society. 

2. Her memoir of her husband was transcribed by John H. B. Latrobe and is preserved 
in a large manuscript notebook (also containing much other material dealing with the 
Latrobes) now in the possession of the family. 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: 1802-1807 183 

hanna. In September, Governor McKean appointed Latrobe one of the 
commissioners of the survey and also the engineer of the project. The 
architect's uncle. Colonel Frederick Antes, had been made the agent two 
months earlier, and it was probably he who selected Latrobe as his chief 
assistant. 

The Latrobes therefore set out together in the soft early autumn days, 
leaving Henry and Lydia at Clover Hill. The survey party, under the 
architect's direction, was to start at Columbia, some miles down the 
river from Harrisburg, and work gradually to the Maryland line. It was 
to make an accurate survey of the banks, reefs, rapids, and existing chan- 
nels and wherever possible to remove boulders and even blast off pro- 
jections and dredge shallows in order to make the channel safer. Mary- 
land was to do the same thing south of the boundary; the result was to 
provide barge navigation, even in periods of low water, from Columbia 
to Chesapeake Bay. 

In early October, soon after the work began, Colonel Antes died of 
kidney trouble, at the age of sixty-seven, and his nephew fell heir to his 
responsibilities. The work was arduous but pleasant; the country proved 
picturesque, and Latrobe's workbook (now in the Maryland Historical 
Society) is full of rapid pen sketches of the rocky valley, done con amore. 

As the survey progressed (with Christian R. Hauducour as assistant 
engineer and surveyor) contracts were let for digging and for the re- 
moval of rocks, and on November 18, the work being substantially com- 
plete, Latrobe wrote Governor McKean a report of what had been accom- 
plished. But in addition he had to make adjustments of a myriad of ac- 
counts and untangle carefully all the unfinished business left by Colonel 
Antes. The final accounts were not presented till mid-March, 1802; for 
the entire job Latrobe received $1,000. 

The whole project was embodied in a single long annotated map, 
graphically rendered in color, which was sent from Pennsylvania to 
Washington in connection with Gallatin's proposed Federal support of 
internal improvements. The map disappeared when the British looted 
and fired the Capitol in 1814. Later (in 1817), when Latrobe was living 
in Baltimore, he made a replica of it from his notes and from memory 
and presented it to the Library Company of Baltimore; it is now in the 
Maryland Historical Society. The map's indications of rocks, rapids, reefs, 
and promontories are so compelling that it is as legible to a layman as to 
an engineer. 



184 



LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 





PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: 1802-1807 



185 




In Maryland Historical Society 

FIGURE 13. Sketches on the Susquehanna. Top, Culley's Falls. Second, Bear Island. 
Third, A Cave. Above, Fulton's Ferry House. From the Latrobe workbook of 
the Susquehanna survey. 

Latrobe was back in Philadelphia by mid-November; Mary had re- 
turned earlier. An affectionate letter to her from Buckhalter's Tavern 
(November 10, 1801) while she was living at the Hazlehursts' at 117 
North Second Street reads in part: 

If I could bring myself to write to anyone but you, I could furnish a letter 
entertaining enough. . . . The very reception we have met with has been so 
various that I could fill a letter with descriptions of character & manners, that 
would often make you laugh. , . . But after writing the first words of my 
letter, after calling you, my dearest Mary, my beloved wife, the whole world 
vanishes from my imagination, and I see none but you. I seem to stretch my 
arms from the rocky walls of the Susquehannah in vain towards you, all my 
spirits, and strength exhaust themselves in the exertion, and I scarcely am 
capable of guiding my pen, just to give a bare dry narrative of our daily 
labors. ... 

When I think of you, my dearest love, my heart melts with tenderness, such 
as I never before knew; but it soon rests itself firmly on that superiority of 
mind, that soundness of reasoning, and that command of your feelings that 
I know you to possess, and then I take my level on my shoulders and march 
forth as strong as a lion to push forward to the end of my labor, when your 
arms and your kisses, if I dare to think of them shall reward all my fatigues. 
Oh my love! What virtue can deserve such a woman as you are I Were I but 



l86 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

half worthy of you, how superior to all should I be, and how just would be 
my pride. . . . 

I pray God you may have been well. Love to the children and to our father 
and mother, and to the boys [the Hazlehursts], 

Your most tenderly affectionate husband. 

During the winter he had to make several trips to Lancaster in connec- 
tion with the final accounts. In a letter from there on one of these trips 
(March 18, 1802), addressed to his wife at 186 Arch Street, their own 
house, he gives his impressions of the local political scene: 

... I have attended the house [of representatives] this morning, and re- 
gretted that I durst not use my pencil as freely as I wished. Some of the figures 
there exhibited, are fit only for the pencil of Hogarth. I counted only twelve 
combed heads and two woolen nightcaps. . . . There is neither favor nor 
comeliness among them that we should desire them. Some of the countenances 
unite coarseness & brutality with stupidity in a superior degree. And yet I 
was much disappointed in hearing sound sense proceed from many of the 
least promising in appearance, though dressed in very uncouth language. . . . 
After the House broke up, I had occasion to go to the Governor. He had just 
received a petition from Meadeville on Lake Erie praying for the removal of 
a Mr. Kennedy, a prothonotary whom he had appointed, and who is said 
to be a very worthy man. [In the petition] he was stated to be an aristocrat, 
a tyrant and a Tory. The petition was signed by more than 500 names, written 
on papers of various sizes pasted together so as to form a roll of about 7 feet 
long. On looking over the roll it appeared, that the signatures consisted of old 
Muster Rolls, of the signatures to other petitions the heads of which had 
been cut off, and so clumsily pieced, that ... on separating two pieces the 
head showed the names to be a list of taxable inhabitants of Erie County. 
So abominable a forgery excited not a little of his Excellency's choler, and the 
fellows who brought it sneaked away in the utmost confusion. . . . 

A great disappointment in these early years was Latrobe's failure to 
win the competition for the New York City Hall in 1802. He had two 
good friends in New York, Aaron Burr and Nicholas Roosevelt; both 
hoped eventually to make him a permanent New Yorker. It was at 
Burr's solicitation that Latrobe entered the competition, and (according 
to Latrobe's memorandum to Gallatin on December 15, 1806, shortly 
before Burr's trial for treason) through Burr's influence all the com- 
missioners save one voted for the Latrobe design. Burr's report on the 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: 1802-1807 187 

voting may have been one of his bits of accomplished deceit; in any 
case, the final vote was for the design of Mangin & McComb. 3 

Latrobe's design for the City Hall was in its way superb. His competi- 
tion drawings are now in the Library of Congress, and a comparison of 
these with the Mangin & McComb scheme is revealing. The building 
Latrobe designed is smaller and more tightly organized than the other. 
Its plan is beautifully studied, excellent from the functional point of 
view; compared to it, the Mangin & McComb plan seems loose. On the 
other hand, the Latrobe scheme has no such superb central rotunda stairs 
as the winning design, nor does it include so fine a public suite of state 
reception rooms, and the very looseness of the chosen design has proved 
to be much more susceptible of all those changes that historical develop- 
ment has necessitated. 

Creative as Latrobe's plan is, the exterior nevertheless is far from per- 
fect. The height relation between the ground floor and the piano nobile 
above is weak; the great entrance steps are too high, and the Corinthian 
portico to which they lead becomes too small by contrast. As the crown- 
ing motif of the exterior Latrobe uses his favorite low Pantheon-type 
dome, and the distribution of the openings and all the detail have the 
perfection of relationship and of detail to be expected from him; but 
these virtues do not make up for the fundamental errors in judgment. 

The Latrobe design, moreover, was perhaps too conscious a search for 
economy to appeal to the committee, who were thinking in a remark- 
ably large way; looking forward to a great future for New York, they 
were seeking a building of equal grandeur. The Mangin & McComb 
scheme, with its great length, its projecting wings, and its ample en- 
trance vestibule, had much more of this quality than did Latrobe's simple 
rectangular block. No one can study the two designs candidly without 
realizing that in spite of the economy, the organization, and the reticent 
distinction of the Latrobe design the committee members made the cor- 
rect choice. The admiration and affection in which the New York City 
Hall has been held for a century and a half sufficiently prove their 
wisdom. 

Latrobe bitterly regretted his failure to win the competition; he felt 



3. This competition was finally judged on October 4, 1802. John McComb was ap- 
pointed the architect to carry out the work. The result was the present building. 



1 88 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

he had produced by far the better design of the two. Some time later 
(November 4, 1804) ^ e wrote his brother Christian: 

Three years ago, I presented a design for the new city Hall at New York. 
It was I think my best design. It was rejected, & a vile heterogeneous com- 
position in the style of Charles X of France, or Queen Elizabeth of England 
was adopted, the invention of a New York bricklayer & a St. Domingo 
Frenchman in partnership. . . . 4 Now, this very city of New York, have 
appointed a Committee to solicit my undertaking their business on my own 
terms & I have been obliged twice to refuse them, on account of my present 
engagements. 

The "business" referred to here was the design of a system to drain the 
Collect Pond as well as the construction of suitable docks. For this, J. F. 
Mangin had submitted a scheme that was deemed impractical by the 
authorities. The committee consisted of Wynant Van Zandt, Jr., Jacob 
Morton, and Clarkson Crolins. Their invitation to Latrobe had come, he 
believed, through the influence of Burr. 5 Latrobe wrote them (June 17, 
1804) regretting that he could not accept their invitation "to be useful 
to their city" and going on to discuss the problem of drainage and the 
construction of docks along the North and East rivers. The unexpected 
fullness of his letter and its valuable suggestions led the members of the 
committee to think that his refusal was far from final they little under- 
stood how his ebullient imagination seethed and ran over when any 
problem was presented to it, pay or no pay and they wrote again urg- 
ing him to come. Latrobe firmly declined the job on August 5; he could 
not leave the canal or be so far removed from the United States Capitol, 
on which he was already at work. This nevertheless was not the only 
effort to bring Latrobe to New York, as we shall see. 

One particularly exciting project for which the architect made prelimi- 
nary estimates was a bridge from New York to Long Island across 
BlackwelTs Island. Communication between Manhattan and Long Island 
was becoming more and more of a problem; the small ferries of those 
pre-steamboat days were manifestly insufficient. Roosevelt was the insti- 
gator this time, in the fall of 1804. John Stevens 6 had suggested a tunnel 



4. This is an important new piece of evidence on the life and origins of Joseph Francois 
Mangin, the brilliant co-author with McComb (the "New York bricklayer") of the win- 
ning design. 

5. See the "Memorandum" referred to earlier and given on page 222f. 

6. John Stevens (1749-1848), a brother-in-law of Chancellor Livingston, had been as- 




Latrobe's main-floor plan. 



Library of Congress 



Proposed Theater, Hotel, and Assembly Building, Richmond. PLATE 9 



Latrobe's section of the theater. 



Library of Congress 





Library of Congress 
Proposed Theater, Hotel, and Assembly Building, Richmond. Latrobe's perspective of the assembly room. 

PLATE 10 



The Penitentiary, Richmond, Latrobe's main-floor plan. 



A, Dark cells. 

B, Solitary cells for men. 

Q Solitary cells for women. 

D, Receiving room for men. 

E, Receiving room for women . 

F, Open arcade for ventilation. 

G, Stair to infirmary. 



State Library of Virginia 





The Penitentiary, Richmond. Latrobe's perspective of the entrance. 



State Library of Virginia 




Old photograph, courtesy Valentine Museum, Richmond 

The Penitentiary, Richmond. Cell block (with added top story). 

Long Branch, the Burwell House, Virginia. B. H. Latrobe, architect. Entrance front. 

Photograph Rohden, courtesy Alexander Mackay-Smith 




PLATE ii 




Competition for the New York City Hall. Latrobe's perspective. 



Library of Congress 



PLATE 12 



Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Latrobe's preliminary perspective. Slightly modified in execution. 

Maryland Historical Society 





Historical Society 1 of Pennsylvania 
Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. B. H. Latrobe, architect. Engraving of a drawing by George Strickland. 



PLATE 13 



Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Latrobe's section. 



Historical Society of Pennsylvania 





Philadelphia Academy of Art 

Philadelphia Waterworks. B. H. Latrobe, architect and engineer. Centre Square Pump House 
on the Fourth of July. A painting by Krimmel. 



PLATE 14 



Philadelphia Waterworks. Settling basin on the Schuylkill. Latrobe's drawing. 

Historical Society of Pennsylvania 





Historical Society of Pennsylvania 
Chestnut Street Theater, Philadelphia, as altered by Latrobe. Engraving by Birch. 




Sedgeley, the Crammond House, Philadel- 
phia. B. H. Latrobe, architect. 



Historical Society of Pennsylvania 



PLATE 15 



The Burd House, Philadelphia. 

Old photograph, courtesy Historical Society 
of Pennsylvania 





Historical Society of Pennsylvania 

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Medical School. B. H. Latrobe, architect. Drawing by William 

Strickland. 

"Ml 



PLATE 16 




South front. 



Photograph W. Boone, courtesy Dickinson College 



"Old West," Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. B. H. Latrobe, architect. 
North front. Courtesy Dickinson College 




PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: 1802-1807 l8p 

of brick, or even one made of continuous sheets of heavy waterproof 
leather. Latrobe thought these suggestions impractical and remarked that 
Stevens was always the dupe of his fantastic ideas; then he made an 
elaborate estimate for the bridge that would be required. Roosevelt may 
have been thinking in terms of a wooden-pile bridge, but Latrobe was 
convinced that the difference in cost between that and a stone bridge 
would soon be offset by the heavy maintenance required on the wooden 
structure; 7 accordingly his estimate was founded on stone arches and the 
costs were calculated on the basis of work actually done in Philadelphia; 
the final total amounted to $950,ooo. 8 This at the time was a sum beyond 
the capacities of either the city or any private company, and the matter 
passed into limbo. Manifestly Latrobe was not destined to be a New 
Yorker. 

Meanwhile architectural jobs in Philadelphia remained coy. One of 
those on which he worked intermittently for several years was the radi- 
cal alteration of the Chestnut Street Theater. Latrobe apparently made his 
designs for this sometime in 1801, but construction was only completed 
early in 1806. The building, supposedly a copy of the theater in Bath, 
England, had been erected in 1791 by Thomas Wignall and Hugh 
Reinagle the latter an architect, scene painter, and master mason all in 
one. By 1801 it had become insufficient for the growing town, its lobbies 
and entrances were inconvenient, and its rich gabled brick exterior was 
considered old-fashioned. Latrobe changed the spirit of the whole front 
by adding an entirely new entrance complex on the ground floor. At 
each end were projecting marble-faced wings; these were ornamented 
with sculptured panels and connected by a colonnade. The supper rooms 
and withdrawing rooms were above, on either side; evidently they were 
not finished or used for some time after the theater opening. The audi- 
torium interior was not Latrobe's but, as often happened, was designed 
by the theater's scene-painting department. The new front had a classic 
quality unwonted in Philadelphia. The sculptured panels of the new end 



sociated with Livingston and Roosevelt in their 1798 steamboat experiments. An inventor 
with a restless imagination, he was in later life chiefly instrumental in railroad development 

7. In 1812, Robert Mills and the engineer Lewis Wernwag completed the timber Upper 
Ferry bridge over the Schuylkill: It was an arched bridge of low rise, the sides concave 
for lateral stability. It stood till 1818, when it burned. At the time it was built it had 
the longest single span (344 feet) of any bridge in the world. 

8. See Appendix for the complete text 



ipo LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

pavilions harmonized with the figures of Comedy and Tragedy, carved 
by Rush, in the niches of the older front which showed above and behind 
the new work. Over the colonnade the architect had hoped to use an 
"emblem" (of English Coade stone) with the arms of the state in the 
center, but existing engravings show that this was not included. The 
colonnade was Corinthian apparently the simple Greek Corinthian of 
the Tower of the Winds but, alas, as a matter of economy and against 
Latrobe's wish, it was of wood and the leaves of the capitals were of 
papier-mache, made by the decorator Holland. 9 

The work, like many alteration jobs, was a taxing one; yet payment 
for his services was almost indefinitely postponed. We find him writing 
again and again about his bill all through 1804. In 1805 he says, "I have 
waited four years for any payment," and he states (February 6) that he 
is putting the matter into the hands of his attorney; on April i he 
writes Richard North in Philadelphia that there is $800 due him from 
the theater. Whether he ever received it, or any part of it, is prob- 
lematical; apparently an architect's fee for making the theater usable 
had the last call on the treasurer's till. 10 

Another job phizzed into smoke entirely the Philadelphia Exchange, 
planned for the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce through a certain 
J. P. Broome. This was a most ambitious project, to occupy a lot on 
Second and Dock streets directly opposite the Bank of Pennsylvania. 
The design had originally been made as early as 1800, but subscriptions 
lagged. As late as 1805 the idea was still considered "alive," and Latrobe 
wrote David Cox on February 4 to refresh his mind about the lot size 
(106 by 209 feet) and the contemplated method of building in three 
stages corresponding to the three units of which it consisted. In front 
there was to be an open colonnaded court a summer exchange with 
four large rooms around it; next, a winter exchange room eighty feet 
square, bordered by small offices; then, at the rear, rooms for auctions 
and a customs house. More than a year later (May 27, 1806) Latrobe 
wrote J. P. Broome, then in New York, that he felt that subscriptions 



9. Letter to the agents of the new theater, July 4, 1806. In this letter Latrobe also 
pleads for the final completion and decoration of the retiring rooms for subscribers. 

10. It was probably this failure of the theater to pay that he refers to in a letter to 
Roosevelt (March 26, 1805): "... a most serious disappointment to the amount of 850 
dollars, on which I counted with the fullest reliance has thrown me into the utmost 
difficulty . . ." 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: 1802-1807 

i 




From the Latrobe letter books 

FIGURE 14. Proposed Philadelphia Exchange. Rough Sketch Plan. From Latrobe's 
letter to Daniel Cox, February 4, 1805. 

would eventually be forthcoming. But the matter had become snarled 
in real estate speculation, for Broome had seen an opportunity to un- 
load a piece of property he owned, and Latrobe told him, probably with 
secret pleasure, there was no possibility of the Exchange's moving to 
Broome's lot; the definite action of the Chamber of Commerce had speci- 
fied the Second Street site. Latrobe still counted on the job, and the grad- 
ual fading out of the grand scheme must have been a severe blow. 11 

There was still another taunting will-o'-the-wisp: the alteration of 
Bingham's great mansion into a "Tontine" coffee house a luxurious co- 
operative club for Philadelphia businessmen, like the Tontine Coffee 
House which McComb had designed in New York. Latrobe was the 
natural choice for architect. But here again subscriptions failed to ma- 
terialize, and eventually the aim was changed; the Bingham house be- 
came the Mansion House Hotel. The hotel job, too, brought Latrobe 



ii. On May 6, 1806, he wrote his father-in-law: "The Chamber of Commerce has no 
fund out of which to pay me." 



192 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

little or no money, for he had no claim on Renshaw, the lessor; it also 
brought vexation and trouble. Financial confusion reigned, much litiga- 
tion ensued, and in all of it Latrobe was drawn in, willy-nilly, as a 
witness. 

But other commissions did materialize in that difficult period. There 
was, for instance, Nassau Hall at Princeton. This had been completely 
gutted by fire on March 6, 1802; the roofs, floors, and partitions had all 
been destroyed, but the greater part of the exterior walls (of stone) re- 
mained. It was to Latrobe that Princeton turned for the design and carry- 
ing out of the restoration. He contributed his services, charging only for 
the actual expenses, and the new work was substantially completed in 
the following year. He changed the plan somewhat, laying out the rooms 
on a more regular scheme; on the exterior he designed a new, wider, and 
taller cupola of great elegance of detail, and over the old simple entrances 
he added pediments to make them more consonant with the monu- 
mental scale of the whole long building. 12 

The architect was proud of his work there and wrote Henry Clay about 
it (May 15, 1812) apropos of Transylvania College in Lexington, for 
which he had made a design (to be considered later) : "In Princeton, 
they lodge three or two [students] in a room of 16 or 12 by about 15 
[feet] . . . divided into 2 or 3 cells for study thus . . ." (adding a 
sketch). Further on he continued: "The renovation of Princeton, the 
College of Carlisle, the Medical Schools of Philadelphia are among the 
most gratifying exertions of my art . . ." Although he had contributed 
his services, Princeton's gratitude was grudging. He had used iron for 
the roof and the roof leaked. The Princeton authorities were much 
disturbed and wrote to Elias Boudinot in Philadelphia suggesting an- 
grily that Latrobe "be held strictly to account." Latrobe wrote to Samuel 
MifHin, manager of the rolling mill at the waterworks, about this iron, 
but there is no further reference to it in the correspondence. 13 

Dickinson College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was a more satisfactory 
engagement, though here again his services were donated. In 1803 he 
was approached with regard to this commission by Hugh Brackenridge, 
the famous judge and satiric author, who had made a special hurried 



12. Latrobe's reconstructions produced in large measure the Nassau Hall of today, save 
for the arched entrance, the modifications in the cupola, and the interesting end stair 
towers of stone that were added by Notman some half century later. 

13. See "Mr. Duffield's Letters," Princeton Alumni Weekly, Friday, August 10, 1934, p. 5. 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: 1802-1807 193 

trip to Philadelphia to catch Latrobe before he left on one of his visits 
to Washington. The two men seem to have developed an instant under- 
standing and mutual liking, and Latrobe attacked the design with pleas- 
ure. Before long (on May 18, 1803) the designs were sent to James 
Hamilton in Carlisle by Brackenridge, together with a long explanatory 
letter by Latrobe: 

... I will beg leave to state to you the principles which have governed me 
in the distribution, & arrangement of the apartments. 

The two aspects, the most unpleasant in our climate are the North East 
& the North West. The extreme cold of the North West winds in winter, 
& their dryness, which causes a rapid evaporation so thoroughly chills the 
walls of every house, exposed to them, that when the wind, as is almost 
always the case, changes afterwards to the West & S.W. & becomes warmer 
& moister, the water is precipitated upon the Walls from the air, by their 
coldness, as upon the outside of a Glass of cold Water in warm weather, 
ano! they soon stream with humidity. The North East winds bring along 
rain & sleet, & their violence drives the moisture into every wall of which 
the material will permit it. The unpleasantness of the winds is aggravated 
by the suddenness with which the Northwest commonly succeeds the North 
East. I have stated these things, which are indeed known to every body, in 
order to explain a law, which is thereby imposed upon the Architecture of 
our Country: It is, to reserve the Southern aspects of every building in the 
erection of which the choice is free, for the inhabited apartments, and to 
occupy the Northern aspects by communications, as Stairs, Lobbies, Halls, 
Vestibules, etc. 

This Law governs the designs herewith presented to you. 

On the North are the Vestibule & Lobbies, or passages. They protect the 
Southern rooms from the effect of the Northern winds. On this Aspect I have 
also placed the dining room, a room only occasionally occupied for a short 
time, & the School rooms above it, which by means of Stoves, & the con- 
course of Students are easily kept warm. There are indeed two Chambers in 
the N.E. wing on each story. If these Chambers be inhabited by Preceptors, 
the one as a study, the other as a Bedchamber, the disadvantages of the Aspect 
must be overcome by such means, of Curtains & Carpets, as a Student does 
not so easily acquire. The South Front affords on each story 6 rooms for 
Students. The angle rooms will accommodate 3, and each of the other, 2 
Students; in all 14 on each 'floor. 14 



14. See William W. Edel, "Hugh Brackenridge's Ride: How We Got 'Old West,'" in 
of Liberty, vol. i of The Boyd Lee Spahr Lectures in Americana, Dickinson Col- 



194 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

Brackenridge reported to Hamilton in his letter that Latrobe much pre- 
ferred stone to brick as the building material. 

Two of Latrobe's original preliminary drawings the basement plan 
and the north elevation exist in Dickinson College. They indicate the 
basic scheme as built, although the proportions of the details of the eleva- 
tion differ somewhat from the executed work and the sketch shows no 
cupola. Since the changes between drawing and building were clearly 
intended to produce a more coherent whole, and since the details (espe- 
cially the cupola) are in a spirit that is obviously Latrobe's, it seems likely 
that they were the result of further study by the architect and that the 
lost working drawings which he made incorporated them. The building 
is a U-shaped structure with projecting wings on the north side to shel- 
ter the main entrance (originally on the north also, though now closed) ; 
there is an off-center corridor, with only small rooms to the north and 
deeper ones to the south; and on the sunny southern side are the "hall," 
below, and above it a large room at first intended as the library. The 
exterior except for the closing of the north door remains substantially 
as Latrobe planned it and has all of his love for simple, strong forms. 
It is built of stone, as he suggested, with brick for arches here and there. 
Its proportions are eminently satisfactory, and its deft handling of scale 
is obvious. Almost the only purely decorative features are the inscription 
panel on the north front and the exquisite cupola with its quaint iron 
weather vane now called the Mermaid but probably intended as Aeolus 
pointing into the wind. Perhaps someday the old north entrance will 
again be opened and the original sheltered forecourt on that side brought 
back to its pristine charm. Yet even changed as it is it remains one of 
the most distinguished, and certainly the most subtly designed, of all 
early American college structures, for its distinction is founded not on 
ornament but on solid qualities of functional planning, good proportion, 
and excellent materials beautifully used. 

The third of Latrobe's educational projects was the Medical School of 
the University of Pennsylvania, With the removal of the national govern- 



lege, Carlisle, Pa, (New York: Revell [01950]), pp. 115-45. Latrobe's remarks on orienta- 
tion are particularly interesting. In the "Observations" before Chapter 10, of part n, vol. n, 
book 3, in Hugh Henry Brackenridge's satiric potpourri, Modern Chivalry, first published 
in 1805 but later reprinted (New York, Cincinnati, etc.: American Book Co. [01937]), 
there is a passage on house design very similar. He may well have expanded it from 
Latrobe's ideas. 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: 1802-1807 195 

ment to Washington, the great house that had been built for the Presi- 
dent on Walnut Street in Philadelphia was purchased by the University 
of Pennsylvania as its chief building. As early as 1800 Latrobe had been 
consulted about the necessary alterations and on December 29 of that 
year had submitted plans (now lost) ; a detailed report exists in the Uni- 
versity archives. 15 Latrobe furnished all the accommodations that had 
been demanded including quarters for the "charity schools" for boys 
and for girls except residences for four professors; for these, he found, 
"the arrangement of the house is extremely unfavorable.*' He did, how- 
ever, provide accommodations for the master of the charity schools and 
for one other professor; he says, "I have endeavored so to arrange his 
apartments, that their convenience and number may entice the principal 
Professor or Provost to solicit the use of them." He wished to remove 
the old double stairs in the circular hall, replacing them with new stairs 
and using the old north service stairs as the main stair of the new ar- 
rangement; then the large circular hall could be made into a handsome 
combined chapel and exhibition room two stories high. 

Exactly how much, if any, of Latrobe's plan was carried out at this 
time is unclear, but four and a half years later he obtained from the 
University a more important commission. The institution itself had been 
formed by the merging of the College of Philadelphia and the Medical 
School, and in 1805 a large wing designed by Latrobe for the Medical 
School was added at the rear. The architect was introduced to this com- 
mission through his always helpful friend Samuel Fox, who wrote him 
on May 9 with regard to the needs of the University. Latrobe answered 
(May ir) pessimistically in respect to the likelihood of his design's be- 
ing accepted: "I well know that the probability of its adoption will be 
in inverse ratio to the excellence of the design. But it will be an ample 
reward to me have complied with a wish of yours . . ." Then on May 
25 he sent on the completed sketch, with a letter in which he noted that 
he had had in mind the "famous anatomical hall in Paris" in his design 
of the chemical lecture room and that the best way of heating such a 
large room was "by steam pipes of tin." 

The trustees did accept the design, and construction went forward at 
once under Latrobe's direction. No views or plans of the interior have 

15. "Report of the Committee to Provide for the Payment of the President's House, &c.," 
pamphlet XIH of University Papers in the University of Pennsylvania archives (n.p., n*d., 
printed by Z. Poulson, Jr.). I owe this reference to Mr. Charles E. Peterson. 



Ip6 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

as yet come to light, but there is a charming little drawing by Strickland 
(in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania) which shows the exterior. It 
is a characteristic Latrobe design, of great elegance, and one in which 
simplicity adds markedly to its geometric grace. A low Roman dome 
over the anatomical hall crowns the composition, and a cupola and large 
semicircular windows give light. Below, the mass of the building, appar- 
ently T- or cross-shaped and two stories high, is interesting in proportion 
and has the triple rectangular windows of which the architect was fond. 
The whole is distinguished and serene, set though it is behind a high 
masonry wall. A severe gateway with a segmentally headed door prob- 
ably also by him gives access from the street. 16 

Latrobe also handled numerous alterations within the mansion itself, 
perhaps carrying out the suggestions contained in his report five years 
earlier, changing partitions and modifying and adding to the stairs to 
make circulation easy for the various departments of the University. All 
in all it was a large commission and one of which he was proud, yet he 
gained from it little save reputation. He complains to Isaac Hazlehurst 
(July 21, 1806): "With the Trustees of the University, my bargain was 
disgraceful $250 in lieu of $500 . . ." Even learned and professional 
Philadelphia could not see its way to pay an architect his due! Nor did 
he have better fortune with his own Masonic brothers, for whom in 
1807 he designed a Masonic Hall, to contain also a dancing and assembly 
hall; in 1811 he was still trying (May 30) to collect from them the $150 
which he felt they owed him for his work. 

He could not even get paid for some domestic work actually completed 
from his designs. In 1804 S. Goodwin wanted to build a house, vaulted 
throughout, at Ninth and Market streets. The client had agreed to pay 
Latrobe $100 for the design, and the house was built from his drawings 
and under his supervision. He was never paid; seven years later (May 30, 
1811) he wrote from Washington to a Philadelphia attorney, S. Ewing, 
asking him to sue for the amount owed him. If, as it appears, this was 



1 6. In 1817 William Strickland was engaged to design a new Medical Hall and in the 
following year he made various alterations and repairs to the older existing one. These 
chiefly consisted of repairs of the flooring of the first and second stories and certain addi- 
tional sinks and drains, the total amount involved being some $600. See Agnes Addison 
Gilchrist, William Strickland, Architect and Engineer, 1788-1854 (Philadelphia: University 
of Pennsylvania Press, 1950). A few years later, in 1829-30, the old house built for the 
President of the United States was demolished, along with the Medical School, and two 
new buildings were constructed from Strickland's design. 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES! l802-l8o7 197 

the country's first masonry-vaulted fireproof house, it is doubly unfortu- 
nate that no other record of it than Latrobe's letters seems to exist. 

But 1805 brought him another job that was more rewarding his first 
large Philadelphia house since the ill-fated Sedgeley. This was the Wain 
house, on the southeast corner of Chestnut and Seventh streets. Among 
Mary Elizabeth's closest girlhood friends had been Mary Wilcocks, who 
at this time was engaged to William Wain, the successful and wealthy 
China merchant. On March 12 Latrobe answers a letter from her brother, 
J. S. Wilcocks, who had written him (March 5) about a house that 
Wain was thinking of building for his bride : 

I have also received a letter, on the same subject, from another gentleman 
[Fox, perhaps] in Philadelphia who in naming the proprietor of the lot has 
given me a motive for the exertion of my best talents & industry by leading 
me to believe that the house I may design, will be inhabited by a Lady, more 
loved and esteemed by Mrs. Latrobe than any of her friends . . . 

By March 21 he had developed a preliminary sketch and sent on a book 
of the designs. Then (March 26) he wrote Wain a long explanatory letter 
in which he incorporated the basic theories of his house designs. Every 
good building, he says, is adapted to both climate and to manners, and 
though American manners are English the American climate is entirely 
different from the English climate; hence copies of English houses in 
the United States are faulty. French houses, on the other hand, have 
many elements more suited to the American climate than do the English; 
yet, since our manners are still basically English, to copy French houses 
would be equally silly. "All we require," he writes, "is the greatest pos- 
sible compactness, & convenience for the family, expressed in the very 
comprehensive word comfort, and moderate means of entertaining com- 
pany." 

He describes the typical French house, divided so that its functions do 
not overlap and recommends the French system of having "two distinct 
apartments on the principal floor, Fappartement de Madame & 1'ap- 
partement de Monsieur." He calls for a bathroom and a water closet, as 
well as a private service stair. Conversely, in the English house of four 
rooms to a floor and a central hall and staircase, this hall becomes "a 
kind of turnpike road through the house over which everyone, whether 
visitor or member of the family, male or female, sick or well must pass, 
paying toll to curiosity." In the Wain design, he continues, he has striven 



198 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

to combine the advantages of both the English and the French types and 
to avoid "back buildings" (rear extensions) in order to keep the rear of 
the lot free for gardens and stables. This he has achieved by putting the 
kitchen, service stair, and services on the rear of the low-studded ground 
floor, with only a small entrance hall and stairs at the front, and by plac- 
ing all the main rooms above on the main floor the scheme generally 
known as the English basement house. 

The house Latrobe envisaged had many similarities in plan to the 
Tayloe house design made seven years earlier in Virginia again an ex- 
ample of how he liked to work all the possible variations on an architec- 
tural idea that appealed to him. As in that scheme, the stairs here were 
centrally placed and lighted by a "lanthorn," with the rooms ranged 
around to get the greatest benefit from the external windows. Fearing 
that this design would seem too radical, he sent at the same time another 
set of plans, which he also describes; but these, too, called for a central 
main staircase and a separate service stair. Neither design, however, seems 
to have completely pleased the Wains, for on May 6, 1805, he sent a 
third set perhaps combining elements from the first two and on June 
25 a fourth design, probably the final one, for with it he encloses his first 
bill for one hundred dollars. 

Latrobe laid great stress on this commission and wanted to make sure 
that it got started in the right way. He dreaded a possible repetition of 
the Sedgeley experience and insisted on keeping the detailing and the 
supervision in his own hands. The vehement letter to Wain already 
quoted 17 reveals his deep anxiety on this point. The house was slow in 
construction and was only completed in 1808. Robert Mills acted as 
superintendent on the job. As a residence it seems to have been the suc- 
cess Latrobe had hoped, and he not only designed all the furniture but 
also advised on the planting of the grounds. Its richness is indicated by 
the drawing-room frieze representing scenes from the Iliad and the 
Odyssey based on Flaxman and painted in "Etruscan colors." 18 The 
painter was George Bridport (the brother of the architect Hugh Brid- 
port), who later painted the ceiling of the House of Representatives in 
Washington. Latrobe was very proud of the Wain frieze and recom- 
mended the painter to all his friends. 



17. See page 150. 

1 8. Letter of Latrobe to Joseph Norris, June 6, 1809. 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: 1802-1807 *99 

Unfortunately no plans and no photographs of the Wain house have 
been preserved; the only graphic record of its beauty is a charming little 
water color now in the Ridgeway Branch of the Free Library of Phila- 
delphia. 19 The house was placed well back on the lot, and the ground 
rose somewhat from the street level. It was rectangular in plan, with a 
hipped roof, and there were square one-story pavilions at the front cor- 
ners (like those in the Tayloe design) which created a sort of forecourt. 
The openings were few and large, and the detail was extremely reticent. 
Like the Burd home, the house was large in scale and a striking addi- 
tion to the Chestnut Street ensemble. 

Two other houses of this period warrant notice: one (already referred 
to) for Latrobe's old Virginia friend Dr. McClurg, in Richmond; and 
Adena, the mansion that Colonel Thomas Worthington commissioned in 
Chillicothe, Ohio. Latrobe had met Thomas Worthington in Washing- 
ton, where he was serving as a member of the House of Representatives, 
and had started work on the designs sometime in the late summer of 
1805; on September 2 he wrote Worthington that the sketches were 
ready and that he was sending them to him by one of the draftsmen, 
Louis de Mun; by the end of March, 1806, working drawings were well 
under way. 

Adena still stands and has been restored to its original state. It is an 
impressive residence, all of cut stone, with a large central block, hip- 
roofed, and two one-story wings; between these there is a terrace, and a 
colonnaded porch across the central block connects the wings on the 
north, or entrance, side. The details are of the simplest; the emphasis, 
as in so many of Latrobe's houses, is on geometrical power and the dis- 
tinction that comes from restraint. Since the architect could not super- 
intend the construction in far-off Ohio, alterations may have been made 
in his design when the house was built. But according to local tradition 
Worthington brought two skilled workmen from the East with him to 
do the actual building and Latrobe's drawings were carefully followed. 

Certainly the plan bears every evidence of being Latrobe's. The orien- 
tation, with the entrance to the north between sheltering wings and 



19. A tiny photograph of this water color is included in Casper Souder, Jr., The History 
of Chestnut Street, Philadelphia . . . (Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1860). 

William Wain found himself in financial difficulties only a few years after the house 
was completed. He therefore sold it to Dr. Swain, who had made a fortune with a popular 
panacea. Later still, Swain changed the house into a public bath called Swain's Baths. 



200 



LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 




with the chief rooms to the south, follows the scheme of the Dickinson 
College building. Heavy stone cross walls, containing the fireplaces, di- 
vide the main block into unequal thirds. The eastern third, together with 
the east wing, forms just such a private suite with its own exterior door 
as Latrobe describes in his Wain house plan, and the circulation is in- 
geniously designed to give ease of passage and yet to preserve perfect 
privacy for the bedrooms. Similarly, the western portion, containing the 
kitchen, the private dining room, and the state dining room, is carefully 
arranged for ease of service. Upstairs, too, there is the same kind of en 
suite planning. The two heavy cross walls continue up through the sec- 
ond floor; the eastern section is obviously intended for the family and is 
connected by a separate private stair to the owner's suite below. There 
is also direct connection to a large storage or work space possibly a 
spinning and weaving room in the attic of the one-story eastern wing. 
At Adena there is one other evidence of Latrobe's original thinking: 
the ingenious cylindrical rotating servers leading to the state dining room 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: 1802-1807 



201 




Courtesy James H. Rodenbaugh 

FIGURE 15. Worthington House, Adena, Chillicothe, Ohio. Plans. From 
measured drawings. 

and the drawing room. In his report to Wain, cited above, he had ob- 
jected to the lack of privacy in the ordinary course of domestic service 
as provided for hi the conventional plan. Here, although service to the 
drawing room is through the hall, the designer made it possible for food 
and drinks to be served in the important rooms without having the serv- 
ants enter the rooms at all, and he arranged it all so that when important 
state dinners are given the family dining room becomes itself a com- 
modious serving room. These rotating servers would be used again when 
Latrobe designed the Van Ness house in Washington ten years later; they 
are typical examples of Latrobe's ingenuity. 

Latrobe's largest private architectural commission of these early years 
was the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Baltimore, so important that it 
warrants a later chapter of its own. This occupied him off and on for 
years, beginning with the spring of 1804. To the architect its design was 



202 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

a ringing challenge, as well as a magnificent opportunity, to prove him- 
self as capable of achieving true monumentality in a large building as in 
the much smaller Bank of Pennsylvania; he rose magnificently to the 
occasion. 

Other little jobs we hear of in these years the designing of a seal for 
the Bank of Philadelphia (later he was to design its new building), and 
of a pedestal for the metal statue of William Penn in the Philadelphia 
Hospital, for which he billed the committee in charge $25.00; that is 
nearly the complete list. 

This, then, is almost the total of Latrobe's non-governmental archi- 
tectural work in those crucial years; this was all that Philadelphia, in 
a time of rapid growth, could offer him. And the record, as we examine 
it from the financial side, becomes even sparser. Among his commissions, 
only the Bank of Pennsylvania and the Wain house were complete en- 
terprises, carried through from beginning to end and bringing fees com- 
patible with the effort involved. The McClurg and Worthington houses 
required designs and drawings only, and the bills for them must have 
been correspondingly meager. The theater job, which should have paid 
him liberally, brought nothing or nearly nothing. For Princeton and 
Dickinson he donated his services, charging merely expenses. From the 
University of Pennsylvania he received only a pittance; it was the Rich- 
mond penitentiary experience all over again. No man with a growing 
family and with Latrobe's social position could hope to live on that 
basis! 

Moreover, this was during the years when the financial web of his 
association with Bollman and Roosevelt had ensnared him in unfore- 
seen and burdensome debts the years during which, to save his credit 
and his reputation, he had been forced to sacrifice all his current perma- 
nent assets. Had the Latrobes depended entirely on architecture, they 
would have faced actual destitution; indeed, they skated several times 
along its perilous and terrifying edge. 

Two things came to their rescue: Latrobe's reputation as an engineer 
and important appointments from the national government. Both, how- 
ever, turned his interests away from Philadelphia where he and Mary 
so ardently wished to live and finally forced them to leave it. From 
1803 on, the family home was successively in many places, their longest 
single stay in Washington. It is one of the great achievements of Mary 
Elizabeth Latrobe that she had the courage and the adaptability to wel- 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: l8()2-l8o7 203 

come cheerfully each new abode and make it a delightful home for her 
husband and children. That quality shines out everywhere In Latrobe's 
letters to his English relatives, in the accounts of her son John H. B. 
Latrobe, in various social notes on Washington and it gleams between 
the lines through a hundred of Latrobe's business letters. 

Their wanderings began as a result of his connection with the long- 
contemplated Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, which had been pro- 
jected before the Revolution. Benjamin Franklin had supported the idea, 
Thomas Gilpin had been an enthusiastic advocate, and preliminary sur- 
veys had been made, though no actual work had been carried out. But 
at the turn of the nineteenth century many canals and turnpike roads 
were being built; increasing commerce and industrial development com- 
bined to make closer communication between the cities and their hinter- 
lands, as well as between the cities themselves, more and more essential. 
If a canal could be cut between these two great estuaries, water-borne 
traffic between Philadelphia and Washington, Annapolis, or Baltimore 
could save the long and frequently dangerous voyage down Delaware 
Bay, around Cape Henlopen and Cape Charles, and up the Chesapeake. 
Accordingly some of the most important men of Philadelphia under the 
stimulus of Thomas Gilpin and his son Joshua formed the Chesapeake 
and Delaware Canal Company. This was organized under the aegis of 
the state of Pennsylvania, which contributed some of the capital and 
retained a certain supervisory power exercised through commissioners 
appointed by the governor. Early in 1803 Governor McKean appointed 
Latrobe as one of these; it was an almost inevitable appointment in 
view of his efficient and economical handling of the Susquehanna River 
survey. And the canal company, in order to cement its bonds with the 
state as well as because of his reputation, commissioned him to make a 
careful survey of the canal route. 

Such a survey, of course, required residence close to the area, and in 
the summer of 1803 the family moved to Newcastle, Delaware the first 
stop in their wanderings. It was close enough to Philadelphia to allow 
easy visiting there for a day or a week and, at the same time, close 
enough to the general area to be surveyed so that Latrobe could be 
home at least for week ends. "Having a pleasant carriage and excellent 
horses,'* Mary Elizabeth Latrobe says of this period in her memoir of 
her husband, she would drive over on Friday evening to get him, usu- 
ally at Elk Forge he was generally away from Monday to Friday. Their 



204 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

little boy John, his nurse, and Lydia would accompany her; Henry was 
at Drake's boarding school in Philadelphia. Mary's father wished them 
to return to Philadelphia; but on October n Latrobe wrote his father- 
in-law that living there would be impossible, and he started looking 
around for a residence near Elkton, Maryland, where the most time- 
consuming work was centered. In the autumn Lydia also was sent to 
school in Philadelphia Jaudon's Academy and in December the La- 
trobes were already planning their first extensive trip to Washington 
and writing their friend Samuel Harrison Smith, the famous Washing- 
ton editor, about lodgings. The Latrobes remained in Washington for 
roughly two months, from January 8 to the end of February, 1804, La- 
trobe making a short trip back to Newcastle in the meantime. 

It was during this visit to Washington that Latrobe learned of his 
promotion in the canal company; he had been appointed engineer in 
charge, with complete control of all design and construction. The sal- 
ary, for the time, was excellent $3,500 and this, with the fees from his 
Washington work (of which more later), seemed to assure him the se- 
curity for which he had vainly been seeking. But he was in a quandary 
about where he should live Philadelphia? near the canal? Washington? 
There were objections to any of the alternatives; all meant working at 
a distance from important commissions or prospects. But immediate 
pressure from the canal company determined his decision, and during 
his journey from Washington to the canal at the end of January he pur- 
chased a farm on the top of Iron Hill (near Elkton) for nine dollars an 
acre, from one "Mrs. McDonald (late Miss Polly McDaniel)." The farm 
consisted of between fifty and sixty acres, as he wrote his father-in-law 
(February 4, 1804), and he intended it chiefly for a summer residence. 
His wife was pregnant at the time and apparently none too well. Two 
days later he withdrew Lydia from the Jaudon Academy, informing 
Mr. Jaudon that she was needed at home. At the same time he with- 
drew Henry from Mr. Drake's school, although much pleased with his 
progress there, in order to enter him in Father Dubourg's college or semi- 
nary in Baltimore not from any religious motive but because he liked 
the continental atmosphere there and the Latin type of education that 
was offered. 20 



20. Father William Dubourg- was a French Sulpician monk, a refugee from the French 
Revolution, who in 1800 had established an academy in connection with the Sulpician 
monastery in Baltimore. Most of his faculty, like himself, had come direct from the Acad- 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: 1802-1807 205 

To understand the choice o Iron Hill, one must know something of 
the progress on the canal When Latrobe was engaged as engineer, its 
route was still unsettled, save that it should start somewhere in the Elk 
River neighborhood on the Chesapeake and debouch into the Delaware 
either through Christiana Creek and the Christiana River, flowing by 
Wilmington, or else close to Newcastle and directly on the Bay. John 
Tatnall was president of the company; in Latrobe's letters to him, as 
well as to his own particular friend among the directors, Joshua Gilpin, 
one can follow the discussion. On October 10, 1803, Latrobe sent Gilpin 
a sketch map showing the various possibilities, and he wrote him again 
on October 18; disgusted with quarrels among the board of directors 
each wanting the canal to be run according to his prejudices or property 
holdings he was almost willing to throw up the whole job. 

Seven months later the matter was still undecided. Latrobe wrote Isaac 
Hazlehurst (May 14, 1804) that everything pointed to Newcastle as the 
best eastern terminus but that the majority of the stock subscriptions 
pointed the other way. Even Latrobe's advice could not overbalance that 
economic pressure! But his advice did have one effect the change of the 
western end from Frenchtown, up the shallow Elk River, to Welch 
Point, the promontory where Back Creek joins the Elk. A series of locks 
here would, in one flight, lift the canal from relatively deep water in the 
Chesapeake to almost the highest point it would need to reach, and from 
there on the route would be comparatively level; enormous economies 
over the original other route would result, and the canal mouth would 
be much easier to approach from the bay. 

He made numerous surveying trips to this area in those early days, 
apparently enjoying them thoroughly; the rough living and the spice of 
danger in making wild passages in small boats were welcome anodynes 
for his almost constant financial worries. And he appreciated to the full 



emy of St. Sulpice in Paris. This academy, later called Saint Mary's College, offered a 
classic education largely in the manner of a French lycee from the secondary-school 
through the college level; the closely related St. Mary's Roman Catholic Seminary (founded 
in 1791) offered the more advanced theological training. The educational standards of the 
college were high, and for a period it enjoyed a great popularity even among non-Catholics. 
Latrobe wrote Dubourg (January 14, 1805) urging that the academy-college be officially 
chartered, and later that year it was legally incorporated as a "university." In 1805 Maxi- 
milian Godefroy, the architect, came to Baltimore to be professor of civil and military 
architecture and of the fine arts at the new university and a few years later designed for 
the seminary a remarkable Gothic chapel, which still stands. 



2O6 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

the beauty of these headwaters of the Chesapeake the woods, the sand 
bluffs, the little towns and as late as August, 1806, on a final tour of 
the canal work, he stopped long enough to make a series of charming 
water colors of various spots in the area scenes that appear not too dif- 
ferent today. 

The route the canal was to take was at last determined in June, 1804 
Welch Point to Christiana Creek and construction could actually 
begin. Already large orders had gone to Philadelphia for shovels, spades, 
and wheelbarrows, and on May 10, 1804, John Strickland, carpenter, 
builder, and father of William Strickland the architect, was engaged as 
construction foreman and was set up temporarily in the existing log cabin 
on Latrobe's farm at Iron Hill, where his first job was to build barracks 
for the expected workers; Latrobe sent him (May 3) a sketch of what 
he wanted. One foreboding note was sounded on the same day: Latrobe 
wrote Gilpin that the canal construction was feeling a shortage of funds. 

The first work planned for the project itself was the construction of a 
feeder line to bring water from the Elk River, above its falls, to the 
proposed canal, since water was necessary for the canal itself as well as 
to facilitate its construction. This feeder left the Elk near Elk Forge and 
passed beneath Iron Hill, not far away; hence the purchase of land at 
Iron Hill both by the company and by Latrobe himself. Early in 1804, 
too, Latrobe was searching for a quarry of good building stone for the 
locks. He had written Traquair in a preliminary way about stone blocks 
for the lock construction almost a year earlier, for Latrobe considered the 
wooden locks used on many early canals to be wasteful makeshifts. The 
feeder went forward rapidly. It was to be twenty-one feet wide, with a 
water depth of three and one-half feet, and could itself serve as a branch 
canal for light-draft scows and barges. Yet as it progressed the crucial 
need for money became ever more harassing on July 6 the work needed 
two thousand dollars immediately and on August 26 there was a "des- 
perate need of money" for the subscribers to the canal stock were lag- 
gard in paying up their subscriptions, and Latrobe was beginning to have 
difficulty in collecting his salary. 21 



21. In a letter o October 29, 1804, to a stockholder of the canal company (John 
Helmsley, of Centerville, Maryland) Latrobe gives some estimated costs of the canal, as 
follows: Total amount of subscriptions expected, $350,000. Cost of the water of the Elk, 
$66,000. Cost of the feeder, $40,000. Distance of the feeder from Welch Point, 8Vz miles 
at an average of $15,800 per mile. (This makes the total cost of the western half of the 
canal $335*30-) 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES! 1802-1807 20J 

And the canal had its share of labor troubles. Suddenly to place a 
hundred or more common laborers in barracks in a quiet rural com- 
munity which had few facilities for recreation created a critical situa- 
tion, which finally erupted early in October, 1804, in a riot that devel- 
oped from arguments surrounding a horse race at Elkton. It was a 
serious riot one man was killed and thirty were woundedbut the 
fault, Latrobe thought, lay not on the side of the laborers. He wrote to 
Joshua Gilpin about it (October 7): "I have a body of evidence on 
that subject, which must some day come forward and which will re- 
dound to the honor of our people, as to the disgrace of the gentlemen 
jockies and gamblers of the neighborhood . . ." 

In other ways, too, this was a bad period for the Latrobes. The finan- 
cial difficulties surrounding the Philadelphia waterworks and the rolling 
mill were mounting steadily. Even the mill itself seemed to be producing 
less well than was expected, and Latrobe was forced to write constandy 
to Samuel Mifflin, the manager, urging him to hasten deliveries of sheet 
iron needed for this, that, or the other job especially for the public 
buildings in Washington and for President Jefferson's Monticello. And 
more personal troubles intervened. At the end of May, 1804, Mary's 
brother Robert Hazlehurst died, and on July n their mother, Mrs. Isaac 
Hazlehurst, passed away. Mrs. Latrobe was not told of her mother's 
death immediately, for on July 17 a daughter, Juliana Elizabeth (Julia), 
was born to the Latrobes in Philadelphia; a little later they moved there 
to stay with the bereaved Hazlehursts till September. 22 



22. On March 22, 1805, Latrobe sent Samuel Hazlehurst suggestions for the inscriptions 
to be carved on the tombstones of Mrs. Hazlehurst and Robert at Mount Holly, as follows: 

In Memory 
of Robert Hazlehurst, son of Isaac Hazlehurst 

born 

died 

With talents to serve 

Virtue to adorn, 

Wit to delight 

Affections to enjoy 

this world 
He departed in the bloom of his youth 

Leaving to his afflicted friends 

The consolation of immortal bliss 

The admiration of his worth 

The instruction of his example 



208 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

When the family returned to Delaware, it was to a different residence. 
This was a house in Wilmington, owned and lent to them by Isaac 
Hazlehurst. It required major repairs and complete redecoration, for 
which Mr. Hazlehurst paid; the total costs were over six hundred dol- 
lars, a sizable amount at that time. This place was their home until the 
next summer (when again they moved to Iron Hill) and also from 
October through December of 1805; from then on till they finally set- 
tled in Washington in the spring of 1807 they lived chiefly in Philadel- 
phia, though Latrobe himself was absent in Washington almost half the 
time. Of all their homes, Iron Hill was probably their favorite. High on 
the summit of the hill, the house commanded a superb view embracing 
both the headwaters of the Chesapeake and the gleam of Delaware Bay, 
thus overlooking the entire terrain the canal must traverse. In addition it 
was restful and far removed from the bustle of traffic or the hurry of 
towns; it was a wonderful refuge from the day's business, a palliative 
to worries and fears. When the Latrobes bought the farm it had a two- 



22 (cont'd). To the Memory of 

Juliana, wife of Isaac Hazlehurst, Esq. 
and daughter of Sam 1 Purviance late of 

Salem County in this state 

She was born March 18, 1740, and 

died July n, 1804, at Cloverhill 

in the 65th year of her age 

To her 

Tender, prudent, pious, intelligent 
one daughter and six sons 

owe 
their being and their virtue 

To her 
The solitary mourner who erects this tomb 

The pride and the consolation 

That for 33 years, her love and her counsel 

Blessed their union 

To her 
In the search now vain for happiness 

in this world 

The cheering certainty that he shall share 
Her immortality 

At the present writing (1954) there is no trace in the Mount Holly churchyard of the 
stone for Robert Hazlehurst and no record of his burial there, but Mrs. Isaac Hazlehurst* s 
stone is intact and shows that a slightly shortened version of Latrobe's text was used for 
the inscription. 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES.* 1802-1807 20p 

story log house on it, and it was here that John Strickland was first in- 
stalled; later it became the nexus of the larger house into which it grew 
as Latrobe added to it to meet the needs of his growing family. Yet, 
though they liked it so much, they were fated to live in it only one full 
summer and part of another. 23 

In all this period Latrobe was busy frantically, almost maniacally so. 
Jobs in Philadelphia, the Cathedral at Baltimore, the endless details of 
the canal, the growing work for the national government these would 
have filled any two other men's time, yet in actual income how un- 
profitable! He made one ill-fated attempt to obtain something of real 
value for his work in the "American" way, by speculation. Judge Kinsey 
Johns of Newcastle suggested it to him in the spring of 1805; it was the 
plan that they should be partners in purchasing, at its current low value 
(nine dollars an acre), a sizable tract of land where the canal and the 
feeder met. Of the ethics of such a speculation by which the engineer 
and a stockholder would benefit from the construction of the canal 
it is perhaps better not to judge; Latrobe's dire need of money may have 
blinded him to the actual issues involved. In any case he was well pun- 
ished. "The speculation is a great one," he wrote to Roosevelt on March 
28, "but a most serious disappointment to the amount of $850, on which 
I counted with the fullest reliance has thrown me into the utmost diffi- 
culty. I have given bond to pay on the loth of April 750$ [elsewhere he 
mentions notes to Johns of $675], being the amount of my half, and 
have not a dollar towards it, nor know where to borrow it . . ." But 
by June 14 he had somehow scraped together enough to pay Johns $425 



23. On June 5, 1805, he wrote to Eric Boll man from Wilmington before his move to 
Iron Hill, about the inconveniences of living far from his work: 

"The board [the canal directors] broke up only yesterday, & left me vexed & fatigued, 
& I am now in an hour again going to the works 17 miles from hence where I spend 
all my working days of the week, seeing my family only on Sunday & part of Saturday 
& Monday morning. This is one of the features of that enviable profession you sometimes 
speak of & write about, a profession the outside of which appears calculated to gratify 
every species of laudable & elegant ambition, but of which the practice is fit only for a 
servile & cold mind inhabiting an iron body. As a wheel in the great machine of the 
world, I however believe, it right that extreme irritability & restless activity should be 
given as a spring to force forward the movement of public works to those who are to 
perform the part of engineers, and that the painful reaction of the pressure of ignorance, 
meanness, selfishness & egotism of public boards is a mere regulating contrivance, like 
the lump of lead on a pendulum." 



210 LATROBE BECOIMES AN AMERICAN 

on account. On July 2 he wrote him again, attempting to straighten 
out the accounts between them; then the matter dropped out of the 
correspondence, Latrobe saved himself from arrest on his bond in some 
way and retained title to his half, using it later as security to cover 
certain Washington debts. But he never received a cent from the sale 
of the property; the speculation which was to have been "a great one" 
actually cost him $425 which he badly needed perhaps a small price to 
pay for the lesson he learned. 

His Philadelphia work, as we have seen, brought little income, and the 
Baltimore Cathedral paid for actual expenses only, providing nothing 
toward the family living. Even the Washington work in these early years 
cost him almost as much to carry out as it brought in. The canal com- 
pany, because of his necessary absences on trips to Washington and else- 
where, voted to dock his salary pro rata for the time he was absent. In 
a letter to President Jefferson asking for an adjustment in salary (April 
28, 1806), he showed that against the $1,700.00 he received in 1805 for 
work on the Capitol and the White House he had been forced to write 
off actual costs of $1,639.46 $940.80 deductions from his canal salary 
because of time spent in Washington, $215.66 as excess costs of living in 
Washington, travel expenses of $108.00, and half of a draftsman's time, 
$375.00. This left him for all this work a personal gain of exactly $60.54! 
He told Jefferson that he was in an impossible situation; he could not 
go on like this. In 1805 he had received $450.00 from the Navy Depart- 
ment, and he expected $200.00 on the fireproof vault he had designed 
for the Treasury Department. He suggested that in the future he should 
be paid annually $1,700.00 for the Capitol work, $1,300.00 for Navy De- 
partment work (he was in complete charge of the building of the Wash- 
ington Navy Yard and advised the Department on other matters), and 
$500.00 from other government departments for miscellaneous services. 
This would be equivalent to the $3,500.00 he had been given by the 
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company and would justify his mov- 
ing to Washington permanently. 

The letter reveals Latrobe's acute anxiety about the future. As the 
canal work creaked to its close its treasury drained dry, its subscriptions 
everywhere in default the company paid Latrobe his salary in checks or 
notes, not in cash; as rumors of the company's plight circulated, these 
checks and notes were everywhere refused. To all intents and purposes, 
for the last five or six months of his employment he was working for 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: 1802-1807 211 

literally nothing. On August 5, 1805, he complained to Joseph Tatnall, 
the president, that the company was settling its accounts with notes; he 
needed and wanted cash. Five days later he wrote Samuel Hazlehurst 
that he was starting to settle up and close the canal affairs, and by the 
middle of November the company had voted (November 19) to dis- 
charge all the employees except the officers on December i. 24 Latrobe, 
as an officer, was not discharged, and for another several months he 
devoted much time and effort to the final winding up of its affairs. 
Creditors of the company were besieging him; on May 29, 1806, he was 
forced to write John Partridge of Elkton that he was not responsible, 
and could not be held responsible, for the debts assumed by the com- 
pany. The whole ambitious project was in a coma. 25 The failure of the 
canal company to collect or increase its subscriptions was the result of 
world conditions, as Latrobe wrote his brother Christian (June 2, 1806) 
from Philadelphia: 

My business here is to meet the Directors of the Ches. & Del. Canal, which 
is ... now at a. stand [still]. . . . The true reason, however of the suspen- 



24. Letter to Isaac Hazlehurst (November 25, 1805); letter to Lenthall (November 19, 
1805), in which he writes: "The canal is aground, and all that are embarked with them 
must go overboard, except the officers, & they may stay by the wreck & starve if they 
chuse . . ." Eventually, however, Latrobe's widow recovered $600 from the company when 
it was resurrected and the canal built after 1823. 

25. The canal company remained dimly alive, however. There was a flurry of reawakened 
interest in 1807-9, when Gallatin's imaginative proposal for extensive internal improve- 
ments was being prepared and put before Congress. He and Latrobe had corresponded 
busily on the whole scheme, and Latrobe had been his chief adviser in connection with 
roads and canals. The completion of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was high on the 
Gallatin list. Nothing came of these proposals, nevertheless, and another period of dormancy 
intervened. Then, in 1821, the company employed William Strickland to make a completely 
new study of the problem. This was published in 1823 as a Communication from the 
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company; and a Report and Estimate of William Strick.- 
land to the President and Directors (Philadelphia: J. R. A. Skerrett, 1823). The report 
changed the route so as to terminate the canal at Back Creek on the Chesapeake and north 
of Reedy Point on the Delaware substantially the present route. This time the United 
States government invested $300,000, Pennsylvania $100,000, Maryland $50,000, and Dela- 
ware $25,000. Work was recommenced immediately, and the canal was finally opened to 
traffic in 1830 at a total cost of $2,250,000, or about $165,000 per mile. It was bought 
by the national government in 1919 and was widened, deepened, and eventually changed 
into a sea-level canal, without locks and deep enough for medium-sized ocean freighters. 
See Alvin F. Harlow, Old Towpaths, the Story of the American Canal Era (New York & 
London: Appleton, 1926); also [George Amroyd,] A Connected View of the Whole In- 
ternal Navigation of the United States ... by a Citizen of the United States, corrected 
and improved from the edition of 1826 (Philadelphia: the author, 1830), 



212 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

sion of the internal improvements of the country, is the absorption of all our 
active capital by the Neutral trade. The turnpike roads which have been 
opened near Philadelphia, as well as the Ch. & Del. Canal were children 
of the peace of Amiens. They sickened, & our canal indeed has died in 
consequence of the abstraction of pecuniary support by the foreign trade, 
which revived with the new War a War which, by the accounts which have 
arrived here seems scarcely beyond its commencement. In the present volcanic 
state of Europe, we cannot help congratulating ourselves on the peaceful state 
of our shores . . . 

With the canal scheme now dead, Latrobe wrote (July 19) from Phila- 
delphia to his father-in-law about his plan to move to Washington. But 
it was not to be Washington yet; instead the family leased the Iron Hill 
place and moved back from Wilmington to Philadelphia. They tried to 
rent a house on Arch Street from Elias Boudinot, but the scheme fell 
through. Eventually they rented a house at 132 North Second Street; this 
was their residence during the rest of their stay in Philadelphia. 

The canal work led indirectly to two other planning commissions. The 
first was a survey of the town of Newcastle, undertaken largely at the 
suggestion of Latrobe J s friend Judge Kinsey Johns. This was much more 
than a survey, since it included plans for the future growth of the town. 
The actual surveying work was done by Strickland and an assistant, both 
working under the supervision o Robert Mills; but the plans for fur- 
ther development were of course Latrobe's. The survey and the accom- 
panying report are still extant. 26 The plans include little elevations of all 
the existing buildings on the most important streets, and among these is 
the front gable of a brick house as purely Dutch in concept, shape, and 
detail as any seventeenth-century house in New Amsterdam or Albany 
a lovely relic of the early Dutch settlements on the Delaware. Like all 
the drawings from the Latrobe office, the sketches are extremely legible. 
The report containing Latrobe's criticisms and suggestions is another evi- 
dence of its author's interest in the hygiene of cities and the enormous 
importance of correct orientation in street and house design. 27 

Larger in scope, the other commission was the design of an entire 
new city on the banks of the Susquehanna, an enlargement of the vil- 
lage called Nescopek. Samuel MiiHin, the manager of the Roosevelt- 



26. See Appendix for the report. 

27. In the Historical Society of Delaware, Wilmington. 



PROFESSIONAL STRUGGLES: 1802-1807 213 

Bollman-Latrobe rolling mill in Philadelphia, owned a tract of land ripe 
for development and, naturally enough, he turned to Latrobe for the 
design of his proposed town. Unfortunately the plan cannot be found, 
but the long descriptive report (dated March 30, 1805) which accom- 
panied it is preserved. 28 Latrobe found the opportunity an exciting and 
congenial one, and into this town plan he poured all he knew of Amer- 
ican needs and all he dreamed of for the American town of the future. 
He planned ample promenades along the river bank and a large town 
square, around which he would group the important public buildings. 
The streets were oriented so as to take the best advantage of the sun and 
of prevailing winds. Vistas were considered; most of the major streets, 
he says, have either public buildings or the water as climaxes. And, ask- 
ing the owner or the trustees to retain an ample area for public uses, 
such as the support of an academy, he remarks that such a scheme is so 
cheap in America and its results so beneficial to a town that even selfish 
interests rather than public spirit should endorse it. All this, alas, passed 
over MifBin's head; he was no city builder but merely an all-too-common 
type of real-estate speculator. What he wrote Latrobe is not known, but 
Latrobe's next letter to him (April 12) tells the story only too clearly: 

It cannot have been my intention by sending you the plan of the town of 
Nescopek to interfere with your views of immediate profit. ... I had under- 
stood that you were proprietor of the shore of the Susquehannah for near 
a mile above the fall. Had I known that your property was so very limited. , . . 
I certainly should not have proposed the sacrifice of even so small a gratuity 
as 300 feet for public use. [One wonders if Mifflin caught the irony.] 

He goes on to say that he has one request to make of MifHin that he 
never, never use Latrobe's name in connection with his subdivision and 
never suggest that Latrobe had a thing to do with its design. So, again, 
American speculation defeated a forward-looking vision; "immediate 
profit** prevented true creation. And here, as usual, the architect received 
not a penny for his pains. 



28. In the Latrobe letter books. Its wording largely repeats that of the report on New- 
castle. 



CHAPTER 
II 



Colleagues and Quandaries 



DURING these busy years Latrobe's office force had changed. His early 
draftsmen Graff and Traquair had left him, Barber had absconded, 
Breillat was dead, and an entirely new group of brilliant young men 
collected around him. The most important were Louis de Mun, Robert 
Mills, and William Strickland, and it was their hands that prepared 
many of the drawings that flooded out from the office all to be revised 
by Latrobe himself. In the case of the more important jobs the draftsmen 
merely laid in the basic control lines and Latrobe added the details and 
the ornament. 

There were three De Mun brothers, and all became the architect's 
good friends. They were royalist French army officers who had fled 
from France to Santo Domingo and, at the uprising there under Tous- 
saint L'Ouverture, had fled in turn to America. Latrobe was drawn to 
them by their background, their broad culture, and their charm. Louis 
de Mun became in effect his chief draftsman, working especially on the 
Cathedral and the Capitol and often acting as the architect's confidential 
agent. But perhaps, despite his brilliance and conscientiousness, he was 
not the "born architect." Latrobe sent him to Washington to act as his 
agent in the Navy Yard work; then when apparently this did not work 
out De Mun's aristocratic manners may hardly have suited the ways 
of the United States Navy, and Latrobe himself complained of De Mun's 
delay in sending on necessary information x he moved him to the office 



i. The letter containing the complaint (November 12, 1805) is characteristic in its ex- 
pression of Latrobe's affection for De Mun. He apologizes for the bmsqueness of his re- 
proof. "But I also wrote in great haste & ill-humor . . . wishing to compleat all the draw- 
ings of the details before Mills goes to Charleston . . . William Strickland has entirely 
left me . . . Mills goes to Charleston to visit his churches & with a chance of remaining 
there. If you could then become a member of our little circle again it would be highly 

214 



COLLEAGUES AND QUANDARIES 215 

of John Lenthall, clerk of the works at the Capitol. This, too, proved 
unsatisfactory, for neither Lenthall nor De Mun had an easy personality, 
and De Mun returned to Philadelphia, Latrobe did not forget him, how- 
ever; in the spring of 1806 he recommended him to Gallatin as a suitable 
person to survey the site of the lighthouse proposed for the mouth of the 
Mississippi. De Mun was appointed, and Latrobe saw that he was furnished 
with the proper instruments and tools and that he took a refresher course 
in surveying under the mathematics professor at the University of Penn- 
sylvania, Robert Patterson; he even saw to the making of a special bor- 
ing machine designed to take core borings on the site of the lighthouse 
foundations. 

De Mun's appointment came through on April 29, 1806, but he did not 
sail till August; Latrobe wrote him a final letter (August 2), adding: 
"Of all things, give me a picture of Dr. B. [Bollman had gone to New 
Orleans ostensibly to practice his profession.] I have served that man most 
zealously wherever I could. . . . He is, however, the only human be- 
ing that ever taught me to hate, for which I do not thank him . . ." ~ 
De Mun returned about the beginning of May, 1807, his mission satis- 
factorily completed but himself having somehow become involved in the 
Burr conspiracy, as noted in a letter marked "private" from Latrobe to 
Gallatin (May 4) : "De Mun arrived here 4 or 5 days ago . . . He found 
on his return to N. Orleans, that not the slightest notice had been taken 
of his letters , . . but was informed that Col. Wilkinson had given or- 
ders for his arrest," Both De Mun and his friend Colonel de Peyster, 
with whom he had gone to stay in Burlington, New Jersey, after his re- 
turn from the South, were suspect for a while but later cleared. We 
shall return to the conspiracy shortly. Afterward De Mun joined his 
brothers in Havana and dropped out of the picture. 



pleasant to me & Mrs. Latrobe . . ." Earlier (April 8) he had written Louis's brother 
Augustus de Mun at Baltimore: "Your brother, who is with me, is become absolutely 
necessary to my business, as well as to my domestic circle. In this money getting country, 
a friend who does not consider it the object of human existence to scrape dollars together, 
& who has a heart as well as a pocket, is an invaluable companion to me, whose nature, 
education, & habits have also taught me a different doctrine. Such a one is your brother 
Lewis [sic], and such a one I am sure I shall find Amadee. The sooner I gain this addition 
to my circle, the better . . ." But apparently Amadee did not come or, if he did, stayed 
but a short while; there is no evidence of his work. On December 12, though, Latrobe 
wrote to him that he would speak to Robert Smith, Secretary of the Navy, on his behalf. 

2. Later, however, Latrobe relented and restored Bollman to his good graces, even his 
affection. 



21 6 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

Of the other draftsmen, William Strickland (the son of the canal 
foreman, John Strickland) was the youngest and the most brilliant, the 
one for whom Latrobe had the greatest admiration, but he was also the 
most ebullient and the most intractable, so that finally he had to be dis- 
charged. Strickland worked chiefly on the United States Capitol during 
the nearly four years he was in Latrobe's office, which he had first en- 
tered in Philadelphia in August, 1801. Two years later (July i, 1803) 
Latrobe had moved him to the Newcastle office. But as Strickland grew 
older he became more self-willed and rebellious. On March 10, 1804, La- 
trobe writes John Strickland: "Your son, has bethought himself that 
he has both a father and a mother alive, and is seized with such a violent 
inclination to see both, that I have given him a furlough for a few days," 
But the next letter to the father (August 18) has a different tone: "Al- 
though I am still of the opinion that your son William has the best 
talents and disposition I have almost ever seen in a boy of his age [he 
was at that time in his sixteenth year] his conduct has been such as to 
render it necessary to use him with great severity. For the last fortnight 
he has been with me in Philadelphia." William had been sent on ahead 
to air the Latrobe house, but he had forgotten or neglected his commis- 
sion and the family arrived to find the house damp and a "mass of 
mildew." The young man was sent home as a punishment; later he was 
taken back and continued to work with Latrobe until the middle of 
the summer of 1805. Then he was finally discharged, after he had neither 
appeared at the office for two days nor given any notice whatsoever. The 
father was deeply distressed and begged the architect to take William 
back, but Latrobe could not be moved. Perhaps he realized that he had 
given the boy all the training he could and had obtained from him all 
the service that William, with the personality he had, could offer. Yet 
for many years Latrobe retained his admiration for William Strickland's 
talents and took pleasure later in recommending him in the highest 
possible terms 3 until 1818, when controversy about the Second Bank of 
the United States in Philadelphia again estranged them. 4 



3. For example, to the Secretary of War (June 10, 1812): "Mr. William Strickland, the 
bearer, is desirous of obtaining a commission in the Corps of Engineers. ... He is an 
excellent draughtsman, perhaps the best of those I have educated. ... I should consider 
the talents, the spirit, & the acquirements of Mr. Strickland to be an acquisition to the 
Corps . . ." 

4. See pages 500-503. 



COLLEAGUES AND QUANDARIES 2iy 

The wheelhorse of the office was the ever dependable, the conscien- 
tious, the hard-working Robert Mills. Mills wanted to be an architect, 
knew he could learn more with Latrobe than with anyone else, and 
came to him in 1802 on the recommendation of President Jefferson a 
good friend of both after having worked with Hoban and spent more 
than a year at Monticello learning what Jefferson could teach him. He 
was a superb draftsman and made beautiful if somewhat cold render- 
ings. Yet, though Mills was of inestimable value at the office, Latrobe 
never warmed to him as he did to De Mun and Strickland, and his at- 
titude toward him after Mills had left was often ambivalent; he admired 
Mills's abilities while at the same time he distrusted, and even actively 
disliked, his sense of design. He was fond of him; but there was some- 
thing in Mills's constant energy, in his continual forging along no mat- 
ter what the obstacles, that seems to have disturbed and perhaps fright- 
ened Latrobe. Mills had a kind of unshakable purpose, combined with a 
narrow though serious rectitude, that was essentialy alien to Latrobe's 
more mercurial temperament. Latrobe apparently wanted to like him 
more than he actually could. 

Perhaps there was a little unconscious envy in Latrobe's feeling. Mills 
was a much younger man but possessed an equal enthusiasm for archi- 
tecture; though he had none of Latrobe's advantages of wide European 
travel and lacked his breadth of education, he was already in 1805-6 ob- 
taining commissions with an ease that astonished Latrobe. Obviously he 
was going to be a success professionally in a way that Latrobe could never 
be, but in a way, too, that would have been impossible had not Latrobe 
broken the ground. This was bound to lead to a certain restraint in La- 
trobe's admiration of his pupil even at times to a certain suspicion. Yet 
he tried unceasingly to be helpful. In 1805 Mills had already designed 
two churches for Charleston and, as we have seen, had left Latrobe's 
office to superintend them, with the possibility of remaining in Charles- 
ton. Latrobe was deeply concerned with Mills's professional future; he 
wanted to make doubly sure that the younger man preserved his pro- 
fessional attitude unsullied, hence the full letter (July 12, 1806) on the 
architectural profession in America, which was quoted in part in Chap- 
ter 8. 5 

When the prospects in Charleston evaporated, Mills returned to Phil- 



5. See also in Appendix. 



21 8 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

adelphia and to Latrobe's employ, remaining with him as his invaluable 
assistant, superintendent, clerk of the works, and agent all through 1807, 
1808, and into 1809. He acted thus for Latrobe on the Wain house, the 
Markoe house, and the difficult and unusual Gothic Bank of Phila- 
delphia. If Mills got from this an education of the greatest importance 
to his future, Latrobe in turn received from him unquestioning loyalty, 
devoted hard work, and the greatest possible skill in interpreting his own 
wishes with sympathy. 

And Latrobe helped and advised Mills on commissions received while 
he was still in Latrobe's employ. In addition, he helped him when Mills 
was asked to design a jail for Burlington County, New Jersey, in Mount 
Holly a particularly generous gesture when one realizes the Hazle- 
hursts* close association with Mount Holly* Mills had written Latrobe 
asking his basic philosophy of prison design and had sent specific ques- 
tions about the relative advisability of a city or a country site, and so on; 
Latrobe answered the questions at length (November 17, 1807). But there 
was still something missing in their relationship. 

The whole situation was pointed up years later, in 1812, in connection 
with the proposed monument to the seventy-two persons (including the 
governor of the state) who perished in the dreadful fire of the Richmond 
theater on December 26, i8ri. Latrobe had written to the mayor offering 
his services, and at about the same time John Wickham had written di- 
rectly to Latrobe asking for his suggestions; Latrobe replied (January 21, 
1812) with a long letter. He had learned that it was planned to build both 
an Episcopal church and a commemorative monument on the old theater 
lot. But he disapproved of the idea; the money collected for the church 
could only build "a plain brick building such as we see everywhere." In- 
stead, Latrobe proposed that only the monument should be erected; this 
should consist of a block 32 feet square, on which a pyramid 48 feet high 
should rise, and within there should be a chamber 20 or 24 feet square. 
On the inner walls should be carved the names of the victims and the 
appropriate inscriptions; in the center there would be a memorial statue, 
"a kneeling figure, representing the city . . . mourning over an urn." A 
sketch embodying the idea still exists. Then suddenly, two months later, 
he learned that Mills had received the commission. He wrote in aston- 
ishment to Dr. John Brockenborough of the building committee (March 
22). Latrobe had understood he had authority to proceed; he had already 
received preliminary estimates from a Mr. Douglas for the construction 



COLLEAGUES AND QUANDARIES 2Ip 

and had procured from Franzoni a model of the figure the sculptor was 
to carve. He was at a loss to know what to say to these men, for, he 
added: 

Mills has furnished you with designs, one of which you approve . . . You 
wish for a design for a church from me also. ... I feel reluctant to enter 
the lists against my own professional child . . . especially when the principle 
on which Mr. Mills has made his design is my own idea, communicated to 
him, though much modified. ... Of Mr. Mills, I cannot . . . speak but in 
terms of respect . . . [He is] of the strictest integrity. ... He is of a re- 
ligious turn of mind . . . Whatever design you adopt, it would be infinitely 
to your interest ... to engage him to direct its execution. ... In the design 
of private houses, he is uncommonly excellent, in ... public works, he wants 
experience, as yet, to a sufficient extent. ... As you have explained Mr. 
Mills* design ... it is a monument ... in front of a church, so as to serve 
as its vestibule. . . . The church itself has no trace of monumental character, 
and as its roof ... [is] of boards . . . covered with shingles ... it has 
every property in a superior degree to that of permanence. A Monumental 
Church ought to be such a monument as that in extent & arrangement it 
could serve as a church ... [In connection with] Mr. Mills' circular vesti- 
bule . . . with columns of permanent materials and of impressive size, his 
estimate of $35,000 would fall infinitely short. If you will favor me with 
the ideas of the committee and are at all desirous of my further assistance, 
I will prepare a design in which they shall be embodied . . . 

Latrobe was deeply hurt at what seemed like Mills's attempt to wrest a 
commission from him. He wrote Mills (May 26) enclosing some draw- 
ings of Mills's that he had found in LenthalFs office: 

I regret that after knowing that I had been consulted on the Monument 
once proposed to be erected at Richmond . . . you should have transmitted 
to them a number of ideas & drawings, which rendering decision difficult has 
I believe defeated the object. ... I am far from supposing you intended 
[it] ... yet you have already not only injured but disgraced me, because 
I had already made a conditional contract with respectable men, whom I had 
to disappoint with an explanation not very creditable to myself, namely that 
your plan was preferred. ... I arn very far from being jealous of the pref- 
erence of such judges . . . but I am most sensibly hurt, that you should not 
have become aware of the indelicasy. ... It is also singular that you should 
propose setting marble panels into freestone margins, exactly in the same 
manner in which I had proposed, without being informed of my intention. 
It is however impossible to suppose you had been informed, because you 



220 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

would hardly have waged war against me in my own armor. Had you had 
the special information ... the committee furnished to me you would have 
given a different design . . . 

But the whole matter was a misunderstanding, the result of the clients' 
thoughtless ineptitude in handling professional matters. Mills and La- 
trobe had been consulted independently, and neither had been informed 
that the other had been approached; Mills hastened to put Latrobe 
straight on the facts, and Latrobe was mollified. He wrote Mills (July 22) : 

I can only say that if you did not know that I was consulted by the 
Richmond Committee, & had given them a design & was wholly unapprized 
of my intentions as to the mode of recording the names, although your father 
in law told me that he should write to you on the subject, before you sent 
in your different plans, then all ground of offense is certainly removed, & 
nothing remains but astonishment that in so novel a mode of setting marble 
in freestone we should both have invented the same thing at the same mo- 
ment. But such extraordinary coincidences do actually happen sometimes. . . . 
I shall always endeavor to serve you, & although my period of ability is 
passed for the present, it may again arrive . . . 

The Monumental Church (as it is known) that Mills designed and 
built, though the final structure was much altered from his original 
sketch, stands today as one of its architect's most original and successful 
achievements. 

Latrobe's influence on his draftsmen and superintendents was incal- 
culable. It is certainly no accident that two of the greatest American 
architects of the generation coming up should have been with him for 
years; perhaps his training of these younger men in aesthetic design, in 
fine and permanent construction, in meticulous detailing, and in profes- 
sional idealism was one of Latrobe's greatest contributions to the archi- 
tecture of America that lay ahead. 

This is no place for an account of the alleged Burr conspiracy to create 
a new country in the American Southwest, with Burr himself as king, 
president, or leader; yet that tragic, ambitious, embittered character, who 
by a hair had failed to become President of the United States, hypno- 
tized and misled a remarkable group of people, including Latrobe. He 
had an uncanny sense of those who were brilliant, adventurous, and un- 
appreciated, of those who found themselves in positions of personal 
hardship or had become bitter because of unjust fortune, and of those 



COLLEAGUES AND QUANDARIES 221 

whose talents could be useful to him. Before a chosen few of these he 
dangled baits cleverly chosen to appeal to them most, the chief one be- 
ing the dazzling opportunities of gain offered by the gradually opening 
West. 

Such a man was Bollman, now since his failure struggling with vision- 
ary but often prophetic scientific schemes. Such a man was Latrobe in 
the years from 1804 to 1806, with judgments hanging over him, debts 
everywhere, and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal about to fold up in 
ignominious failure. The enticing bait hooked Bollman, who became one 
of Burr's most important agents; it almost caught Latrobe. How deeply 
Burr confided in Bollman we shall probably never know; in Latrobe he 
confided a little, for he wanted Latrobe's engineering and architectural 
skill, which he appreciated even if Philadelphia did not. The canal proj- 
ect did collapse, and Burr seized the opportunity to make a definite 
offer, as Latrobe wrote his father-in-law (July 21, 1806): 

When the Canal company's operations were evidendy on the point of fail- 
ure, I received, through Colonel Burr, proposals respecting the Canal to pass 
the falls of the Ohio, a project in which the whole western interests of the 
Union are at present engaged, which I fear the misfortunes of our country 
in the separation of the Western from the Eastern states will in a few years 
develop. I stated my terms . . . they were acceded to ... I did not go 
Westward, as I otherwise, on my own judgment should have done ... I 
came to Philadelphia instead ... [A narrow escape!] 

Meanwhile Bollman had gone on to New Orleans as Burr's chief emis- 
sary to the ineffable play-both-sides-against-the-middle General Wilkin- 
son, and in the summer, through pure coincidence, Latrobe's former em- 
ployee Louis de Mun sailed to survey the mouth of the Mississippi. La- 
trobe was shocked and astounded when, toward the end of the year, 
rumors of Burr's duplicity and his real purpose began to circulate. Early 
in January, 1807, Wilkinson proclaimed martial law and shortly after- 
ward summarily arrested Bollman, Col. Samuel Swartwout, Peter V. 
Ogden, and General Adair, without warrants. Bollman and Swartwout 
as the most dangerous were put on board a vessel bound for the East 
coast; Ogden and Adair were released by the courts in New Orleans and 
their arrest was declared illegal. Wilkinson had suspected De Mun, too, 
and as we have seen had ordered his arrest, but De Mun escaped before 
his arrest was accomplished. Communication from the New Orleans area 



222 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

was slow, however, and Latrobe at first knew nothing but these rumors. 
Then Gallatin writes him asking what he knows of Burr, and Latrobe 
answers (November 15) with a long account headed "Memorandum": 

My first acquaintance with Col. Burr was In the year 1797 or 8. He intro- 
duced himself to me ... Since that time I have received from him nothing 
but civilities, and he has taken pains to render me essential services. For in- 
stance, when the City Hall at New York was projected, his interest pro- 
cured me all the votes of the corporation, save one, as his persuasion had 
at first induced me to become a competitor for the design & decoration of 
that building. I was afterwards, thro' his means, applied to by the corporation 
to undertake the general superintendence of the city & Island, but declined . . . 
and whenever we were in the same place we have seen much of each other . . . 
but he seemed always a litde embarrassed even in talking to me of State 
affairs, as he knew my individual feelings to be in favor of Mr. Jefferson's 
election in 1800, at the very time of his election; for I had very innocently 
& indiscretely opened myself to him. At least I thus account for his reserve 
to me in matters of politics, while on other subjects he was as open as pos- 
sible. About the year 1803 I had a long conversation with him on the 
Western navigation, then, as I told you this evening, the New York periauger 6 
was discussed between us, as the best boat, probably, for shallow & rapid 
rivers, as well as deep water, as being capable of navigating both; the 
latter by the help of the [lee] boards. I promised to obtain him a building 
draft of one, & succeeded. I finished the groject of the boat at once, he re- 
quested me about the i5th of July last that I would procure him half a 
dozen copies to be made. I did so, in my own office, Mr. Mills & Mr. De Mun 
each hav s each made 3. The dimensions of the boat I do not recollect, but 
I know well that I advised him to [use] boats 80 feet & not more in length, 
& not more than 18 feet beam. ... I understood him to want these in order 
to distribute them more diffusely among his friends on the Western Waters. 
In 1805, about June, [I received the offer of the canal job at Louisville. 
I answered and heard no more] till one evening in June last he walked into 
my house. The subject of the Canal was then renewed. I saw him almost 
every day as he lodged near me, & I was very ill. We talked of almost every 
subject. Miranda's expedition for instance, the rise & origin of which he was 
well acquainted with, & which he said he had from the beginning considered 
a most precipitate & ill considered scheme. And on this subject he told me 
many things which astonished me, both as to the names he introduced, and 



6. A type of shallow-draft lighter. 



COLLEAGUES AND QUANDARIES 223 

as to light thrown upon many characters & much conduct, which the public 
appear to have viewed "through a glass darkly." 

[In August I showed him articles in the Aurora on the] old & new Western 
conspiracy, mentioning Burr. He considered them personal attacks due to 
Marshall, & said they would cause "great uneasiness to the Westward." [I 
spent the last days of July in fitting out De Mun.] De Mun's Brother in law, 
Depestre came to town to wish him farewell. On this occasion I had much 
conversation with Depestre on his affairs. He had sold part of his Jersey farm 
& intended to part with the remainder provided he could get more land of 
good quality for his money, even if it lay further back. Having had much 
conversation here, on the land in Ohio with Col. Worthington, I advised him 
to look about him in that state, & promised him letters, which I afterwards 
wrote & sent to Burlington after him when De Mun was gone. 

[Burr also asked me about sounding out my Irish friends to see if they 
would go out & dig.] I accordingly treated with three of my contractors, 
Sands, Stuart, & Grimes, who were all inclined to take land & provisions & 
some money for their Labor; & I went so far as to arrange for having 500 
men . . . 

Latrobe states that, since the separation of the eastern and western states 
had been openly voiced in Congress, he asked Burr what he thought of 
it; Burr considered it imprudent at the time, but he thought there was 
already a majority of two to one for the separation. Then Latrobe goes 
on to report a long conversation with Depestre on "Saturday last" (after 
Latrobe had had dinner with the President), on the eve of Depestre's 
leaving for Havana, evidently low spirited and greatly disappointed in 
his western tour: 

The effect of what he said on Col. B's offer to me, was that of an advice 
not to accept of it. In fact the more I consider it, the more I think, that 
my presence is the only thing desired. The rest is sham. I forgot to mention 
that I am in a bad scrape with my Irishmen, for Col. B. has never once 
noticed the subject of the Canal since I made conditional arrangements with 
them. . . . 

On December 15 Latrobe sends to the Secretary of the Navy, Paul Ham- 
ilton, a copy of the "draught of a boat, made in my office for Col. Burr, 
when in Philadelphia June last. ... I will also . . . mention . . . that, 
at the instigation of Col. Burr, I did also make arrangements to engage 
and send to the Western country, 500 Irish laborers, to be employed in 



224 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

cutting a canal at the falls of the Ohio . . ." He mentions De Mun's em- 
ployment, and he also writes Roosevelt (January 22, 1807) : "Bollman as 
you will see by the papers is arrested and at Charleston. . . . Burr is not 
taken . . ." Later rumor had it that Burr had disappeared and that $2,000 
was offered as a reward for his apprehension. 

Innocent though he was in his connection with Burr, Latrobe was wor- 
ried. On April 3 he wrote his brother Christian a short account of Burr's 
"curious conspiracy" and told him that he had heard President Jefferson 
say that Burr's treasonable intent could be proved if there were time 
enough to collect witnesses. Bollman and Colonel Swartwout, as is well 
known, were released almost immediately upon their arrival in the East; 
the Federal courts held that their arrest without warrant was unlawful 
and that there was no evidence of treason. Exactly what their complicity 
was in the scheme has never been ascertained. But Bollman's hopes of a 
successful future in the United States were dashed who would trust him 
now? Burr was arrested and indicted for treason; his trial is one of the 
great monuments of American jurisprudence, and he was at last ac- 
quitted of the charge. Having been held up to the scorn and hatred of all 
good Americans, however, he fled to Europe to avoid the universal de- 
testation with which he was regarded. 

Latrobe was subpoenaed as a government witness against Burr and was 
held under bail in Washington for several months. When the trial began 
he was summoned to Richmond and made an official report on the se- 
curity of the room in which Burr was detained, but he was never called 
to the stand. Again, when Colonel Wilkinson was brought to trial in 
connection with his most circuitous behavior in the supposed plot, La- 
trobe was subpoenaed as a witness but was never actually called; Wilkin- 
son, too, was acquitted. Little by little, then, the matter faded into the 
background. It is largely a mystery still, and historians have yet to reach 
unanimity on what actually happened, on what Burr's and Wilkinson's 
dealings with each other and with the Spanish meant, and on which 
of the two was the stranger and the more crooked character. Burr was 
gradually reinstated in Latrobe's friendship, for who could withstand 
his charm? And five years later, Latrobe writes Bollman in Philadelphia 
(August 14, 1812) his final summing up of the affair: 

Aaron Burr ... is another guess sort of person. ... I love him still, tho' 
I would not trust him with the conduct of an intrigue to elect a common 
councilman. . . . Wilkinson may be rotten, as you say, & whatever Burr's 



COLLEAGUES AND QUANDARIES 225 

plans were, God knows neither side have ever explained them to me. . . . 
But the rottenness of Wilkinson was not nearly so cankerous to their success 
as the lawyer like management of Burr himself. ... To me, Mr. Burr re- 
vealed a project of cutting a Canal round the falls of the Ohio. ... I com- 
mitted myself accordingly . . . $10,000 would have commanded 500 Irish- 
men. ... I am told he could not command the money ... he ought to 
have known in July what he could do in September. ... He combines 
within his own, two most opposite characters the most sanguine and the 
most suspicious, while he is careless of his interest, and even of public opinion, 
he is cautious to a degree of folly. 

Besides professional work and financial worries, as well as the Burr 
matter, there was another factor in the Latrobe family life between 1804 
and 1808 which brought them much anxiety, many misgivings, but finally 
a deep satisfaction. It concerned Roosevelt and, like everything surround- 
ing that extraordinary personality, it was strange, at times ambivalent, and 
unexpected. Roosevelt, scarcely four years younger than Latrobe, had 
fallen in love with Latrobe's daughter Lydia! The news broke upon the 
family like a thunderbolt in a letter from Roosevelt to Mrs. Latrobe. La- 
trobe himself could hardly believe it. At the end of a business letter to 
his friend he wrote: "On the subject on which you have written Mrs. L., 
we had better tal^ than write. Perhaps it will be still better to laugh. 13 
years & 6 months" (Lydia's age). Of Lydia at that time, Latrobe wrote 
his older brother (February 6, 1805) : "I must tell you that Lydia though 
only 14 on the 23 of March next is a fine sensible young woman, in- 
heriting the faults o her mother's character as to unevenness of temper, 
but abounding also in excellent qualities of solid value," and he asked 
Christian to send on to him evidence of the registry in London of her 
birth and Henry's. 

The attraction between Lydia and Roosevelt was deep, but it created a 
dilemma in the minds of her parents. Not only was he old enough to be 
her father; he was also financially unstable and unduly optimistic, and at 
this very time his actions were threatening Latrobe's entire future. Every- 
thing on the worldly plane was against such a connection. On the other 
hand, Roosevelt was Latrobe's most sympathetic friend, and Mrs. La- 
trobe was equally fond of him. At last, when Roosevelt proved per- 
sistent as evidently did Lydia her parents gave in and accepted him as 
a serious suitor for their daughter's hand. On March 28, 1805, Latrobe 
wrote Roosevelt, at the end of one of his worried business letters: 



22 5 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

Now for the other subject. 

We on the 22nd of March celebrated the entrance of our Daughter into 
her i6th year. 7 How does that look as to our consent and even wishes?- 
But I declare I would rather be responsible for your whole fortune than for 
your happiness. Come & see us when you can. Mrs. Latrobe will no doubt 
write you fully on this head. 

Early in April, therefore, Roosevelt visited them at Wilmington and be- 
came the accepted if unannounced fiance of the young woman, scarcely 
out of childhood. Latrobe wrote him again on April 13: "We are all well, 
excepting Lydia, who, since you left this place, has been seized with a 
dreadful fit of affectation, and can scarce speak so as to be heard. Yours 
very affectionately . . ." But, still troubled as to the prospects of such 
an April-December match, he wrote three days later to Isaac Hazlehurst 
for his advice 

[On a matter] so situated, as you will see, that not even my own or Mary's 
judgment was left to decide. R[oosevelt] already proposed a settlement of 
about $20,000 value in landed property which he has designated: but I have 
declined entering into any discussion as premature. L[ydia] is, since this grand 
event, silent, & as affected as a Cat. I don't know what to do with her . . . 

And on May 16 he wrote to his brother Christian: 

As to Lydia, we have lost her. Mr. Roosevelt of New York, a man who 
in every respect but age is exactly what I could wish, has contrived to per- 
suade her that she will live more happily with him than with us. I regret 
most sincerely that a man past 30 [he was actually 36] should have made the 
proposition to her who is only in her i5th year. But before I dreamed that 
anything serious was meant things were so far settled between them as to 
put it out of my power to prevent their union but by an exertion of authority 
to which I hardly conceive I have a right. A year's probation is put upon 
them, & I sincerely hope that in the year something to break off the con- 
nexion will occur. If not, I must depend upon his good conduct to prevent 
that unhappiness which seems inevitably to belong to so very unequal a 
union. Mr. Roosevelt is a man of exceptionally good moral character, and 
of one of the oldest families in the State of New York, has a very handsome 
fortune [did Latrobe actually still believe this?], and inhabits one of the most 
enchanting country seats in Jersey, on the river Passaic. He calls himself 33, 



7, A typical example of Latrobc's occasional carelessness about dates. The "22nd** should 
be *'23rd" and the "i6th" should be "i 



COLLEAGUES AND QUANDARIES 22y 

but is suspected to be a year or two beyond that . . . [Did not Latrobe know 
his real age?] 

Anxiety still shows through the words, in spite of attempts to brighten 
the picture. But Roosevelt was impatient. The year's delay seemed irk- 
some, and he tried direct action. On May 18 Latrobe wrote him again 
about a letter Lydia had given her parents in which Roosevelt had pressed 
her for an immediate union: 

On this subject I must most seriously repeat to you what before I said, 
that my duty to my child, my anxiety for her happiness & for her education, 
and above all my well considered principles of propriety, will never permit 
me to consent to her marriage before next year. ... I beg you will there- 
fore desist from persuasion to her. Her consent you can no doubt obtain by 
pressing solicitation. Mine is better worth having . . . 

And on June 4, still fearful of the impetuosity of the lovers, he admon- 
ished him further: 

Early next week I shall go to Washington with Mrs. L. & leave Lydia in 
charge of the house & little folks. You will I am sure understand the delicacy 
of her situation in this scandalous town, & I need say no more . . . 

Roosevelt nevertheless visited Wilmington and Lydia, and Latrobe was 
forced to write once more (July i) : 

On referring to my letter on the subject of your visit to Wilmington during 
my absence, you will find that I could not usefully intend to prohibit your 
visit. I only cautioned you as to the time and duration of it. You have acted 
as you ought, but I am sorry if I have caused your inconvenience by it. ... 
You will know how much I have regretted your infatuation from my first 
knowledge of it. ... All I can do now is to prepare for your happiness as 
well as I can. ... As a daughter there can not be one more dutiful, & con- 
venient in every respect. She is an excellent housekeeper & nurse both for the 
children & the sick. Her behavior must necessarily win our warmest affection. 
But a daughter is not a wife, nor are the qualities which are required of 
an inmate exactly those which the head of a house should possess. In a few 
years more she might do us and you honour. We ask only a few months, and 
you think it too much. I am not in very high spirits in this affair. . . . Now 
I look round in vain for a subject of congratulation. A little more instruc- 
tion may make me change my opinion and cannot possibly be against your 
interests. Be assured that every part of my conduct which displeases you is 
dictated by my affection for you rather than for L. She cannot help but be 



228 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

happy with a man of your kind heart, and perfect principle. . . . The delay 
we ask is but a short one, tho' I know a week seems an eternity to lovers. 
Heaven bless you, my dear friend. Yours most affectionately. 

From this strange and confused letter of a confused parent are we to 
understand that Latrobe was becoming conscious of a certain lack of 
full frankness on Roosevelt's part, just as he was increasingly struck by 
Lydia's immaturity? His financial difficulties with Roosevelt were in 
part the result of a lack of frankness; here too were growing the seeds 
of misunderstanding. And Latrobe needed so much the continuing friend- 
ship of his prospective son-in-law. Yet apparently he bowed to the in- 
evitable; on November 3 he wrote his brother, whom he had urged to 
try to get some of the money due from the Sellon estate: 

Lydia is now going to be married. Must I describe her English relations 
to Mr. Roosevelt as a panel of speculators on her property [which of course 
they were] or must I save their character at the expense of truth & of my 
own. ... As to my own fireside, I have no idea of anything on this side 
the grave more calculated to attach the mind to sublunary happiness. And 
yet the longer I live the less does human existence appear to me of impor- 
tance. The laborious uphill climb to my present hour in which I have always 
engaged has given me a restlessness which all my activity of employ scarce 
satiates. What should I do without the sedative, of the kindness & example 
of my beloved Mary? 

At last 1806 came round but there was no marriage and a new note 
arose. Perhaps Latrobe's hopes that a delay would cause a break in the 
connection were to be realized. In a letter to Roosevelt on January 5 he 
intimated that he had learned that Lydia had refused to answer Roose- 
velt's last letter! But worse was to come. The Latrobes, shocked, discov- 
ered that over all the past months, when supposedly Roosevelt had not 
approached Lydia directly, Lydia and he had been carrying on a secret 
correspondence weekly; neither of them had been frank and open with 
the parents. Their distress was great a beloved daughter and a beloved 
friend both seeming underhanded and insincere. This was something 
Latrobe could not stomach, and to increase his distress there was the 
additional sorrow that the correspondence had in some way backfired 
and brought unhappiness to Lydia through the end of a romance which 
Latrobe, though questioning it, in his heart had welcomed. He wrote to 
Roosevelt in protest; Roosevelt replied in a letter that Latrobe called 



COLLEAGUES AND QUANDARIES 229 

"insulting and insane." In a letter (March 8) to Jacob Mark, Roosevelt's 
partner, Latrobe asserted that all Roosevelt's troubles were based on his 
deep bitterness at the breakup with Lydia. 

The basis of Latrobe's feeling for Roosevelt had now changed com- 
pletely; ". . . you have taught my child deceit," he wrote on March 21, 
and for months he signed his letters (which were rigidly impersonal and 
dealt only with business) "Yrs etc." But time softened Latrobe's anger, 
and there may have been personal explanations and apologies; for even- 
tually, and with great relief, the two old friends resumed their former 
relationship and the infatuation appeared to be a thing of the past. Yet 
actually it had not died in the hearts of either Roosevelt or Lydia. They 
went on with their ordinary lives, Roosevelt increasingly busy on a 
thousand nebulous projects, Lydia gradually growing into a fascinating 
and much sought-after young lady both in Philadelphia and in the de- 
lightful and exciting society of Washington. 

In September, 1808, Roosevelt visited the Latrobes. Mrs. Latrobe was 
upstairs, ill, recovering from a miscarriage a few days earlier. Latrobe 
was called out on business, and Roosevelt and Lydia were left alone to- 
gether for an hour and a half. That was enough; he proposed again, and 
she, with a year and a half more of experience behind her, accepted. 
On September 8, after Roosevelt had returned to New Jersey, Latrobe 
wrote him that Mrs. Latrobe and he were in perfect agreement about the 
marriage and welcomed it but what about Roosevelt's financial state? 
Roosevelt, Latrobe knew, had debts of almost $75,000 and assets of only 
about $36,000; how was Roosevelt going to pay the $30,000 to the United 
States Navy, which he should do at once, in order to clear his credit? 
Latrobe knew the facts only too well the Corps and Casey notes, the 
Navy copper affair all things that had dragged him into the picture, 
whether he would or no. But apparently Roosevelt satisfied him on this 
score, for Latrobe wrote his father-in-law the story of the resumption of 
Roosevelt's suit and Lydia's acceptance. He went on to say that the ex- 
ample of President and Mrs. Madison had convinced him that a differ- 
ence in ages was no bar to happiness. The fact that the failure of the 
Sellons had taken with it all of Lydia's own inheritance was referred to, 
and he said that Roosevelt on a final summing up of his assets and lia- 
bilities had between forty and fifty thousand dollars. And he related that 
Lydia had had several proposals and had refused them all: 



230 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

One of them, from Captain Porter [the famous officer] of the Navy, now 
married, was of such a nature that I could not well have objected to it, 
either on grounds of prudence or character. I therefore left her to her own 
feelings, but she rejected him so firmly that the matter dropped at once; and 
on this occasion she said to her mother, that he was not to be compared with 
Mr. Roosevelt. This circumstance among others persuadefs] me that she is 
as seriously attached to him as her calm disposition admits; and he is cer- 
tainly sufficiendy devoted to her. 

So at last they were married, and Latrobe wrote to his father-in-law: 

Yesterday evening [November 15] our daughter Lydia was married by the 
Revd. Mr. McCormick to Mr. Roosevelt, who arrived here in his own carriage. 
He picked up Henry at Baltimore, & brought him hither. No one was present 
at the ceremony but our own family, Mrs. Madison, Miss Brent, Lydia's par- 
ticular friend, Captn. Tingey [of the Navy Yard] & James Eakin. Mr. Madison 
promised to come, but he was so ill as to be confined to his room . . . 

The marriage proved a happy one much happier than the preliminaries 
might have presaged. After several exciting, worrisome, adventurous years 
the couple finally retired in modest affluence to Skaneateles, New York, 
where they were honored citizens till the days of their deaths. 

Even more important to the future of the Latrobe family, of course, was 
the removal to Washington, as an inevitable result of Latrobe's growing 
governmental work. This will be discussed in later chapters, but in order 
to get a true perspective on the life the family lived in this troubled 
period some consideration of it is necessary here. 

Latrobe had met Jefferson in 1798, at Fredericksburg, and had written 
him about possible canal work in the Charlottesville area in the same 
year. Evidently reports of Latrobe's growing reputation in his early Phila- 
delphia years had reached Jefferson and impressed him. When, in 1802, 
Jefferson had the idea that the best way to preserve naval vessels out of 
commission would be in huge covered dry docks, he turned naturally to 
Latrobe as the man best fitted to design the necessary structures. Long 
letters were exchanged between them, and finally Latrobe was sum- 
moned to Washington to develop the designs in co-operation with the 
Navy Department He was invited to dinner at the President's House on 
November 29, 1802, and much of the next day he spent writing his wife 
a full account of it. 8 The dinner was small only three besides himself 



8. See Appendix. 



COLLEAGUES AND QUANDARIES 23! 

and the conversation was largely scientific and professional: "on the best 
construction of arches, on the properties of different species of lime- 
stone, on cements generally, -on the difference between the French and 
English habits of living as far as they affect the arrangement of their 
houses, on several new experiments upon the properties of light, on 
Dr. Priestley, on the subject of immigration, on the culture of the 
vine ... on the domestic manners of Paris, & the orthography of the 
English & French Languages . . ." Then to lighten the atmosphere the 
President told amusing anecdotes of life in Paris, and especially one, 
slighdy ribald, about the Quaker Dorcas at Benjamin Franklin's. 

Latrobe's design for the docks so impressed Jefferson that three months 
later he appointed him Surveyor of the Public Buildings of the United 
States; in addition the architect received much work for the Navy De- 
partment and eventually was made Engineer of the United States Navy. 

With all this Federal government work, eventual residence in Wash- 
ington became inevitable, though the Latrobes were long in making the 
final move. They first considered it seriously in 1806, when the cessation 
of work on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was imminent. They 
had made extended visits in 1804 and 1805. Later, after all bright hopes 
in Philadelphia had collapsed, they were again uncertain. Latrobe wrote 
his father-in-law (July 19, 1806) that he could not make up his mind 
whether to move to Washington or not; every visit there had cost him 
more than he received. Two days later he wrote again, explaining his 
indecision, citing the lack of Philadelphia commissions, but adding: 
"Even my dependence on the Government . . . must be precarious while 
a single vote of Congress, to abandon the crazy project of forcing a 
national metropolis by paltry appropriations of 50-60000 Dollars a year, 
must draw the foundation on which I depend from under me/* 

By November, nevertheless, he seemed convinced of the necessity of 
the move, and he wrote Jefferson (November 8) that he planned to 
bring his family to Washington on the first of June and had leased his 
Philadelphia house. He said that he had tried to rent a house in Wash- 
ington from a Mr. Wheaton, but the lease fell through and he had had 
to come on alone; that he had been called home by illness and since 
then the serious illness of himself and various members of the family 
had deferred the move. & He added: "I confess candidly that the addition 



9. This illness, which Latrobe calls dysentery, may have been cholera. The architect 
was called home at the beginning of September by the serious illness of his son John H. B., 



2?2 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

[to the salary] proposed would be very convenient for me ... I have 
engaged a house here [he was writing from Washington] to which I 
shall move in the spring, should I still be engaged in the service of the 
Government" 

But when 1807 came round his uncertainty came again to the fore. He 
wrote the President (February 18) that it would be useless to move to 
Washington unless Congress passed the appropriation for the north wing 
and Latrobe was assured of full pay. Friends and relatives, he added, 
"consider it madness in me to leave a populous & wealthy city where I 
am known & where I may obtain much business, less honorable indeed, 
but more lucrative, for a situation so precarious & depending on appro- 
priations." 

Yet the logic of events inevitably overcame his doubts. As early as 
February 9, even before the letter to Jefferson, he had apparently made 
the decision, for on that day he wrote to Dr. Bullers, who had offered 
to rent him his own Washington home, that he could not take it; he had 
made other arrangements. The house he took, between the Navy Yard 
and the Capitol, was owned by Robert Alexander, a builder then absent 
in New Orleans as contractor for the customs house there which Latrobe 
had designed. The lease ran from May i, and on May 20 Latrobe wrote 
Robert Smith, Secretary of the Navy, that the next day he was "putting 
the whole family on board the packet for Washington." Actually the 
move seems not to have been made for another two months; all his letters 
till July were written from Philadelphia. Beginning with July i, 1807, 
Latrobe was a Washington resident for six consecutive years. 

Philadelphia again had failed him; the Wain house and the Bank of 
Philadelphia (the commission for which he had just received) could not 
justify his further residence there. The Philadelphia home which he 
held on a long lease he sublet to an art dealer, Delormeric; unhappily, 
and characteristically enough, Delormeric's rent was not forthcoming. 
This seemed a final example of Philadelphia's ingratitude. Perhaps Wash- 
ington would be more kind. 



whose life was for several days despaired of. He himself caught the infection in an attack 
of almost equal violence, and his recovery from the immediate attack left him completely 
prostrated; between August 27 and October 6 not a letter of his left the house, and for 
two weeks or so longer all the letter copies are in the hand of either Robert Mills or Mrs. 
Latrobe. He was not well enough to return to Washington until the end of October. 



CHAPTER 
12 



The Baltimore Cathedral 



FROM the spring of 1804 on throughout Latrobe's years in the East he 
worked spasmodically on the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Baltimore. 
In his search for good building stone for the United States Capitol he 
had become well acquainted with the city, and later when his son Henry 
was put in St. Mary's College, the Sulpician academy, his connections 
with Baltimore became even closer. The Diocese, under the farsighted 
Bishop Carroll, had for some time seen the advantages of having an im- 
pressive cathedral, and someone had prepared a sketch. This sketch was 
given to Louis de Mun by one Fitzsimmons, and De Mun passed it on 
to Latrobe for his comments and criticism, perhaps at the Bishop's sug- 
gestion. 1 

The result was a letter from Latrobe to Bishop Carroll (April 10, 1804), 
in which he attacked the proposed design on two counts, both practical 
In the first place, there was no adequate support for the dome shown at 
the crossing or for the indicated tower. Then there was the cost; the 
proposed design included 54 Corinthian columns 30 feet high, and these 
alone would cost at least $54,000, or approximately the total proposed 
cost of the entire building. He concluded by offering his services free. 
Apparently the Bishop thought well of the offer, for a month later La- 
trobe was hard at work on his design. Here was a magnificent oppor- 
tunity for all the best he had to offer. 



i. See Fiske Kimball, "Latrobe's Designs for the Cathedral of Baltimore," Architectural 
Record, vol. 42, no. 6 (December, 1917), and vol. 43, no. i (January, 1918); and Walter 
Knight Sturges, **A Bishop and His Architect: The Story of the Building of Baltimore 
Cathedral," Utwgical Arts, vol. 17, no. 2 (February, 1949). See also J. M. Riordan, Cathe- 
dral Records from the Beginning of Catholicity in Baltimore to the Present Time . . , 
(Baltimore: Catholic Mirror Publishing Co., 1906). 

233 



LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

In 1804 Latrobe was still the rebel, still under the influence of the 
Romantics in the England he had left. What could be more fitting, he 
thought, than that America's first major cathedral should be Gothic? 
But what sources could he use, what documents for details? At this 
period he was engaged in work on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, 
living in quiet Newcastle and later at Iron Hill and Wilmington. Joshua 
Gilpin was important in the direction of the canal, and Gilpin was his 
good friend and a man of cultivation. Latrobe had lent him his own 
copy of "Gothic Hints" and in the middle of May wrote to see if he 
could get it back and at the same time borrow a few volumes of "Pic- 
turesque Scenery," which Gilpin owned. 2 The books came a few days 
later, and Latrobe set to work in earnest. 

But the designs proceeded slowly. Latrobe was almost unbelievably 
rushed. Daily oversight of the canal operations, thronging questions about 
the Capitol requiring many drawings and numberless long letters to 
Lenthall, and visits to Washington and Philadelphia left little time for 
the Cathedral save occasional evenings and Sundays and odd hours 
when De Mun or Mills could be put to making drawings. It was not till 
the following February (1805) that the designs were nearing completion. 
On February 6 he wrote his brother Christian (in a letter already quoted 
in part on page 225) : 

Your account of your rambles carries me to the spots I have visited among 
those you describe. I forget the year I went to Bath, Bristol, Wells, & Salis- 
bury with Mr. Lloyd. I think you were in Germany on the Gnadenfrey busi- 
ness, ... I am obliged as to the Baltimore Cathedral to design from memory. 
I cannot procure here a single technical account or representation of a Gothic 
Building o any superior merit; but the style, & even the detail is so impressed 
on my imagination that I hope to succeed, in escaping the censure you so 
justly bestow upon Wyatt, whom among architects, I have always put in the 
same rank that Shenstone & Phillips hold among poets. 

2. These books are difficult to identify, since the titles Latrobe gives do not agree with 
any recorded book titles. The "Gothic Hints" might possibly refer to Batty and Thomas 
Langley's Gothic Architecture, Improved by Rules and Proportions (London: Taylor [1742]) 
or, more probably* one of the works of John Carter or of John Britton. The earlier volumes 
of Carter's Ancient Architecture of England (London: n.p., 1795-1807) had already ap- 
peared. Barton's Architectural Antiquities had also begun publication and included King's 
College Chapel in Cambridge and the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey. The "Pic- 
turesque Scenery" perhaps refers to William Gilpin's Remarks on Forest Scenery . . 



THE BALTIMORE CATHEDRAL 235 

I have, as I believe I have told you, made a good campaign at my great 
Canal. I shall send you such another book of this work & of the buildings 
at Washington as soon as I can get it drawn as your last, 3 & will add to it 
my Cathedral, & any other work I have not yet sent to you . . . 

Another two months passed before the Cathedral design was finally 
ready. Along with the Gothic scheme Latrobe included one he called 
Roman; obviously he wished to give the Cathedral authorities the op- 
portunity of such an important choice. With the designs went a long 
letter of explanation (April 27, 1805) addressed to the Right Reverend 
Bishop Carroll and the building committee; it is entitled "Remarks on 
the proposed erection and on the designs submitted." This communica- 
tion is remarkable not only as a treatise on church design but also be- 
cause it shows so clearly that for Latrobe, as for any really creative archi- 
tect, the making of a suitable program and the development of a plan 
to fulfill its demands must be the basis of any good building. He starts 
out: 

A Cathedral of the Latin Church, has a prescribed form, from which that 
propriety, which ought to be uniform in the practise, to produce the respect 
which is always given to consistency does not permit the architect to deviate. 
This form is that of a cross, the style of which is longer than the head, and 
either of the arms. The head of the cross is also necessarily the Choir, the 
arms the Transepts, & the style the nave of the Church. . . . The Choir, being 
that part of the church which is devoted to divine service, must be of a size 
to admit of the commodious arrangements, & movements of the Clergy en- 
gaged in its performance. If it be ascertained, what is the smallest space, in 
which the ceremonial of high festivals of the Church can be decently, that is 
commodiously exhibited (for embarrassment arising from a crowd, destroys 
solemnity) the smallest possible size of the Choir of a Cathedral would be 
determined. The Choir governs the dimensions of the remaining parts of the 
Church. 

But generalities are not enough; basing his estimates on a nave width 
of 25 feet, he assumes a depth of 50 feet for the choir, and from this di- 



(London: Blamire, 1791). It is barely possible that this William Gilpin was a relative of 
the Philadelphia Gilpins. 

3. "Your last" refers evidently to Latrobe's volume of drawings, now in the Historical 
Society of Pennsylvania, which contains the designs of the Bank of Pennsylvania and the 
waterworks of Philadelphia. Its title page informs us that it was made for Christian 
Latrobe. The book this letter promises has never been found. 



2 ^ 6 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

mension in turn he arrives at a total length o 177 feet for the entire 
church. These dimensions are for the Gothic scheme, which he refers 
to as the "first design," and he comments that such a length is "a small 
dimension, compared to the length of any European Cathedral with 
which I am acquainted." With regard to the second, the Roman design, 
he writes: 

In the second design, I have very considerably contracted the length of the 
Nave, the style of the building admitting it better than that of No. i. 

The length of the choir in this design from the back wall to the Screen 
is 37'~6". The center is covered by a dome 40 feet in diameter, and the nave 
is 58 feet long, making, with the width of the arches on which the dome 
rests (6 feet), 141 ft. 6 in., or $6'-6" less than the ist design. 

Only after presenting a complete table of dimensions for the two de- 
signs does he bring up the subject of style: 

The Veneration which the Gothic cathedrals generally excite, by their pe- 
culiar style, by the associations belonging peculiarly to that style, and by the 
real grandeur, & beauty which it possesses, has induced me to propose the 
Gothic style of building in the first design submitted to you. The Gothic style 
of Cathedrals, is impracticable to the uses of common life, while the Greek 
& Roman architecture has descended from the most magnificent temples to 
the decoration of our meanest furniture. On this account, I claim that the 
former has a peculiar claim to preference, especially as the expense is not 
greater in proportion to the effect. The second design which is Roman, has, 
as far as I can judge of my own works, equal merit with the first in point 
of plan, and structure, and I therefore submit the choice to you, entirely, 
having myself an equal desire to see the first, or the second executed, my 
habits rather inclining to the latter, while my reasonings prefer the first. 

He refuses to make an accurate estimate for either plan: 

... if the building is to be erected at all events, and the least possible size 
be determined, everything else follows of course: for an estimate made with 
the best care & judgement cannot bind the expense. All that is to be done 
then is to execute the smallest work with the greatest economy which is con- 
sistent with solidity, for no extravagance is so profligate & ruinous as that 
of bad workmanship. 

The letter ends with practical advice on the materials and on choosing 
a competent clerk of the works. For the clerk of the works he suggests 



THE BALTIMORE CATHEDRAL 237 

William Steuart, son of Robert Steuart the stonecutter, from whom La- 
trobe had purchased stone for the Capitol. He concludes: 

In offering you my professional services I have to request that you will 
do me the honor to accept them in their fullest extent. In this you will do 
no more than to gratify the jealous desire I feel to be as useful to you, as if 
my love of fame & of independence were as much interested, as are the feel- 
ings of my heart in serving you. When you are ready to lay out your build- 
ing, I will do myself the honor to wait upon you & to perform that duty . . . 

A day later, in a letter sent personally to the Bishop, Latrobe elaborates 
upon his offer, explaining that donating his services does not mean do- 
nating the services of his employees, and continues: 

But as neither my private or professional income, nor the measure of what 
a single individual ought to offer to a numerous society, or that society to 
accept, extend to actual expenditures in your service, I mean very candidly 
and unceremoniously to deliver to you an account of all, & every [one] of 
the trifles, which affect my purse. 

Still more important, he includes here his first tentative estimates: either 
design, he believes, can be built for $55,000 or $60,000. Even for that 
period, however, these figures seem (and proved) low for a building 
of the size and elaborateness planned. 

Hastening to accept this generous offer, the Diocese chose the second 
the Roman design for execution. But the building committee, finding 
even this smaller scheme too long and too wide for the selected site, 
wanted the plan reduced, and Latrobe sent on (July 9, 1805) a revised 
design which also included a change from the square east end to a semi- 
circular apse, as the Bishop desired. Continual minor changes were made, 
and it was not until the end of the year (December 26, 1805) that La- 
trobe wrote that the construction drawings were at last ready. 

The ensuing four months were crucial. On February 15, 1806, he 
pleaded with the Bishop for an additional twenty feet, fifteen feet, even 
ten feet; ten days later he wrote again that he was now satisfied with the 
fifteen feet more he had been allowed and asked (apparently in vain) if 
he might design the rectory. By then it had been decided to omit the 
transept porticoes, and Latrobe inquired whether the transept doors were 
necessary. Finally, on March 6, the first of the actual working drawings, 
the foundation plan, was sent; two days later Latrobe wrote the Bishop 
saying he could not see any way to reduce the length further. Apparently 



238 LAIROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

the whole would impinge on an existing earlier building, and Latrobe 
suggested that the erection of the apse be postponed until the old build- 
ing could be taken down. 

With this first working drawing trouble began. The builder had read 
the sections upside down, had mistaken the crypt vault for reversed 
foundation arches, and had complained to the Bishop that they were 
absurd. On March 26, 1806, Latrobe wrote the Bishop reassuring him on 
this point and explaining the builder's error. Toward the middle of 
April Latrobe submitted his first bill for expenses 4 and made his first 
visit of inspection. He was appalled at what he found. A certain John 
Hillen, one of the Cathedral trustees, had been appointed the builder, 
and a Mr. Rohrback clerk of the works. Not only was Hillen incompe- 
tent enough to misread Latrobe's plans, but he was continually running 
to the building committee and the Bishop with objections to the plans. 
The Bishop, architecturally innocent, brought up all these complaints 
with Latrobe. From Washington, on April 18, Latrobe wrote the faith- 
ful Louis de Mun, who had been the principal draftsman on the project: 
"I had a terrible battle at Baltimore, with Hillen whom I found at the 
bottom of ail the Bishop's objections. Another such battle will drive me 
from the field." 

Early in August, 1806, Latrobe made another visit to Baltimore and 
hastened to write the Bishop in high dudgeon: 

Near three months have now elapsed since I have seen or heard anything 
of the Cathedral, excepting a few words . . . that it was progressing. On 
my arrival here this morning, I find that alterations which appear to me 
very material have been made, that others are projected. I might complain 
on 'this occasion in strong terms. But I content myself with requesting that 
you will please to return to me all the drawings of the church ... & desig- 
nate the person to whom I may return my actual expense . . . 

And a little later, from Washington, he wrote his good friend Maximilian 
Godefroy (August 18) telling him of his trouble. 3 

4. The total bill was $247.00: Louis dc Mun, 66 days, at $2.50 a day; Robert Mills, 
26 days, at $2.00. 

5. Maximilian Godefroy was a French ex-officer and a thoroughly trained architect and 
designer o no little skill. A refugee from the trouble in France, he had come to the 
United States in 1805, to be professor o fine arts at St. Mary's College in Baltimore. Nine 
years later he completed the layout of the Virginia state Capitol grounds in Richmond. 
This was a formal garden with two axial apse-ended compositions of walks and hedges, 



THE BALTIMORE CATHEDRAL 239 

During all the rest of 1806 the Hillen matter rankled. Bishop Carroll 
did his best to smooth matters over, but Latrobe's professional pride was 
involved. The disastrous occurrences at Sedgeley had been lesson enough 
to him; they should not happen here! Reluctantly the Bishop returned 
the drawings, and finally, on December 12, Latrobe wrote the building 
committee a virtual ultimatum: 

It is now time that all the drawings necessary for the erection of the Cathe- 
dral . . . should be made. . . . Before any steps of this kind can be taken 
a very perfect understanding ought to exist, as to the plan you mean to 
execute. . . . All the drawings are now in rny possession. Alterations have 
been made in them and in the work by Mr. John Hillen, in direct violation 
of the stipulations under which I have given my services to you. ... I shall, 
I am sure, not be thought unreasonable in making a further proposal . . . 
that either I, or Mr. John Hillen, be wholly discharged from all share in the 
design & construction of the Cathedral. 

The next day he sent an explanatory letter to the Bishop suggesting the 
firing of Rohrback as clerk of the works and the hiring of Robert Mills 
instead; he added what amounted to a threat: 

I sincerely hope that hence forward everything will go on agreeably to all 
parties. ... If it is such ... I will proceed actively and zealously, if I de- 
cline I shall publish the whole correspondence, and thus prevent my name 
being ever connected with the building that will be erected . . . under the 
auspices of Hillen & Rohrback . . . 



one on each side of the capital; the capitol hill itself was terraced high between these in 
three rectangular terraces with an axial walk and steps. The present informal grading and 
planting superseded the old formal layout about 1830. Godefroy married Eliza Crawford, 
the daughter of a well-known physician and herself something of a blue stocking. She was 
the editor and publisher of a periodical called The Companion (published between Novem- 
ber 3, 1804, and October 25, 1806) and its successor, The Observer (November 29, 1806, 
to December 26, 1807), to which Latrobe contributed several pieces of architectural interest. 
Godefroy himself became famous as the architect of the chapel of St. Mary's College (for 
Father Dubourg) a design of great verve in a sort of strange picture-book Gothic and 
later of the superb domical Unitarian Church in Baltimore. Still later, he entered into a 
somewhat unfortunate collaboration with Latrobe on the Baltimore Exchange, as we shall 
see. Embittered by this experience, the Godefroys sailed for England in August, 1819, and, 
equally unsuccessful there, in. 1827 they went to France where he became the official archi- 
tect for La Mayenne. Here he designed the Prefecture of Laval. Mrs. Godefroy died there 
in 1839, a^ k fi apparently left Laval in 1842. No date for his death has thus far been 
ascertained. See Carolina V. Davison, "Maximilian Godefroy,*" in Maryland Historical 
Magazine, vol. 29, no. i (March, 1934), and William D, Hoyt, Jr., "Eliza Godefroy: 
Destiny's Football," in Maryland Historical Magazine, vol. 36, no. i (March, 1941). 



240 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

And to show his good faith he wrote to Bishop Carroll some three weeks 
later (January 6, 1807) that he was still working on the Cathedral draw- 
ings and waiting for word of his re-engagement. 

The Bishop's position was not enviable. Between the pressures from 
Hillen (a trustee) and Rohrback on the one hand and Latrobe's profes- 
sional attitude on the other, and with a building committee largely igno- 
rant of the real points involved and eager to get on with the job, all his 
skill and diplomacy were needed. He urged Latrobe to continue; La- 
trobe answered that he would do so on receipt of an official letter, and 
on January 26, 1807, he again wrote Bishop Carroll a new, extended ac- 
count of the whole controversy, marked "private." Then, on the first 
of February, Latrobe sketched a letter he would like to send the trustees, 
but he had the wisdom to send it to the Bishop first. The Bishop at once 
seized the opportunity to make a final attempt to clarify the problem and 
to mollify the architect in a direct appeal to him dated February 9: 

When I received four days ago your favor of the first inst. inclosing the 
draft of one intended for the trustees, it gave me too much concern to comply 
with your request by writing an immediate answer. My concern did not arise 
merely from the foresight of the fatal consequence which would result to our 
undertaking by the withdrawal of your direction in its present state, but like- 
wise because it appeared to us that the loss of your talents and knowledge 
would be chargeable in some degree to my imprudence, not indeed for having 
exhibited to the trustees your private letter of December 13 (which I was 
careful not to do), but for having verbally informed them of your repugnance 
to act with Mr. Hillen, (one of the trustees) or to have the building superin- 
tended by Mr. Rhorback [sic] repeating this part of your letter from mem- 
ory, I may have used unintentionally expressions from which they inferred that 
they were to be restrained from employing agents best approved by them, for 
the immediate superintendence of the building, and therefore they required 
that their answer should assert their authority. But as they expressly added 
that these agents should have no authority to make alteration in the design 
or construction without your knowledge or approbation, is it yet forbidden 
to hope that more attention will be paid hereafter to this, and that you will 
reconsider and suspend at least, if not change your resolution? ... It does 
not escape me that this is a selfish and interested request; it is soliciting you 
to sacrifice your own feelings to those who have rashly undertaken to rejudge 
your work and modify without knowledge a design formed on the principles 
of science and directed by experience. Conscious of my inability to give any 
opinion on the combinations required for the various detailed parts of a great 



THE BALTIMORE CATHEDRAL 24! 

piece of architecture, I have constantly refrained from every interference, but 
seeing now the mischief into which we shall be plunged without your aid, 
I am determined to interpose my voice more decidedly, and I shall insist 
peremptorily on a strict compliance with your directions . . . 

Having offered these observations, and despairing almost of their having 
the effect of producing a change in your determination, I send you back the 
copy of your intended letter. If, however, you can think more compassionately 
for our ignorance and presumption its daughter, you will find it advisable to 
soften some expressions (a few marginal notes on your copy will direct you 
to the passages) which have appeared most likely to me to give displeasure 
perhaps you will note the others. . . , 6 

This letter succeeded in its aim. On March 26, at last, all seemed set- 
tled and Latrobe wrote gratefully to the Bishop: "I thank you sincerely 
for your kind interference in the work of peace, & will do all I can to 
give success to your wishes ..." A new agent was appointed the Rev- 
erend Francis Beeston to whom Latrobe could send his technical direc- 
tions and his drawings, and a chastened George Rohrback continued as 
clerk of the works. Latrobe had won his main point no changes what- 
soever were to be made in the design without his express approval or 
his direct and specific orders. Already nearly three years had passed since 
the architect's first letter, but many details of the final design had not 
yet been decided on and only the excavation and some foundations had 
been carried out. The three years had brought to Latrobe hope, disap- 
pointment, and trouble and to the Bishop difficult problems of human 
relations; both of them must have felt a great relief to have the contro- 
versies settled. Now the work could proceed! 

All through 1807 the drawings were piling up and being sent on to 
the Reverend Francis Beeston sections of the foundation walls and de- 
tails of the transept, the gallery and gallery stairs, the vestry windows, and 
the bases for pilasters and columns. Latrobe had planned to visit Balti- 
more in the last week in July, but the weather was unfavorable and 
later his subpoena as a witness in the Burr trial held him in Washing- 
ton. He was in Philadelphia from the end of November, 1807, until 
mid-January, 1808, when he returned to Washington; during that period 
he probably visited Baltimore, for another important change occurred 
about this time. The Bishop and the trustees wanted the four central 
piers that had been planned removed, so that the crossing dome, instead 



6. Sturges, op* cit. 



242 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

of being only as wide as the nave, could be the total width o nave and 
aisles. On February 5, 1808, Latrobe wrote that the desired drawings 
were being delayed by this change "wholly altering & I think spoiling 
the design." He recapitulated the matter in another letter to Bishop 
Carroll (February n): 

All the difficulties of the piers arise, like all our other difficulties, out of 
the alterations made by desire of the Trustees. Side aisles in every Cathedral 
of the world are passages, or walks. I made them j'-6" wide. But the Trustees 
would add 10 feet to them. I added the 10 feet, & then they became of con- 
sequence to the room of the church, and the piers were then too big. Thus 
a seventh design becomes necessary, & I am making it ... 

This "seventh" design was completed in March. In its preparation 
Latrobe had to consider not only the final effect he desired the great 
open central space and such alterations in other parts of the original 
interior design as were necessary to make them consistent with the new 
vision, but also the existing foundations. He had to plan in such a way 
as to utilize as much of the old and necessitate as little new foundation 
work as possible. This problem he solved brilliantly; only small diagonal 
wings were necessary, added to the inner side of the eight central piers, 
and to even the bearing on the foundations he used four diagonal re- 
versed arches to tie each of the four diagonal corners together. The exist- 
ing work shows no trace of unequal settlement, although the weight of 
the central dome was transferred from the four central piers to the 
eight that were adjacent. On March 4, 1808, the final section drawing 
went forward to Bishop Carroll, and in transmitting it Latrobe wrote 
that "the Church as it now is proposed must necessarily be vaulted . . ." 

At last the Cathedral design had taken its final form, and construc- 
tion now went ahead slowly but surely. The finished drawings were made 
largely by George Bridport and were billed for on October 10. It was this 
seventh design that produced the Cathedral substantially as it stands 
today, except for the additional domed bay used to lengthen the choir 
in 1890, when Latrobe's pleas for greater length were found to have 
been warranted; the space which he had wanted in front of the altar 
and had shown in his earliest designs ultimately had to be provided. 

All through 1809, 1810, and 1811 the building progressed gradually and 
without friction; apparently the trustees had learned their lesson. The 
exterior walls had risen to the level of the panels above the side windows 



THE BALTIMORE CATHEDRAL 



243 




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W 

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o 



Q 



vo 

M 

w 

PS 

o 



244 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

by the autumn of 1809; in November there was correspondence about 
the special cut stone for these panels, obtained from "Mr. Robertson, the 
quarrier." In the following July (1810) the interior was almost ready for 
the Ionic column capitals for the galleries and the apse, and Latrobe 
wrote the Bishop that he would have them carved in Washington by 
Andrei, one of the Italian sculptors who had been imported for the 
Capitol work, and by his assistant Somerville; in February he wrote 
again saying they would cost $200 each for the sanctuary capitals and 
$120 each for the smaller capitals beneath the galleries, plus $200 more 
for the stone. On July 4 and July 12, 1811, he wrote two letters pleading 
for payments to the carvers. Latrobe visited the Cathedral twice that 
year sometime between July 23 and July 30, and again on September 20. 
Apparently he found everything in order. All bade fair for continuing 
progress and the completion of the Cathedral at not too distant a date. 

But these hopes were vain; the War of 1812 intervened and, with the 
consequent financial confusion and the depression that accompanied and 
followed it, brought a total cessation of the work for almost five years. 
Only in 1817 could building be resumed. Latrobe was called to Balti- 
more at the end of March in that year, but work at the Capitol delayed 
him; he seems to have been in Baltimore between April 12 and April 25, 
however, and on his return to Washington he wrote the Reverend Enoch 
Fen wick (who had replaced Beeston as the Cathedral's executive agent) , 
sending some dimensioned plans and requesting him to check their di- 
mensions against the actual work. More drawings of the central dome 
followed, and on May 21, 1817, Latrobe wrote asking Fen wick to call 
for them at the Baltimore office of Hazlehurst Brothers. Two months 
later he wrote Mr. Hayden at the Cathedral: "The heads of the niches 
[in the two eastern corners of the central area] must have caissons, other- 
wise they will be as bald as a monk, & cost more in painting them . . ." 
And by August i he stated that "the great dome is under way." Details 
of the dome went forward to Baltimore on August 6. Meanwhile the in- 
terior details were being completed; but what had become of the column 
capitals ordered six years earlier? Latrobe wrote Fen wick (August 21, 
1817) : "I had an indistinct recollection that I had formerly all the capi- 
tals of your internal columns carved here by Andrei. This morning I 
. . . found them ... in a log shed, where they have remained these ten 
years [a typical example of his occasional vagueness in dates]. They are 
among the most beautiful things . . . Andrei will engage to carve over 



THE BALTIMORE CATHEDRAL 245 

and repair all those that require it." Andrei's assistants in the work were 
Henderson, Somerville, and Mclntosh. The capitals were finally shipped 
on October 22; the cost of the carving, we learn, was $142.50 each. 

At the end of that year Latrobe resigned his position as architect of 
the Capitol under distressing circumstances, as we shall see, and went to 
Baltimore to live, primarily to be close to the Exchange then under con* 
struction. But this removal also brought him in immediate touch with 
the Cathedral and he had the satisfaction of seeing it enclosed during 
1818, its vaults and its roof complete and most of its interior finished. 
Only the exterior portico and the towers remained to be built. 7 The great 
church was ready for use. It was dedicated in 1821, its noble interior a 
mute witness to its architect's skill. 

Thus the first major Roman Catholic cathedral in the United States 
gradually came into being. It is now a fitting time to consider its de- 
sign and its construction, for both offer convincing testimony to the archi- 
tect's vision. 

Latrobe's first design was Gothic. In this, as he wrote to his brother, 
he had "to design from memory." What was this memory and how 
accurate was it? He had traveled extensively in Europe; undoubtedly 
he had seen at least the chief Gothic cathedrals of France and certainly 
some of those in Germany and England. Of his acquaintance with Eng- 
lish Gothic monuments we can place him definitely in Bath, Wells, and 
Salisbury, and he must have known the Gothic churches of London. We 
also know that as a lad in Fulneck he had sketched Kirkstall Abbey in 
near-by Leeds. His general acquaintance, therefore, with important 
Gothic monuments was large. Yet we must remember, too, that in those 
early years Latrobe's chief architectural interest was in the new, ration- 
alist, classic revival buildings which were rising all over Europe; to him 
the Gothic monuments were merely historic and picturesque backgrounds. 

As an ardent young architect in London, however, he was necessarily 
under the Romantic influence, which must have been nearly as strong for 



7. Latrobe's drawings show simple domical tops to the belfry towers; the present onion- 
shaped outline, dating from 1832, is not his work. The portico was not completed until 
1863, and John H. B. Latrobe served as the architect to carry it out and thus complete 
his father's creation. The choir was lengthened in 1890, as we have seen, and the whole 
was carefully examined, repaired where necessary, and redecorated in 1945. The lengthening 
in 1890 followed the original details meticulously, but the more recent decoration seems 
to follow the fashions of its time more than the spirit its original architect would have 
preferred. 



246 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

him as the classic rationality that underlay his thinking and his design. 
In his painting he was a romantic of the romantics, disciplined by his 
sense of reality rather than by any classic rules. He was a water-colorist 
of the school of Girtin, with occasional atmospheric touches not too un- 
like the early Turner; not infrequently one sees in the work flashes of 
Fuseli if not of Blake. To one formed in such an environment, at a time 
before any profound analysis either historic or structural of Gothic 
monuments had been made, "Gothic" was pre-eminently an atmosphere 
rather than any strict category of definite forms. It connoted an emotion 
about buildings rather than any specific way of building them. Moreover, 
this Gothic was still not a revival, in the strict sense of the word. For 
Wyatt, in Fonthill Abbey, as for Wren in his Gothic work a century 
earlier, the architect's freedom in design remained untrammeled by no- 
tions of historical consistency. Nostalgia rather than archaeology reigned. 
And in Latrobe's Gothic work Sedgeley, the Baltimore Cathedral design, 
Christ Church in Washington, the Bank of Philadelphia the same holds 
true. 

Apparently, nevertheless, in this design for the Cathedral, one prece- 
dent predominates Kirkstall Abbey, the ruin that had enthralled the 
architect as a boy. In the treatise on landscape which he prepared for Miss 
Susanna Spotswood, there is a romantic picture of it, painted either from 
memory or more probably from early sketches which he still preserved. 
In general mass its effect is strikingly like that of the Baltimore Cathe- 
dral project. In both a relatively low central tower covers the crossing; in 
both there is the same rather high-shouldered appearance, derived from 
high side aisles and a low clerestory. Latrobe's painting in the Spotswood 
sketchbook includes, too, a revelatory little detail vignette of the end 
of the nave or choir. It shows an enormous single window running 
the entire height of the structure and flanked by large corner pinnacles. 
Significantly, the sketch depicts the wall beneath the window sill as al- 
most completely destroyed, giving the effect of one colossal door or porch. 
Here then, rather than in the quite different Peterborough, is the source 
of the tall recessed porch that dominates the front of the Cathedral de- 
sign. 

It is futile to seek direct precedents elsewhere. Latrobe was designing 
within an atmosphere, not aiming to re-create the past. The tall lancet 
windows of the side aisles and the equilateral arches of the clerestory 
are his own. Possibly these clerestory windows recall the low arches of 



THE BALTIMORE CATHEDRAL 247 

the Salisbury cloister; perhaps they are merely the result of the effort 
to obtain large scale in conjunction with modest height. 

In the interior, however, the spirit is more that of German than of 
French or English Gothic. The nave vault is essentially a barrel vault 
with penetrations, rather than a true groined vault, and like some late 
Gothic German church vaults it is covered with a lace of surface tracery. 
Everything is done, too, to exaggerate the slim verticality of the nave; 
there is little here of the long horizontals so frequent in England. It is 
characteristic of the atmospheric quality of the entire design that this 
vault is apparently intended to be of lath and plaster, for the supports 
(only three feet thick) and the thin strip buttresses are manifestly in- 
sufficient to support or to buttress the thrusts of a vault of masonry. In 
plaster the non-structural, reticulated vault ribbing is as consistent as any 
other form could be; in masonry the pattern would be absurd. Similarly 
the primitive and sometimes awkward window tracery seems designed 
for wood rather than for stone. Here the architect's emotional feeling 
for Gothic led him far indeed from the structural logic that so largely 
controlled his classic buildings. 

But Latrobe's chief difficulty in this design was in the matter of scale. 
As he wrote the Bishop, the length of the church was "a small dimension 
compared to ... any European Cathedral/' and the nave width (only 
twenty-five feet) was from ten to fifteen feet narrower than the average 
in European Gothic cathedrals. The whole scheme was of necessity a 
miniature, and since that very fact made the copying of typical Gothic 
monuments absurd to a thinking designer Latrobe went to great lengths 
to avoid in it any sense of the toy. Hence the use of stretches of plain 
wall, the single lancets of the side aisles, and possibly the use of what is 
virtually a barrel vault. Yet even in this relatively short cathedral the 
designer's search for the emotion of mystery led him to use a complete 
choir screen (with an organ) across the west end of the choir. Here, of 
course, it was the memory of the broken perspectives of English abbeys 
that controlled. 

The total result was interesting but not convincing, vivid but somehow 
unreal. And Latrobe's memory of Gothic detail, despite the accuracy he 
boasted of in his letter to Christian, played him false in many places, so 
that his moldings are too thin, his tracery wiry and without conviction. 
The design displays a compromise between emotion and structure, be- 
tween memory and imagination. One hazards the opinion that Latrobe 



2^8 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

himself, despite a certain disappointment, felt a deep relief when the 
Cathedral authorities chose the "Roman" design. Later Latrobe's own 
view of the desirability of Gothic changed. On May 30, 1813, he wrote 
from Washington to David Hare, of Philadelphia, about a proposed 
Washington Hall there. Hare had mentioned the possibility of making it 
Gothic, and Latrobe protested: 

You even speak of a Gothic arch. The Bank of Philadelphia [which La- 
trobe had designed in Gothic] has done more mischief than that of Penn- 
sylvania has produced good. The Free Masons' Hall [designed by William 
Strickland], which is anything but Gothic, has made me repent a thousand 
times that I ventured to exhibit a specimen of that architecture. My mouldings 
& window heads appear in horrid disguise from New York to Richmond. 

In his other design for the Cathedral the effect is entirely different. 
Latrobe himself commented on the fact that with the Roman inspiration 
he could make a satisfactory design considerably shorter than in the case 
of the Gothic. The fewer and more definite architectural details allowed 
a much truer sense of scale throughout. In the earliest classic sketches 
the aisles are narrow, and the dome over the crossing some forty feet 
in diameter occupies the total width of the nave and aisles. By using 
semicircular windows above as a sort of clerestory lighting, the side-aisle 
scale has been cut down; the exterior rusticated walls beneath are un- 
pierced. The highly developed transepts are fronted by six-column Corin- 
thian porticoes, and above them the treatment (recalling distantly some 
of Soane's eccentricities) is somewhat inept in tying the transept pedi- 
ments to the paneled octagonal dome base. 

The plan in essence is a Greek cross, with an added short bay in the 
nave to transform it into a Latin cross, the plan Latrobe was seeking. 
Noteworthy is the large choir with its square end, and some kind of 
screen is indicated to separate it from the crossing and the nave. Four 
low saucer domes on pendentives cover the bays of transept, nave, and 
choir and lead up to the larger and higher central dome. 

Thus the plan of this first classic scheme is logical and consistent, but 
the total design is still far from the simple grandeur eventually achieved. 
The scale is still in certain places too small, and particularly on the ex- 
terior the planes are too broken up; for instance, the use of horizontally 
rusticated stone up to the sills of the "clerestory" windows, though not 
without ample precedent, makes for confusion. From this project the 



THE BALTIMORE CATHEDRAL 249 

final design was arrived at, but only by means of drastic simplifications. 

The first major change the increase in aisle width to seventeen feet, 
made at the behest of the trustees was accompanied by another: the 
marked shortening of the choir and the substitution of an apse for the 
domed square. Both caused major changes in the interior. Once the aisles 
were widened, they became essential parts of the entire interior volume; 
to express this, large arched windows, one in each bay, were inserted to 
replace the earlier semicircles. Immediately the interior was clarified and 
the sense of openness increased. At the same time the nave saucer dome 
was replaced by a square cross vault, and sections of barrel vaults were 
used over the transepts and the choir. Only the central dome over the 
crossing remained. This was to have been vaulted in masonry, but its 
outer drum walls were placed, most unfortunately, over the middle of the 
side-aisle bays, and the section appears almost unbuildable. Yet this second 
version of the design is in general still a confused compromise. The sim- 
ple clarity of conception of the first four saucer domes surrounding a 
larger central one has been irrevocably lost, despite the gain in volume. 
And the central dome, now reduced to the nave width, has lost its com- 
manding scale. No wonder Latrobe was irked. 

But salvation of the scheme came with another suggestion from the 
client the omission of the four inner piers at the crossing. Latrobe again 
regarded the interference as a difficulty, but he made no serious attempt 
to change the client's mind; evidently he, too, felt the narrower dome 
a blemish and to the challenge of the new problem he rose magnificently 
in what was the final design. He approached the entire problem anew, 
bound only by the position of the exterior walls and the major pier posi- 
tions and sizes; the lower parts of these were already built. For the first 
time he realized what the changes already made had created the oppor- 
tunity of orchestrating the entire interior volume as a single, richly 
rhythmical whole. In line with this new thinking the upper clerestory 
windows disappear; the walls now count as single areas, with emphasis 
on their height from floor to vault. The earlier saucer dome over the 
nave goes back into the design again as a preparation for the central 
dome over the crossing, and this central dome now has its proper com- 
manding dignity and a diameter of more than sixty feet. All the diffi- 
culties of its structural relation to the rest of the building have vanished; 
again everything is integrated. It is unconventional a copy of no known 



250 LATftOBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

building but it is a whole in which use, construction, and effect have 
been united at last with true Vitruvian power. 

Structurally the Baltimore Cathedral is a masterpiece. When in the 
spring of 1808 Latrobe submitted his "seventh" design to Bishop Carroll, 
as we have seen, he had decided that the entire church was to be vaulted. 
This at the time was a daring decision; except for a few Spanish mission 
churches in Texas, no other American church of that day was completely 
vaulted in masonry. And here it was a question not of mere barrel or 
groined vaults but of coffered domes and pendentives and of a major 
crossing vault some 65 feet across (more than 20 feet wider than the archi- 
tect's earlier dome over the Bank of Pennsylvania). The nave dome is two 
feet thick to the bottom of the coffers; apparently these coffers were built 
in the solid vault brickwork. In the nave and transepts the width of the 
aisles and the weight of the exterior stone walls take care of the thrusts; 
longitudinally the extension of the nave and the belfries make spread im- 
probable if not impossible. The crypt is divided by cross walls, pierced 
with several low segmental arches; these in turn carry segmental trans- 
verse barrel vaults that support the nave floor. It was these barrel vaults, 
shown in section, that Hillen had read upside down and taken for re- 
versed arches in the foundations. No important thrust considerations 
occurred here. 

In the central dome the case is different. This is a double dome, the 
outer one of timber, metal covered, and the inner of brick, 2 r -8" thick 
to the bottom of the coffers and 3 / -6" thick over all. Built into its spring 
there is probably a continuous iron band similar to that used in the Bank 
of Pennsylvania, though Latrobe did not depend upon this alone to with- 
stand the thrusts. The dome is low, and the heavy barrel vaults over the 
transepts and the first bays of nave and choir would do much to prevent 
the dome drum from deforming; but in addition he weighted the 
haunches of the inner dome heavily with a mass of solid masonry (4 feet 
thick at the base and 2 feet thick at the upper rim) which forms the 
external visible drum and the lower steps of the visible outer dome. This 
masonry domes inward slightly and receives the ends of the radiating 
laminated timbers of the outer dome, thus carrying their weight down 
on the outer haunches of the inner dome and then to the cross arches 
and the piers. It is a brilliantly conceived scheme, and its success is proved 
by the stability that has held all without apparent cracking or movement 
for a century and a third. And it is something of this stability that seems 



THE BALTIMORE CATHEDRAL 251 

expressed, perhaps unconsciously, in the quiet directness of the archi- 
tecture, both inside and out. 

When it was first built, the shortness of the choir, which brought the 
apse so close to the crossing, must have made the climax seem unduly 
sudden; yet from the first the Cathedral of Baltimore won an almost 
universal admiration, alike from the untutored public and from the so- 
phisticated. Mrs. Trollope found it, like the Capitol, remarkable. She 
writes: 

... Its interior, however, has an air of neatness that amounts to elegance. 
The form is a Greek cross, and a dome in the center; but the proportions 
are ill-preserved; the dome is too low, and arches which support it are flat- 
tened and too wide for their height. 8 

Yet today, as one enters the great west door, the beautiful openness of 
the space envelops one, and the way in which part leads to part and the 
little to the big all so simply detailed, with just the right amount of 
ornament in the dome coffers and on the Greek Ionic capitals of the 
columns around the apse and under the galleries makes for one of 
America's truly distinguished interiors, which even the present inept 
"decorations" and boudoir colors cannot destroy. 

Mrs. Trollope notes one criticism the fact that the use of segmental 
arches throughout makes the interior too low. Two reasons evidently 
determined the architect's use of this form: the fear of exceeding a lim- 
ited appropriation by building to an undue height, and the fact that 
such segmental arches were a commonplace in the English architecture 
of the late eighteenth century. Latrobe liked and used them elsewhere. 
Perhaps here the arches are too segmental, with too little rise for their 
span, but somehow the relation of heights to widths seems fundamen- 
tally right. 

There is another peculiarity of the design less easy to justify the treat- 
ment of the central dome without pendentives, together with the odd 
soffits that result in the four chief arches at the crossing. Perhaps Latrobe 
was afraid that pendentives so large would be difficult if not impossible 
for the local masons to construct. Perhaps he felt that the necessary scaf- 



8. Mrs. [Frances Milton] Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (London: 
Whittaker, Trecher & Co., 1832; New York: reprinted "for the booksellers," 1832). 

9. As, for instance, in the Old Park Church of St. Mary, Paddington, London, built 
between 1788 and 1791, from the designs of J. Flaw. 



252 LATROBE BECOMES AN AMERICAN 

folding and centering would entail too great an expense. Or perhaps he 
remembered the design difficulties in which Wren had found himself 
through his desire to have eight equal pendentives at the crossing of 
St. Paul's in London and the awkward means he had been forced to 
adopt to produce them. Latrobe's taste was always for the straightforward, 
the untroubled, the continuous plane. And by the omission of penden- 
tives he certainly achieved at the crossing in Baltimore a simple and di- 
rect power of effect, for which he felt the unequal soffits of his arches 
curved in plan on the crossing side though straight on the other were 
but a small price to pay. To have added further segmental arches over the 
corner faces of the crossing, as the use of pendentives would require, 
would have destroyed this lucidity. 

On the exterior the design is equally compelling. Except for the onion 
tops of the belfries, the Cathedral stands much as Latrobe designed it. 
The simplicity of the masses is superb, the handling of the wall planes 
direct and unforced. The large arched recesses in which the windows are 
placed define on the exterior the scale of the interior and suggest the 
vaulting within, just as the cut-stone panels express the membering of 
the plan. The shortness of the nave allows the dome, low though it is, 
to dominate as it should, and the 1890 addition to the choir length en- 
hances the uniformity of the rhythms. It is an exterior worthy of the 
interior it surrounds, and that is high praise indeed. 



PART III: THE CLIMAX PERIOD 



CHAPTER 



Work for the United States Government: 
1798-1812 



WITHIN two years of Latrobe's arrival in the United States he found 
himself working for the Federal government, and from 1802 to the end 
of his life there were only four years (1813-15 and 1818-20) during which 
he had no Federal commission. Thus government work was a continu- 
ing thread running through his life; for long periods it was his chief 
interest. Personally, too, this connection was important to him. It brought 
him into close contact with the most influential men in the United States; 
it won him wide professional esteem as well as savage criticism; and for 
years the salary he received from it was, if not his chief, at least his 
most secure source of income. 

His first Federal employment arose out of the French war scare of 
1798. The fortifications at Norfolk, largely destroyed in the English 
bombardment during the Revolution, had never been rebuilt. Latrobe 
therefore was asked to survey the ruins of the old forts and make rec- 
ommendations about what should be done to make the city secure, and 
he spent weeks in the summer of 1798 on this work. His findings were 
embodied in two vividly graphic plans, still extant. 1 In addition he made 
two designs, one small and one large, for a powder magazine a circular, 
masonry-vaulted building with a conical roof. 2 

These plans contained the best that European practice had to offer, 
and Latrobe had even been informed that it was the intention of the 
military authorities to appoint him their architect. But the commission 



1. In Records of the United States Army, National Archives. 

2. A similar structure was built from his designs on Judiciary Square in Washington 
during the War of 1812. 

255 



256 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

never came he belonged to the wrong party. Since political passions 
were high in those frightened years, any governmental appointment at all 
seemed an impossibility for him; not only was his French name almost 
a sufficient barrier in itself, but he was also known to be in the closest 
sympathy with all the Virginia democrats. He had also hoped to become 
the designer of a new arsenal to be built at Harpers Ferry, but he soon 
learned how fantastic his expectation of either job had been. 3 

With the election of Jefferson in 1800 the pattern changed. Latrobe was 
now in Philadelphia and enjoyed an acknowledged position as architect 
and engineer. Was it with this political change in mind that in January 
of that year he made a design for a military academy ? 4 The drawings 
show a building on three sides of a deep court, with an entrance gate on 
the axis in front, connected to the ends of the wings by ditches. Opposite 
the gate the building is both heightened and widened to produce a strik- 
ing central motif. This is dome crowned and at the rear accented with a 
semicircular projection containing a large lecture room on each floor; in 
front of the lecture rooms are a dining hall (below) and a library (above), 
so that the whole forms the functional center of the structure. Dwelling 
rooms and minor rooms occupy the wings. It is not an entirely successful 
plan; the entrances are awkward, some connections are forced, and the 
whole seems to need more study as well as a more closely reasoned pro- 
gram. The simple exterior, like the Richmond penitentiary, owes its ef- 
fect to the rhythmical repetition of the arches. Yet it has coherence and 
is marked by an appropriately bleak military character. Latrobe felt 
acutely the need of some such academy and kept coming back to the 
idea again and again, but in vain. As late as 1808 construction of the 
military academy was still under discussion, and in a letter to Colonel 
Williams in New York (December 28, 1807) Latrobe remarks that a 
possible Washington site "Camp Hill" had been selected and that the 
plans were in the hands of General Dearborn. 

His next government venture was on a totally different plane. In 1802 
Jefferson, then President, found himself in a political dilemma between 
his pacific ideals and a desire for government economy on the one hand 
and the preservation of national security on the other. The order for the 



3. As disclosed in his letter of November 29, 1798, to Joseph Perkins in Philadelphia. 

4. The drawings are in the Library o Congress. The United States Military Academy 
at West Point was not established until 1802. 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT! 1798-1812 257 

74'$ the great frigateswhich had been issued by the Adams adminis- 
tration had since been canceled. Jefferson wished to keep the navy small, 
yet he realized that under such a policy the preservation of existing ships be- 
came all the more important. Ships when afloat require maintenance crews; 
could they not be more economically stored and better preserved in dry- 
dock and under cover? The President decided to find out whether such 
covered drydocks could be built and if so what their cost would be. 
There was but one person in America, he felt, who was fitted to handle 
so large a project, and this was B. H. Latrobe. On November 2, 1802, 
therefore, he wrote the architect proposing his scheme for a covered dry- 
dock 175 feet wide and 200 feet long, with a roof u like that of the Halle 
aux Bles in Paris." He asked Latrobe's help and told him that the job 
would require a visit to Washington and that only four weeks remained 
till the opening of Congress. 

Latrobe accepted the assignment on November 8, on condition that 
satisfactory arrangements for payment could be made. On November 12 
the Secretary of the Navy, Robert Smith, set the architect's mind at rest 
on that score, and Jefferson confirmed this a day later, suggesting that 
the first payment be an advance of $100. Latrobe then hastened to Wash- 
ington, examined the conditions, and in the short time available pro- 
duced an extraordinary design. The roof, as in the Halle aux Bles, is 
supported on tremendous laminated-wood arched girders, built up of 
planks in a manner first suggested by the French Renaissance architect 
Philibert de POrme; 5 these are received on and against heavy masonry 
buttress-like piers which, with the arches between them, establish a pow- 
erful and expressive rhythm. On the center of each side a monumental 
Greek Doric portico forms an imposing entrance; at the landward end a 
low pediment hides the curved roof, and three great arches provide light 
and ventilation. This covered dry dock, 165 feet wide and 800 feet long. 



5. This roofing system is based on the use of curved girders made of two layers of 
timber bolted together in relatively short pieces and given strength by horizontal purlins 
that are keyed through the joints. Latrobe knew this system best through the publications 
of the Prussian architect David Gilly (1748-1808), father of the brilliant architect Friedrich 
Gilly. David Gilly, a man of wide curiosities, was the editor of Prussia's first architectural 
magazine, Sammlung niitzHcher Aujsatze ttnd Nachrichtcn, die Baufytnst betreffend, in 
1799-1800. He was the author of Ueber Einfindung, Construction und Vortheile der 
Bohlen-Ddchcr (Berlin: Vieveg der Aelter, 1797), which is entirely devoted to the de 
TOrme roof and its possible modern uses. It was probably through this book, which Latrobe 
knew well, that he was introduced to this type of roof. 



258 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

was to be approached through two large masonry locks, designed with 
equal care, and the whole vast scheme proved to Jefferson at once La- 
trobe's ability not only to handle a project of large scale but also to inte- 
grate its demands and its construction into a building of power and 
beauty. Jefferson had an extensive correspondence with Secretary Robert 
Smith about this covered drydock and was deeply disappointed when 
Congress refused to appropriate the large sum of money $417,276 it 
would cost. 

While Latrobe was in Washington, Jefferson invited him to dinner. 
The party, a small and intimate one, has already been referred to (pages 
230-31); but its real purpose, besides the pleasure Jefferson always found 
in stimulating company, was probably to give the President an oppor- 
tunity of observing the architect more closely and of finding out if 
he could become a congenial collaborator. For Jefferson had another 
pressing architectural problem on his hands the completion of the 
United States Capitol. 

Work on the Capitol had reached a virtual impasse; the realization of 
Thornton's great plan was becoming more and more difficult. 6 The north 
wing had been in use since 1800, but already the roof leaked, the plaster 
was cracking, and fundamental repairs were necessary. Since only the 
south-wing foundations were in, the House of Representatives was using 
a temporary building (known in local slang as the "Bake-oven" because 
of its shape and its lack of ventilation) which Hoban had built on the 
foundations of Thornton's oval House chamber. The central portion was 
a maze of foundations that were based on at least two entirely different 
plans. 

Three superintendents or assistants had worked on the Capitol, trying 
to overcome Thornton's technical ignorance: foienne Hallet, who had 
been awarded second prize in the original competition; George Hadfield 
(the brother of Jefferson's friend and correspondent Maria Cosway), who 
had been brought over specifically for the job at the suggestion of Colonel 
Trumbull; and James Hoban, the Irish-born architect who had designed 



6. As early as March 26, 1793, Jefferson had sent Washington a new plan of the 
Capitol made by Hallet, with a description in which fundamental faults of the Thornton 
plan were noted especially poor lighting and bad circulation, Washington had answered 
from Mount Vernon (June 30, 1793), somewhat testily, "It is unlucky this investigation 
of Dr. Thornton's plan . . . had not preceded the adoption of it," and suggested a meet- 
ing between Thornton, Hallet, and Hoban to straighten out the confusion* 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 259 

the President's House. Thornton had rendered the position of each of 
them unbearable, and one by one they had resigned. Hoban, the last, 
had been given a special title, Surveyor of Public Buildings, but even 
this move had been unavailing. All of the work had been carried out 
under the direct financial direction of the three commissioners of the 
capital, who were responsible for street layout and construction as well 
as land sales. This board (of which Dr. Thornton was a member) had 
also proved ineffectual. As a result, responsibility for the financial ad- 
ministration of the development of Washington and for the construction 
of the government buildings had been centralized in one commissioner, 
Thomas Munroe, who proved a faithful and efficient public servant. But 
the vacuum in the architectural administration of the construction of the 
Capitol and the President's House still remained. 7 

On March 3, 1803, Congress appropriated $50,000 to start the south 
wing of the Capitol, and the President had to choose a new surveyor 
preferably a man with the necessary artistic and technical skills and one 
who had not been embroiled in the former controversies. From every 
point of view Latrobe seemed an ideal choice; accordingly Jefferson in a 
letter on March 6 offered him the position of Surveyor of the Public 
Buildings of the United States, and the architect accepted. Thus only five 
years after his arrival from England Latrobe found himself in the most 



7. There is an extensive literature that deals with the building of the United States 
Capitol. Glenn Brown's History of the United States Capitol, 2 vols. (Washington: Govern- 
ment Printing Office, 1900, 1903) is a terse narrative valuable for its excellent illustrations, 
including many reproductions of existing drawings; but its handling of Latrobe's work is 
marred by an unjustified pro-Thornton bias. The Documentary History of the Construction 
and Development of the United States Capitol Building and Grounds f Report 646 of the 
2nd Session of the 58th Congress (Washington: Government Printing Oflice, 1904), prints 
many (but not all) of the pertinent documents in extenso. Charles E. Fairman's Art and 
Artists of the "United States Capital ', Senate Document 95 (Washington: Government Print- 
ing Office, 1927), contains many interesting details. Thomas Jefferson and the National 
Capital, 1783-1818, edited by Saul K. Padover, with a preface by Harold L. Ickes, U.S. 
Department of the Interior, Source Book Series no. 4 (Washington; Government Printing 
Office, 1946), makes available in convenient form an enormous amount of valuable corre- 
spondence- Elinor Davidson Berman's Thomas Jefferson Among the Arts, an Essay in 
Early American Esthetics (New York: Philosophical Library [01947]) also contains much 
valuable material. Paul Norton's Latrobe and the United States Capitol, a dissertation for 
Princeton University, 1950 (available at the Princeton University Library), is an almost 
day-by-day account of the construction of the Capitol and contains reproductions of a 
large number of previously unpublished drawings; the same author has in preparation a 
revised and more complete account of all Latrobe's governmental architecture. I have used 
all these sources in this chapter. 



260 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

important architectural position in the country. It was a great triumph, 
but it was an even greater challenge. 

After a visit to the capital city in March and April, 1803, Latrobe set 
seriously to work. Since at that time he did not contemplate moving to 
Washington for in the letter of appointment Jefferson had expressed 
some uncertainty about the permanence of the job the first requisite 
was the selection of a clerk of the works in whom he could put absolute 
trust. John Lenthall was his choice, and in many ways a perfect one; 
Latrobe appointed him on April 7. Lenthall was English born, two 
years older than the architect, with wide experience in building and in 
architecture both in England and in Washington. Furthermore, his wife 
was the daughter of Robert King, the city surveyor, and a sister of Nich- 
olas King, who followed his father in that job. Lenthall therefore had an 
intimate knowledge of Washington conditions and personalities. The 
earliest letter we have from Latrobe to Lenthall in which he requests 
him to ride over to the Capitol and informs him that he is being given a 
house near the Capitol to live in is written with a kind of playful inti- 
macy that suggests a previous acquaintance and sets the personal tone 
that was to distinguish all their future relationship. 

This fundamental sympathy was of great importance. Lenthall was 
highly emotional and tender-skinned almost to the point of abnormality. 
He was easily offended, could at times be rude, and was often silent 
when speech was called for. Occasionally he was at odds with Munroe 
and sometimes with Jefferson; for a period in 1807, thinking himself 
slighted by Latrobe, he sulked like Achilles in his tent for several weeks. 
Yet basically he worshiped his employer and was absolutely devoted to the 
great work the completion of the Capitol. Latrobe on his side was fond 
of Lenthall, finding him so congenial that again and again in letters to 
him he unburdened his mind as he did to no one else. He encouraged, 
he twitted, by turns he was playful and somber; but always the letters 
were affectionate, always written as if the two of them alone knew the 
magnificence of their common opportunity. Continually Latrobe urged 
on Jefferson the justice of LenthalPs demands for more salary; he ex- 
plained away Lenthall's testiness and lack of tact. Each was a true friend, 
a loyal supporter, of the other. Yet invariably Latrobe remained the de- 
signer and decider of questions, welcoming Lenthall's suggestions but 
accepting or rejecting them impersonally, and ever ready, as we shall see, 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.' 1798-1812 




From Brown, A History of the United States Capitol 

FIGURE 17. The Capitol, Washington. Ground-floor Plan as proposed by 
Thornton. 

to acknowledge responsibility for his own decisions in the most whole- 
hearted manner. 

Obviously Latrobe had to begin by examining Thornton's plan for the 
south wing; and here the troubles began. Latrobe had received five dif- 
ferent plans of the Capitol, and they were not in agreement. 5 The com- 
pleted north-wing walls indicated the lines the exterior of the new wing 
must follow, but as for what was intended inside beyond the mere room 
shapes there was no evidence. The commissioners had complained 
earlier that they could get no sections from Thornton, and still none 
were forthcoming. The entire interior design would have to be created 
anew. 

After his first month of work Latrobe wrote a long report (April 4, 
1803) to Jefferson; in it he described the conditions as he had found them 
and set forth the futility of a visit he had made to Thornton at Jeffer- 
son's suggestion. The construction that had been completed was of what 
seemed to him a shockingly low standard and would require extensive 
demolition in the interests of safety; and the more he studied the plans 
he had received (none of which were in exact accordance with the exe- 
cuted foundations), the more practical difficulties he found in them. 
There were large areas of waste space and equally large areas that could 
not be well lighted; there were almost no committee rooms and simi- 
lar auxiliary spaces. Latrobe's mandate had been to construct the building 



8. One plan was given to him by Vblney, one he received in 1801 from James Greenleaf 
(Robert Morris's partner in early Washington land speculation), one from George Blagden 
(the stone contractor), one from Thornton, and one from Jefferson. All were small-scale 
plans of the main floor. 



262 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

in accordance with the competition plan that Washington had approved. 
But could he justifiably go ahead and build an expensive structure when 
he knew it would lack essential usefulness? To Latrobe as an architect 
there could be but one possible answer it was his professional duty to 
call the attention of the President to these inadequacies before he pro- 
ceeded. 

Hope of any co-operation from Thornton was fruitless. He had already 
taken his stand that Latrobe was an intruder and that any changes 
Latrobe might suggest would constitute not only affronts to himself but 
also direct violations of Latrobe's orders, which were to build according 
to the plan approved by Washington. Latrobe requested drawings; Thorn- 
ton either had made none or they had been lost he stated that they were 
no longer in his hands. Thornton did, however, describe the colonnade 
that would surround the oval House of Representatives, but he brusquely 
declined any further responsibility. 

In this first report Latrobe also found fault with the Thornton layout 
for aesthetic as well as economic reasons. The oval shape, he felt, was 
bad acoustically; there was no relation between the exterior and the in- 
terior, and the plan would produce a badly lighted room. Moreover, the 
construction would be extremely expensive, for each stone of the pedestal 
wall would have to be cut to a special pattern and not to a single radius; 
he suggested that the oval be replaced by a semicircle or by two semi- 
circles connected by a rectangle. Then he stated his impressions of the 
completed north wing: everywhere he found evidence of badly designed 
construction; rot was already appearing in many of the wood beams; a 
new roof that did not leak was imperative; and some way of heating the 
Senate chamber had to be found Latrobe suggested steam. 

Latrobe's immediate tasks were to get as much stone cut as possible, 
to strengthen and complete the foundation walls, and to carry up the ex- 
terior (in which there could be no changes) as high as possible. Jeffer- 
son was especially anxious to get this exterior up; he was politician 
enough to realize the excellent effect on Congress of such a showy evi- 
dence of progress. Quarries had to be examined, especially the one the 
government owned at Acquia, in Virginia. Additional sources for stone 
had to be found, for unless a sufficient quantity was delivered to the job 
at once the masons could not be used to their full efficiency during the 
coining months. Thus the summer of 1803 was devoted to preparing the 
necessary foundation drawings, taking down and replacing that part of 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT! 1798-1812 263 

the existing work which was so badly constructed as to be unsafe, and 
letting contracts for stone. 

During Latrobe's absence on Chesapeake and Delaware Canal work 
after the middle of April, the Capitol building continued under LenthalTs 
efficient direction. Letter after letter passed between the architect and 
his clerk of the works, and Latrobe was able to settle many questions 
by means of careful drawings or little sketches in the letters. In the middle 
of June, after one of his many bouts with sickness, caused in this case 
perhaps by the conflict of interest between his two chief jobs, he was back 
in Washington for a short time to see that everything was going well. 
By the end of the building season the cellar vaults of the south wing had 
been completed and the cellars under the north wing cleaned out and 
ventilated to prevent further rotting of the wood floor beams. Yet diffi- 
culties in this method of handling the work were arising. Between July 
and September there was not a letter to Lenthall, and Thomas Munroe, 
the commissioner, was forced to write Jefferson of Lenthall's consequent 
embarrassment. Latrobe himself, however, returned at last for a week 
in mid-September. 

Criticism in Washington had already become vocal on the slow prog- 
ress being made, and Mrs. Latrobe records in her memoir that she felt her 
husband's absence from Washington was the basis for it. The President, 
in his eagerness to speed up the construction, even suggested the use of 
wooden columns for the House of Representatives; but Latrobe, writing 
to Lenthall (November 27, 1803), stated firmly: "The wooden column 
idea is one with which I never will have anything to do. On that you 
may rely. I will give up my office sooner than build a temple of disgrace 
to myself and Mr. Jefferson." Later, when Jefferson suggested brick 
columns stuccoed, the architect had to convince him that these, too, would 
be unworthy of the capitol of a nation; for Latrobe from the beginning 
had the concept that the United States Capitol, as far as he could make 
it, should be a solid structure, masonry built and of only the finest 
materials. 

As 1803 wore on, another problem which was to dog the architect 
throughout his service in Washington raised its head. This was the dif- 
ficulty of obtaining labor and materials. Washington itself was still but a 
village; skilled labor had to be brought in from outside and, since the 
work was seasonal only, labor recruitment was annually a bothersome and 



264 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

discouraging task. 8 Stone was a problem, too. Daniel Brent had a near 
monopoly on good freestone in Washington, and he forced up the prices 
unmercifully. The government quarry had proved expensive to operate; 
it was closed, then reopened, then closed again. Finally Latrobe found a 
quarrier in Baltimore, William Steuart, to whom he let a large contract. 
Brent then saw the light and reduced his exorbitant demands, and from 
that time on the cut stone was purchased from both sources. The archi- 
tect's task was proving much more than one of designing, detailing, and, 
through Lenthall, superintending the work; it was one that required a 
broad knowledge of the sources of supply and much business negotiation, 
as well as all the tact Latrobe could command. How could an impatient 
Congress be aware of these endless but inevitable troubles? 

When Latrobe visited Washington again at the beginning of 1804, re- 
maining from January to March, the final plan of the House of Repre- 
sentatives was still undecided except that it should be raised one floor 
from the ground level, leaving the space beneath for required service 
and committee rooms. 10 Thornton was asked to supply a plan showing 
how he had contemplated providing committee rooms, and he complied 
with a plan showing a ring of them around the outside of the oval foun- 
dation wall of the House. Latrobe at once countered with the observa- 
tion that this still left the entire central area an unusable dark hole. Some 
other solution had to be found. At Jefferson's suggestion, the architect 
went to call on Thornton again in late February to attempt to get his 
consent to the changes Latrobe felt necessary, and again the call was un- 
availing. Meanwhile he had several talks with Blagden and Hadfield in 
order to assemble the actual facts of their respective connections with 
the Capitol earlier; armed with this information, he made a report 
(February 22, 1804) to the Congressional committee in charge of the 
public buildings explaining to them the "absurdities" he found in the 
Thornton designs and the absolute necessity of changes. Then, that same 
evening, he went to Jefferson and carefully described to him all that he 



9. In 1806, for instance, when skilled stonecutters were urgently needed, the New York 
City Hall and the State Capitol at Albany were both attracting so many that Latrobe was 
forced to send Mills to Albany to recruit possible employees there. 

10. Thornton claimed that he had originally wanted the House and the Senate to be 
placed on the upper floor but that Jefferson himself had been responsible for moving 
them to the ground floor, and the north wing had been planned and built according to 
this decision. 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 265 

felt was wrong and what he proposed. The President appeared convinced 
and asked him "to transmit to him drawings of a practical and eligible 
design retaining as much as possible the features of that adopted by 
General Washington." I:i 

Under this Presidential command, therefore, during the first days of 
March (immediately after his return to Newcastle from Washington) 
he labored at the plan, embodying the necessary changes, and eventually 
found his answer. He wrote Lenthall of it at once (March 10, 1804) : 

Instead of the ellipsis I am going to propose two semi-circles abutting against 
a parallelogram in the center. Of this I can make a very good thing of the sort. 
As old Mr. Izzard, who hates the New Englanders, said of Mr. Coit from 
Connecticut . . . [when asked if he were not a good sort of man] . . . "N, N, 
Neneno!" said Mr. Izzard, who stuttered violently, "He, he, he's a googood 
man of a G, G, God damn'd bad sort." This I say of my plan and no more. 

The plans were all in Jefferson's hands by the first of May, the President 
approved, and the work went ahead; but Thornton was by now the 
architect's implacable enemy, and in October the Washington Federalist 
published the first of its many attacks on Latrobe. 

Congress meanwhile, becoming restive over what it considered the 
slowness of the work and its cost, threatened to stop further appropria- 
tions. Latrobe wrote Lenthall of his discouragement at the delay: "As 
for our business, I give it up for lost at once. We must now continue to 
make what money remains cover the President's house, and when that 
is finished, knock off altogether . . ." But only the day before, March 27, 
Congress at last, despite hot and acrimonious debate, had actually made 
the appropriation for another year again $50,000 and now the work 
could go on. In his report to Jefferson at the end of the year (December 6, 
1804) Latrobe recounted the year's accomplishments and a little later 
(December 30) estimated that it would require $134,300 to complete the 
south wing. 



ii. From a memorandum dated February 27, 1804, in the Latrobe papers in the pos- 
session of the family. Two months later (April 28) he wrote Hadficld: "... I am now at 
open war with Dr. Thornton. He has written me a letter in which he asserts that my 
report to the Commissioners on the Public Buildings to be false, in terms which according 
to fashion ought to produce a rencontre with a brace of pistols ... In the meantime, if 
you could go over your drawing, and as nearly as possible ascertain what is his, and what 
stolen property in the plan now said to be the original plan I should be infinitely obliged 
to you. 1 * 



266 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

On January 25, 1805, Congress appropriated $110,000 a special victory 
for the architect, for Thornton on New Year's Day had had a printed 
letter issued to all the members of Congress virulently attacking Latrobe, 
refuting in a somewhat casuistic way Latrobe's statement to the com- 
mittee that none of Thornton's drawings could be found, and violently 
supporting his own plan for the south wing. This had all been fodder 
for Federalist criticism in general, but it had failed to affect the action 
of Congress. 

The same winter, however, brought Latrobe a disappointment. Justice 
Chase of the Supreme Court was to be impeached, and because of the 
importance of the case the first impeachment of a high-placed govern- 
ment official Vice-President Burr wished the surroundings of the trial 
to be as dignified as possible and asked Latrobe for a plan. Having left 
Washington on December 13 after a short stay, the architect immediately 
set to work to design the fitments and rearrangements of the Senate 
chamber the trial would require. He sent off his drawings to Burr on 
the seventeenth surely not an excessive time for the job. But mail was 
slow and Burr impatient; before receiving the Latrobe drawings he 
awarded the commission to Samuel Blodgett (the Massachusetts archi- 
tect of the First Bank of the United States in Philadelphia), and all La- 
trobe's work went for nothing. Blodgett's design, Latrobe felt, was both 
more expensive and less convenient than his own. 12 

Meanwhile he had taken time to search for proper stoves for the Capi- 
tol and for Monticello, to look for possible American sources for win- 
dow glass, and to study new ways of making the roof of the President's 
House tight since it, like the roof of the north wing of the Capitol, had 
become a veritable sieve. Latrobe wrote the President (January 26, 1805) : 
"I am almost in despair about parapet roofs in this country . . ." And on 
the same day he wrote Lenthall that one of the difficulties was the fact 
that the roof drained directly into the water-closet cistern in the attic: 
"Those who can afford to perform the stircatory functions by machin- 
ery, can always afford a forcing pump & the labor of a man to work it. 
I mean to propose to the President once more the drainage of the roof 
by external pipes, & the filling of the ... cistern by a forcing pump." ls 

Again in Washington during the first week of March, 1805, the archi- 

12. See the letter to Lenthall on page 275. 

13. This is interesting evidence that a water closet existed in the White House appar- 
ently from the beginning. Two years later the installation was still giving trouble, as we 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 267 

tect found a much more congenial task confronting him. The south 
wing had now progressed to the point where it was time to plan for the 
decorative carving. Still more important, Latrobe with Jefferson's backing 
had proposed for the House of Representatives the decorative sculpture 
that he deemed essential, and where could good sculptors be found in 
America? Rush, the country's best sculptor, was a woodcarver only. Who 
in the United States could be trusted to carve even the rich Corinthian 
capitals based on those of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in 
Athens which Jefferson was insisting on? Latrobe had already written 
the President (November 17, 1804) that he could not understand "how 
economy and anything like an exact imitation can be united for it's a 
most complicated piece of sculpture." But Jefferson had been stubborn; 
he felt that only the richest effect would do. The sculptors, then, must be 
imported naturally, from Italy. The architect therefore wrote (March 6, 

1805) to his acquaintance (and Jefferson's) Philip Mazzei 14 in Italy, 
asking him to find and send over two sculptors as well as to inquire 
what Canova would charge for a large figure of Liberty. Mazzefs answer, 
long delayed, brought such a fantastic estimate for the proposed Canova 
statue that the idea of employing this famous artist was abandoned; but 
the following year Mazzei did find and send over two young sculptors, 
Giuseppe Franzoni (1786-1816) and Giovanni Andrei (1770-1824), who 
brought a new standard of skill and taste to America. 

The two Italians arrived in the United States toward the end of Feb- 
ruary, i8o6. 15 One wishes that they had left us some account of their ad- 
ventures. What could they, fresh from Leghorn and Carrara, make of 
the young country? In a letter to Lenthall from Philadelphia (March 3, 

1806) Latrobe mentions that he is going to write them in Italian to 
cheer them up; perhaps they had been appalled at the raw newness of 
Washington, the swamps, the muddy roads. He also informs his clerk 
of the works that Franzoni (according to Mazzei) "is a most excellent 
sculptor, & capable of cutting our figure of Liberty, & that Andrei excells 
more in decoration." 16 



know from a letter to the President on August 7, 1807, in which Latrobe suggested a 
revision of the cistern arrangement. 

14. Philip Mazzei was an Italian scientist and scientific farmer who at one time had 
visited Jefferson in Monticello and become a close friend and frequent correspondent. 

15. See Charles E. Fairman, op. dt* 

1 6. The two sculptors were paid $85 a month each and were furnished with living 
quarters for themselves and their families, as well as their traveling expenses to Washing- 



2 fi8 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

Franzoni came of an excellent family -an uncle of his was a Cardinal 
and he proved to be a sculptor of more than ordinary ability and a 
swift and enthusiastic workman. He was acutely aware of his professional 
standing and took an early opportunity of calling on President Jefferson 
and leaving at the door, when he found the President out, a group of 
little marbles he had carved, intending them as presents. What must 
have been his astonishment at their strange American reception when 
they were returned with a gracious note from Jefferson explaining that 
it was his irrevocable policy never to receive gifts of this kind while he 
held an official government office. But a friendship sprang up between 
them, and Jefferson later gave the Franzoni family a silver sugar bowl. 
Latrobe soon realized the sculptor's skill and the dignity of his charac- 
ter; it may even have been Franzoni's own presence in Washington that 
suggested a richer sculptural decoration of the House of Representatives 
than had been contemplated. There was to be a great eagle, fourteen 
feet from wing tip to wing tip, in the frieze over the Speaker's desk; near 
the entrance there were to be four over-life-size relief figures representing 
Agriculture, Art, Science, and Commerce; and behind the Speaker's chair 
was to rise a colossal figure of Liberty nine feet high plenty of work 
to keep a sculptor busy for two years and more. 

Andrei, on the other hand, was chiefly a modeler and carver of archi- 
tectural decorations. He was "not only a good sculptor, but a man of 
rare personal virtue, united to first-rate talents, and firmness of charac- 
ter," as Latrobe wrote to Senator Nathaniel Macon later (January 9, 
1816); he was observant and adaptable too, for in the same letter the 
architect added, "He has also a perfect knowledge of the temper of 
our country." But Andrei was slow a careful, plodding workman who 
refused to be hurried. Three years after he arrived on the job Latrobe 
wrote to Thomas Munroe, the commissioner (September 14, 1809): 
"[Andrei] is the slowest hand ever I saw, especially in modelling, and in 
fact our clay models of his work have cost more than the same thing 
in marble . . ." 

The architect kept a sympathetic but critical eye on all this decorative 
work. Franzoni's first task was the great eagle, and as the model pro- 



ton; in addition the government contracted to pay for their return to Italy when their 
work was completed. The house taken for them was near the Capitol; it provided each 
family with two rooms, besides a common kitchen and a servant's room. Franzoni ob- 
jected to the crowding and later bought a house for himself at 121 Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E. 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 269 

gressed Latrobe found the result too conventional, too Roman; he wanted 
an eagle that would be definitely American. Latrobe accordingly called 
on Charles Willson Peale for aid, writing him (April 18, 1806) : "May I 
therefore beg the favor of you, to request one of your very obliging and 
skilful sons to send me a drawing of the head and claws of the bald 
eagle, of his general proportions . . ." Peale at once sent on not only 
the drawing but also an actual head and claw from the stores of his 
museum, and the eagle when completed won universal acclaim. About 
the Liberty Latrobe also had his reservations and when he received 
Franzoni's sketch 17 wrote, somewhat facetiously, to Lenthall (December 
31, 1806) : "It may be correct symbology or emblematology to give Dame 
Liberty a club or shelelah, but we have no business to exhibit it so very 
publicly ... I must have one arm close to her side, resting on her lap. 
The other may be raised, & rest on a wig block, or capped stick . . ." 
He also reduced the height from nine to seven feet. This figure was never 
carved in marble, but a finished plaster cast was erected in place of it in 
the completed room. The architect was delighted with the four alle- 
gorical figures near the entrance. Plaster casts of them all were sent to 
C. W. Peale in Philadelphia for exhibition at the Academy of Arts, for 
Latrobe wished Franzoni's talent to be widely known and appreciated. 18 
Thus the completed House of Representatives had a rich panoply of 
expressive sculpture: Liberty, above and behind the Speaker, a constant 
reminder presiding over the meetings of the House; crowning all, the 
daringly colossal eagle, the incarnation of the country; and at the en- 
trance, as though handmaidens to Liberty and to the nation, Art, Sci- 
ence, Agriculture, and Commerce. It was a noble iconography which the 
architect had conceived and with the President's support had so boldly 
carried out. Any such use of sculpture was undreamed of before in the 
country, and it is a tragedy that we know it only from descriptions and 
from Latrobe's few indications on his drawings, for all of it was de- 
stroyed when the British burned the Capitol in 1814. And, as if to under- 



17. The carefully rendered pencil sketch preserved among the Capitol drawings in the 
Library of Congress probably represents the Athena designed for the Supreme Court. Con- 
trary to the common attribution, this drawing does not seem to be in Latrobe's manner 
and is more probably by Franzoni. 

1 8. When work on the Capitol slowed up in 1808, the two sculptors were "loaned** to 
Godefroy, in Baltimore, to help him with the statues and decorative detail required for St. 
Mary's Chapel. 



2TO THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

line its loss, Giuseppe Franzoni died two years later in Washington, 
when the rebuilding of the Capitol had scarcely begun. 

The work of the plodding Andrei was more fortunate. Probably from 
his models and his chisel came not only many of the decorative details 
of the Capitol as rebuilt after the fire but also the beautiful corn capitals 
(in the Senate stair vestibule) which he modeled and carved from La- 
trobe's detail. 19 The architect was immensely proud of these and on 
August 28, 1809, had a model shipped to Monticello as a gift; Jefferson, 
equally pleased, used it to support a sundial in his garden. With pardon- 
able pride Latrobe says in his letter to Jefferson: "This capital, during 
the summer session obtained me more applause from the members of 
Congress than all the works of magnitude . . . They called it the Corn 
Cob Capital, whether for the sake of the alliteration I cannot tell, but 
certainly not very appropriately" (for the capital uses the full ears, not 
the cob). 20 

Other newly originated capitals, based on the tobacco plant, crown the 
columns of the oval lobby on the upper floor; these date from the re- 
building after the fire and were modeled and carved by another Italian, 
Francisco lardella. One of these also was sent to Jefferson (October 28, 
1817); the architect in his letter at the time admitted that it was not so 
effective as the corn capital had been and suggested that the leaves be 
stained pale umber to bring out the flowers just as was to be done in the 
lobby. 

Latrobe designed (1809) one more capital based on the country's na- 
tive flora a cotton capital. It was intended for an upper range o mini- 
ature columns forming a sort of cupola over the Senate lobby. These 
columns were cylindrical and without entasis; with their broadly spread- 
ing naturalistic capitals they had an effect almost Romanesque. From the 
existing evidence it is impossible to say whether or not they were actually 
used, for all that part of the north wing was rebuilt after the fire. What 



19. Mrs. Trollope was much impressed by the novelty of the corn capitals. In Domestic 
Manners of the Americans, describing her visit to the recently completed Capitol, for which 
she expressed an astonished and enthusiastic admiration, she writes: "In a hall leading to 
some of these rooms the ceiling is supported by pillars, the capitals of which struck me as 
peculiarly beautiful. They are composed of the ears and leaves of Indian corn, beautifully 
arranged and forming as graceful an outline as the acanthus itself. ... A sense of fitness 
always enhances the effect of beauty . , ." 

20. The Senate stair vestibule was completed in the spring of 1809 and was so little dam- 
aged by the fire of 1814 that much of its present detail goes back to that early period. 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 27! 

is significant is the fact that in the Capitol the architect sought for novel 
decorative forms expressive of the country itself. 

Still another artist participated in the Capitol decoration George Brid- 
port, the decorative painter. We have already come across his work in 
connection with Latrobe's Philadelphia houses; he was evidently a thor- 
oughly competent craftsman, with imagination and an excellent decora- 
tive sense. Obviously in the House of Representatives the wide, curved 
ceiling could not be left in naked plaster, and, pierced as it was with 
wedge-shaped rows of dazzling skylights (considered in greater detail 
below), it required more than a mere protective coating to give it co- 
herence and scale. At first Latrobe thought of employing for the work 
the Philadelphia scene painter Holland, for whom he had a great ad- 
miration, but Holland's price was exorbitant. The architect's next choice 
and probably, as things turned out, the best he could have made was 
Bridport, who accepted the contract for $3,500. One can surmize from 
various indications that the scheme was probably a matter of simple lines 
and panels of color with discreet classical ornaments. As to its final ef- 
fect, however, there is no question. To those who saw the work it seemed 
a perfect treatment, completely in harmony with the architecture and with 
the sculpture beneath it. It was the final touch which, together with 
the handsome hangings at the windows and around the Speaker's chair 
and the red curtains between the columns, made the whole room as dis- 
tinguished in hue as it was in form. 

This rich panoply of color and of sculptured decoration, carried out in 
a city that was still a raw village, and in a country where any such con- 
ception had previously been unknown, would have been impossible with- 
out the hearty support of the President. Rightly Latrobe wrote him 
(August 13, 1807) : "It is not flattering to say that you have planted the 
arts in your country. The works already created are the monuments of 
your judgment and your zeal and of your taste. The first sculpture that 
adorns an American public building perpetuates your love and your pro- 
tection of the fine arts." Latrobe and Jefferson were both familiar with 
many of the greatest buildings in Europe, and for both of them the ideal 
of what the United States Capitol should be was far higher than any 
that could readily be accepted by the majority of Congressmen; this 
was one of the difficulties under which they labored. To men like the 
peppery John Randolph of Roanoke the Capitol was merely a matter of 
shelter and of dollars; to the architect and the President, on the other 



2^2 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

hand, it was an opportunity for achieving a building that should not 
merely equal but even surpass the great government buildings of Europe, 
one that should stand out as a superb visible expression of the ideals of 
a country dedicated to liberty. It is a mark of their greatness that they 
succeeded, for the House of Representatives when it was completed in 
1811 was undoubtedly the most beautiful legislative chamber in the 
Western world. 

In a work of this magnitude it is not strange that labor troubles should 
have arisen. During the summer of 1805 the masons and the bricklayers 
presented a petition requesting "that the hours of work may begin only 
at six o'clock in the morning and end at six in the evening" a system 
that had been in use earlier in the building of the north wing. Latrobe 
instead had followed the usage current elsewhere of working the masons 
till dark; they had an hour and a half off for dinner in the middle of 
the day. u At the Navy Yard," the architect wrote in his answer to the 
petition, "the same hours are observed which are kept at the Capitol, & 
though two hours are allowed at dinner time, no rest is permitted in the 
course of the morning or afternoon as with us ... Allowing, however, 
the justice of your statement as to the inconvenience & heat of the place 
. . . two hours will be granted at dinner time, from this day (June 18) 
to Sept. i next, and one hour and a half from the ist of Sept. to the 2ist, 
after which the old regulation will again prevail. The usual times of 
refreshment in the morning & afternoon will also be continued." Ap- 
parently this compromise satisfied them and there was no more trouble 
then. 

By the fall of 1805 the details of the great domed roof were being 
considered, and now the most serious of all Latrobe's controversies with 
Jefferson began. 21 The President, having been overwhelmed in Paris by 
the effect of the Halle aux Bles, wanted the new House of Representa- 
tives lighted in the same way by wedge-shaped skylights radiating out 
and down from the center. The architect saw endless objections to this 
scheme. The light from such skylights would be dazzling in Washing- 
ton summers, condensation impossible to avoid, and waterproofing diffi- 
cult He made a graphic sketch to show how the light would fall; Jeffer- 
son answered that Venetian blinds could be used to control the light. 



21. See Paul Norton, "Latrobe's Ceiling for the Hall of Representatives," in Journal of 
the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. x, no. 2, pp. 5-10. 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 273 

and Latrobe obediently worked out a mechanism for operating them. 
The President minimized the practical difficulties and implied that to 
solve them was part o the architect's task. Latrobe stubbornly continued 
objecting to the scheme; he wanted to use a lantern with vertical glass 
that would diffuse the light and would be easy to make waterproof. In 
London he had known at least one of Soane's great halls in the Bank 
of England and been delighted with the dramatic effect of light pouring 
in from sources almost concealed; and he himself had used such a scheme 
in the Bank of Pennsylvania. 

All during the summer letters on the subject went back and forth be- 
tween Latrobe in Washington and Jefferson at Monticello; neither would 
yield, until at last in September Jefferson threw the onus for the decision 
entirely upon the architect. Latrobe hastened to answer (September 13, 
1805) : "I cannot possibly decide the point of the Halle aux Bles lights 
of myself . . ." and on the same day he wrote to Lenthall that the Presi- 
dent's decision placed him "in a most unpleasant situation," and contin- 
ued: "I shall therefore let [the skylights] lie over till it is absolutely nec- 
essary to decide, & then my conscience & my common sense I fear will 
reject them in spite of my desire to do as he wishes . . ." 

In the summer of 1806 as the roof approached completion the matter 
cropped up again, and Latrobe had Lenthall frame the great roof in such 
a way that either the panel lights Jefferson wished or his own lantern 
could be used; he even had the lantern framed up, perhaps hoping that 
the sight of it would convince Jefferson. Instead, it had the reverse ef- 
fect. Jefferson, arriving in Washington in October an illness had kept 
him at Monticello saw the lantern and was enraged; apparently he ex- 
pressed himself in no uncertain terms to Munroe. Latrobe wrote him an 
apology (October 29, 1806) "I have heard with the deepest mortifica- 
tion that I have had the misfortune to displease you*' and explained 
that since for the want of glass the lights could not be opened that year 
he had taken the liberty of building the roof so that either scheme could 
be adopted. Yet he stuck to his guns: "I am convinced by the evidence 
of my senses in innumerable cases, by all my professional experience for 
near 20 years, and by all my reasonings, that the panel lights must in- 
evitably be destroyed after being made . . ." It was impossible to put 
the thing more strongly. 

Some two and a half weeks later, perhaps wishing to emphasize the 
impersonal character of this difference of opinion, he sent Jefferson a 



274 THE CLIMAX 

colored perspective of the Capitol with a letter: "In presenting to you 
the drawing of the Capitol, which I herewith leave at the President's 
House, I have no object but to gratify my desire, as an individual citi- 
zen, to give you a testimony of the truest respect and attachment . . ." 
Even as late as the spring of 1807, when the roof was already almost 
complete, Latrobe still hoped he could persuade the President to give 
up his panel lights. One of Jefferson's objections to the proposed lantern 
was that he could find no ancient classic precedent for such a form. La- 
trobe answered (May 21): "What shall I do when the condensed vapor 
showers down upon the heads of the members from 100 skylights ... ?" 
And then he adds the famous statement of his artistic credo: 

My principles of good taste are rigid in Grecian architecture. I am a bigoted 
Greek in the condemnation of the Roman architecture of Baalbec, Palmyra, 
and Spalatro. . . . Wherever, therefore the Grecian style can be copied with- 
out impropriety I love to be a mere, I would say a slavish copyist, but the 
forms & the distribution of the Roman & Greek buildings which remain, are 
in general, inapplicable to the objects & uses of our public buildings. Our 
religion requires a church wholly different from the temples, our legislative 
assemblies and our courts of justice, buildings of entirely different principles 
from their basilicas; and our amusements could not possibly be performed in 
their theatres & amphitheatres . . . 

Nevertheless the President finally prevailed, but on a compromise basis; 
instead of the long wedge-shaped skylights he had originally suggested, 
a series of relatively small square lights between the great structural ribs 
was adopted in the final building. But Latrobe's prophecies proved only 
too true. The lights caused endless trouble, because of leaks, until the 
adoption by the architect of a new detail using single sheets of glass that 
projected beyond the sides of the openings. Condensation did drip on 
the bald heads of the Congressmen below, a condition later mitigated 
when some of the lowest lights were arranged to open to allow ventila- 
tion of the upper air of the room. And eyes were so dazzled by the glare 
that all the western lights had to be permanently covered. The huge ribs 
of the domed roof, it is interesting to note, were built of New England 
white pine, for yellow pine from Virginia and the Eastern Shore (called 
by Latrobe the best of American woods) could not conveniently be ob- 
tained in sufficiently large pieces. 

The campaign to bring the Capitol to completion was carried on in 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 275 

spite of a long series of vexations that had little to do with the actual 
construction. For instance, there was the problem of keeping Lenthall 
happy and co-operative. As early as the summer of 1804, for example, an 
antagonism for Thomas Munroe had begun to grow in Lenthall's mind. 
Why should this person, who he felt was an outsider so far as Latrobe 
and himself were concerned, have so much to do with the conduct of 
the work? Why should Latrobe consult him? Lenthall's jealousy of 
Munroe even became apparent to others, and Latrobe was forced to write 
him a letter (August 22) putting him clear on the subject, for nothing 
more fatal to the carrying on of the work could be imagined than an 
open break between the architect's clerk of the works and the commis- 
sioner who served as the direct agent of Congress the man through 
whom all payments came. And in the letter Latrobe assured Lenthall of 
his continued regard and affection. 22 

Later that same year, in September, it was George Blagden, the master 
mason, who came under Lenthall's disapproval. The fact that Blagden 
was doing the stonework for the Navy Yard gate concurrently seemed to 
Lenthall's exaggerated devotion to the Capitol a dereliction of duty. Again 
Latrobe had to intervene to straighten matters out; but Blagden was still 
suspect in the eyes of the clerk of the works, and, when a difference of 
opinion arose between Lenthall and Blagden about whether to use iron 
or lead cramps in the stonework, Latrobe's upholding of Blagden almost 
broke the ties of friendship between Lenthall and the architect and all 
of Latrobe's tact was necessary to repair the damage. 

As the job progressed, Lenthall grew abnormally sensitive and increas- 
ingly rude to those he disliked. At last Latrobe wrote his employee (Sep- 
tember 5, 1807) reproving him for his uncivil actions and his constant 
complaints and asking him if he wished to resign; at the same time 
he was compelled to write the President, apologizing for Lenthall's be- 



22. The playful confidence between the two men is well shown in another letter Latrobe 
wrote Lenthall when he learned that Blodgett had been chosen to design the arrangements 
in the Senate for the impeachment of Chase (January 7, 1805): "You and I are both block- 
heads. Presidents and Vice Presidents are the only architects and poets for ought I know, in 
the United States. Therefore let us fall down and worship them! As for the Ladies behind 
the piers [at the trial] and the respondents at the long table, they shall ogle the Vice Presi- 
dent, the Vice President may ogle them, as much as they please"* and he goes on to con- 
jure up a picture of "Little Hamilton and Little Burr, standing in the temple of Lingam 
(the Hindo Priapus) like the columns of Jakin and Boas in the Temple of Solomon . . . 
for their sins.** 



2 ^5 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

havior but acknowledging the "spirit of mutiny" it had caused among 
the Capitol laborers. Then, thinking better o his curt letter to Lenthall, 
he later on the same day wrote him another long letter o explanation 
and appeal: 

When you were first appointed it was against the wishes of the President, 
who was prejudiced against you by false reports. ... I adhered to my nomi- 
nation with the same pertinacity that I have exhibited in respect to the sky- 
lights, & he acquiesced. [Latrobe goes on to remind Lenthall that he had pro- 
cured him and his family a healthy dwelling near the Capitol at public cost 
though Lenthall had insisted on moving to an unhealthy place where they 
had all been sick; to this illness Latrobe attributes all LenthalFs ill humor. 
He continues by recalling how he had tried to find him an assistant,] but 
if such an assistant had been found, he would have been useless to you had 
anybody but you chosen & appointed him. I have tried De Mun & Mills . . . 
Strickland, Courtenay, & Carpenter [and none of them could work with the 
clerk of the works;] whether you remain or not depends not on me. If you 
remain till I desire you to go, you will go only to sleep with your fathers. 
I can easily put up with all your humors. 

Lenthall was moved, and he answered, "I mean not to employ you to 
dress my wounds any more you make them worse . . ." Yet the trouble 
continued. To improve the morale on the job, Latrobe on October 7, 
1807, gave a dinner to all the Capitol workmen. It was a festive occasion 
to celebrate the near completion of the House of Representatives, and 
apparently it served its purpose. Only one thing marred the harmony 
that reigned LenthalPs absence, for he obstinately refused to come, 
and Latrobe wrote him a sharp rebuke the next day. 23 For a while there- 
after Latrobe's letters to Lenthall were strictly on a business basis; then, 
little by little, the old friendship triumphed, Lenthall forgot his trials, 
and the playful, intimate co-operation was renewed. 

All the more tragic, then, was the death of Lenthall, crushed as the 
vault of the Supreme Court fell when the centerings were taken down 
on September 21, 1808. The original conception had contemplated a 
ribbed semi-dome; the ribs were to have had conical vaults built over 



23. Latrobe in vain tried to have himself repaid for the expenses involved in this dinner. 
He wrote Jefferson about it in 1811; Jefferson answered that he had no memory of it and 
could not help. Latrobe gave another dinner to the Capitol workmen in 1809, when the 
centering of the rebuilt Supreme Court vault was struck. In this case, too, the expense had 
to come out of his own pocket. 



277 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 

and between them to support the 
Senate chamber floor above. While 
Latrobe was away from Washington, 
Lenthall suggested another scheme 
which would save a great deal in cen- 
tering and labor: instead of the coni- 
cal vaults radiating from the center, 
annular barrel vaults would be run 
over the lower semi-dome circumfer- 
entially. Latrobe accepted the advice 
but with some reservations. As he 
wrote Jefferson two days after the 
tragedy, he had placed too great a 
dependence on Lenthall's skill and 
experience. The Lenthall system had 
brought heavy concentrated loads on 
the dome at places ill-adjusted to re- 
ceive them, and when the supports 
were removed the whole collapsed. 
All in the room escaped except 
Lenthall. 

There was intense local excitement 
over the disaster. The Capitol work- 
men, out of respect and affection for 
both Latrobe and the clerk of the 
works, voted to donate a week's labor 
toward repairing the damage. There 
was even talk of sabotagefor the 
continued Federalist attacks on the 
entire project enraged many besides 
Latrobe and the mayor of Washing- 
ton offered a reward for the appre- 
hension of any who were found 
guilty. But Latrobe in a letter to the 
National Intelligencer (September 23, 
1808) assumed the responsibility, for 
he was not one to lay public guilt on 
the shoulders of the dead. And, as a final tribute to his late friend, he 




r_ 

From the Jefferson Papers, 
in Library of Congress 
FIGURE 18. Sketch Explaining the Fall 
of the Supreme Court Vault in the 
Capitol. From Latrobe's letter to Jeffer- 
son, September 23, 1808. 

Instead of the radiating lobes orig- 
inally planned, Lenthall substituted an- 
nular vaults. These brought concen- 
trated loads (as at A) on the ribs (a, 
b, c . . . g), which were insufficient to 
carry them. 



278 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

sent the Intelligencer a long letter that contains the only trustworthy 
biography of Lenthall we possess; in the course of it he says: 

The full utility of so many and such extraordinary qualifications of mind 
and body, seldom united in the same man, was somewhat abated by a re- 
served exterior and a rigid adherence to his own principles and opinions 
which nothing could bend ... In the execution of the public duty, and es- 
pecially in the control of expenditure he was so inflexibly just, as to be often 
thought harsh; but when acting in his individual character, the benevolence 
of his heart could not be mistaken, and he was by all those who had known 
him long as much loved as respected. . . . Since the year 1803 he had been 
clerk or immediate superintendent of the public works, and had in that situa- 
tion acquired a reputation for talents and virtues, unanimously conceded to 
few. His loss to the public will not be easy to repair. 24 

It speaks well for the true esteem in which Latrobe was held by Congress 
and the Administration that, despite the fall of the vault, the Federalist 
attacks, the Thornton letter, the Thornton libel suit (of which more 
later), and the continual charges of extravagance, appropriations for the 
Capitol continued to be made and for another three years the architect 
continued in his position. 

It has always been a piece of popular American mythology that archi- 
tects are high-priced luxuries. And, as Congress and the rest of the little 
Washington world scanned the high and to them expensive standards 
both of appearance and of construction in the Capitol that was rising 
before them, accusations burst forth. Every year the annual appropriation 
bills were passed only after violent debate; frequently they were severely 
cut before final passage. What finally brought the antagonists of Latrobe 



24. Lenthall was born in Chelmsford, Derbyshire, in 1762. In England he had had wide 
experience in all phases of mining, as well as of cotton manufacturing, and had picked up 
an extensive knowledge in many other phases of engineering and building; he was also an 
accomplished draftsman. He was married to Jane King, the daughter of Robert King, City 
Surveyor, "about 1800 or iBoi." Lenthall built two houses, apparently on speculation, at 
612 and 614 Nineteenth Street, N.W., which stood until comparatively recent times. See 
Maud Burr Morris, "The Lenthall Houses and Their Owners," in Columbia Historical So- 
ciety Records, vols. 31-2 (1930), pp. 1-35. 

LcnthalFs position was not filled immediately; since Latrobe was then at the Capitol 
almost daily, there was less need for a permanent clerk of the works. Slightly later, how- 
ever, Latrobe obtained the President's permission to take on his own son Henry, fresh from 
college in Baltimore, as his assistant, and Henry served in this position until his departure 
on his first visit to New Orleans. 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 279 

to the very brink of victory was another most unfortunate happening- 
the overspending of the 1807 appropriation by more than $50,000. 

The reasons behind this seeming extravagance were many. In the first 
place, since all the building accounts were kept by Thomas Munroe, the 
architect had to plan his work on the basis of whatever summaries of 
the actual state of affairs he could get from the commissioner's office, and 
apparently Munroe had given no hint that a deficit was about to occur. 
A second and to Latrobe even more important factor was the President's 
continued insistence on getting the House of Representatives finished and 
the President's House and grounds into more acceptable shape. Toward 
this end Jefferson asked Latrobe to take on more hands and exert the 
greatest possible pressure to see that Congress at its next session would be 
able to use the new hall, and at the same time he kept writing anxiously 
to ascertain how the work at the President's House was progressing; 
under this double pressure money was spent hurriedly. And a third rea- 
son was that always in carrying on a complex building operation, par- 
ticularly where many structural elements are concerned, it is literally 
impossible to draw a sharp line in the work and the expenditures at 
any given moment and say "Stop." Both safety and efficiency demand a 
certain planned continuity. 

In any case, when the year's accounts were finally made up they showed 
an expenditure for the year of approximately $118,500 instead of the 
$67,000 that had been appropriated. A little over $3,000 of this was not 
chargeable to the Capitol but was spent on the State, War, and Navy 
buildings and would be repaid by those departments; but even with that 
deduction the deficit was enormous. Fortunately, the House was at last 
meeting in its new home; fortunately, too, the vast amount of work 
that had been accomplished on the north wing was obvious. Otherwise 
the results might have been much more serious than the floods o oratory 
and newspaper criticism that did pour forth. 

Jefferson himself was deeply shocked all the more, perhaps, because 
of a realization that his own overeagerness had helped produce the dis- 
crepancy. He wrote Latrobe at this time the most severe letters that ever 
passed between them one on April 25: 

You see, my Dear Sir, that the object of this cautious proceeding is to prevent 
the possibility of a deficit of a single dollar this year. The lesson of last year 



280 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

has been a serious one, it has done you great injury, & has been much felt 
by myself it was so contrary to the principles of our Government, which 
made the representatives of the people the sole arbiters of public expense, and 
do not permit any work to be forced on them on a larger scale than their 
judgment deems adapted to the circumstances of the Nation. . . . 

and six weeks afterward, on June 2: 

When I was obliged to state it [the deficit] to Congress, I never was more 
embarrassed than to select expressions, which, while they should not charge 
it on myself, should commit you as little as possible. As short as that message 
was, it was the subject of repeated consultations [with department heads] to 
help us find expressions which should neither hurt your feelings or do you any 
injury. 

Later in the year, whenever Jefferson wrote Latrobe about the Capitol 
or the work on the President's House, he added a cautionary note, a 
warning "if there is money enough.*' 

Among the ringleaders in the Congressional attacks on Latrobe's sup- 
posed extravagance was John Randolph, that strangely warped genius 
who was one of the foremost orators of his time. To him, therefore, in 
order to vindicate himself in the eyes of so eloquent a man in such a 
strategic position, Latrobe wrote a spirited defense (April 23, 1808). In 
it he begins by apologizing for taking notice of what had been said in 
Congressional debate, "but you have been too long known to me, and 
to the public, to permit me to doubt your receiving this proof of my 
confidence in your candor otherwise than it is meant." Then, acknowl- 
edging gratefully Randolph's recognition of his competence as an artist, 
he states that the point of importance now is his competence as a busi- 
nessman; it is this that he wishes to vindicate. He goes on: 

Nothing has so much injured my utility to the public & to my family, as 
the very prevailing opinion that men who unfortunately for themselves are 
called men of genius are incapable of the management of money. ... It is 
a mark upon me, the effect of which I feel daily, and which keeps me from 
acquiring that independence which a dull usurer, or a dealer in dry goods 
easily and honorably attains . . . 

Now it happens also very unluckily that the professions of architecture and 
painting are supposed to be of the same grade, & to require the same sort 
of head & habits; and that as Stuart, the greatest painter we have ever seen, 
was a profligate, the only architect we know, may possibly be just such an- 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT! 1798-1812 28l 

other. But I am sure the professions, & I hope the men, are widely different. 
. . . When the castle in the air [the architect's original conception] has 
been made to descend into the office, and such instructions in writing and 
drawing are to be manufactured as to guide the hard hand & the iron tool 
of the mechanics, imagination is busy only to disturb. To execute such a 
building as the Capitol without relaying a brick or altering the shape of a 
single piece of stone, a competent knowledge of 18 mechanical arts is neces- 
sary . . . and above all a correct mastery of accounts. . . . 

If I could lay before you the accounts of all the buildings in which I have 
been engaged, I am very certain that you would never again pay a compli- 
ment to my imagination at the expense of my common understanding . . . 
wherever I have committed myself upon an estimate I have never exceeded 
it, unless gross alterations of the design have been made to induce greater 
expense. For instance: 

Estimate Expense 

Portico of the Bank of Pennsylvania 58,500 57^5 

Great tunnel of the waterworks 23,500 2 3>35 

Philadelphia Bank 30,000 28,500 

(not finished but 
contracted for) 
Plaisterers* work, South Wg of the 

Capitol, Washington 12,500 12,240 

and many others which I could quote. ... 

He goes on to explain the details of the way in which the south wing of 
the Capitol was erected and the careful measurements he made before 
authorizing payments; he says the measurements of the "plaisterers' work 
alone occupy 128 columns in my measuring book." Continuing, he writes: 

But the truth is that previous estimates have never but once, in 1804, been 
required of me, & the responsibility of an estimate for such a work as the 
Capitol will never be courted by me for a salary of 1700 $ p. annum, which 
for several years did not pay the expenditures of my office, but left me the 
honor of presenting my labors to the public. In the course of the debate, I 
am informed, I was by some gentleman supposed to be a contractor to build 
the Capitol for a certain sum, & that if it exceeded that sum, I ought to lose 
it. I wish I had been such a contractor at the cost of the north wing. I should 
have put 60,000 dollars into my pocket instead of being poorer than when 
I undertook the work. 

I might pass this over with the very proud but little satisfactory consolement 



282 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

of Virtute mea me involvero. But this will do for myself, not for my wife 
& children. That which robs me of reputation, robs them of bread. 

The freedom with which I have written this is the best evidence of my 
respect for you. I will therefore say no more but to assure you of its sincerity. 

The Capitol appropriation was finally passed, carrying $36,500 for 1808, 
plus the deficit of $51,500, and Randolph voted aye. 

But the greatest vexation of all was Dr. Thornton's undying enmity. 25 
In 1804, as we have seen, Thornton had distributed to the members of 
Congress a printed letter defending his own design and accusing his 
successor of making false statements in his report to Congress. Latrobe 
took no active steps to refute it at the time; but in the spring of 1806, as 
Thornton's attacks and those which he had inspired in the Federalist 
papers continued, Latrobe also, feeling himself compelled to follow 
Thornton's technique, had a long justificatory letter printed and distrib- 
uted to the members of Congress. In it he told the story of his own 
association with the Capitol and of the difficulties involved in the work, 
and he included a long and devastating criticism of Thornton's original 
plan in order to bring out the reasons why he was forced to depart from 
the scheme Washington had approved. He also contrasted the vaulted, 
solid construction he himself was attempting to use with the old wooden 
framing (already rotting) and the bad stone- and brickwork he had found 
in the structure when he was appointed. 

Latrobe's letter was a complete answer to all the attacks Thornton had 
made on him, but its forthright manner was perhaps not the most ef- 
fective way of mollifying an enemy its very forcefulness could only 
rankle. Thornton, seeing that his whole crusade against his successor's 
Capitol designs had failed, determined on a new approach an assault 
on the architect as a man; perhaps if Latrobe could be made odious 
enough on general grounds his resignation could be forced. He launched 



25. When Latrobe came to Washington in April, 1806, at his first visit to the Capitol a 
brick fell from the scaffolding, hit him on the head, and stunned him. He was senseless 
for a while, and for nearly a week afterward, as he wrote President Jefferson (April 21), 
he was so troubled with giddiness that he could not see to write. Eventually, of course, he 
recovered completely. Such accidents bricks falling from scaffolds are always suspect. No 
suggestion is intended that Thornton was directly involved, of course; but the uncertainties 
which resulted from his campaign against Latrobe may have helped to produce in some 
unbalanced workman an unreasoning dislike of Latrobe. I have no wish to overdramatize 
this incident, and the fall of the brkk may well have been pure accident; but the other 
possibility does exist. 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT." 1798-1812 283 

his offensive in a signed letter to the editor of the Washington Federalist, 
dated April 20 and published on April 26, 1808. The letter, a column and 
a half long, not only assails Latrobe's architectural competence but also 
accuses him of habitual falsehood. 

Thornton begins by justifying the choice of a doctor (himself) as archi- 
tect of the Capitol by citing the case of Claude Perrault (also a doctor), 
who was chosen over Bernini as architect of the Louvre. Then he states 
that Latrobe might present a similar justification on his own behalf, for 
Latrobe (like Perrault) was not trained as an architect; he had come to 
the United States as a Moravian missionary, and in London he had been 
only a carver of chimney pieces. He mentions Latrobe's alleged antipathy 
to General Washington (thus subtly bringing in the Federalist-demo- 
cratic rivalry) and hints at a reason for it by saying, "for that great man 
was asked by a very respectable man now living why he did not employ 
Mr. Latrobe. 'Because I can place no confidence in him whatever,' was 
the answer." Proceeding to a detailed criticism of the changes his suc- 
cessor had made in his own plan for the House of Representatives, he 
inserts the claim that Latrobe was so prone to alterations that he even 
changed his name from Latrobe Boneval to simply Latrobe; he implies, 
too, that Latrobe was not, as he professed, a native of England. He at- 
tacks the acoustics of the House of Representatives, claiming his own 
ellipse would have been better than Latrobe's plan; and he ridicules the 
sculpture, saying that the great eagle is more like a goose and that most 
people take the figure of Liberty to be meant for Leda and the Swan. 
Then he cites the lantern that Latrobe had wished to use for lighting 
the House chamber and remarks, "I wonder how the idea of that lantern 
ever entered the head of this architect; for if Diogenes had now lived 
he would never have blown out his candle on meeting Mr. Latrobe." As 
for the architect's extravagance, Thornton cites an occurrence in Phila- 
delphia: "So much are his calculations depended on that in Philadelphia 
it was published in the newspapers that proposals would be received for 
one of the public buildings from any persons except Latrobe/* 2e Closing 
with a blistering attack on the architect's taste, he ridicules the Navy 
Yard gate and also the entrance arch which Latrobe forced to work 
with a pittance has made in the wall around the President's House: 



26. So far as I know, the source of Thornton*s statement if any has never been identi- 
fied. He gives no supporting evidence in die answer he later filed in Latrobe's suit for libel. 



2$ . THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

. , . for such an arch as the interior one [In the Navy Yard gate, the rear 
arch of which was a large semicircle] was never made to a Gateway before, 
and till the extinction of taste will never be made again. The eagle, which 
crowns it, is so disproportionate to the Anchor, that we are reminded of the 
Rook in the Arabian Nights Entertainments; but on reviewing it the Eagle 
looks only like a good fat Goose, and the Anchor fitter for a cock-boat than 
even a gunboat. If the American hope rested on such an anchor she would 
soon breathe her exit in a sigh of despair! The next object of taste is the 
wall around the president's square ! Every ten steps we are reminded of 
point-no-point! To emphasize the whole he has put up a Gateway, that in- 
stead of being adapted to the termination of a grand Avenue, and leading 
to the Gardens of a palace, is scarcely fit for the entrance of a Stable Yard. 
Though in humble imitation of a triumphal Arch, it looks so naked, and 
disproportioned, that it is more like a monument than a Gateway: but no 
man now or hereafter will ever mistake it for a monument of taste. 

This letter was so outrageous and many of its claims were so mali- 
cious and untrue that Latrobe felt he had but one course to take, and 
he entered suit against Thornton for libel. On April 30 he wrote Walter 
Jones at Alexandria, asking him to serve as his attorney and asserting 
that "the two paragraphs in Dr. Thornton's letter . . . aim so directly, 
the first at the destruction of my respectability in society, the second at 
the means of supporting my family, that I cannot help conceiving it to be 
my sacred duty ... to appeal to the laws of the land . ." Later he 
sent the Thornton letter to John Law with a similar appeal; it was Law 
who actually acted as his attorney, and the complaint was dated May 28, 
1808. Thornton chose as his lawyer Francis Scott Key, later to become 
famous as the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner." 

Both Latrobe and Thornton left voluminous memoranda with regard 
to the case." 7 They are characteristic of the two men. Latrobe's are simple 
factual statements of his meetings with Thornton, the history of the 
Capitol, his vain attempts to win the doctor's co-operation, the efforts of 
friends to reconcile the two in the summer of 1807, and his surprise at 
the attack. He tries to get in touch with Ferdinando Fairfax, the man 
who, he had learned, had reported Washington's disapproval of him. He 
tells his attorney of his only meeting with Washington, on his visit to 



27. Latrobe's are scattered through the letter books in the possession of the Latrobe 
family; Thornton's are among the Thornton papers in the Library of Congress. The offi- 
cial records of the case arc preserved in the National Archives. 





Old photograph, courtesy Historical and 
Archaeological Society of Ohio 

Adena, the Worthington House, Chillicothe, Ohio. B. H. 
Latrobe, architect. View from the garden. 



PLATE 17 



Adena. The rotating server. 
Courtesy James H. Rodebaugh 



The Wain House, Philadelphia. B. H. Latrobe, architect. Old 
water color by J. Kern. 



Ridgeway Branch, Free Library of Philadelphia 





Courtesy Diocese of Baltimore and Walter Knight Srarges 
Latrobe's Gothic side elevation. 



PLATE 18 

Roman Catholic Cathedral, 
Baltimore 




Courtesy Diocese of Baltimore and Walter Knight Sturges 

Latrobc's Gothic plan. 




Latrobe's first*Roman*plan. 

Courtes) Diocese of Baltimore and 

Walter Knight Sturges 



f 



A.*'*. r *j'!^^itffe 

^ 
- 







Courtesy Diocese of Baltimore aod Walter Knight Smrges 
Roman Catholic Cathedral, Baltimore. Latrobe's section of the "seventh" design. 

PLATE 19 



Roman Catholic Cathedral, Baltimore. B. H. Latrobe, architect. Part measured section showing actual dome 
construction. 

Courtesy Diocese of Baltimore and Walter Knight Sturges 





Exterior. Photograph J. H, Schaefer and Son 



PLATE 20. Roman Catholic Cathedral, Baltimore 



Interior. Photograph J. H. Schaefer and Son 





Library of Congress 
Proposed Storage Dry dock for the United States Navy, Washington. Latrobe's preliminary design. 




PLATE 2 1 



Library of Congress 
Stern of the United States Sloop of War Hornet. Latrobe's sketch for the rebuilding. 




Treasury Fireproof, Wash- 
ington, Latrobe's plan and 
section. 

Library of Congress 



if pi l\l II $ 

1 < 1^4 i ; 

1 'i J. a la 





H Of" l;; ' . ; S^ i: 

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Latrobe's plan for the South 

Wing. 

Library of Congress 




Latrobe's preliminary section 
through the House of Rep- 
resentativcs, showing the 
penetration of light through 
the skylights. 
Library of Congress 



PLATE 22. United States Capitol, Washington, before die War of 1812 

Latrobe's section showing arches and vault of the Supreme Court, 1808. 






Photograph I. T. Frary 

Senate rotunda with Latrobe's tobacco capitals. 



G, Brown, History of the United States Capitol 
Senate vestibule with Latrobe's corn capitals. 



PLATE 23 
United States Capitol, Washington 



Latrobe's section through Senate and Supreme Court, 1808. 



Library of Congress 

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j ';;,/; , .& , . r ', , ;- ,1 Ml'i"*;!' fel Ii 




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^^iliSi^ariltif 




Latrobe's south elevation with proposed propylaea. 



Library of Congress 



PLATE 24. United States Capitol, Washington, before the War of 1812 



Latrobc's west elevation with proposed propylaea. 



Library of Congress 




WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 285 

Mount Vernon in 1796. It seems that the basis of Washington's supposed 
remark lay in the fact that Latrobe had promised to send him a Rother- 
ham plow; Latrobe had given Washington's request to the man who 
had previously offered it and then forgot all about it; evidently the plow 
man never fulfilled the request. He explains his occasional use of the 
name Boneval Latrobe or Latrobe Boneval instead of the simpler La- 
trobe, and obtains certificates of his children's baptism to prove his right 
to the more complex form. 

Thornton's memoranda are an extraordinary hodgepodge of fact and 
fancy, of prose and bad verse. They contain no real evidence but they 
reveal plenty of his almost indecent spleen. He rakes up all the gossip 
of the last years to find anything that might involve Latrobe. He men- 
tions a Mrs. Turner, a notorious and disreputable woman of the town, 
whom he claims Latrobe had ruined no dates, no facts, only a verse: 

Epitaph 

The monument of poor Moll Turner, 
Whose clay's so soaked that Hell can't burn her. 
How died poor Moll? Moll died of spleen 

Because she found L too keen; 

In other words, he broke poor Moll's heart 
What! Outmatched Moll? Yes, rough or civil 
He can out-jaw, out-lie the devil. 
Hell dries the clay of poor Moll Turner 
And waits L as fuel to burn her. 

Other examples of the doctor's poetic genius may be cited from the same 
collection: 

This Dutchman in taste, this monument builder, 

This planner of grand steps and walls, 
This falling-arch maker, this blunder-roof gilder, 

Himself still an architect calls. 

Benny's hatred to Washington never can end 

He hates both the name and the place 
For he knew that this good man could ne'er be his friend, 

Having fully pronounced his Disgrace. 

Out of such nonsense Thornton's lawyer had to build his case. 
Year after year the case was called, and Key reported that he was not 



286 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

ready because witnesses he needed were unavailable. At last, in the June 
term of 1813, the judge, disgusted with the defendant's continual post- 
ponements, called the case to trial. On June 27 Latrobe wrote to his son 
Henry in New Orleans: "On Thursday last, the old cause of Thornton 
came on to be tried. My counsel did not press damages, however. I got 
a verdict with costs. This plague is therefore off the list." Although the 
award was only one cent with costs, it was nevertheless a moral victory 
for Latrobe, and the filing of the suit had actually put a stop to Thorn- 
ton's public attacks. The certificate of satisfaction is dated September i, 
1813. 

The impact of all these troubles the deficit of 50,000, the explanations 
to Congress, the reproofs of Jefferson, and finally the attack by Dr. Thorn- 
ton proved too much for Latrobe and early in June, 1808, he suffered 
one of his typical nervous and physical prostrations; for the rest of the 
month he lay sick at home. 

From 1808 to the War of 1812, progress on the Capitol continued stead- 
ily and with a minimum of troubles. Early in 1809 Congress requested a 
complete and detailed estimate of what would be necessary to complete 
the two wings. In order to make such an estimate Latrobe needed more 
assistance, and he had the satisfaction of hiring George Hadfield, whom 
he had always liked and had often tried to help. Hadfield worked for 
him till his pay amounted to 300 (roughly three or four months) ; for 
this the commissioner had allowed Latrobe $150, but the architect paid 
the other half out of his own pocket. 28 On the basis of the appropriation 
that followed, the completion of the redesigned north wing was seri- 
ously undertaken. 

That drastic repairs and replacements were necessary here had been 
obvious to Latrobe from the moment he became Surveyor of the Public 



28. Later, in 1812, the final settlement of accounts between Latrobe and Commissioner 
Munroe brought into his hands a gold medal that Hadfield had given Munroe as security 
for an unpaid loan of fifty dollars. Latrobe hastened to return it to Hadfield. It was the 
prized gold medal awarded him by the Royal Academy in 1784 the highest architectural 
honor that England could ojffer to aspiring young architects. Latrobe wrote him (August 
19): "It gives me much pleasure to return it to you, as I should feel abhorence at the idea 
of possessing it. In losing the prospect of an independence arising from your professional 
talents, it would be too much were you also to part with the honor you have so deservedly 
obtained , . ." In his published Journal Latrobe notes of him further: "He loiters here, 
ruined in fortune, temper, and reputation, nor will his irritable pride and neglected study 
ever permit him to take the station in art which his elegant taste and excellent talent ought 
to have obtained/' 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 287 

Buildings, and in his reports to the President and to Congressional com- 
mittees he had pointed to the dangerous condition of the wing. Yet it 
had been impossible, with the limited labor and material at his com- 
mand and the pressing necessity of concentrating on the House of Rep- 
resentatives prior to 1807, to carry out more than the most urgently 
needed repairs. 

And there were profound faults. Much unventilated wood had been 
built into the masonry, and all of it was rotting; some was no better 
than powder, and the brickwork above was threatening complete col- 
lapse. The Senate columns themselves consisted merely of plaster over a 
wood framing; this had started to warp and to rot, and the plaster was 
bowing out and cracking. Latrobe's letters to Jefferson between 1803 and 
1807 are full of accounts of this dangerous condition, becoming progres- 
sively worse every year. It was all a sad commentary on the lack of 
knowledge or care in supervising on the part of the original builders; 
for the wing had been completed and put into use only in 1800. 

Even more radical changes than mere repair were necessary too. The 
original Senate chamber was still on the ground floor. After the House of 
Representatives had been brought up to the main floor to permit the in- 
clusion of committee, clerk, and storage rooms below, it seemed impera- 
tive to raise the Senate to the same level, and in 1806 Latrobe sent the 
President complete plans showing the new arrangement. Here for the 
first time the Supreme Court was assigned an adequate and dignified 
home in the room beneath the new Senate chamber. In addition, by 
changing the uneven shape of Thornton's old Senate into a semicircle, 
several committee rooms and a more convenient circulation were achieved. 
All of the new construction involved was to be carried up in "solid work" 
as the President and Congress had directed and Latrobe interpreted 
this to mean solid masonry construction vaulted in brick. 

Congress in March, 1807, seeing that the House was rapidly approach- 
ing completion, appropriated $25,000 for the new work on the north 
wing; in 1808, a similar sum; and in 1809, $16,650. At the end of that 
year the Senate voted to occupy its new chamber at the beginning of 
1810. It was in 1807-8 that the distressing deficit was discovered, and on 
July 6, 1808, Jefferson wrote Latrobe suggesting that the Senate floor be 
installed at the new level and the chamber opened to the roof, but that 
the old cracked wood-and-plaster columns should remain until there was 
absolute proof that there would be money enough to replace them with 



288 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

stone. It Is an interesting letter because it shows so clearly Jefferson's 
limitations as an architect. Apparently he still had little realization of 
the profound difference between the basic ideals of building expressed 
in Latrobe's scheme and those revealed in the work being supplanted; 
nor had he any real understanding of the complete integration of con- 
struction, use, and appearance that was always dominant in Latrobe's 
designs. To save money, therefore, Latrobe concentrated on the changes 
in the eastern half of the wing, which was to be completely rebuilt. The 
western half, containing the Congressional library and various smaller 
rooms, was left for future attention and now only repaired. He had, of 
course, made plans for its rebuilding, including a superb Egyptian de- 
sign for a new and larger Congressional library; but the growing war 
clouds prevented Congress from making any sizable appropriations, and 
this section remained much as it had been built originally. 

Latrobe began by entirely rebuilding the roof, thus enabling construc- 
tion to go on continuously beneath it, unhampered by the weather. The 
semicircular walls around the Supreme Court and Senate were carried 
up and vaulted in brick, a brick dome was built over the oval staircase 
hall, stone steps with iron railings were substituted for the old wooden 
stairs, and a new vaulted entrance vestibule (with Latrobe's corn capi- 
tals) replaced the inconvenient earlier entrance. The vaulting was a tour 
de force. The Supreme Court vault that had fallen was replaced by a new 
ribbed semi-dome carrying the radiating conoidal vaults which the archi- 
tect had originally intended, but in the rebuilt vault these radiating forms 
were exposed beneath, so that the whole had a sort of umbrella shape. 
Above, the Senate chamber was covered by a continuous brick half dome 
sixty feet in diameter, supported at its circumference on a semicircle of 
closely spaced Greek Doric columns. Latrobe notes that when the first 
Supreme Court vault collapsed the Senate dome stood undamaged. Even 
after the terrific conflagration of 1814, which utterly destroyed the west- 
ern or library hah: of the north wing, all this masonry-vaulted area, to- 
gether with the vaulted lobbies of the House and the vault over the 
House galleries, came through virtually intact a striking vindication 
of the soundness of the architect's construction. 

Between 1803 and 1812 the Capitol, under Latrobe, was carried to a 
point that assured safe and beautiful accommodations for the House of 
Representatives, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, together with all the 
necessary minor rooms. Except for the House roof and the old library 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 289 

section, the greater part of it was solidly built (masonry vaulted) of the 
finest materials the architect could command. The decorative detail was 
of cut stone or marble and the floors were chiefly of marble slabs, though 
Jefferson would have preferred hexagonal French tile, then completely 
unavailable because of the English blockade. And pre-eminently there 
was the continuous interest of designed space successions of lobbies, 
stairs, and great rooms, all harmonious with one another and with the 
whole. 

Criticism naturally did arise. The acoustics of the House, for example, 
were bad. Latrobe had warned Jefferson from the beginning that any 
oval shape would be unsatisfactory, and even his modification of the 
oval was little better. When Congress first used the chamber (October 18, 
1807) and it became obvious at once that echoes rendered even the best 
speakers unintelligible, a committee was appointed to consult with the 
architect. His solution, reached on December 14, was to hang heavy red 
baize curtains between the columns (he wrote Lenthall on that day 
showing how it was to be done) and to paint the ceiling with flock 
colors (this Bridport did). He had always intended curtains, but Con- 
gress in cutting the appropriation from $21,000 to $17,000 had rendered 
it impossible to install them; now at last even Congress saw the neces- 
sity, and they were ordered. John Rea, the Philadelphia upholsterer, 
made them; they finally arrived on February 25, 1808. Three stripes of 
red velvet and a wide fringe in red, yellow, and black, all designed by 
Latrobe, decorated their lower edges. Not only did the curtains solve 
the problem, but their rich color added greatly to the beauty of the 
room; again the architect had made a practical requirement into an 
opportunity for creating effect. As he described the earlier condition and 
its cure in a letter to his Philadelphia friend Colonel Duane (February 
29, 1808) : 

, . . the noisy echoes; who having no respect of persons, repeated with equal 
impartiality the speeches of the eloquent, the reveries of the stupid, and the 
negotiations carried on upon the Washington Exchange, alias the lobby of 
the house. To hang [the curtains] tastefully & usefully has been ... my 
almost sole employment. They have produced the fullest effect, & even Mr. 
Rhea of Ten. is distincdy heard, & almost understood in every part of the 
house. . . . But besides this effect on voice & cars, the eye is now extremely 
gratified by the appearance & proportions of the room to the full extent I 
expected and intended, for the curtains were part of my design . * . Hitherto 



290 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

I have been distressed by the praises bestowed upon the room, knowing what 
a bad effect the angular forms peeping thro' the circular colonnade neces- 
sarily produced on the eye of taste; now one single & simple image presents 
itself to the mind in a splendid colonnade backed by the folds of well hung 
draper}'. 

There were dignified hangings in the Senate too. In this smaller area, 
the color was more subdued than the crimson and gold-yellow o the 
House; here buff, straw-yellow, and blue predominated. In both rooms 
the furniture was of mahogany; the throne-like desks and chairs of the 
Speaker and the Vice-President were restrained in design, with spots 
of rich ornament, and there were handsome draperies behind them. 
It is important to remember these colorful fitments, all designed by La- 
trobe, for as \ve look back on the Capitol of that distant time we are 
prone to evoke a vision of cold whiteness instead of the color harmonies, 
the subtle richnesses, and the human touches of ornament and sculpture 
and furniture which as an integral part of the architect's original scheme 
made it the building it was. 

Latrobe now took the occasion to make a careful new study of the 
entire building, including the central section. By this time it was ap- 
parent that the Senate needed the entire north wing. Latrobe therefore 
added a bold projection on the west, containing a magnificent library 
room extending its whole length and fronted by a long Corinthian colon- 
nade to give an imposing elevation from the Mall below. In addition he 
planned at the foot of the hill a monumental Greek Doric propylaea, 
with an impressive flight of stairs within to lead up to the west entrance 
of the Capitol. The flanking buildings of the propylaea were for guard 
rooms, fuel storage, and the like. It was a superb conception which made 
full use of the slope and effectively tied the Capitol to the long axis of 
the Mall that stretched out on the lower ground toward the west. It is 
unfortunate that this brilliant scheme was not carried out in the rebuild- 
ing of the Capitol after the fire. 

By i8n the working parts of the Capitol were virtually complete. 
Now, with the difficulties in trade which the European blockades pro- 
duced, the falling revenues, and the growing military expenditures, Con- 
gress could only see its way to closing down all the work, especially since 
accusations of extravagance were still being flung at Latrobe. In vain 
did he point out that the north wing as originally built in wood and 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 2pl 

plaster, with cheap, slipshod construction, had cost nearly $100,000 more 
than the south wing (of which he had had charge) with its vaulting, its 
solid masonry, its sculpture, and its furniture. To the Congressmen ac- 
counts were merely figures on paper, meaning little, whereas any fool 
could see the costliness of brick vaults, of color and carving! To them 
// was beauty itself that was the extravagance no cost comparisons could 
contradict that! What could any architect do in the face of such an 
attitude? 

The final appropriation made by Congress in April, 1812, allowed 
only for the payment of outstanding debts and the cost of returning 
Franzoni and Andrei to Italy. Latrobe was referred to as "the late Sur- 
veyor of the Public Buildings," and no money was appropriated to pay 
the salary due him* This shocking oversight he took at once to the 
President (then Madison), but it was not till July that Congress relented 
and passed a revised appropriation based on reality and not on emotion. 
It did allow for the completion of the carving of the House capitals and 
did provide for the arrears in salary, though it paid Latrobe only up "to 
July i, 1811, when his duties in that capacity ceased." This, of course, 
was the least they could honestly do. There was not a word of gratitude 
anywhere for the architect's accomplishment. 

Jefferson was more appreciative. He understood Latrobe, realized the 
struggles he had had, and was gratified at all he had achieved. After La- 
trobe had written him (April 5, 1811) out of deep discouragement, even 
doubting that Jefferson had retained his old cordiality toward him (so 
universal seemed the disesteem with which he was regarded), Jefferson 
answered (April 14) : 

Besides constant commendations of your taste in architecture, and science 
in execution, I declared on many and all occasions that I considered you the 
only person in the United States who could have executed the Representative 
Chamber, or who could execute the middle building on any of the plans 
proposed. ... Of the value I set on your society, our intercourse before as 
well as during my office, can have left no doubt with you; and I should be 
happy in giving further proofs to you personally at Monticelio. 

And fifteen months later, when Latrobe had written him of the cessation 
of the Capitol work, Jefferson said in another letter (July 12, 1812) : 

With respect to yourself, the little disquietudes from individuals not chosen 
for their taste in art, will be sunk into oblivion, while the Representative 



292 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

Chamber will remain a durable monument of your taste as an architect. I 
can say nothing of the Senate room, because I have never seen it. I shall live 
in hope that the day will come when an opportunity will be given you of 
finishing the middle building in a style worthy of the two wings, and worthy 
of the first temple dedicated to the sovereignty of the people, embellishing 
with Athenian taste the course of a nation looking far beyond the range of 
Athenian destinies. 

But perhaps the most forceful comment on Latrobe's success in the Capi- 
tol was made later by his son John H. B. Latrobe: 

I can still recall, among the shadowy impressions of my earliest boyhood, 
the effect, approaching awe, produced upon me by the old Hall of Represen- 
tatives. I fancy I can see the heavy crimson drapery that hung in massive 
folds between the tall fluted Corinthian columns to within a short distance 
of their base, and I remember, or I think I remember, the low, gilded iron 
railing that ran from base to base, and over which the spectators in the gallery 
looked down upon the members on the floor. I seem to see, even now, the 
speaker's chair, with its rich surroundings, and the great stone eagle which, 
with outspread wings, projected from the frieze, as though it were hovering 
over and protecting those who deliberated below. Of course, after so many 
years, it is not impossible that form and color have been given to the memories 
of a boy, nine years old at the time, by what he had seen in the portfolios 
which were almost the picture-books of his childhood. Be this as it may, how- 
ever, there can be no question that the old Hall of Representatives was a 
noble room. Even the British officer, who was ordered to destroy it, is re- 
ported to have said, as he stood at the entrance, "that it was a pity to burn 
anything so beautiful." 20 

Meanwhile Latrobe had been busy with other Federal work. Work to 
be done for the Navy had increased and won him the position of en- 
gineer for the Navy Department, with a welcome addition to his sti- 
pend. Then, in the early summer of 1807, as we have seen, he had moved 
his family to Washington. But two years before that two other impor- 
tant government commissions came his way, chiefly through his contacts 
with Albert Gallatin, the Swiss-born genius who was Secretary of the 
Treasury under Jefferson. Both jobs came at almost the same moment. 
One was a lighthouse for the mouth of the Mississippi; the other, a fire- 
proof archive room for the Treasury Department, to be included in one 



29. Jahn E. Semmes, John H. E. Latrobe and His Times, 1803-1891 (Baltimore: Norman, 
Remington [1917]). 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 2p3 

of the long one-story colonnaded wings which Jefferson wished to add 
to the President's House and for which he had made the first drawings 
himself. 

Latrobe devoted much time to the design of the lighthouse, and there 
was a busy correspondence about it between the architect and Gallatin. 
Of the details of the design there is now no existing record, but from the 
correspondence we learn that it was in essence a conical masonry tower 
with a spiral marble stair inside. We may perhaps gather some hints 
of it from the design which Henry developed in 1816, for the plans of 
this exist and we know from the correspondence that B. H. Latrobe 
gave his son all the help he could by sending him (December 19, 1816) 
his own calculations of cost and probably sketches as well. The soil was 
soft and fluid, so that the base had to spread wide; in the final design 
by Henry Latrobe advantage of this was taken by surrounding the cone 
with a colonnade and connecting the complicated ring-shaped founda- 
tions by reversed brick vaults, in the hope of wedding the parts into one 
almost monolithic whole. Gallatin wished to make an over-all lump-sum 
contract for the construction of the lighthouse, and although the archi- 
tect could and did assemble accurate bids for its masonry (largely of 
stone to be cut in Philadelphia) he could find no one to undertake the 
risk of construction on that distant and lonely site. The project was there- 
fore abandoned. Some ten years later, when Henry Latrobe was estab- 
lished as an architect-builder in New Orleans, the proposal was revived 
and Henry was finally awarded the contract. But the foundation design 
was faulty; the masses of masonry in the building were too heavy for its 
piles; the building settled unevenly and collapsed just before its comple- 
tion. It was rebuilt, without the colonnade, in i823. 30 

The Treasury "fireproof" also caused Latrobe much trouble during 
1805 and 1806. Jefferson had planned colonnaded one-story wings stretch- 
ing east and west from the main block of the President's House, to con- 
tain a stable and executive offices and to connect with the departmental 
buildings that flanked the President's dwelling the Treasury Department 
to the east and the War and Navy Departments to the west. The Treas- 
ury fireproof was to be in the eastern wing. For this wing Jefferson had 



30. See Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe, Impressions Respecting New Orleans, edited 
with an introduction and notes by Samuel Wilson, Jr. (New York: Columbia University 
Press, 1951)* PP- "4n., 169-73. 



294 THE CLIMAX 

made elaborate drawings, which nevertheless left many practical points 
unsolved, and it was within the limits set by these drawings that Latrobe 
had to work. He disliked the wings fundamentally; again and again 
he refers to the President's Palladian taste as old-fashioned. In a letter to 
Lenthall (May 3, 1805) ke unburdened himself on the subject: 

... a post or two will bring you the President's colonnade, etc. I am sorry 
that I am cramped in this design by his prejudices in favor of the old French 
books, out of which he fishes everything but it is a small sacrifice to my 
personal attachment to him to humour him, and the less so, because the style 
of the colonnade he proposes is exactly consistent with Hoban's pile a litter 
of pigs worthy of the great sow it surrounds, & of the wild Irish boar, the 
father of her . . . [So much for Hoban.] 

There was difficulty in adjusting the levels of the new work to the old, 
and the planning was an exacting task. In a letter to Gallatin, Latrobe 
calls it "damned hard work"- but, he adds (May 4, 1805) : "I have made 
something of it which does not altogether displease me, & of which your 
fireproof is infinitely the best morceau, for with that, I am entirely satis- 
fied . . ." 

As designed (the architect's beautiful drawing is dated April 27, 1805), 
the archive room took up nine bays of the colonnade, with an entrance 
in the center bay. Light came in from semicircular windows, which were 
on both sides between the piers, and the piers were connected across the 
long room by built-in timber tie rods. Segmental arches crossed from 
pier to pier above the ties, and these in turn carried shallow segmental 
vaults* In this way the over-thin walls and piers were enabled to bear the 
weight of the fireproof covering. Large cases in which the papers were to 
be preserved lined the walls, and additional double-faced cabinets were 
placed transversely at each bay. The floor was carried on another long 
segmental vault over the cellar. It was a light and daring solution of a 
difficult problem, and it demanded the most meticulous construction. 

In the original design an open vaulted loggia extended over the road 
that bordered the ground to the east of the mansion in order to give 
undercover approach to the colonnade from the Treasury building. This 
loggia was double-arched, with a narrow arch over the sidewalk and a 
wider carriage arch. In December the vaults were complete and the mor- 
tar was sufficiently set for the temporary centering to be removed. The 
removal was disastrous; either because of badly designed centering or 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 295 

through carelessness in removing the posts that supported it, the western- 
most of the supports over the carriageway was shoved out of plumb and 
the entire vault collapsed. Latrobe in Philadelphia heard of the accident at 
the end of the month and wrote Lenthall (December 31, 1806) : "I am 
very sorry the arches have fallen, both on account of the expense & the 
disgrace of the thing. But I have had such accidents before, and on a 
larger scale, & must therefore grin & bear it" and he continued with 
an elaborate explanation of what must have been the cause. But the 
vaults were reconstructed successfully as originally designed, and the 
Treasury fireproof eventually went into use. 

Another commission from Gallatin came just afterward a customs 
house for New Orleans. This was given to Latrobe in March, 1807, and 
on the fifteenth he wrote his acquaintance Daniel Clarke, who was living 
there, asking for permission to send him the plans in order that they 
might receive criticism from someone thoroughly acquainted with the 
local conditions. The completed designs were sent to Gallatin on April 28, 
along with a cost estimate of $19,193.26 and the interesting news that 
Robert Alexander, who had been one of the contractors for Latrobe's 
Navy Yard work, was planning to move to New Orleans to open a build- 
ing business and would take the contract for $19,000. 

The job was rushed. All the joinery was done in Philadelphia, and it 
was practically complete by August i. The contractor had purchased a 
brig there and was loading her with bricks to ship around to New 
Orleans; on the way she was to go to Alexandria to pick up all the 
ironwork and other manufactured parts that had been made in the 
Washington area. On August 20, Alexander obtained permission to use 
all the materials he could salvage from the old wooden customs house 
in New Orleans which was being replaced, and soon afterward the brig 
sailed. Alexander himself arrived in New Orleans in May, 1808, and the 
building was completed in 1809, 

This was an ambitious project to be undertaken at such a small cost. 
The lower floor, for stored goods, was covered with fireproof brick vaults. 
Above it rose walls faced with Philadelphia brick, the main front had a 
recessed loggia with two Greek Doric stone columns in antis, and there 
was a wood-shingled hipped roof. In refusing to follow the New Orleans 
custom of building all walls on horizontal logs laid in the foundation 
trenches, however, Latrobe made a serious error; for his masonry foot- 
ings did not give the perfect continuity the logs would have provided, 



296 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

and the ground was so soft as to make that continuity necessary. More- 
over, Alexander skimped his walls; instead of building them through- 
out of good Philadelphia brick he used that material for facing only, and 
the backing was of local soft brick inadequate for the loads. Unequal 
settling and serious cracks were the result, but when expensive repairs 
became necessary in 1813 the war prevented any appropriation for them. 
Four years later the building was an unusable ruin, and a new customs 
house by the local architect Benjamin Buisson was erected to replace it. 
The whole vain attempt was a disappointment to its architect- and to 
New Orleans. 31 

Two other important projects in Washington had long occupied La- 
trobe's busy hours the Navy Yard and the necessary repairs and com- 
pletion of the President's House. The architect's design for the covered 
drydock had naturally brought him to the attention of the Secretary of 
the Navy; when, therefore, the Navy Yard organization was rearranged 
in 1804 and Captain Tingey was officially made commandant (he had 
served in that capacity earlier, from 1799 to 1801), a large building pro- 
gram was decided on and it was to Latrobe that the Navy looked for 



assistance. 82 



The Navy Yard in 1803 was an incoherent group of sheds and slip- 
ways on the northern shore of the Eastern Branch, extending from Sev- 
enth to Ninth Streets Southeast. It had one long wharf running out to 
the channel, and in 1801 a house had been built for the commandant 
(at that time Captain Cassin) near the northern boundary. Latrobe's 
first task, then, was to regularize what existed as far as he could and 
then lay out the area so that the new buildings would form an efficiently 
related group. For his plan we are forced to depend on the description 
of it which he sent to Secretary Robert Smith in the winter of 1804-5; 
for, as Latrobe himself wrote later, no plan could then be found in the 
Navy Department of either the Washington Navy Yard or that at New 
York, and no Latrobe plans can be found today. 33 

Secretary Smith approved Latrobe's ambitious scheme, and work on 



31. Sec Latrobe, op. at. pp. xiii, xiv. 

32. Sec Henry A. Hibben, Navy Yard, Washington; History from Organization, 1799, to 
Present Date, 515* Congress, ist Session, Executive Document 22 (Washington: Government 
Printing Office, 1890). 

33. Mr. Nelson Blake, of the Navy Records department in the National Archives, has 
been kind enough to make a thorough search for such plans but in vain. 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 297 

it began at once. Robert Alexander was the chief contractor for the 
buildings. The plan called for building first a new permanent stone-faced 
wharf adjacent to the existing one of timber, second a similar section to 
replace the old, and then annually 150-foot sections until the entire chan- 
nel frontage was complete. Westward of this wharf section were the slip- 
ways, which were to remain in their original locations but were to be 
rebuilt in a more permanent manner. Meanwhile, as the wharf sections 
were erected the shallows were to be filled in to meet them, thus adding 
nearly 30 per cent to the yard's area. Still farther west, a canal was to be 
dredged that would pass back of the ends of the slipways and allow 
barges or rafts to be floated deep into the yard; along this canal, on both 
sides, were to be placed rows of important storage and shop buildings. 
The timber shed, the mast shed, and other storage units for bulky and 
heavy articles opened also on the open space around the shipbuilding 
slips. The main gate was placed on the axis of Eighth Street Southeast 
and fronted on Georgia Avenue; from it a street called Gate Street led 
to an open area on which were located the residences of the "master 
artificers," and the rear doors of these gave approach to the central open 
yard and thence to the shipbuilding slips and the major shops. Along 
the eastern boundary were placed the slaughter house and the salting 
house (for producing the salt pork and salt beef that formed the basis 
of navy rations); these, being "nuisances," as Latrobe calls them, were 
situated as far from the other parts of the yard as possible. The old 
commandant's house was close to the north boundary and east of the 
entrance; a second good house, also built before Latrobe's appointment, 
existed not far away on the eastern lot line. To these the architect planned 
to add another and better home for the commandant west of the en- 
trance, but this was not built until 1807. 

The whole plan was a study in providing the most efficient relation- 
ships for a large group of essentially industrial buildings. The structures 
themselves were of the simplest types. Architectural display was limited 
to the main gate. This was a most interesting composition consisting 
of a double gateway, with guard rooms between the inner and outer 
gates. The entrance toward the street was a miniature triumphal arch; 
that toward the yard was the wide, low, semicircular opening that so 
enraged Dr. Thornton; the passage between the two was bordered by 
two Doric columns on each side, with the guard rooms behind them; 



2 g8 -THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

and die whole was crowned by a great eagle and anchor carved by 
Franzoni. 

Of all of this large composition little is left today. At the time the 
British entered Washington (August 24, 1814) Captain Tingey ordered 
the yard to be burned before evacuating it, and a thorough job com- 
pleted by the British was made of the fire. The two old houses still 
stand, much altered, but neither of them was designed by Latrobe though 
he may have carried out some decorative work in them. His main gate, 
however, still exists, almost hidden by an amorphous mass of later addi- 
tions, and the eagle and anchor vanished when the inharmonious upper 
floor was built. 

An addition made to the Washington Navy Yard by Latrobe in 1810 
one he was even prouder of than he was of the gate was a large 
steam engine (bought from Smallman of Philadelphia) which was spe- 
cially designed to provide power for both the bellows and a trip hammer 
in the yard forge. Later it was attached to a sawmill, and it could be 
used for a blockmill as well (to make the hundreds of pulley blocks 
required). The architect wrote with justifiable pride to Secretary Paul 
Hamilton (June 29, iSn) that the engine could operate the forge, the 
bellows, and the sawmill at the same time or the blockmill, the bellows, 
and the forge and to Jefferson (July 2, 1812) that it saved the Navy 
at least $16,000 a year besides the saving in time. As in all those early 
engine installations, there were troubles of one kind or another. Small- 
man was supposed to erect the engine, and a controversy arose whether 
he or the Navy Department should pay the wages of his employees in 
this work; a compromise settlement was arrived at. There were times 
when the engine would not run; Latrobe discovered that the well driven 
through the clay to furnish condensing water was subject to tidal action, 
and that when an unusually low tide occurred there was no water in 
the well. Most of the time, however, the engine performed satisfactorily, 
to the immense advantage of the yard. 

The following year brought another Navy job the design of a new 
stern for the brig Hornet, which, much rotted, was largely rebuilt in the 
spring and early summer of 1811. Latrobe's preliminary sketch for this, 
still preserved, is our only evidence of actual ship detailing by him, 
though he may have done more. 

An interesting special problem that Latrobe solved was the erection 
of the famous Tripoli Monument in Gate Street, on the axis of the 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 299 

Navy Yard gate. This had been carved in Italy to memorialize the offi- 
cers who lost their lives in the Tripoli war. It had been shipped over 
in cases, and the architect found that the building o a heavy core was 
necessary to support the thin marble slabs; Franzoni and Andrei were 
put in charge of repairing and setting the statues. Later, after the war, 
during which it had been knocked down, Latrobe was responsible for 
its reconstruction. Washington hoodlums had looted the yard after the 
fire, and a discussion arose whether the monument had been destroyed 
by them or by the British* Tingey thought it was the Washingtonian 
looters, but the discovery of a fragment of one of the statues in the pos- 
session of a British officer who had been captured at New Orleans was 
evidence enough that the British were the guilty parties; a new inscrip- 
tion stating the fact was therefore installed at the Navy's request. 3 * 

Two other commissions for the Navy Department deserve notice. The 
first was the replanning of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Latrobe was sent 
to New York in mid-August, 1808, to examine conditions there and to 
suggest improvements. He enjoyed this visit, for it enabled him to see 
the Roosevelts and to renew his acquaintance with friends there the 
Marks, Robert Fulton, Dr. Hosack (with whom Latrobe dined after 
having been shown his botanical garden, and for whom the plans for 
a house were apparently under discussion), and Colonel Williams. On 
his return to Washington his observations of the Brooklyn yard resulted 
in a complete new plan for it; nothing, however, was done at that time 
to carry out his recommendations, and four years later in a report to the 
Secretary of the Navy he noted that his plan had long since disappeared. 

Much more important, though it also resulted in no construction, was 
his scheme for a naval hospital to be placed on New Jersey Avenue, close 



34. From Latrobe's letters of July 31 and October 5 and 19, 1815, to Commodore Porter. 
The Tripoli Monument, now in the grounds of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, is an am- 
bitious if awkward example of the classic revival Italian sculpture of the turn of the nine- 
teenth century. In my opinion Latrobe, Franzoni, and Andrei made a serious error in the 
arrangement of the statues. There are unexplainably but three figures placed on three of the 
four corners of the square base, leaving the other corner empty and naked. It would seem 
probable that the Victory (or Fame), instead of crowning the whole and conflicting with the 
monument's outline, was probably intended as the fourth corner figure, with her out- 
stretched arm pointing toward the inscription that refers to fame. This arrangement, with 
a slight change in the placing of the other three figures, would then agree perfectly with 
the inscriptions on the four faces of the pedestal. Since the present arrangement, however, 
appears on the earliest prints we possess, which show the monument as it was first erected 
in the Navy Yard, the error (if it is one) must have occurred then. 



jOO THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

to the Navy Yard gate. This occupied him from time to time for four 
years, from 1808 to 1812, and, as the war grew more and more imminent, 
interest in the project increased. In 1812, accordingly, at the request of 
Secretary Hamilton, he prepared an elaborate set of plans. At one time 
it seemed as though the building would surely go ahead; but the final 
breaking out of the war prevented it, and Latrobe's modest bill was 
never paid. His design shows a large U-shaped structure,, with residences 
for doctors and the commanding officer at the corners and the wing ends. 
The court is arcaded on the ground floor, and a large formal garden 
occupies the center. It was the architect's intention that half of the long 
western wing would be built first to take care of immediate and emer- 
gency needs the rest to be added as conditions warranted. The plan is 
carefully studied throughout for ventilation and convenience, the quiet 
exterior well composed. It would have produced a building both useful 
and beautiful and together with Hadfield's marine barracks and the 
Navy Yard gate near by would have created a handsome naval center. 

The work on the President's House extended over the entire period 
from 1804 to 1812. Jefferson had found the building incomplete the 
great east room unfinished,, for example and moreover the roof leaked 
and the plaster was falling. The entire construction indeed had been 
as slipshod as that of the north wing of the Capitol. And the grounds 
had not been touched; the house rose starkly above a wilderness. The 
wooden sewer that carried the wastes from the water closet and the 
kitchen discharged at the surface, over a temporary roadway of ap- 
proach on a hot summer day not a pleasant prologue to a visit to the 
President! To Jefferson, himself an architect of fastidious taste, the whole 
was a challenge and drastic improvements were an urgent necessity. 
The President needed office space as well as stables; he needed privacy, 
too, and surroundings that had some modicum of decency. For service 
elements, Jefferson designed the one-story colonnaded wings already de- 
scribed, in which Latrobc (as we have seen) incorporated a fireproof 
section in the eastern wing for the Treasury Department in 1805-6 and 
one in the western wing for the Post Office in 1810, during Madison's 
administration. Vaulting troubles occurred in this later wing too, but in 
this case they were caused by imperfections in the old walls. 

In 1806 and 1807 the surroundings were studied by Latrobe and re- 
ceived the close attention of the President. A stone wall was built around 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: 1798-1812 3<>I 

the immediate private grounds, with an arched gate on the north, and 
a road was constructed around the whole to produce not only an essen- 
tial connection between the various avenues that focused on the Presi- 
dent's House but also a convenient approach to the executive office build- 
ings which flanked it on the east and west. The sewer* in addition to 
being an unhygienic nuisance, was threatening to destroy the road by 
erosion and had to be reconstructed and covered. Within the wall ex- 
tensive grading was undertaken, to open the view from the house over 
the Potomac toward the south; the earth removed was used to form 
little hills on either side to give privacy to the wings and to a private 
garden. It was a brilliantly conceived landscape plan of the popular 
English informal type. Since appropriations were scant, every means 
was sought to keep down the cost of the wall and the road. Still the 
expenditures mounted, and still Jefferson's pressure to finish the work 
continued. It was this pressure, Latrobe claimed, together with the fact 
that he could not get actual figures from Commissioner Munroe, which 
caused the $50,000 deficit in the season of 1807-8. 

Latrobe never liked the President's House. Hoban's design for it was 
purely in the eighteenth-century English manner; to Latrobe, trained in 
the more efficient planning of the classic revival, the great entrance hall 
was absurd ("all stomach" he called the plan) and the lack of convenient 
service a disgrace. He found the central oval projection on the south ill- 
proportioned and the central entrance pavilion on the north undistin- 
guished. As a result, during 1807 he prepared a new plan for the entire 
building. This showed not only an almost complete change in the plan 
of the central section but also a semicircular portico on the south and 
a boldly projecting entrance portico incorporating a dignified porte- 
cochere on the north. The interior alteration was never undertaken, 
but Jefferson saw at once the tremendous value of the two porticoes, and 
work on them was begun; the entire stone foundation, platform, and 
steps were completed before Jefferson left office. The main-entrance stone- 
work was large in size and costly; to those who could not visualize the 
grandeur of the portico that would one day rise upon it, it was but 
one more example of Latrobe's extravagance. Actually, of course, these 
foundations determined the porticoes that were constructed later, and 
it is to Latrobe's designs incorporated in a series of superb drawings 



302 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

that we owe these salient features of the White House exterior today. 35 
Thus except for the north and south porticoes, the President's House 
was almost complete when the Madisons took possession in March, 1809. 
From that time on till the beginning of the war Latrobe was busy acting 
as interior decorator and purchasing agent for them in their ambitious 
scheme of making the interior as beautiful and as distinguished as its 
purpose dictated. Since Mrs. Madison was an old and intimate friend 
of Mary Latrobe 's and since the President much older, often ill, and 
rather aloof left all such matters largely in the hands of his wife, it 
was on an unusual basis of personal understanding that these missions 
were carried out. 

First it was necessary to procure new and suitable carriages, but this 
proved almost fatal to the continuation of the work. They were ordered 
by Latrobe from the Philadelphia coachmaker Peter Harvie, who had 
made various carriages for the architect's friends and had won their ad- 
miration for his work. On this of all jobs, however, everything went 
wrong and when the carriages were delivered one of them was found 
completely unacceptable in both workmanship and finish; it had to be 
returned and the contract for it was canceled. This was not an auspicious 
start, but the Madisons' faith in their architect was unshaken. 

The Madisons had in mind no less than the complete refurnishing of 
all the most important rooms in order to make them for the first time 
worthy to be parts of the executive mansion of an important nation. 
This included everything carpets, furniture, new marble mantels, 36 
stoves, plate, china, lighting fixtures, great mirrors, and hangings. Not 
only did Latrobe have to select, but much had to be designed. The fur- 
niture he designed was manufactured in Washington and Baltimore; the 
hangings were made locally by Mrs, Sweeny, the fashionable upholsterer 
of the city; the carpets, plate, china, and lighting fixtures were purchased 
in Philadelphia; the mirror and table linen were bought from Jacob 
Mark in New York. Because of the embargo, the later Non-Intercourse 



35. The restoration of the President's House after the fire of 1814 was put into the 
hands of Hoban, and it was under Hoban's direction that the porticoes following the La- 
trobc drawings were built in 1824. 

36, It was probably for the President's House that Latrobe ordered a marble mantel from 
Adam Traquair on October 17, 1810. He wrote: "Forward hither as soon as possible the 
best marble mantel piece you have . . You know my taste. I want no spindle shanked 
columns, nor elliptical pilasters. A plain good thing, of well chosen marble will please me 
best." 



WORK FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT! 1798-1812 3<>3 

Act, and the English blockade of the Continent, many European ma- 
terials were in short supply. It was therefore a tragedy that the largest 
mirror, ordered from Mark for $1,500, was broken in transit; it could 
not be replaced, and two smaller mirrors (at $1,060 for the pair) had 
to be substituted. Since German stoves were also unavailable, Latrobe 
used instead an ordinary iron-plate stove in the hall, surrounding it with 
a handsome hollow pedestal crowned with an urn of masonry. 

From Bradford & Inskeep, of Philadelphia, Latrobe bought the lamps, 
as he did some of the plate. They were of the new spiral-burner type 
with glass chimneys a great improvement over the more common can- 
dlesand the architect used them in parts of the Capitol as well. There 
were twelve double lights in the great East Drawing Room alone. Latrobe 
wrote the firm (November 21, 1809) that he would prefer bronze to 
brass or glass, for cut-glass lamps ornamented with drops and festoons 
"would soon be demolished by the clumsy & careless servants of this part 
of the world." When the lamps came the architect wrote them again 
(December 23) that the fixtures gave the greatest satisfaction to Presi- 
dent and Mrs. Madison, "and, permit me to add at a proper distance, 
to myself, altho' I cannot say that I admire the mixture of Egyptian, 
Greek, & Birmingham taste which characterizes them." As early as May 
29, 1809, the bills for furnishings amounted to more than $5,000; for his 
own extra work Latrobe charged only 2 per cent. 37 

The final achievement was worth all it had cost and all the labor and 
imagination which the Madisons and Latrobe had put into it. Con- 
temporary accounts vouch for the elegance and beauty of the drawing 
room. The colors of its hangings and upholstery were red, light blue, 
and yellow, and the carpet harmonized with them. Over its mantel hung 
the largest of the mirrors; the great Stuart portrait of Washington dom- 
inated the dining room. 38 But all this elegance was ruthlessly destroyed 
when the British burned the President's House on that dread day (August 
25, 1814) so painfully recalled by Mrs. Madison in a letter to Mary 
Latrobe (December 3, 1814): 

37. See Katherine Anthony, Dolly Madison: Her Life and Times (Garden City, N.Y.: 
Doublcday & Co. [01949]), and Allen C. Clark, Life and Letter* of Dotty Madison (Wash- 
ington: W, F. Roberts, 1914)- 

38. Mrs. Madison had wished to hang the general's picture in the drawing room but 
had yielded to Latrobe's advice. 



304 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

Two hours before the enemy entered the city, I left the house where Mr. 
Latrobe's elegant taste had been justly admired, and where you and I had 
so often wandered together; and on that very day I sent out the silver (nearly 
all) and velvet curtains and General Washington's picture, the Cabinet Papers, 
a few books, and the small clock left everything else belonging to the public, 
our own valuable stores of every description, a part of my clothes, and all 
my servants' clothes, etc., etc. In short, it would fatigue you to read the list 
of my losses, or an account of the general dismay or particular distresses of 
your acquaintance. . . . 

So came to a close Latrobe's work on the President's House, for when 
he was recalled to Washington in 1815 to rebuild the Capitol the recon- 
struction of the President's House was put in other hands. Here again, 
as in the Capitol, all that he had created the product of a decade of 
toil and genius literally went up in smoke. 



CHAPTER 



Washington Years: 1807-1813 



IT MUST have been with a deep feeling of relief that Mary Latrobe finally 
settled her family in Washington in July, 1807. At last they had a home 
that promised to be permanent, or at least as permanent as could be ex- 
pected of any busy professional man's menage. The Capitol would be 
several years in the building, and Latrobe's position seemed for the mo- 
ment secure. Of course she would be days away from her beloved Hazle- 
hursts, but that too was not an unmixed hardship; now she and her 
husband could establish a center that was theirs alone, to be formed and 
managed as they saw fit. Disappointed in their hopes for a home in 
Philadelphia, they must have seen Washington as a new foothold in 
pleasant contrast to their temporary abodes in Newcastle and Wilming- 
ton. Iron Hill, at least, had been all theirs and much loved by them both, 
but it was a summer home only. 

And their removal to Washington was the inevitable end of a long 
process. Latrobe had collected a large circle of friends and acquaintances 
there, and to Mary it was hardly a strange city; she had been there with 
her husband in 1803-4 and again in 1805. Then, too, many important 
Philadelphia acquaintances were often in Washington, and some made 
it their chief home. Mrs. Madison had been a close friend of Mary's when 
they were both young girls in the Quaker City, and what more perfect 
introduction to Washington society could be wished? 

Their house, disclosed as a large one by its use as a landmark in an 
advertisement of a furniture dealer in the National Intelligencer and 
further identified as being "half-way between the Capitol and the Navy 
Yard," belonged to Robert Alexander, who had gone to New Orleans as 
the contractor to build the customs house there from Latrobe's designs. 
It was a pleasant and commodious home, and in an addition which 

305 



306 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

he had designed, Latrobe set up his office. He roofed it with a cement 
invented or marketed by a Russian officer who called himself Baron de 
Niroth, whom Latrobe had befriended as he had so many other Euro- 
pean travelers and refugees. The cement was worthless, the roof leaked 
while Latrobe was away, and many of his precious drawings were de- 
faced or destroyed. This was not the only trouble he was to have with 
this strange individual, however, and a brief account here may throw 
interesting sidelights on the Latrobes and their times. 

Five years after the Latrobe family settled in Washington, "Baron" 
de Niroth, encumbered by debts in the city and with no more prospective 
victims to fleece, decided to leave town. Unfortunately his plan became 
known and he was arrested and jailed for debt in Alexandria, leaving 
his daughter Charlotte (apparently in her late teens or early twenties) 
penniless at the inn there. Dr. Dick, of Alexandria, was kind enough to 
take her in for a time, and either he or De Niroth called on Latrobe for 
aid. Evidently the Latrobes had met Charlotte, liked her, and felt some 
responsibility for her, for the architect wrote Dr. Dick (October 29, 1812) 
thanking him for rescuing the girl, who later joined the Latrobes in 
Washington as their guest. Meanwhile, he added, a "fellow debtor's" 
generosity to the "old Baron " had accomplished his release and he was 
then at McCleod's Tavern, and the letter goes on to describe the situation: 

He is an accomplished brute; accomplished only so far as he possesses 
various knowledge, and a command of various languages, but a brute in 
morals, and in habits. ... but [I] foresee it will be impossible to do what 
humanity points out as the most effectual mode of preserving her innocence 
and happiness (if she ever can be happy) to separate her from her father. 

Writing the same day to the Baron that he must take care of his 
daughter, Latrobe says he cannot accept the responsibility for keeping 
her. De Niroth had suggested she be committed to Bishop Neale; Latrobe 
thinks the suggestion excellent and agrees to be responsible for her board. 
There things rested for a week Charlotte staying with the Latrobes and 
anxious not to join her father, the Baron evidently planning ways and 
means, Latrobe all puzzled and considerate. Charlotte wished to return 
to the Dicks in Alexandria, and Latrobe wrote her (November 10) : "We 
worked 2 hours on your father last night, & he at last agreed to allow 
you $200 a year through a merchant in Philadelphia who is at present 
anonymous/' Suspicious, Latrobe wrote the Baron (November 15) ask- 



WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 307 

ing who the merchant was, and it is not altogether surprising that his 
identity never appears. For, earlier, when the Baron had suddenly dis- 
played a recommendation from Latrobe's own brother, apparently signed 
by him as president of the Imperial College of Medicine, near St. Peters- 
burg, Latrobe had indignantly written to Dr. Dick: *1 have a brother, 
a physician, 1 in Russia but I did not know before, and I doubt now of 
his being, President of the Imp. Col. of MedJ" De Niroth had been 
overplaying his hand; this was a patent hoax. 

Now the Baron takes the attitude of a wronged nobleman. He wants 
his daughter back what right have they to interfere in the affairs of 
a Russian noble? Latrobe, increasingly skeptical, at once institutes an 
inquiry through the Russian embassy, with which he is on terms of 
special intimacy. The result, which Latrobe hastens to convey to De 
Niroth (November 18), is that the embassy denies any knowledge of 
De Niroth personally, or of any Russian nobility of that name. Tb^ 
Baron is now caught fairly out. He has lived off Washington for at least 
five years; his pretended waterproof cement has been widely used and 
later widely deplored; he has displayed a genius for borrowing money 
and for running up bills. Obviously he has personal charm; but even 
that is no longer good coin in Washington, and finally Latrobe in disgust 
writes Dick (November 23) suggesting that the Baron be locked up. 
Charlotte, it appears, is at last settled with the Dicks as a sort of gover- 
ness, and the Baron disappears from the pages of history. But the whole 
episode is expressive of Latrobe's deeply considerate kindness as well as 
of his naive trust in others. 

The new Latrobe residence was situated in what was then one of the 
most rapidly growing areas of the city. Washington in 1807 was less a 
city than a grotesque expression of faith and hope. The L'Enfant plan 
was still chiefly on paper; only a small number of its streets had actually 
been laid out and even fewer of them paved. It was a city of summer 
dust and winter mud a city where occasional short rows of brick houses, 
entirely urban in type, rose incoherently out of vacant land (thicket- 
grown) or dotted the ubiquitous market gardens. Here and there an 
elegant mansion, like Colonel Tayloc's "octagon house,** proudly faced 
the confusion, haughty and disdainful of the unkempt and often un- 



i. His younger brother Frederick, who bad married a livonian countess and lived at 
DorpaL 



308 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

drained land it overlooked; here and there older mansions of die original 
Maryland patrician landowners were gradually giving way to the new 
city pattern. Yet this was the city that boasted one of the country's 
greatest houses Hoban's home for the President, then without its north 
and south colonnades and by far the country's noblest building project 
the daringly conceived United States Capitol, crowning the city's most 
imposing hill. When the Latrobes came to Washington, the exterior walls 
of the two wings of the Capitol were practically complete, but nothing 
had been done aboveground on the central section; the building was as 
magnificent in conception, and still as incoherent in appearance, as the 
entire city for which it was the sole raison d'etre. Only on the far side 
of Rock Creek, along the Potomac and the canal around its falls, was 
there any considerable district of cohesive development, for Georgetown 
had existed even before the Revolution and its quiet brick houses and 
occasional mansions were the result of its favorable situation. 

Foreign diplomats laughed at Washington and at what seemed to 
them its extraordinary pretensions; they disliked its climate and hated 
its dust and its mud. Tom Moore displayed his anti-Republican prejudices 
in reviling it. Congressmen from New York or Virginia, from New 
Hampshire or the Carolinas, were appalled at its rawness and the crowded 
inconvenience of its boarding houses; their wives were struck by the 
primitiveness of the city, by the difficulties of keeping house, and by 
the fact that a horse or a carriage was absolutely necessary, since their 
friends might be far away in Georgetown or miles up the hill near the 
Capitol. As it had been christened by the witty Portuguese Abbe Correa, 
it was the city of magnificent distances, and those distances usually had 
to be traversed over unpaved and undrained roads. It is perhaps no 
wonder that there arose in Congress frequent agitation to move the 
government away back to New York or Philadelphia, even to Baltimore 
or the West so hopeless seemed the struggle to create a real city. But 
these movements were often mere expressions of pique or disappoint- 
ment; there was no force behind them when it actually came to collecting 
votes. Latrobe called them "intrigues." 2 The men of vision prevailed, 
and the capital little by little came into being. 

Latrobe himself was acutely conscious of this strange, unfinished char- 

2. In a letter of February 13, 1808, to George Clymer, president of the Bank of Phila- 
delphia. 



WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 309 

acter of the city, but he was conscious too as were hundreds of others 
of the opportunity for gain its growth might bring. On an earlier visit 
he had leased a lot at Sixth and C Streets Northwest and, instead of 
holding it for investment, as most men did, had tried to make it income- 
producing by building on it a "painting room" or studio for Gilbert 
Stuart. When Stuart left, Latrobe held on to the lot and later added 
to the original building to make a little factory for steam engines an 
equally profitless venture, as it turned out. Typical of the replies he made 
to acquaintances who had invested in Washington real estate and were 
continually writing him for information about their holdings is that to 
James Martin, Jamaica, Long Island (July 21, iSio): 

Your lots all lie in that district of the city which may be called Terra Incognita 
Borealis to the north of Massachusetts Avenue, a part of the town which 
is admirably calculated for the pasturing of lean catde ... for some years 
to come. . . . Between the President's House and the Capitol & in the neigh- 
borhood of the Navy Yard, lots are now selling at a price above their value, 
namely from 10 to 25 cents p. superficial foot, but in every other part they 
are a mere drug . . . 

During the last years of the decade, however, the growth of the city 
accelerated, and building for speculation became the ruling passion. 
Latrobe tells of this new development graphically in a letter (July 17, 
1810) to his friend Thomas Law, who had gone away from the town 
for an extended stay: 

Between the Capitol & President's house, there is a great busde of building. 
Huddleston, the stone cutter fills up with good brick houses the space between 
Lindsay's & Charles Jones, so that square will be complete. They are also 
building on the other side ... & in a variety of other straggling situations. 
The Bank of Washington are also going to build next door to your house 
occupied by Poydras. . . . Carol [sic] 3 complains of ill treatment. He has 
now almost all his houses on the hill on his hands. . . . 



3. The Carol referred to was Daniel Carroll of Duddington. Julien Poydras was elected 
Orleans Territorial delegate to Congress in 1809. Thomas Law, to whom this letter was 
written, may well be considered one of the founders of the city of Washington. He had come 
there, in 1794, with a large fortune made in India, where he had had an important gov- 
ernment position. This fortune was invested in Washington real estate through the ill-fated 
firm of Morris, Nicholson & Greenleaf (part of Robert Morris's overextended real-estate 
ventures), and Law had built numbers of the earliest brick mansions in the city. He had 
married Eliza Parke Custis, a granddaughter of Martha Washington, but they were divorced 



310 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

Yet in this unkempt, uncomfortable town there was a gay, often lux- 
urious and vivid social life a life of free association with some of the 
most influential personalities of the time. The very smallness of the 
population made for intimate acquaintanceship; the inconvenience of 
the great distances usually transformed even a routine call into a stay 
of some hours or the sharing of a meal Essentially this was a quadra- 
partite society: the President and his official family (the Cabinet mem- 
bers and their staffs), a fairly permanent group for at least the life of 
a single administration; the ministers of foreign countries and their en- 
tourages; the members of Congress (especially the senators, who came 
for longer terms than the representatives); and a group of important 
professional people, especially lawyers, ministers, and army and navy 
officers. Unlike New York or even Philadelphia, Washington was a 
world in which it was men of official position who dominated, not busi- 
nessmen; though money had its place, money alone counted for little. 
It is significant, for instance, that the Thorntons, though their com- 
parative poverty was notorious, held a high position in Washington 
society. 

During the Latrobes' earlier years in the capital, Jefferson was Presi- 
dent and his idealistic and intellectualized democracy was in control. 
Some of the more stuffy Federalists might complain of the letdown of 
social barriers, yet the tradition Jefferson had set was evident long after 
he had been replaced. And the Madisons, though Mrs. Madison was a 
thoroughly sophisticated and socially trained hostess, never forgot their 
Jeffersonian principles. The new First Lady might be the most fashion- 
ably dressed American in the town, but the Presidential levees were as 
democratic as any that Jefferson had held and, except for the comparative 
absence of Westerners, as any that Jackson would hold later. Latrobe 



in 1 8 10. He was probably at his Vermont farm near Westminster, where he often spent 
his summers, when this letter was written. AH his life he was an enthusiastic believer in 
the future of Washington and a worker for its betterment, and he was instrumental in 
obtaining the early passage of the Act authorizing the rebuilding of the government build- 
ings after they were burned by the British in 1814. His brother Edward was chief counsel 
for the defense in the famous trial of Warren Hastings and was later created Lord Ellen- 
borough, Two sons born of an earlier marriage in India were also famous in Washington 
history: John Law as an attorney, and Edward as a financier. Thomas Law was one of 
the organizers of the Columbia Institute in 1816, and Latrobe was a member of its first 
executive committee. See Allen C. Clark, Greenleaf and Law in the Federal City (Wash- 
ington: Roberts, 1901). 



WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 3!! 

himself was surprised; even after twelve years in the country he could 
hardly imagine such wholesale hospitality. He wrote George Harrison, 
in Philadelphia (June 30, 1809): "Mrs. Madison gives drawing rooms 
every Wednesday. The first one was very numerously attended by none 
but respectable people. The second, La, la. The last by a perfect rabble 
in beards and boots . . " 

Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith has left such a vivid picture of the day- 
by-day activities of a Washington hostess at that time 4 that little more 
need be added. In reading her graphic pages, however, it is well to 
remember that although she was the wife of one of Jefferson's most 
enthusiastic supporters- and herself fell a victim to his natural and 
honest charm she had been brought up a Pennsylvania Federalist, with 
just that little touch of primness and innate feeling of superiority which 
so often distinguished the genus. To her, genuine democracy always 
seemed a little shocking. That is one of the reasons that lay behind the 
feud which developed later between the Latrobes and the Smiths and 
thus perhaps kept the Latrobe name from ever appearing in Mrs. Smith's 
fascinating pages. 

This family feud was particularly unfortunate not only because of Mr. 
Smith's eminent position as a publicist and his wife's as a social arbiter 
but also because earlier the two families had been on such intimate terms 
that the Smiths had invited the Latrobes to stay with them on their first 
visit to Washington; they had been, as well, close friends of the Hazle- 
hursts in Philadelphia. The bad feeling was the result of an unavailing 
letter Latrobe had written to Governor Snyder of Pennsylvania (who 
had married one of Latrobe's Antes cousins) recommending that Mrs. 
Smith's brother, Andrew Bayard, a Federalist, be continued as state 
auctioneer despite his party. Latrobe had no reason to love Andrew, 
for it was Andrew, he claimed, who had prevented the passage by the 
Select Council of Philadelphia of a resolution of thanks to Latrobe on 
the completion of the waterworks. Solely out of friendship for the 
Hazlehursts and the Smiths, however, he wrote the letter (November 
20, 1808) and later pressed the matter personally when he happened 
to be in Lancaster that winter. But the governor was obdurate; his elec- 
tion vote, he claimed, had been so overwhelming that he could keep 



4. The First Forty Years of Washington Society, edited by Gaillard Hunt (New York: 
Scribner*s, 1906). 



312 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

no Federalist in office. Latrobe reported this to Samuel Hazlehurst and 
said that the only effective pressure would be for the Smiths to obtain 
a letter to Snyder from some highly placed officer in the Federal govern- 
ment, and he added that he doubted whether in their position they would 
descend to such tactics. Andrew Bayard apparently took umbrage both 
at his sister and at Hazlehurst, and Mrs. Smith in turn seized on this 
as an opportunity to break off all relations with the family. From the 
long letter of explanation which Latrobe wrote his friend Smith (Septem- 
ber 22, 1809), it would almost seem that Mrs. Smith had used the Bayard 
episode as a convenient hook on which to hang some long-felt resent- 
ment probably a combination of politics, spleen, and even some envy. 
She was instinctively distrustful of those more daring and more im- 
aginative than herself. 

An instance in point trivial perhaps, but interesting for the light 
it throws on that early Washington society is furnished by Mme Jerome 
Bonaparte, nee Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore. She was very beautiful, 
and knew it; she was at the peak of fashion, and knew that too; and 
she combined awareness of both in her actions and her dress. Empire 
fashions were the reverse of concealing, and she outdid even the beauties 
of the imperial court in Paris in the low cut of her gowns, the sheerness 
of the materials, the small amount of what she wore beneath. Washing- 
ton was scandalized and loved it. Latrobe was diverted; as he wrote 
Joshua Gilpin in Philadelphia from Washington (February 20, 1804): 

Jerome and Madame Bonaparte have amused us considerably for the last 
fortnight. She is certainly pretty, her youth and singular fortune excuse her 
if she be not very wise; of her it might be said, "I see thee beautiful; I be- 
lieve thee wise" [a translation of Latrobe's Italian]. She has much scandalized 
the lovers of drapery, and disgusted the admirers even of the naked figure . . . 

Later, in 1817-18, as recorded by Latrobe's son John, Mme Bonaparte 
became an intimate of the Latrobe household. But to Mrs. Smith and 
her particular friends Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte was not a source 
of amusement; she was an outrage, a threat to the sacredness of the 
American home. Mrs. Smith therefore took the lead in organizing a 
group of Washington women who agreed to attend no parties at which 
Mme Bonaparte was to be present, unless she put on more clothes a 
boycott in the cause of convention. The difference between the two 
attitudes is basic. 



WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 313 

There is one more element in the break, and this is perhaps the most 
fundamental, though neither side ever mentioned it. Mrs. Smith's most 
intimate Washington friend was Mrs. Thornton. Each was continually 
trotting to the other's house for petty aid, for advice, or for gossip. But 
Mrs. Thornton, though she never descended to the level of her husband 
in her prosecution of his controversies, was definitely his worshiper and 
his partisan. She was a passable draftsman and helped him with his 
drawings. In a way, when Jefferson had appointed Latrobe Surveyor of 
the Public Buildings and Latrobe for good and sufficient reasons had 
radically altered the Thornton design, could she help feeling involved 
herself? Was it not an affront to her as well as to her husband? 

The Thornton-Latrobe antagonism was indeed inevitable, since Thorn- 
ton was a rabid Federalist, proud as a peacock and combative as a robin. 
Friends of both families tried to patch things up between the two; pos- 
sibly even the Smiths had been among these peacemakers. But by 1808 
the breach had become complete, and Latrobe had been forced to sue 
Thornton for libel. In the almost daily chats between Mrs. Smith and 
Mrs. Thornton could this have been overlooked? Mrs. Smith was under 
Mrs. Thornton's influence in many ways; perhaps in breaking with the 
Latrobes, as in the Patterson matter, she was "taking a stand" and sup- 
porting her friend Mrs. Thornton rather than merely showing umbrage 
at the Andrew Bayard imbroglio. No wonder the Latrobes, in some 
things strangely innocent, were perplexed. 

Yet even this break could not deeply affect the Latrobes' Washington 
life. Those with whom they most loved to associate were above such 
petty schisms. For friends like the Madisons, the families of the two suc- 
cessive Secretaries of the Navy Robert Smith and Paul Hamilton, the 
Russian minister Dashkoff and his American wife, Robert Goodloe 
Harper (the Senator from Maryland, who though a Federalist was a 
staunch and lifelong friend and customarily had Sunday dinners at the 
Latrobe home whenever he was in Washington), and the Joel Barlows 
(he a diplomat, poet, and radical a fellow spirit), the Smith break could 
have been merely a subject for smiles. And among Latrobe's old Virginia 
friends were the Bushrod Washingtons, now the owners and residents 
of Mount Vernon. One of the British embassy secretaries, Foster, later 
the British Ambassador, had married an English cousin of Latrobe's, 
and the English embassy was always open to him and his family. The 
French embassy also sought them out, and with Serurier Latrobe had 



314 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

close social relations. His linguistic ability and his wide European back- 
ground created common interests with the foreign colony. It is obvious, 
too, that Latrobe was one of the Administration's inner circle. His posi- 
tion as Surveyor of the Public Buildings necessarily involved frequent 
contacts with the President, but the bonds were stronger than that. Again 
and again he refers in letters to dinners with the President, sometimes 
tete-a-tete. 

Outside the political world there were also many close contacts. The 
Hunters, the family of a well-known Presbyterian minister, were near 
neighbors of the "Navy Yard House." The famous Commodore David 
Porter, then a Captain, was an assiduous visitor at the Latrobes' in 1807 
and early 1808, as well as a suitor for Lydia's hand. There were the 
Robert Brents, among the wealthiest of Washingtonians; their daughter 
was Lydia's closest Washington friend, and Brent was at one time mayor 
of the city and later owner of the magnificent house Brentwood which 
Latrobe designed for him. Then, too, a continual string of visitors to 
Washington called on or dined with the family. The diminutive Miss 
Juliana Miller, a maiden lady from Philadelphia, witty and kind a 
favorite companion of Mrs. Latrobe's made them extended visits, bring- 
ing with her the latest gossip from Philadelphia and thus uniting, for 
Mary, the past and the present. She was a continual and special delight 
to the children, John, Julia, and Ben almost the ideal "maiden aunt." 
And behind the scenes, to keep the household running easily and quietly, 
was the ever faithful and efficient if sometimes crotchety Kitty (Catherine 
McCausland), who for years until her death was the family factotum 
nurse at first, then housekeeper and friend. 

The Latrobes, in fact, had what was virtually a salon in Washington 
another indication that in that milieu money had not the all-powerful 
importance it later achieved. Robert Fulton, introduced to them by their 
friend Joel Barlow (who had been Fulton's patron in Paris), was often 
in and out and before long became an intimate associate and friend 
a fact that rendered the later developments in Pittsburgh all the more 
distressing, Washington Irving, visiting Washington in 1811 for a week, 
dined with the Latrobes and records the fact. 5 Paul Svenin, or Svinin, 
the hawk-eyed, inquisitive, and understanding secretary of the Russian 



5. In a letter to Henry Brcvoort, in Lift and Letters of Washington Irving, edited by 
Pierre Monroe Irving (New York: Putnam's, 1862-4), v ol- * P* 268. 



WASHINGTON YEARS! 1807-1813 315 

legation an artist, too, like Latrobe was a frequent visitor. Mr. and 
Mrs. Henry Clay were often guests, and Latrobe helped them profes- 
sionally in the design of their house Ashland in Lexington, Kentucky. 

One is struck by the varied character of those represented as well as 
by the fact that all had some similarities. A broad foreign background, 
wide intellectual interests, a brilliant and forceful type of imagination, 
an excellent education, artistic skill of some kind these seem the hall- 
marks of the frequenters of the Latrobe drawing room. Even the famous 
Salem merchant and financier Derby was included because of his musical 
skill. Latrobe himself was a trained musician. Mary had a lovely singing 
voice "cultivated, 1 ' wrote her son John, "under the instructions of the 
best masters of Philadelphia of the day." 6 Some of their parties were 
musical, with Mary or Miss Brent at the piano and occasionally singing, 
and Latrobe perhaps playing the clarinet. But it was more than pleasure 
in music that was the attraction there, more even than Mary's wit and 
warm-heartedness or her husband's imaginative and forthright conver- 
sation; it was doubtless the feeling that here was a home where innocence 
and affection reigned and where in addition there was learning coupled 
with imagination a center that welcomed all who dreamed or worked 
for human betterment and freedom a place, however gay, of essential 
idealism, free from the boring chatter of the marketplace and from the 
rankling bitterness of political controversy. Here poets and scientists, 
artists and writers, men of the world and men of ideas could meet with- 
out restraint. 

Himself at least half artist, Latrobe had an especial fondness for artists 
and a deep interest in their success. The story of the Gilbert Stuart 
painting room is indicative. Learning in 1803 that Stuart was moving 
to Washington and wished a studio there, Latrobe erected expressly for 
his use a small building on the lot he himself had leased. This Stuart 
was to rent from him, to help Latrobe carry the lot as well as to benefit 
the artist. On learning that Stuart had finally started for Washington 
in December of that year, Latrobe wrote John Lenthall on December 13: 

I have understood that Mr. Stuart has departed for Washington. If so, you 
will see one of the greatest, if not the most pleasant, originals In the United 
States. His presence, and probably his conduct, leaves me nothing certain to 



6. John E. Semmes, John H. J&. Latrobc and His Times, 1800-1891 (Baltimore: Reming- 
ton [01917]). 



jl6 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

say respecting his painting room, but ... I shall come prepared to make 
good all deficiencies on my arrival . . . 

Stuart carne, took possession of his atelier, and remained there for over 
a year, but the uncertain condition of his health and his erratic habits 
made it basically an unproductive period for him. Latrobe, in Washing- 
ton in the spring of 1805, was shocked at what he found and on March 
12 he wrote to John Vaughn, a friend of them both in Philadelphia, 
that Stuart was in a bad way: 

All last summer he had a violent ague & fever. It is now returned upon 
him, and he cannot paint at present. I fear indeed that he will lay his bones 
in Washington, and it seems of the highest importance that some of his 
family should attend him. He is miserably off, though his life & his resi- 
dence ... are of his own choice. He has one man servant, who does exactly 
what he pleases, & is seldom with him. He has shut himself up in a little 
building never intended for a habitation but only for a painting room; where 
he boards himself, after a fashion, with the assistance of his man servant when 
he can get him to the place, and where he sleeps. The house is remarkably 
comfortable & warm, but in the present state of the drainage of the city the 
situation must be unhealthy in warm weather. I could do nothing with him, 
not even get him to paint my own portrait, which, if he ever paints it, will 
cost me 1000 dollars, & more. He had resolved when I last saw him, to finish 
the pictures he had in hand, which he thought he could do in six weeks, 
begin no new ones, and move off to the northward. But should he continue 
sick there will be an end to all his exertions, & I think he runs the risk of 
dying for want of good nursing where he is. I shall write to him, but he 
is a man who answers no letters. Thank heaven at least my family ought 
to thank heaven, that I have no genius, if this is the orbit in which genius 
must move. And indeed it generally is so ... 

Latrobe did write Stuart the very next day (March 13). He begins by 
attempting to arouse his interest by sending him a print as an example 
of the kind of engravings that could be made of some of his portraits. 
There is a suggestion, too, of another portrait in Stuart's hands perhaps 
one of Jefferson that apparently was finished and ready for engraving 
(John Vaughn seems to have been connected with this in some way). 
He goes on: 

Let me in the meantime intreat you to leave that sink of your health, your 
Genius, & your interests, Washington. I often am angry with you for having 



WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 317 

staid so long. Get into the packet at Georgetown if you cannot bear a car- 
riage, get away any where, but get away. 

As to myself, I was very sick for four or five days previously to my depar- 
ture, and had I staid longer, it would not have been so easy to have moved 
me. My illness prevented me calling upon you. 

God bless you & give you resolution to start off to a climate more healthy 
& less tainted with fraud, speculation, marsh miasmas, & the insolence of 
clerkships. 

But Stuart lingered on until July, when he left the city. He never paid 
Latrobe a cent of rent; nor, so far as we can tell, did Latrobe ever dun 
him for the debt such was the consideration he felt was due to artists. 
Later the building was "rented" to a Mr. Boyle, another painter, who 
maintained a kind of museum there; he was connected in some way 
to one of the Hazlehurst cousins, and evidently he paid no rent either. 
Latrobe had good reason to doubt the ability of artists or art dealers 
to discharge their debts. When he left for Washington in 1807 (as has 
already been noted) he sublet his Second Street house in Philadelphia 
to a certain Delormeric, who had a valuable collection of paintings for 
sale but no buyers, and Delormeric remained there till the expiration 
of Latrobe's lease without paying him a cent. Four years later when 
Delormeric wrote for further help, Latrobe's answer was a firm negative 
(October 3, 1811): 

You inform me you were the loser by occupying my rooms in Second Street, 
at an expense to me of $125. If you made a bad speculation at my expense, I 
cannot help it ... I have a house in this city. Mr. Stuart, the painter took 
it of me, occupied it for two years, & went to Boston without paying me a 
cent . . . Mr. Boyle, of Baltimore, then succeeded. He painted also & had a 
museum. He also remained two years, filled the house with negroes, & de- 
camped $125 in my debt. Having thus paid for the encouragement of painting 
& Museums above $500 in cash without any advantage whatever to myself, 
except the acknowledgment which you are willing to make me, I must decline 
during the rest of my life having anything whatever to do with paintings, 
museums, or their proprietors . . . 

Yet Latrobe's enthusiasm for art and his vision of its importance to 
the new country continued. He fought for sculpture in the United States 
Capitol and was instrumental in bringing over Andrei and Franzoni 
from Italy. An ardent supporter of decorative painting, he employed 
George Bridport whenever he could and gave him letters o introduc- 



318 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

tion to all his influential friends. Similarly, he tried to help a French 
painter and miniaturist, E. Boudet, with introductions to the Claiborne 
family. Bishop Carroll, and others. And he took care to see that "his 
Italians" Andrei and Franzoni got other work when their Washington 
labors lagged and that models of their figures for the Capitol were ex- 
hibited at the Academy in Philadelphia. 

Deeply, too, Latrobe felt the need for artists' associations. He knew 
what the American Philosophical Society had done for American thinkers, 
naturalists, and other scientists and how it had raised American ideals 
at home at the same time that it had enhanced American prestige abroad. 
Thus he became an early member of the Academy of Arts in Philadel- 
phia, in 1805, and a frequent exhibitor in its exhibitions. 7 When later 
several artists, thinking that the Academy had become too much dom- 
inated by its wealthy lay patrons, formed the Society of Artists of the 
United States, he joined that as well and had the honor and the pleasure 
of conveying to President Madison (January 16, 1811) the Society's in- 
vitation to become its chief patron; Madison graciously accepted, and 
he did more he offered a present. As Latrobe wrote George Murray, 
one of the founders (January 31): 

I enclose the answer of the President U.S. . . . He gave it to me in the 
form in which I sent it, himself, & asked . . . whether having accepted the 
office, he ought not to promote our views in some way or other ... I told 
him, that I doubted not but it would be agreeable to his feelings, so it would 
be highly flattering & acceptable to the Society to receive from him any work 
of excellence in the arts ... to place in their exhibition room ... He begged 
me then to look out for some suitable object to present. . . . Will you sug- 
gest something of the kind. We have nothing here. I think perhaps he had 
best send to Paris for something . . . 

Latrobe's efforts on behalf of the Society were crowned by what he always 
considered one of the pleasantest and most flattering offers he ever re- 
ceived: he was invited to give the Society's annual oration in May. The 



7. According to the catalogues of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the 1811 ex- 
hibition included, by Latrobe, a landscape on the Schuylkill River, a view of the Richmond 
penitentiary, and five large drawings of the Capitol at Washington two plans, two ele- 
vations, and a perspective. In 1812 he exhibited a view of the seat of Myers Fisberg, Esq., 
and another Schuylkill River landscape, and in 1818 a perspective of the Baltimore Cathe- 
dral. His wife also painted; Mary Latrobe is credited with two views from nature in the 
1812 exhibition. I owe this information to the kindness of Miss Anna W. Rudedge. 



WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 319 

address was given and printed and is an important document in the 
early art annals of the country. 8 

The notes of the architect bring us also a vivid picture of Washington 
life in another field the purlieus of "enthusiastic religion." In a note- 
book labeled III, containing comments on life, philosophy, and literature 
made between 1806 and 1809, there is a full description of a camp meet- 
ing (August 6, 1809), beginning with an interesting sidelight on his wife: 

I have always endeavored to prevent my wife from being led by her curiosity 
to attend the meetings of the Methodists. With the most rational, but very 
pious & sincere religious sentiments, she joins a warmth of imagination, 
which might receive a shock, if not an impression from the incantations 
which form the business of their assemblies, A camp meeting however is a 
thing so outrageous in its form & in its practices, that I resolved to go to 
one held a few miles from Georgetown in Virginia, under the auspices of 
some very good citizens, principally Mr. Henry Foxall the great Iron- 
founder. 

The meeting was held about seven or eight miles out on the Leesburg 
road, and as the Latrobes got within a mile of it the crowd increased, 
with 

parties of well dressed blacks of both sexes returning on foot towards the city, 
& of ill dressed white boys hurrying forward . . . [further on] we could dis- 
tinguish among the trees, half concealed by the underwood, houses, chaises, 
light waggons, hacks, & a crowd of men & women, in the midst of whom we 
presently arrived . . . Crowds of negreos & mullatoes tastily dressed stood 



8. Anniversary Oration Pronounced Before the Society of Artists of the United States on 
the eighth of May, i8n f by B. Henry Latrobe, Fellow of the American Philosophical So- 
ciety, of the Academy of Arts, and one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society of Artists of 
the United States [New York, 1811]. This address starts with a refutation of the notion 
that the fine arts have no place in a republic; Latrobe cites Greece and Rome as examples 
and emphasizes the value of monuments to great citizens. Similarly he attacks the notion 
that the times are not ripe for art; all times are ripe for it. Art is a hardy plant, the 
author states, which will spring up everywhere, and he mentions the figureheads carved 
by Rush, which he says "seem rather to draw the ship after them than to be impelled by 
the vessel.'* He would like to see engravings made of them and broadcast. But art needs 
support; artists need sympathetic patronage. As an example of such an understanding patron, 
Latrobe names Samuel H. Fox, recently dead, and praises him as the real force behind the 
building of the Bank of Pennsylvania; to him, rather than to the architect, should go the 
gratitude of Philadelphia "to the mild but powerful influence and discriminating taste of 
this one man." The artists are here; with patronage like that of Fox, the arts in America 
will prosper. Incidentally, Latrobe states that he considers Philadelphia his real home. 



THE CLIMAX PERIOD 
P? 




WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 




321 




From the Latrobe journals 
FIGURE 19. Camp Meeting near Washington. Plan and Sections. 

among the trees, & the groups looked as if any motives but religious ones had 
assembled them. . . . We at length reached the camp ... It was placed on 
the descent of a narrow ridge, at the foot of which ran a small stream . . . 

The camp itself, of which Latrobe gives a plan and section, consisted 
of two concentric semicircular arcs of tents, separated by a street for 
cooking fires, surrounding a roughly semicircular swale in which were 
the benches for women on one side and men on the other focused on 
the stage or pulpit. Behind the stage was a row of tents for Negroes, 
and directly in front of it "a boarded enclosure filled with straw, into 
which the converted were thrown that they might kick about without 
injuring themselves." When the Latrobes learned that men and women 
could not sit together they took their places, standing, at the head of 
the center aisle, 

from whence everything could be seen & heard. There I staid for about an 
hour during which Mr. Bunn, a blacksmith of G. Town, one of the most 
eminent Preachers of the Methodists spoke [with] immense rapidity & exer- 
tion to the following effect. ... It appeared that his subject was the preach- 
ing of St. Paul before Felix & Festus, He was in the midst of his discourse 



322 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

when I heard him exclaim: "Temperance, Temperance, Temperance. I say 
& so says St. Paul temperance, not self denial, no he asks no favors of you, 
no, only temperance. And what is temperance, Paul had no communica- 
tion with women, none at all. Peter carried about with him a sister named 
Lucilla, I suppose she was his wife, else he had no business with her, this I 
call temperance, one woman was enough for Peter, ..." Then he spoke of 
the judgement to come "That's the point, the judgement to come, when 
the burning billows of hell wash up against the soul of the glutton & the 
miser, what good do all his victuals & his wine, & his bags of gold; do they 
allay the fiery torment, the thirst that burns him, the parching that sears his 
lips, do they frighten away old Satan who is ready to devour him, think of 
that: this is the judgement to corne, when hell gapes, & the fire roars, Oh 
pour [sic] sinful souls, will ye be damned, will ye, will ye, will ye be 
damned, no, no, no, no, don't be damned, now ye pray & groan & strive 
with the spirit." (A general groaning & shrieking was now heard from all 
quarters which the artful preacher immediately suppressed by returning to 
his text) "and so it was with Festus, he trembled, he trembled, he trembled, 
( during these words the Preacher threw out both his arms sideways at full 
length, & shook himself violently, so as to make his arms quiver with aston- 
ishing velocity . . . ) he trembled every bone shook, he strove with the 
spirit, & he was almost overcome, but he conquered, he was afraid of the 
Jews, saving grace was not for him, etc. " 

[A little later] I found him further advanced in his business. A general 
groaning was going on ? in several parts of the Camp, women were shrieking, 
& just under the stage there was an uncommon bustle & cry, which I under- 
stood arose from some persons who were under conversion. 

He was proceeding thus: "There, there, stands an unconverted coxcomb; 
dressed in his God & his delight, will it help him then, when he must face 
the fiery gulph, when he cries mercy, mercy, mercy, & there is no mercy, 
when hell burns & roars, what then is his smartness & his buckishness, of no 
use, none, not any, any use to allay hellfire, which calls for him to devour 
him; but there I see another, a woman. Oh, how grace strives & the spirit 
works, oh for power, power, power, see how her bosom heaves & throbs, 
how her whole form is agitated, how the tears start from her eyes, how they 
burst forth, oh, my brethren pray for her, pray for her, see how she trembles, 
how she trembles, how she trembles." 

(Here he repeated his trembling) "how she trembles, and now comes the 
stroke of grace, the stroke," (at every time he pronounced the word he struck 
his right hand into his left palm so as to produce an astonishingly loud 
clap) "the stroke again, and another stroke (repeated about 20 times) and 
now it works, it works, it works, Oh God for Power, power, power, power, 



WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 323 

power, power, power, power, power (roaring like a bull), there it is, now 
she has it, glory, glory, glory, etc.*' By Ms time the noise of the congregation 
was equal to that of the preacher, & he too\ the opportunity to receive a 
drinf^ of a glass of water, of which he seemed In very great need, for he was 
quite exhausted. 

[And so on and on, till B. H. and Mary left.] Henry our son, who re- 
mained at the Camp till midnight reported that the conversions were numer- 
ous, & in the same hysterical style in all the tents, & that the negroes after 
the Camp was illuminated sang & danced the methodist turnabout in the 
most indefatigable & entertaining manner. 

Enthusiasm has its charms, & as this is the only public diversion in which 
the scattered inhabitants can indulge, it would be a pity to suppress it, even 
by the ridicule to which it is so open. The night scene of the illumination 
of the woods, the novelty of a camp especially to the women and children, 
the dancing & singing, & the pleasure of a crowd, so tempting to the most 
fashionable, are in fact enjoyments which human nature everywhere pro- 
vides for herself, in her most savage as well as most polished state. Let the 
congregation rejoice & wellcome. But as to the Preacher, who lives by such 
dishonest means, "to his own Master he standeth or falleth." 

Thus Latrobe, with his customary understanding, closes his account of 
one of the country's most characteristic early customs. 

Latrobe himself, though keeping as aloof from political battles as his 
position permitted, was anything but a political agnostic. He was part 
of his age, a convinced democrat, an ardent patriot. Soon after the tragic 
Burr-Hamilton duel, he wrote George Read in Newcastle (July 22, 
1804) : "I have not been able to work myself up into the fashionable 
pitch of grief for the death of Mr. Hamilton. Other folks besides myself 
are also refractory . . ." He despised chicanery and deplored the com- 
promises to which politicians descended (his letters are often eloquent 
on that), but he bore his own part staunchly. He tried to preserve a 
native dignity and gentle manners even when enemies (chiefly Federal- 
ist) were yapping at his heels. The Washington 'Federalist contained 
attack after attack on him, on his competency, on his work at the Capitol. 
He was accused of extravagance, of feathering his own nest, and by 
innuendo of dishonesty. It hurt him profoundly but until Thornton's 
final outrageous letter forced him to act he bore it patiently, secure in 
his own rectitude. He was bitterly opposed to dueling at a time when 
dueling was achieving a new status in American life to the endless 
harm and disgrace of the country and his distaste increased as he grew 



o 2 4 THE CLIMAX PERIOI) 

older and more aware of the fantastic lengths to which gossip could go 
in many Washington circles. Thus in a letter of protest to Thornton 
as early as April 28, 1804, he speaks of the insults planned and care- 
fully arranged that Thornton has offered him and that according to 
custom would lead to a challenge, but at the same time he acknowledges 
the hospitality he had received at his hands: 

For a considerable time I have been convinced that an open rupture would 
be more honorable to me than even that show of good understanding which 
has prevailed between us; and which was kept up last winter by the respect 
of my wife for the ladies of your family: a respect which led me to accept 
an invitation to a Ball at your house. For the civility of this invitation * . . 
I feel myself indebted and particularly for the transmission of your essay on 
Negro Emancipation; a mark of respect, as unintelligible on any principle of 
consistency, as it would have been flattering had it been possible for it to be 
sincere. . . . 

He goes on to recapitulate the entire controversy and to remind Thorn- 
ton of his own constant efforts to preserve peace and pleasant relations 
between them and continues: 

My last call upon you is the strongest proof of how far I was willing to go. 
The insulting treatment I received closed all further prospect of amicable 
arrangement, which I might have expected from your politeness or your 
understanding. 

I now stand on the ground from which you drove Hallet, and Hadfield to 
ruin. You may prove victorious over me also; but the contest will not be 
without spectators. ... I shall not court public discussion. It is in my power, 
however, more than in my inclination, to show you in a more ridiculous 
light, even, than were I, as is the fashion after such a correspondence, to call 
you to the field . . 

Seven years later the matter of dueling came up again. Under date of 
August 15, 1811, there is a "Memorandum of what passed between Captn 
Jones, Commander of the U.S. sloop Wasp and BJHJL in the Navy Yard 
on Monday evening, x\ug. 12," which reads: 

About six o'clock on Monday evening, prior to my leaving the yard, I 
went as rny custom is to the Bell Post, where Captain Cassin, Commandant, 
... in the absence of Captn Tingey, sat in conversation with Mr. Geo. 
Beale ... I took my seat also, and in a few minutes Captain Jones came 
up ... I asked Captain Jones, when he was likely to sail from Alexandria, 



WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 325 

where his ship lay. He told me, ironically, that for aught he knew he might 
lay there all winter. . . . Which led to his opinion of the yard, answered by 
Cassin. His opinion of the waste of money in architecture and machinery, 
answered by B.H.L., finally his opinion of the Secretary, answered by all. 
Just before he left, he told me that I should hear from him next day. I an- 
swered, that if by that he meant that he would send me a challenge, he would 
be disappointed if he expected me to meet him. That I should certainly not 
prove my courage by risking the life of a man of my age, family Sc standing 
in society against the common calumniator of all those with whom I acted 
. . . He was very near me the next day on the Common, but he kept his 
distance . . . 

And the next day (August 16) Latrobe reported the matter in general 
to the Secretary o the Navy but did not send his "Memorandum." It 
is shocking to realize on what frivolous grounds challenges were sent 
and duels, sometimes fatal, were fought. 

Latrobe had frequent opportunities for the exercise of patience under 
attack. Not only did he become the target for Thornton's disappoint- 
ment, anger, and envy; but also as an important appointee of Jefferson, 
in a position where his every move was open to scrutiny and where he 
had control (or part control) of the spending of large sums of public 
money, he was a logical target for all the Federalist writers. Long be- 
fore, in 1798, he had had his taste of their bile, in Cobbett's sneering 
paragraph about his play, The Apology. Six years later the Washington 
Federalist was in full cry, and from Wilmington Latrobe wrote Lenthall 
in Washington (November 2, 1804) : 

I find by the [Philadelphia] Aurora that the Federalist has commenced an 
attack upon me. Pray get me the papers collected in which the filth is thrown, 
that I may have the pleasure to see how I look when dragged through the 
Kennel. . . . The attack will help our Democratic Congress to appropriate 
in opposition. Anything to cure the headache in the pocket . . . 9 

On December i, 1806, Latrobe took cognizance of a further attack by 
Thornton and of more yapping by the Federalist; he wrote Thornton: 

The pamphlet you caused to be laid on the desks of Members of Congress 
attacked me by name, and in a manner which, in my opinion, nothing 



9. The Aurora article stressed both the low quality and the high cost of the work that 
had been accomplished on the United States Capitol before Latrobe's appointment, suggested 
that corruption had been rampant, and complimented Latrobe on bringing order out of chaos. 



326 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

could have provoked. I did not notice it at that time, nor yet the very scur- 
rilous abuse of me in the Washington Federalist, some of which public re- 
port attributed to you . . . 

But Thornton could not be placated; the attacks continued and cul- 
minated at last in the letter of April 20, 1808, which Thornton had 
printed in the Federalist and which led to Latrobe's suit against him for 
libel. 

Another of Latrobe's long-term enemies was Oliver Evans, the great 
American engineer inventor of the mechanized flour mill and popular- 
izer of the high-pressure steam engine. Evans thought Latrobe had done 
his engine less than justice in a report to the American Philosophical 
Society 10 and he, too, saw an opportunity to join the pack, perhaps egged 
on by Thornton himself. He sent a letter to the Federalist supporting 
Thornton's attack but changing some of its charges. Latrobe, thoroughly 
aroused, wrote Jonathan Findlay, editor of the Washington Federalist 
(May 20, 1808) : 

I understand that Evans has sent a piece to the press contradicting Dr. 
Thornton's statement as to my having been a carver of chimney pieces, & 
reducing his assertion to the keeping of a statuary yard ... It is a most 
humiliating task ... to vindicate my professional character against the rage 
of a Thornton & the stupidity & officiousness of an Evans . . . 

Even then, however, the Federalist kept the matter alive. Hoban, the 
original architect of the President's House, joined the fray and Latrobe, 
after discovering his attacker's identity, wrote the Federalist editor (Oc- 
tober 17, 1808) : 

I thank you for your letter ... in which you communicate to me that the 
author of the piece published in your paper of the 8th inst. signed "a plain 
man" is James Hoban. ... As to Mr. Hoban, his personal attack is the 
more extraordinary, as I certainly could not positively swear to his person 
... I once saw him in 1797, when I deFd to him a letter from one of the 
Commissioners requesting him to show me the public buildings; and as he 
did not accompany me ... his person was soon forgotten. 

With this was enclosed another letter to the editor for publication: 



ID, "First Report in Answer to the Enquiry Whether Any and What Improvements Have 
Been Made in the Construction of Steam Engines in America," read on May 20, 1803, and 
printed in the Tr&ns&ctiQns, vol. 6 (1809). 



WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 327 

Having discovered the author of the piece ... I have to answer to the 
personal abuse . . . that the work which it has been my duty to condemn 
& tear down was erected while he was superintendent of the public build- 
ings. . . . This notice may serve as a general answer to all he may choose 
to publish against me . . . 

Even the clergy was not free of Federalist fanatics; such a firebrand was 
the Reverend Mr. Wilmer, to whom Latrobe felt himself forced to write 
(May 24, 1809) : 

A paragraph in the Monitor of Thursday last, signed Moses, is generally 
ascribed to you. The respectability of your professional as well as ... of 
your personal character , . . forbids me to believe you capable of that kind 
of scurrility, which without pretension to wit or even truth disgraces our 
American press. . . . The scurrilous allusion to me would be undeserving 
my notice [except that I feel it my duty] to apprize you . . . that . . . the 
next attack on the part of Moses will not be privately noticed. 

The letter apparently was efficacious; no libel suit was necessary. 

Most of the anonymous letters sent or handed to him he disregarded, 
but one contained rumors that could have been dangerous and had to 
be scotched. When Lenthall was killed (September 23, 1808) by the fall 
of the Supreme Court vault in the Capitol, his affairs were placed in the 
hands of his brother-in-law Nicholas King, one of the city surveyors and 
a friend of Latrobe's. To him Latrobe wrote (August 28, 1809) : "Ten 
days ago I received an anonymous letter, in which is the following 
passage . . . 'Mr. Lenthall has left ... a long list of charges against 
you . . . Mr. King ... is going to bring them out.'** Of course the 
whole rumor proved baseless. The anonymous letter, over which Latrobe 
had pondered and worried for more than a week before writing King, 
had merely been a malicious attempt to wound. The year before, in 1807, 
there had been a similarly dangerous anonymous letter, attributed to 
J. P. Van Ness, which started rumors that circulated widely in Congress. 
This letter stated that Jefferson had once said that Latrobe had arranged 
the whole north wing of the Capitol, particularly the courtroom, without 
the President's knowledge and against his wishes. These rumors were 
becoming such a threat to the entire project that Latrobe, thoroughly 
discouraged, felt forced to write directly to Jefferson (April 5, 1811): 
"I beg that you will have the goodness to communicate to me your own 
conviction on this head, I do not expect the public buildings to be fin- 



328 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

ished under my direction. As far as I have conducted them, they will 
not disgrace your presidency . . " Jefferson, his true friend as always, 
sent him a full vindication, 11 and Latrobe acknowledged it gratefully 
in a letter to Jefferson at Monticello (August i): "For the very full & 
honorable testimony which you have been so good as to bear to the zeal 
and integrity with which I conducted the public works during your 
presidency, I cannot express the satisfaction & gratitude I feel . . ." One 
canard, at least, had been effectively stopped. 

The letters, nevertheless, were gradually wearing down Latrobe's con- 
fidence, disturbing his sense of values. Occasionally he came even to 
doubt himself and his friends. Several anonymous letters, for instance, 
stated that Mrs, Sweeny, the seamstress-upholsterer who was working 
on the furnishings for the President's House, 12 was telling everyone that 
Mrs. Madison herself was talking of Latrobe's extravagance, of his ab- 
sences from Washington and his inattention to the government business. 
Latrobe, worried, wrote Mrs. Madison at once. Her answer (September 
12, 1809) 13 is a little masterpiece gentle, strong, tactful, dignified, un- 
derstanding. It alone would explain the worship she received from so 
many of her contemporaries. She begins: 

Incredulous indeed must be the ear that receives without belief the "var- 
nished tale," but most happy would it be if you could listen without emo- 
tion, to the variety of falsehoods framed but to play on your sensibility . . . 

[Then a gentle reproof for his lack of trust.] The letter I have this mo- 
ment rec d from you, gives me uneasiness; because I find my conduct, which 
always contradicted any opinion, or expression against you, has been insuffi- 
cient to assure your judgment that I would at least be consistent. In the 
first place my affection for Mrs. Latrobe would in itself prevent my doing 
injustice to her husband and in the next I always knew that 7 had no right 
to animadvert on his journeys, or conduct as a public officer, as it is one of 
my sources of happiness, never to desire a knowledge of other people's busi- 
ness. Thirdly, I never for a moment doubted your taste or honour in the 
direction of public buildings, or even in the building of our little carriage 



11. Dated April 14, 1811. This letter is quoted on page 291. 

12. Mrs. Sweeny was the proprietress of Washington's best upholstery store she was 
almost what would be called today an interior decorator. She advertised continually in the 
National Intelligencer and evidently had a large and wealthy clientele. 

13. This letter is reproduced in Allen C. Clark, Dotty Madison, Her Life and Letters 
(Washington: W. F. Roberts, 1914). The writing is as precise as the style is clear and direct. 



WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 p.g 

. . . [This was the coachee, ordered from Peter Harvie of Philadelphia, 
which had been unsatisfactory.] 

Mrs. Sweeny is a woman of many words I have never talked with her, 
or before her, but of her work. In your absence she would release to the 
Household terrible tales of dis-affection from the Capitol which I lamented 
for your sake. I can account for Mrs. Sweeny's mis-information to you, only 
by supposing her offended at my leaving her but little to do, in the house. . . . 

I shall be strict in my examination of the servants, when I return, as I 
wish to know those who have taken the liberty to misrepresent me. I will 
say litde of the anonymous letters but that you excite my surprise at suffer- 
ing them to have the slightest effect upon your spirits. . . . Allow me again 
to thank you, with all my heart, for the trouble you have taken, in many 
instances, to oblige and accommodate me and tho' our enemies may strive 
to throw around me ungrateful appearances, I shall take a pleasure in con- 
tradicting their designs. [The "our enemies" is masterly.] 

So again anonymous letters had been proved baseless; yet these con- 
tinual harassments, public and private, coupled with the uncertain state 
of public affairs, made him susceptible to offers of other employment, 
as will appear. 

Nevertheless Latrobe was much more than a mere democratic scape- 
goat for Federalist barbs. All through his Washington residence tem- 
porarily till 1807 and permanently from 1807 to 1813 he was in the 
closest touch with the most salient figures in governmental administra- 
tion, who, at least till the War of 1812, backed him and gave him en- 
couragement. And his contacts with these men were not limited to the 
multitude of questions brought up in connection with the Navy Yard, 
the President's House, and the Capitol His letters are full of graphic 
comments on these important men and of accounts of what they thought 
and believed. In the days of bitter controversy with England which filled 
the four years preceding the war he kept his Hazlehurst relatives and his 
Philadelphia friends well informed on the turns that events were taking. 

Another political matter occupied him occasionally during this period 
the aftermath of the Burr conspiracy. We have seen how he was sub- 
poenaed as a witness at the Burr trial, though never called to the stand; 
yet as a potential witness he was in a way a marked man, and when 
General Wilkinson was tried by a court of inquiry he named Latrobe 
as one of his witnesses. In a letter to Robert Goodloe Harper (April 15, 
1808) Latrobe says of this: 



330 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

I attended the Court of Inquiry ... of Genl. Wilkinson . , . He was 
asked ... as to the nature of the evidence expected from me . . . He an- 
swered, that he believed that I could prove a connexion between Burr and 
Clarke [which would] strengthen his other proofs, that the foundation of the 
persecution he suffered was a sympathy in the designs of Burr. ... I imme- 
diately rose & stated that I was unacquainted with the nature of the con- 
nexion, but that I would very willingly give testimony ... as far as my 
knowledge . . . went ... I said that my motive . . . was the very con- 
temptuous light in which I was held ... in Genl. Wilkinson's testimony 
before the Court in Richmond ... I repeated all that related to Daniel Clarke 
[which] amounted to his having given me letters of recommendation to 
De Mun [evidently when De Mun went south to the Gulf of Mexico on 
his surveying trip]. 

A few weeks later Latrobe, apparently feeling that a talk with Wilkin- 
son (who had asked him for a memorandum of his evidence) was neces- 
sary in order to clarify his own position, wrote Wilkinson (June 4) to 
suggest a meeting. But the conference never took place. 

The effect of Wilkinson's attitude, however, continued to plague 
Latrobe. Burr was unforgettable, and all those he had been close to were 
still under a cloud. Almost three years later Latrobe was still disturbed 
and wrote Dr. Thomas Ewell in Washington two letters (March 22 and 
March 25, 1811) telling him at length of the entire matter exactly what 
Burr had offered him (the job of building the canal around the Falls 
of the Ohio), his association with Burr five and six years before, his 
complete ignorance of Burr's plans, and finally the damage done to him 
unjustly by General Wilkinson's words at the Wilkinson trial. "It is 
unfortunate for me," he says in the second letter, "that Gen. Wilkinson 
did not permit the interview to take place, which I asked ... I rely on 
the exertion of your friendship to put an end to this business in the 
way that may point out . . ." 

Burr had helped to wreck Bollman's life; was it to be the same with 
Latrobe? The architect wrote Bollman, who despite everything still ad- 
mired Burr (August 23, 1812) : "I have found myself sometimes in com- 
pany with half a dozen of Mr. Burr's friends, all cursing him for having 
duped them, & all duped in different manner . . always adapted to 
their peculiar characters." Nevertheless, three years later, when Latrobe 
feared suits would be entered against him in New York in connection 
with the Fulton steamboat debacle (which will be dealt with in due 



WASHINGTON YEARS! 1807-1813 33! 

course), it was Burr, then returned to New York, whom he called in 
to be his attorney. 

Latrobe's opinion of Wilkinson altered, too. Could some new personal 
interest have had its part in the change? Or was it merely that the exist- 
ence of such an interest made him examine the evidence more closely? 
For Wilkinson's father-in-law, Charles Trudeau, was acting as mayor 
of New Orleans, and his support was essential at a time when the New 
Orleans waterworks Latrobe's most important enterprise at the moment 
were at a crucial point revolving around the site of the pump and the 
engine house. In any event, Latrobe wrote Wilkinson on Christmas Day, 
1811: "I have lately become much indebted to your father-in-law, Mr. 
Trudeau, who has acted as Mayor . . ."; and on May 17, 1812, he wrote 
to his son Henry in New Orleans his final judgment: "I have taken great 
pains to study the evidence for & against the General, & am convinced 
that he has been most infamously used by men who ought to have pro- 
tected him at all hazards, but who have sacrificed him to popular clamor, 
& to the hatred of fellows who in talent, in military knowledge, in vir- 
tue even, are not worthy to be named in the same day with him . . ." 

The Chesapeake-Leopard affair in the early summer of 1807 was a 
shock to Latrobe. At first he could not believe that a British war vessel 
would fire on an American frigate when the latter rightly refused the 
request of the Leopard's officers to search the American vessel for de- 
serters. He wrote Henry (July 3, 1807) that he felt there must be some 
mistake in the reports; then, when he was convinced of their accuracy, 
his Americanism roused him to righteous wrath and on July 4 he offered 
his services to Jefferson as a military engineer. There was no doubt where 
his loyalty lay. And in the letter he avowed his American ancestry 
"descended in the fourth generation from American ancestors." Two 
days later (July 6) he wrote his father-in-law: 

I may, however, venture to say, that it is not their [the Administration's] 
opinion that we shall have actual war with England, but that we shall go 
as near to it as possible, so as at last to avoid it. 

And on August 2: 

I have had lately many very confidential conversations with Mr. Gallatin, 
Mr. [Robert] Smith, & the President. . . . The terms proposed to England 
... are the giving up of seamen "proved to be American,*' an apology for 
the conduct of Berkeley, and a reprimand . . . if he acted without orders. 



332 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

... I asked the President [Jefferson] if he thought we should have war: he 
answered From the interests and professions of England we may expect 
everything, but from their pride, nothing. . . . Gallatin, Smith & the Presi- 
dent believe in war, Madison and Dearborne in peace . . . 

Then on August 15, 1807, to Isaac Hazlehurst again: 

These rumors of war are equally fatal to your and to my repose . . . Sup- 
pose the money now expended in public works should go to buy blue cloth 
& pork for our army where am I? Not here at all events I must go to New 
York, or to Norfolk [or return to Philadelphia j. There I have . . . retained 
my house in Philadelphia [sublet to Delormeric, the picture dealer] for 
another six months, during which time & not sooner we shall probably know 
all about it. 

In the ensuing winter the crisis remained imminent. Latrobe wrote 
Joshua Gilpin (February 25, 1808} : 

On the subject of public affairs . . . my conversations with men in office are 
numerous 5c frequent . . . The tone of Mr. Erskine's opinions [Erskine was 
the British minister] with whom I have the pleasure of particular acquaint- 
ance . . , points out the tendency of his ideas. In discoursing on the probable 
election of Mr. Madison to the presidency, I evidently found him decidedly 
against it ... He would rather see a man . . . whose knowledge of the 
connexion between the nations . . . obtained on the spot, would correct his 
theoretical opinions ... A decisive proof to my mind that affairs are not in 
good train . . . 

Then follows a note on the proposed embargo* Later that year, in mid- 
March, Latrobe's English connection Augustus Foster, the secretary of 
the British legation, returned to England, and through him Latrobe 
took the opportunity to send some drawings to the Athenian Society in 
London. But the threat of war continued to grow; by November Jef- 
ferson's embargo was in full force, and Latrobe wrote Samuel Hazle- 
hurst (November 20, 1808) : 

[The present administration plan is to make the] embargo more strict, the 
naval little armament fitted out to watch the coast; perhaps a non-intercourse 
bill, this is doubtful but not improbable; the militia called out, & then wait 
till news arrives from England ... By what Mr. Erskine, who is an in- 
discreet man, says, the British calculations have been on the certainty of a 
President being elected who would arrange matters with England . . . That 
France in resentment would declare war, & of course, we be enlisted by the 



WASHINGTON YEARS! 1807-1813 333 

side of England ... To use his own words 4 months ago, "the Eastern 
states who live by the carrying trade would sooner quit the Union & return 
to a colonial state than see the destruction of their commerce! . . . The elec- 
tion of Mr. Madison gives us a chance for peace." I think the calculation a 
wrong one. We shall obtain no terms from England. , . . Were I a mer- 
chant I would calculate all my plans for a twelve month's embargo & get 
hold of English goods, especially hardware. . . . I'm only giving you the 
cream of my conversations at the President's, Madison's [not yet inaugurated], 
Pickering's, & Quincy's, taking in both sides . . . 

A few days later (December 4) Latrobe wrote his brother Christian, 
telling him of the Lenthall accident, and added: 

Mr. Madison is President. I have for many years been on an intimate footing 
with him. Mary has known his very excellent and amiable wife from a 
child. ... I do not approve entirely the rigid adherence to theoretic prin- 
ciples of policy which mark the conduct of our administration . . . 

To Isaac Hazlehurst, too, he offered his opinion of Jefferson and Madison 
(January 16, 1809): 

... As to embargo or war ... to judge the possibility of the latter by the 
efficiency of the armament that is going on on paper, I should suppose it 
will not take place very soon . . . Mr. Madison is not, I think, half so ob- 
noxious a man to the Federalists as the present President. Mr. Jefferson is 
a man out of a book. Mr. Madison more a man of the world. With equal 
honesty, I think the latter will adapt his measures more to the actual state 
of the world & of opinions, while the former seems to have in many cases 
attempted to force the state of things into the mould of his theories . , . 

Then political matters in so far as they affected Latrobe quieted down, 
the embargo was repealed, and all through 1809 there are but slight 
references to them in his papers. 

Erskine returned to England, leaving things in their still unsatisfac- 
tory status. As a sign of British displeasure at the bold line taken by the 
upstart new country, he was replaced by mere charges d'affaires first by 
Jackson, whose rude stupidities alienated American opinion still further 
and eventually caused his recall; then by John Morier, who brought with 
him revived hopes of peace, soon to be disappointed* Meanwhile, of 
course, the two countries were still technically friendly, and Latrobe's 
social relations with the British legation continued. One encouraging 
note was the evident desire of the British to have at Washington a con- 



^4 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

vcnient and impressive legation building. Morier consulted Latrobe about 
the possibility, and Latrobe in a long letter expressing his own views 
(October 27) notes, first, the original scheme (which he credits to Wash- 
ington) of setting aside the lots on either side of the Mall "one of the 
most beautiful sites in the city/' as he calls it for the accommodation 
of the foreign ministers. "Letters were sent to the several ministers," he 
continues, and "not one accepted but the Portuguese Minister. Tho' the 
deed was actually made to him ... his successors have neglected to have 
it recorded . . . Another difficulty arose afterwards [which] rendered this 
disposition entirely nugatory . . ." Latrobe then discusses various possible 
sites and the probable cost of the building at least $25,000 to $30,000. 
The house in Georgetown which had been rented by the last three Brit- 
ish ministers was now in the hands of the Russian ambassador, Count 
Pahlen. And Latrobe believes that the rent for any suitable building 
would be at least $1500 to $1700. But Morier, Latrobe felt, had little real 
knowledge of American opinion; he was almost entirely under Federal- 
ist tutelage, fundamentally hostile to the democratic point of view, and 
almost blind to its strength. Madison's strong Message to Congress on the 
situation (December 5, 1810) brought matters to a head, and Latrobe 
wrote Joshua Gilpin in Philadelphia (December 5, 1810) of its effect: 

Morier spoke to me very freely ... on the President's speech "They may 
wait long enough ... for anything more than a charge d'affaires if this is 
the spirit in which they chuse to treat John Bull!" ... He considers the 
country to be still under the influence of Jefferson, & believes even that Mr. 
Barlow is not without considerable weight in biasing the opinions of the 
President. This latter opinion I believe to be unfounded, tho' I doubt not but 
that the former is to a certain extent correct. . . There is a wretched kind 
of policy which I think both parties are pursuing ... I am to dine with 
Morier . . . The Federalists will cling to him . . . 

And to his brother Christian two days later: 

[The President's message is] ill humored as respects Great Britain [but] Mr. 
Morier ... is I think more than necessary out of temper with it. ... As 
a sort of war, perfectly bloodless indeed, we have taken possession of the 
whole of West Florida . . . The President has recommended the erection here 
of a National University & of a Military Academy . . . Both, if adopted, will 
give me ample employment. ... It is probable that the non-intercourse act 
will be renewed with England prior to Feb. 2 as I do not suppose the ob- 
noxious Orders in Council will be repealed . . . 



WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 335 

Thus the two countries blundered on in their stubborn course toward 
war. By January, 1811, the lines were growing tighter, and Morier showed 
himself more obstinate and misled. Latrobe kept Joshua Gilpin apprised 
of developments and wrote him (January 3, 1811): 

. . . Morier has been sick for a fortnight or three weeks ... He is miser- 
ably off here for society. A few members of Congress associate I am told 
much with him. They are of the high Federal caste, of course they will do 
him no good . . , With our heads of departments, I do not find that he has 
any associates [sic] at all. Mr. Jo. Tayloe is his principal acquaintance. When 
I dined with him last, Tayloe & Law were present. Tayloe maintained [that] 
the Democratic party were ready to receive a prince of the house of Bona- 
parte, & to find him a throne, that Jefferson governed the country now, & 
was sold to France . . . that the eastern states alone saved us by their threats 
of separation of the Union . . . Law made an admirable defence of the ad- 
ministration to a certain extent . . . But Morier, I found, listened with more 
pleasure to the very inferior speech of Tayloe . . . 

Nor did Latrobe hide his sentiments from his English acquaintances; in 
fact, he made sure that they reached the one most highly placed of them 
all Lord Gambier, whom he had met twenty-five years earlier at the 
house of the famous Mrs. Bouverie. To him he sent by the British navy- 
ship Gleaner, in a packet through the courtesy of the British embassy, a 
long letter (October 23, 1811) praising Captain Rogers, commander of 
the President, whom the British had said they would have hung at the 
yardarm had they been able. Latrobe also attacked the behavior of the 
British officers in the President-Little Belt informal battle, as well as 
those of some of the British privateers that cruised off the American 
coast. He characterizes the "gross ignorance of the English ministers 
who come hither, in every point of importance relative to the country," 
as "astonishing." He tells of the tremendous development of American 
manufactures as a result of the embargo and the English wars* He de- 
nies that Mr. Madison is partial to France; "there is no such thing as 
a French party." The letter is a powerful indictment of British policy 
and a strong declaration of American strength. It is tragic that Britain 
paid no attention whatsoever to all the warnings it received, of which 
Latrobe's was but one. It had not yet learned to think of the Americans 
as other than rather uppish colonials. It would have to learn the truth 
the hard way hard for both countries. 



336 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

It is strange, perhaps, but typical of Latrobe's strong support of the 
basic aims of the Administration that there is hardly a word in his letters 
about the French blockade of Europe and the French seizure of Amer- 
ican ships. Evidently he still retained his fundamental love of France; 
he seemed to feel, like William Hazlitt in England, that foreign powers 
and especially England were responsible for forcing the French to take 
such extreme measures. The Latrobes were intimate friends of the 
Francophile Barlows, and when Barlow was sent on his ill-omened mis- 
sion to arrange things with Napoleon the Latrobes accompanied his 
family to Annapolis to bid him farewell as he sailed. 14 And Latrobe wrote 
Barlow several long letters of gossip, both personal and political. Thus 
on November 15, 1811: 

The meeting of Congress last week has probably produced matter for let- 
ters of all your correspondents. The insolence of Foster, the steady & cautious 
candor of Monroe & the ultimate amende honorable of the Br. Minister . . . 
also the sandy [?] opposition furnished to the Federalists by the late settle- 
ment of the affair of the Chesapeake ... In the house . . . there will be 
38 to 40 sturdy 39 article men, including Randolph from whom I borrowed 
the designation ... on the side of our country we shall count 100. Clay, the 
Speaker, is as firm as a rock . . . Macon had a few votes, being expected to 
be a Randolphian before the close of the session . . , On the Senate, the ad- 
ministration cannot place the same dependence. Pope will desert them, I 
think . * * Bradley is doubtful, & Leib not very firm, . . . Yesterday Mr. 
Monroe's appointment [as Secretary of State] . . . was before the Senate . . . 
I hear it was debated . . . today it was referred to a committee ... It will 
no doubt pass. . . . Giles is also doubtful . . . Varnum fills clumsily the chair 
of Pickering . . . Randolph begins to ... lash away as formerly at the City, 
"We are again met in the Capital & the Capitol, and we also find ourselves 
in the same desert!" 



14. TTie vilification, of Joel Barlow as an atheist, a traitor, and a subversive character at 
the time of this appointment lends an ironic coloration to similar attacks on distinguished 
governmental servants in the mid-twentieth century. But Barlow was so obviously the only 
person qualified for the job that his appointment, despite the violence of the attacks, was 
finally accepted by the Senate. Barlow, pursuing Napoleon in vain, died in Zarnowiec, near 
Cracow, on December 18, 1812. See Charles Burr Todd, life and Letters of Joel Barlow 
(New York: Putnam's, 1886), and Milton Kantor, Joel Barlow (in preparation). 

After Joel Barlow's departure, and until the end of the war, the Barlows rented Kalorama 
to the French Ambassador, Seruricr. 



WASHINGTON YEARS: 1807-1813 337 

This is a typical commentary. Such glimpses must if Barlow ever ac- 
tually received them have awakened in him thoughts of home particu- 
larly pleasant in his icy trek north and east, following Napoleon's march 
to Moscow. 

These years of approaching war brought changes to the Latrobes as 
well. In the autumn of 1811 Robert Alexander, their landlord, died in 
New Orleans, and the Latrobes were forced to move. Their second 
house, to which they moved on March i, 1812, belonged to Thomas 
Ridgeway; the rent was 350 a year. It was larger, a little grander, and 
much nearer the center of things than their first. On Pennsylvania Ave- 
nue, in the neighborhood of the Washington Theater, it was almost di- 
rectly across the avenue from the residence of Latrobe*s good friend Paul 
Hamilton, the Secretary of the Navy. Here the family continued to lead 
a busy social life, remembered later with great pleasure by their growing 
son John. It was from this house that they joined President Madison on 
his second inaugural parade; even John rode in the procession up the 
hill to the Capitol, Another social note at the time of the war places 
Mr. and Mrs. Latrobe at the naval ball held in Washington on Decem- 
ber 8, 1812. As the architect, writing to Henry in New Orleans (Decem- 
ber 9), describes it: 

Captns. Hull & Morris being here, it was decided to give them a Naval 
Ball, as it was called, at Tomlinsons, Lon's formerly. About two hours be- 
fore . . . handbills arrived from New York, announcing the U.S. frigate, 
Com. Decatur, had captured the Macedonian ... It was immediately re- 
solved to illuminate the city, & the Pennsylvania Avenue & the scattered 
houses on the hills, cut, I assure you, a most singular & splendid dash of 
scattered fires. The company assembled, all the secretaries & wives. . . . Doubt 
was then thrown on the truth . . . People were ashamed to have wasted their 
candles . . . The dancing, however, went on, & the illumination was placed 
to [the] account of the Guerrierc. About 9 o'clock, young A. Hamilton ar- 
rived at the door with the colors of the Macedonian . . . the applauses were 
absolutely boisterous ... At last he arrived in the midst of the room, where 
in an open circle stood his mother & sisters, Mrs. Hamilton leaning on your 
mother . . . Her son was soon in her arms . . . The colors were taken tap 
and spread over the heads of Captns. Hull, Morris, Stewart, & other Naval 
men, including the Secretary, & marched like a canopy round the room, & 
at last spread at the feet of Mr. Madison . . . Nothing could be more affect- 
ing, at the same time dramatic, as the scene . . . 



-,g THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

Thus the last month of 1812 brought with it this sudden upsurge of 
enthusiasm and brilliance to lighten momentarily the gathering dark- 
ness. At the naval ball, with Mary the chosen companion of Mrs. Ham- 
ilton (wife of the Secretary of the Navy) Latrobe must have felt proud 
indeedthis was a sign of achievement of high place; this was a kind of 
vindication. But in every other respect he knew his prospects were grow- 
ing constantly dimmer. Congress in its session of 1811 had passed no 
appropriation for his salary or for further major work on the Capitol; 
Latrobe's income from this source was at an end. The Navy work con- 
tinued, but on a more and more uncertain basis. For his main support, 
and for cash to fight suits or to settle various outstanding debts chiefly 
those resulting from his endorsements of the notes of others he was re- 
duced to depending on his non-governmental work and on the business 
ventures into which, with such frequent misfortune, he entered. Mrs. 
Latrobe, in her unpublished memoir of her husband, portrays their situa- 
tion vividly: 

His salary was $3000 a year, the promised addition being made from the 
Navy Department. With this salary we might have laid up something, as I 
was a rigid economist, having been educated never to go in debt. My dear 
husband's generous character was soon discovered and in consequence he 
became a prey to the worthless and improvident, being repeatedly applied to 
to become security for men who had no claim upon him, thus involving him- 
self in the debts of others and drawing upon his salary every year to meet 
their notes. He never could bring himself to use the important monosyllable 
>Jo when asked for his signature. At this time I possess a schedule of his 
property in which list is $10,000 of money lent to unprincipled men. 16 

Thus encumbered, Latrobe's further residence in Washington par- 
ticularly on the wide social scale to which the family was accustomed 
was becoming more and more problematical. 



15. This memoir, transcribed by her son John H. B. Latrobe in a large notebook of family 
memorabilia, is in the possession of the family. 



CHAPTER 



Private Professional Practice: 1807-1813 



LATROBE'S work on the Capitol, the Navy Yard, and the President's 
House by no means occupied his entire time during his Washington resi- 
dence. Although he himself made by far the greater number of the draw- 
ings required and spent many hours in personal inspection, there was still 
ample opportunity to carry on private practice at the same time. Eco- 
nomically this was a necessity, for his government salary was insufficient 
to support his family, furnish the capital necessary for his speculative 
ventures, and at the same time take care of the raveled financial ends 
of his Philadelphia debts. 

A major portion of these private architectural jobs naturally were in 
Philadelphia, some of them brought with him to Washington in 1807 
and some newly commissioned. Work on the Baltimore Cathedral con- 
tinued all through this period. The Wain house, already discussed, was 
under construction, and just before he left his old center he was asked 
to design two more houses, those for Captain John Meany and for John 
Markoe, which we shall come to presently. Soon after this he was ap- 
pointed architect for the new Bank of Philadelphia, and there were even 
a few slight attentions required by the Bank of Pennsylvania, now six 
years old. 

At the same time there were minor commissions for Washington and 
Philadelphia acquaintances. We hear, without particulars, of a house for 
a Mr. Craig. Apparently a stable and outbuildings, possibly in Gothic, 
were designed for his Philadelphia friend George Harrison, to whom 
he writes (July 25, 1807) : "Don't be frightened. The enclosed is a sketch 
of what I have designed for you . . . About 100 dollars more than the 
expense of a common front will give you your abbey glimmering through 
the foliage." And a month later in a letter to Robert Mills (August 20) 

339 



THE CLIMAX PERIOD 



he mentions the job. On the Eastern Shore in Maryland, he seems to 
have helped Charles Goldsborough with the alteration or rebuilding of a 
house Goldsborough had just bought; he writes him (March 18, 1807), 
expressing his regret at not being able to complete the "proposed arrange- 
ment" with him personally, and continues: U I hope still to render you 
every possible service in your proposed re-edification of the house you 
have bought . . ." He recommends a certain Mr. Grimes of Elkton as 
the best carpenter for the job, and concludes: ". . . if you will forward 
me an exact plan of your walls, ground plan & elevation, I can send you 
as clear & useful advice as if I were on the spot." The house referred to 
was probably Myrtle Bank, near the Wye River in Talbot County. 

Among the other, more important commissions was the house for 
Captain John Meany. About this Latrobe never grew enthusiastic as he 
did over the Wain house; he made the designs, to be sure, and Mills 
acted as occasional superintendent for him. But evidently Meany's taste 
and the architect's were often at odds, and Latrobe felt his client had 
made undesirable changes or used inept details. Why the black water 
table, the architect asks Meany, and to Mills he writes of his disgust at 
the exterior brick panels (mere collectors of dust, he calls them) which 
Meany wanted. On August 5, 1807, he wrote to Mills objecting to the 
design for the front door: ". . . this is congruous . . . with the taste and 
wishes of the Captain, for nothing could better remind him of the dec- 
oration of a binnacle, excepting ... a chimney piece. I should think 
those imitations [in stone] of cabinetwork incongruous with good taste 
... I am a little sick of Captain Meany. I shall never get the least credit 
by his house . . " Latrobe billed Meany only $100 for the design (De- 
cember 23, 1807); it would seem that Mills detailed the job as he saw 
fit, working directly with the owner. 

Robert Mills superintended all Latrobe's work in Philadelphia at this 
time, and his careful meticulous handling of it took a load of worry 
off the designer's shoulders. But in taste and temperament the two men 
differed markedly. Mills, brought up in a purely native American archi- 
tectural tradition, was still in matters of detail strongly under the in- 
fluence of the Federal and Late Colonial manners; he loved tiny mold- 
ings and richness of surface modulation, and he never quite came to 
grasp until much later in his lifethe values of the strong quiet planes 
and the muted accents of Latrobe's classical taste. Latrobe's opinion of 
him was equivocal, a mixture of admiration and disapproval. Thus to 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807-1813 341 

John Markoe, in Philadelphia, Latrobe writes (August 10, 1810): "Not- 
withstanding my believing the pious Robert Mills is not absolutely the 
most minute inspector into the proceedings of your workmen ... yet 
his answer [s] to my string of queries are so detailed that it would have 
been more trouble to have invented the statement of things than to 
have copied them from observation . . ." And, after Mills had left his 
employ, Latrobe answers a question of John Wickham concerning his 
house (no\v the Valentine Museum) in Richmond (March 16, 1811) : 
"[Brackenridge] requested me to give you my opinion upon a stucco 
for your house, which it appears your man of taste, who has designed 
it, says is absolutely necessary to render the work complete.'* * He goes 
on to refer Wickham to his report on stucco in India, published in Vol- 
ume 6 (1809) of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. 
In a later letter (April 26, 1811) Latrobe states his own dislike of certain 
features of the house as he had heard them described particularly the 
front hall and staircase, which seemed to him to be in the worst taste of 
Charles IX of France! Nevertheless Mills, in addition to superintending 
the houses for Wain and Meany, was also in 1808 overseeing Latrobe's 
two other Philadelphia jobs the house for John Markoe and the Bank 
of Philadelphia. 

The Markoe house, on Chestnut Street, was brilliantly original in con- 
cept. It made the most efficient use of its narrow lot by having its service 
stair placed near the middle of the garden side of the house and the main 
staircase near the front, in a hall approached through an octagonal porch 
and a square vestibule. The rooms, lighted at front and back, spread to 
meet between the stairways and could therefore be excellently approached 
or served; at the same time the greater part of the floor area could be 
utilized to the best advantage. Closets and beautifully proportioned re- 
cesses filled every inch, yet the effect was open and welcoming. The 
outside was elegantly simple. On each floor large triple windows on 
both sides flooded the interior with light, and the entrance door, re- 
strained in detail, gave just the right note of elegance. 

Naturally the house, for so wealthy and distinguished a client, em- 
bodied all the "latest improvements." It had a bathroom complete with 



i. Although the "man o taste" is not named, it seems probable that Mills, to whom the 
house is usually attributed, is meant. The spirit of these letters and the references to the 
Wickham house designer are precisely similar to other passages referring to Robert Mills. 
This parallelism can hardly be accidental. 



THE CLIMAX 



Gjardeit. 

6 , 




the Latrobe sketchbooks 
20. Afar&oe House; Philadelphia. First-floor Plan. 

\vater closet and bath- A fetter to Mills (January 23, 1810) suggested a 
slight rearrangement so rfiat the furnace that ieated the water might 
be more conveniently vested to an adjoining bedroom chimney. The 
rough s-ketdb that accompanied the letter is perhaps the earliest existing 
American d/a^irig of a complete fcatifiroom. 

Latrobe h#d c^idcB% begun the Markoe designs in February, 18083* 
by Decemfae/ the contract was ready to let; a year later the interior de- 
tails were urder way and there were questions to settle about the very 
unusual stairs. A#d it was at this moment that Mills Bad to he absent 
for several ^eeks, called to his father-in-law's house in Georgetown by 
the tragic de^th of his wife's brother in a duel Latrobe wrote Markoe> 
reas^urifljr hi#* &0d explaining the superintendent's absence^ and him- 
self vent to Philadelphia to see tKat all was well. The railing of the 
marble entrance steps and platform was o iron; for this Latrobe followed 
a pattern he had designed for the Capitol stairs, having the parti cast in 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807-1813 



343 




From the Latrobe letter books 

FIGURE 21. Markoe House, Philadelphia. Sketch for Rearranging Bathroom. From 
Latrobe's letter to Mills, January 23, 1810. 

Washington from the Capitol original. He visited Philadelphia to over- 
see his jobs in March, 1810, and again in June; of the latter visit he 
wrote Mills (June 10) : "My sole object is Mr. Markoe's house. I shall 
stay as long as I want . . ," The house by then was rapidly approach- 
ing completion, and on August 10 Latrobe promised Markoe that he 
would certainly be able to move in in October. Yet in November the 
house was still "almost finished" except for the delayed entrance-step 
railing, and as late as the end of January Latrobe was still writing his 
superintendent about the installation of the iron. The Markoe house, 
according to the architect, cost $8.00 per superficial foot, and he re- 
marks that it was the cheapest house "of the first class" in Philadelphia. 2 
The Markoes were delighted with their new home; their reception o 
it was a heartening thing indeed in a time of discouragement. In early 
December, 1810, just before they moved in, they showed Joshua Gilpin 
around it and expressed their admiration of the architect; Gilpin passed 
on the good news to Latrobe, who answered his letter on December 5: 
"Tour good opinion of Mr. Markoe's house flatters me very agreeably. 
As to the exterior, it is created by the interior, & was with me a secondary 
thing altogether. It has certainly no merit . . ." But in this he did him- 



2, The square-foot cost of the Markoe house reveals that building in Philadelphia was 
expensive even then. In 1953 the cost per square foot of a house "of the first class" would 
be likely to run to $30, or over three times the Markoe figure. But the general buying value 
of the dollar has in the meantime risen to from five to seven times its value in 1810. 



344 E CLIMAX PERIOD 

self an injustice, for the exterior, by its frank expression of the unusual 
plan, had a power and a directness altogether winning; the house, with 
its triple windows, brought a new rhythm into the Philadelphia land- 
scape. When the Markoes moved in at last, in mid-winter, they were 
even more elated, and Mrs. Markoe hastened to write Latrobe of their 
pleasure. He answered (February 19, 1811): ''Delightful as my profes- 
sion is in most of its circumstances, it would be infinitely more so, did 
every architect receive as flattering a reward from his employers, as you 
have bestowed upon me . . ." 

But the family did not live in the house long. Chestnut Street was rap- 
idly changing, and Philadelphia's growth had no regard for personal 
convenience. Business was creeping up the street inevitably, and what a 
few short years before had been the finest of the city's residential dis- 
tricts became instead a confused region of shops and taverns, public baths 
and circuses. Two of Latrobe's most beautiful houses fell early victims 
to this march of "progress" the Wain house, sold to Dr. Swain, became 
a public bath; the Markoe house was converted into a hotel Eventually 
two more stories were added to the original three of the latter, smother- 
ing its proportions and concealing its original elegance; for decades it 
stood, a caricature of its former self, succumbing again to economic pres- 
sure and finally being replaced by a characterless commercial structure. 
Sic transit . . . 3 

Another notable Pennsylvania commission of these early Washington 
years was the Bank of Philadelphia. This institution, of which George 
Clymer was president, was one of the large number of local banks 
founded in the first decade of the nineteenth century to take care of the 
enormous increase in business activity and to fill the void caused by the 
demise of the First Bank of the United States. Latrobe's selection as archi- 
tect was almost inevitable, for his Bank of Pennsylvania was universally 
admired not only as a beautiful incident in Philadelphia's streets but 
also as a functionally satisfactory building. The site of the new structure 



3. The relative rapidity of change in the United States and England can be well illus- 
trated by the history of Latrobe's own work. All his major houses in England are still 
extant, the house his family lived in near the center of London stood till the bombings of 
the Second World War, and the house he and his wife inhabited still stands. Of the American 
city houses which he designed, only the Decatur house is preserved; his own various homes 
in Philadelphia and Washington disappeared long ago, and of his other Philadelphia work 
the two banks and the theater not a trace remains. 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807-1813 345 

was close to that of the earlier bank; this makes all the odder the fact 
that Latrobe in designing it chose to make it Gothic, A rather blocky 
composition of brick with stone trim, its doors and windows had pointed 
arches and projecting hood moldings; it had battlements of a sort, and 
stone pinnacles; the profiles of the moldings were what Latrobe consid- 
ered Gothic, and on the interior the plaster vaults were webbed with 
tracery. Nevertheless, as one sees it in old engravings for it had but a 
short life it is far from the conventional Gothic building, for its firm, 
symmetrical composition, strong horizontals, and broad wall surfaces 
are still, as could be expected, more classic than Gothic in feeling. 

This commission was received in the spring of 1807; by December 
construction was well along. Latrobe wrote his brother Christian (De- 
cember i, 1807) : "Your fondness for Gothic architecture has induced me 
to erect a little Gothic building in this city, the Philadelphia Bank. Ex- 
ternally, it will not be ugly, but internally, I mean it to be a little cab- 
inet. The boardroom is a Gothic octagon Chapter House with one pil- 
lar in the center . . ." Robert Mills superintended the work and made 
many of the details from the sketches (often quite rough) that Latrobe 
sent on from Washington. It is interesting to notice in all of this corre- 
spondence the architect's care in handling the purely practical necessities 
the rebates on the iron bank shutters, for instance, "to prevent fasten- 
ings from being sawn through"; the iron angles or corner beads set in 
the plaster at the corners of piers and reveals, to prevent damage to the 
plaster; the ventilation of the book and money vault; and so on. In the 
course of the work he took occasion to further Mills's architectural edu- 
cation by giving him (February 13, 1808) the first two parts of "Brit- 
ton's Gothic Architecture," 4 realizing also that Mills's increased knowl- 
edge would be of great service to the building. By March the contract 
for the plastering was awarded to Latrobe's favorite plasterer, William 
Thackara, whom he had trained in the skills his own designs required. 
This contract was of special importance, for much of the effect of the 
interior would result from the perfection of the intricate tracery to be 
formed in the plaster ceilings. Sketches in letters to Mills give fascinating 
glimpses of the rich plasterwork. Evidently the banking room had an 



4. Probably John Britten's The Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain (London: Long- 
mans, Reed & Ormc, 1807-26), which was issued in parts from 1805 on. The first volume 
was completed in 1807, the second in 1809. 



346 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

elaborate fan vault; the radiating ribs had cusped panels between them, 
cast in advance, and there were elaborate modeled bosses at the inter- 
sections. In the center was a large pendant. Latrobe had this manufac- 
tured in Washington, under his own eyes; it was framed in iron, like 
"a birdcage" (as he wrote Mills). This was to be fastened securely to 
the ceiling framing, and the radiating ribs were to be brought down 
and adjusted to it. The whole must have been a fantasy in Gothic rib- 
bing not too unlike certain English ceilings of a decade earlier. The vault 
was completely non-structural, but in those pre-Pugin and pre-Viollet-le- 
Duc days Gothic was less a structural system than a dream of richly dec- 
orated curving surfaces to puzzle or please the eye. In the Philadelphia 
of 1808, the vault must have been a source of wonder; at least it was 
unique. 

Late in November of that year the bank moved into its new premises, 
just as the contracts for the Markoe house were signed. Latrobe had 
designed all the bank furniture, and in a full letter to President Clymer 
(June 18, 1808) he described its location. He felt the matter especially 
important because some of the directors, he understood, wished all to 
be left in abeyance till the bank moved in; they did not realize the ad- 
vantage of careful planning ahead of time. With his intimate knowledge 
of the bank's functioning and with the advantage of his experience in 
the Bank of Pennsylvania, he knew better than they how the various 
portions interlocked and had consequently designed the whole as a unit. 
The arrangement he proposed, he told Clymer, was even more efficient 
than that of his earlier bank. The entrance to the banking room was on 
the east* On the left (south side) he had placed the first teller, conven- 
ient to the vaults and the cashier's office. Across the west side stretched 
the desks of the bookkeepers, conveniently accessible to the first teller 
and the currency scales. On the north side was the second teller, equally 
convenient to the bookkeepers. The note clerk was in the northeast cor- 
ner, close to the entrance to be easily available to the public and yet 
also next to the second teller, "to whom the money for payment of notes is 
paid." In the southeast corner, across the entrance passage from the note 
clerk and equally near the entrance, the discount clerk was to reign. 
Latrobe noted that the range of bookkeepers 7 desks along the west side 
might not be required at once, but as the bank grew they could be added 
as necessary. As for the furniture for the cashier's and president's offices, 
that, he added, could wait until his next visit to Philadelphia, 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807-1813 347 

The bank did expand and rapidly outgrew its first building. Less than 
two decades later Latrobe's Gothic structure on which he had lavished 
so much care was destroyed, to be replaced by a much larger classic build- 
ing designed by Strickland. It was the all-too-usual history of Latrobe's 
work. 

The year in which the bank was finished (1808) saw the completion 
of another Gothic building by Latrobe: Christ Church in Washington, 
on G Street near Sixth Street Southeast, not far from the Navy Yard. 5 
The church still stands surprisingly little altered, though somewhat 
changed in appearance by a particularly knobby white stucco applied in 
the early twentieth century and offers an opportunity today of judg- 
ing Latrobe's entire Gothic achievement. A relatively small structure, 
the church is a simple rectangle with a square tower over the entrance; 
the chancel arch was not constructed until after Latrobe's death. The 
composition of the tower itself is excellent, and its connection with the 
gable-roofed nave is handled with simple and satisfactory directness. 
Though the church is in brick, it has a stone hood molding around the 
entrance arch, and little stone key blocks on the smaller arches reveal 
the classic foundation of their author's taste. Yet these are not intrusive; 
the feeling of the whole is right. The doors and windows are pleasantly 
proportioned. When first built it was a sort of village church, and seen 
from a distance its tower rising over the scattered houses must really 
have given to this part of Washington much the effect of an English 
country village. Even today the tower carries its dominant message above 
the little two- and three-story row houses that line the near-by streets, 
and the placing of the church well back from the street line so that it 
is approached over a green churchyard adds immeasurably to its effect. 

Inside, the building is not without charm. Between the nave and aisles 
the roof is supported by two rows of slender, slightly tapered, cast-iron 
columns; the nave ceiling is elliptically vaulted in plaster; the side-aisle 
ceilings are flat. The proportions are high, the windows narrow but tall; 
pointed arches lead into the chancel and the tower gallery; and, for the 
small dimensions, there is a surprising sense of airiness and space. Of 
course, as in the Bank of Philadelphia and the Gothic design for the 
Cathedra] of Baltimore, the interior is in no sense historically Gothic; yet 



5. Latrobe, as architect, signed the final brickwork and plastering accounts on March 9, 

1808. 



348 E CLIMAX PERIOD 

the pointed windows, the slim columns, and the high-seeming space give 
a genuinely churchly effect, faintly reminiscent of antiquityan effect of 
Gothic as seen through a child's eyes or imagined from the reading of a 
fairy story. Its merits, naturally, are those that result from the fact that 
its creator was an artist; for its ineptness as an interpretation of Gothic 
cannot entirely conceal his genius. Later, as has already been noted, La- 
trobe's own feeling for Gothic changed, but it is a boon to have still 
standing, still serving its original function, this quaintly attractive church 
to show another facet of its designer's mind. 

There were other private Washington commissions, several of them 
still problematical like the Bank of Columbia in Georgetown and the 
Bank of Washington. For the first Latrobe had installed an iron roof 
as early as 1805 and perhaps had done more; old photographs show a 
simple exterior with a large and commanding central arch that might 
well have been his, though it is clothed in the prevailing manner of the 
time and either Thornton or Hadfield might have arrived at a similar 
solution. In any case a dispute arose between the bank officials and the 
contractors, litigation ensued in 1810, and Latrobe was the chief wit- 
ness in the affair. 6 

The work for the Bank of Washington is even more puzzling. On 
September 9, 1809, Latrobe wrote Daniel Carroll of Duddington about 
it: "If I expected either to make my fortune or to increase my reputation 
by directing the execution of the design of the Washington Bank, it 
might be well enough to persuade you . . . that I have nothing but your 
interests in view in what I advise or direct , . ." And he goes on to tell 
of the mortification caused him by Carroll's countermanding of his or- 
ders. "You have rendered my drawings useless , . . You would not use 
either your attorney or your physician in this manner, and why should 
you suppose your architect to have less skill or honesty or blunter feel- 
ings?" Obviously he did serve as the architect; obviously, too, things did 
not go as he wished. His feelings about the work were mixed, and in 
all his existing correspondence he never once referred to it again. Yet 
the structure as built (if we can trust old views) was, on the exterior 
at least, a worthy work of which he need not have felt ashamed. 

He had pleasanter experiences on a much smaller commission carried 

6. Letter to Robert Mills, January 23, 1810: *'I am detained by being subpoenaed as the 
principal witness for the Columbia Bank . . . ." 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807 1813 349 

out during 1810 alterations and improvements to Kalorama, the estate 
on the hills of northwest Washington belonging to his dear friends the 
Joel Barlows. The work was small; apparently it dealt largely with a 
gate and gatehouse but included some new marble mantels (probably 
for the main house) bought from Traquair in Philadelphia, Here La- 
trobe had the pleasure of working for a family he and his wife both ad- 
mired and loved; fortunately the job went well, with none of those un- 
foreseen imbroglios that so often cloud professional dealings with per- 
sonal friends. 

Another fascinating project arose in 1812, but nothing came of it. 
Thomas Law, the farsighted, felt that one of the difficulties in Wash- 
ington was the great distance between the residences of the Cabinet 
members. Could not efficiency in the government be improved if they 
\vere nearer the President, the Capitol, and one another? He wrote La- 
trobe asking his advice about the best location, and the architect, at once 
enthusiastic, answered (March 20) suggesting a site north of Pennsyl- 
vania Avenue near Seventh Street Northwest, where the ground sloped 
steeply down to the avenue and the Mall beyond. Not only was this just 
halfway from the Capitol to the President's House, but it was also high 
enough to possess a broad prospect over the Mall to the Potomac. "It is 
perhaps the handsomest situation in the whole city, excepting the Presi- 
dent's house/' he wrote. He would place the houses on the north side of 
the lot, they should be 2j'-6" wide, "and the slope of the hill to the south 
would furnish a handsome garden ... as far as the line of the Avenue. 
I have made a design and estimate for such a block of houses . . ." Com- 
plete with a stable, each would cost $12,000. But in June the war broke 
out, and another forward-looking dream of Law's and of Latrobe's fell 
a victim to it. 

For Governor Claiborne of Louisiana Latrobe designed two New Or- 
leans monuments: the first, in 1810, for a Mr. Lewis who had perished 
in a duel; the second, and the more important, in the following year, for 
Mrs. Claiborne, who had died in childbirth. For this the architect had 
Franzoni carve a relief; as he wrote the governor (September 17, 1811): 
"Franzoni had bestowed upon it his best talents, and the group of figures 
in basso relievo are exquisitely sculptured in marble." The monument 
still stands, and although the relief has been much eroded it bears wit- 
ness to its designer's delicate taste and expressive conception. 

During the early months of 1812 Latrobe was also busy on a design for 



350 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

a dormitory at Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky, made for 
Henry Clay, to whom the architect wrote (May 15) enclosing a long list 
of questions and explaining the different methods used in existing col- 
leges for housing students. In the final plan sent to Clay at Lexington 
(June 24), Latrobe adopted the Princeton dormitory scheme, in which 
each student has an 8-foot-square sleeping cubicle, arranged with one or 
two others to form a room 16 or 24 feet long. Unfortunately the plan was 
not preserved and the first building of Transylvania College has long 
since perished. From existing old views it does not seem to have resem- 
bled Latrobe J s work; if Latrobe's design was used at all, it was probably 
in matters of plan only. At about this time the architect also began to 
work with Clay on the design of Clay's own house, Ashland, which en- 
gaged them both for over a year. 

As an engineer, too, Latrobe was in demand. He was consulted about 
the silting up of the Hog Island bar in the Delaware, with which he was 
familiar through his residence in Newcastle and Wilmington. Recommen- 
dations were made by him and on November 19, 1807, he submitted his bill 
of $150 to Thomas Fitzsimmons of Philadelphia. Three years later he was 
asked for advice about the Potomac bridge at Washington: how could 
the channel through it to Georgetown, which insisted on silting up, be 
kept open? Mr. Thomas More of Brookville, Maryland, had suggested 
wing walls or dykes to narrow the opening in the hope that the increased 
current would scour out the channel between. Latrobe had been retained 
by the Washington Bridge Company as consultant, and, although the 
wing dams were an integral part of the scheme, he wrote General Mason 
at Georgetown (January 8, 1811) that this would not affect his giving an 
unbiased judgment. The matter had come up before a Senate committee, 
for the channel was essential, and the committee through Mr. Carroll had 
referred the question to Latrobe, who found against the proposal; his 
experience both in England and in the United States had made him 
skeptical of such "scouring works," for though they deepen a certain point 
they are responsible for building up other shoals which may be even more 
dangerous. Here he feared that the result would completely close naviga- 
tion in the Eastern Branch up to the Navy Yard. On January 20, 1811, 
he wrote More explaining his objections and appended a long disquisition 
on America's innate suspicion of trained professional men and on his own 
consequent difficulties. 

Just how much Latrobe had to do with the actual design of the Po- 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807-1813 35! 

tomac bridge is difficult to judge; from the existing correspondence it 
would seem that he was more consultant than designer. But he designed 
other bridges. As early as 1797 he had made a design for a Schuylkill 
River bridge in Philadelphia- As we have seen, he had made a complete 
report on a bridge to connect New York and Long Island via Blackwells 
(now Welfare) Island. And in 1806 he had taken out a patent on a stone 
arch-ribbed bridge, which will be considered later. During his Washing- 
ton years he designed a bridge, probably over Acquia Creek, for Daniel 
Brent, the quarry owner, and with his customary honesty he told Brent 
that no bridge in the location could possibly be built for $1,000, the sum 
Brent had named, especially if it had to be furnished with a draw. 

But his largest private engineering work of these years was the Wash- 
ington Canal. Toward the end of 1809 he was asked to make a report 
on the project, and this he did; he received 300 for it. As a result he was 
pestered with questions about both the canal and the bridge. The di- 
rectors of the proposed canal company were Elias B. Caldwell (the presi- 
dent), Dr. May, Daniel Carroll, Robert Brent, George Blagden, and Ed- 
ward Law. To them Latrobe wrote (January 17, 1810), somewhat testily, 
asking where he stood in the scheme and refusing to give any further 
opinions gratuitously. The letter was effectual; the directors at once ap- 
pointed him engineer, and on January 19 he wrote Elias Caldwell accept- 
ing the appointment and agreeing to do all the work for $2,000 if the 
work cost $48,000 or over, or at 5 per cent of the cost if it fell below that 
figure payment in either case to be in canal company shares. A little 
later (January 23) he wrote Caldwell again agreeing to consider the $300 
already received as part of the over-all figure. 

The Washington Canal was designed to connect the Anacostia River 
and the Eastern Branch with the main channel of the Potomac, thus cut- 
ting across the peninsula that occupied the central part of the city. Thomas 
Law had long been an enthusiastic supporter of its construction and had 
even spent two years in Holland trying to raise capital for it. But no 
work resulted, and the American corporation that finally built the canal 
was not chartered until 1808. The canal had been shown in the L'Enfant 
plan. It had two entrances to the Eastern Branch, and for much of its 
length it paralleled and regularized the little Tiber Creek. The necessity 
for the canal seems questionable today; but in the early nineteenth cen- 
tury, with few improved roads and with many of the Washington streets 
still impassable, there was great dependence on barge and scow transpor- 



052 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

tation to bring food and building materials into the city. Some supplies, 
from the east, came down the Anacostia; from the western hinterland 
materials arrived by the upper Potomac and the Georgetown Canal. The 
proposed waterway, therefore, would not only allow easy interchange 
between these two routes but also offer transportation by either o them 
to the heart of the city. Law, moreover, hoped to establish a series of 
packet boats on the canal, to run from the canal entrance on the Potomac 
to the Navy Yard and thus furnish a sort of primitive rapid transit which 
would be both more economical and more comfortable than that fur- 
nished by the usual hackney coaches. The Tiber River already poured 
its waters down from the northwestern hills, affording an ample supply 
to feed the proposed canal. 

In the plan the canal led from the Eastern Branch, crossed the axis of 
the Mall a little to the west of the Capitol at the foot of Capitol Hill, 
and then turned west, following Pennsylvania Avenue and the north 
edge of the Mall to the Potomac. There were to be tidal locks, a harbor 
basin, and docks at both ends; two intermediate locks of small lift; 
and, to connect the whole definitely with the Washington plan and the 
Capitol, a formal settling basin on the Capitol axis. Here, according to 
one of Latrobe's plans, was to be erected the Tripoli Monument, as the 
chief element in a compact, integrated monumental center just beneath 
Capitol Hill. If this had been carried out and the Greek Doric propylaea 
which Latrobe designed for the Capitol had been built, together they 
would have formed one of America's first serious attempts at site com- 
position in the grand manner. The propylaea was never erected, and the 
Tripoli Monument (now in Annapolis) was placed instead in the Wash- 
ington Navy Yard; but the basin was built and formed a most effective 
recall of the Capitol axis in the undeveloped Mall. This part of the canal 
was twice changed. The government wanted to sell some of the land along 
Pennsylvania Avenue, and Latrobe in 1815 made a plan to permit this. 
In it he shows the Tiber flowing into a great circular basin on the 
Capitol axis, with an axial feeder connecting it to a semi-octagonal "mud 
lock" at the canal. But even this did not suffice, and in 1818 the entire 
eastern part of that run of the canal was shifted to the Capitol axis; a 
plan by Frederic C. DeKrafft 7 shows this. The circular basin has gone, 

7, Frederic C. DeKrafFt was a draftsman and surveyor, apparently well trained. Some of 
the Capitol drawings of 1818 bear his name. 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807-1813 353 

but the semi-octagonal mud lock remains. As actually built, apparently this 
last refinement had vanished, and the canal turned a stark right angle 
onto the Capitol axis at the bottom of Capitol Hill. 

The Washington Canal was completed in about two years, but it was 
far from being the monument Latrobe had contemplated. He had hoped 
its locks would be of stone and its construction as permanent as possible; 
but evidently only one of the directors, Dr. Frederick May (who became 
a close friend), agreed with him. In the search for cheapness the canal 
was lined with timber, its locks were built of wood, the docks and basins 
were skimped, and eventually- as Latrobe had foreseen trouble devel- 
oped. Thus in a heavy storm in the summer of 1811 one of the locks was 
completely destroyed, as the architect wrote Robert Fulton (July 31), and 
by 1816 the linings and locks had both tumbled down or washed away 
to such an extent that Latrobe considered them beyond repair. These were 
the results of cheapness, of the failure to accept the architect's advice. 

For the excavation and grading the contractor was James Cochran of 
Baltimore, who had been one of the contractors on the Philadelphia 
waterworks a decade earlier. He had an excellent record and reputation 
and had worked on the National Road as well, where he had earned the 
admiration of Gallatin. At the very beginning of the canal work a diffi- 
culty arose: there was no official survey of the city. The only approved 
legal plan was the first printed one, and many private owners had already 
altered this. Nicholas King, the city surveyor, helped as best he could, 
furnishing the levels of streets at various canal crossings, but in large 
measure Latrobe had to make a new survey. For this he employed a 
German immigrant, Eugene Leitensdorfer, who was a scientific agricul- 
turist as well as an accomplished surveyor. (Later Latrobe tried to help 
him to some position more worthy of his talents.) 

The canal contracts apparently covered only the canal itself, leaving the 
docks and basins for future consideration. Latrobe wrote the directors 
(July 20, 1812) a full report on what remained to be done. Cochran 
would need a small payment to complete his digging in order to pro- 
vide a depth of fully three feet and to secure the canal from erosion. The 
locks already required considerable maintenance; wharfs must be built, 
and Latrobe recommended one at Twelfth Street and another "opposite 
the Rope Walk." He also insisted that dredging at the canal entrances 
under existing conditions would be futile and the cost of permanent im- 
provement too great for the company's treasury; but he did suggest a 



354 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

tide dam, lock, and "tumbling bay" at the Potomac end, to cost about 
$3,000. 

Eventually the canal proved more useful for drainage purposes than 
commercially. To Latrobe the project was another financial blow. The 
war came, then the long depression. He had accepted his fee in canal 
company shares (and in addition he had purchased other shares) ; then 
in a time of dire need he could find no one who would discount the 
canal notes or purchase them. For him his service was, in actuality, 
merely one more contribution to material improvement; it was the 
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal experience all over again. 

Yet another engineering project took form at this time. It was to be 
his own undertaking; he alone would design, organize, and arrange the 
financing for it. This was the furnishing of city water to New Orleans. 
His designing of the New Orleans customs house and the Mississippi 
lighthouse had given him some familiarity with the conditions there, 
and letters to and from Robert Alexander (his Washington landlord as 
well as the contractor who had built the customs house) had provided 
further insight. He had met and become friendly with Governor Clai- 
borne, and through him his own interest deepened; he knew that New 
Orleans was the growing Mecca of restless Americans and restless Ameri- 
can dollars and that its prospects for the future were brighter than those 
of any other American city. Yet its water was atrocious and its health 
record terrifying. Would not a plentiful water supply improve both ? At 
a time when dirt was often blamed for yellow fever, would not good 
water abolish that scourge? And, with yellow fever gone, to what heights 
might not New Orleans rise? 

Perhaps, too, the fact that Roosevelt and Lydia had gone to New Or- 
leans to prepare for the opening of steam navigation on the Mississippi 
may have turned Latrobe*s thoughts in that direction and reminded him 
of a suggestion given him years before by Jefferson. At any rate, we first 
hear of the scheme in a letter to Samuel Hazlehurst (December 7, 1809) : 
"I have . . . digested two schemes, which, as Tibbs says, are *as yet a 
secret' . . . One is to supply the city of New Orleans with water, on 
which object I have a communication from the Governor of the terri- 
tory, the other a canal around the falls of Niagara, on which I am con- 
sulted by the Government 8 . . . The exclusive right of the supply of 

8. Sec pages 361-3. 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807-1813 355 

New Orleans to me & my associates is proposed if I effect it. I have asso- 
ciated with me a Mr. Alexander . . ." And ten days later he wrote his 
father-in-law that he had already petitioned the legislature for the requi- 
site franchise and that "Mr. Poydras, the representative from N.O., an 
old French miser, worth $75,000 p. annum, says that we shall assuredly 
succeed , . ." 

But there was an infinity of delays, and at times the political difficul- 
ties seemed almost insuperable. The city asserted its rights, and a certain 
Monsieur Blanque led the opposition. Latrobe also, he wrote Alexander 
(April 29, 1810), feared Wilkinson's objections. To handle the affair 
more expeditiously as well as to gain a more personal view of affairs, 
Latrobe decided to send down his son Henry, who at eighteen, besides 
his excellent academic education and all the knowledge his father had 
been able to give him, had had experience as surveyor with the National 
Turnpike Commission. Henry left in December, with letters of intro- 
duction furnished chiefly by Poydras. 

Meanwhile Alexander had had no success whatsoever in getting the 
charter .passed, and Latrobe now used Henry as his direct intermediary, 
thereby, he believed, ending any claims Alexander might have in the 
project. Naturally Alexander protested, through his Washington at- 
torney Joseph Cassin. Latrobe was enraged at his tone, for, so far as he 
could see, Alexander had contributed nothing at all to the scheme 
neither engineering skill, original ideas, nor effective political or finan- 
cial activity. What possible claim was left? 9 In a long letter to Alexander 
(July 27, 1811), Latrobe tells the story as he saw it: 

The idea of supplying the city of New Orleans [with water] was first 
suggested to me by a French gentleman from thence to whom I was exhibiting 
my works in Philadelphia . , . But I dismissed the subject from ray mind 
until it was renewed by a conversation with Mr. Jefferson while you were 
in N.O. building the custom house. On your return we seriously entered 
into a partnership for accomplishing the work. The duties of each of us were 
determinate & equal . . . You engaged to procure the charter on terms drawn 
up by me ... You failed in your application . . . Gleize of New York ap- 
plied immediately afterwards and obtained a grant . * * of this you did not 
inform me ... When Governor Claiborne arrived ... I received the first 



9. Latrobe was particularly disturbed because both Cassin and he had endorsed a note for 
Alexander, who had never paid it and owed him, Latrobe claimed, $378 (letter to Alexander, 
July 27, 1811). 



^ THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

clear account of the matter. [He goes on to state the reasons he considers 
responsible for Alexander's failure his ignorance of the French language and 
French manners, and the existence of a French majority in the City Council.] 
All of these reasons . . . made me resolve to send . . . Henry . . . depend- 
ing on his ... knowledge of French ... the French manners [received] 
from a French college ... & his French name ... 2 days before he left ... 
several gentlemen from N.O. . . . entered warmly into the scheme ... & 
suggested a project ... on the condition you be left out. ... I resisted . . . 
Henry departed. . . . The success of my son ... was almost miraculous. . . . 
Now put the question . . . whether there exists any partnership ... in these 
proceedings . . . after you had failed ... If there is & you will state it ... 
I will sacrifice every advantage ... to justify you . . . 

Apparently Alexander accepted Latrobe's explanation, but less than six 
months later he died, a victim of yellow fever, which was afterward to 
claim the two Latrobes first Henry, and then his father. The water- 
works seemed indeed ill-fated. 

Even with the charter finally granted, however, political difficulties 
continued. A site for the pump house had been determined on; sup- 
posedly it was on city property. But the city discovered it held no valid 
title to the lot, over which the Federal government claimed jurisdiction. 
The matter caused endless confusion to the plans, and mountains of cor- 
respondence; eventually that site, however advantageous, was discarded 
and farther down the river another to which no legal objections could 
be raised was adopted. 

The financing, too, was difficult. All sorts of business associates of La- 
trobe tried either to insinuate themselves into the scheme or to destroy 
his general leadership in it. Eric Bollman, poor and almost forgotten, 
saw in this project opportunities for spectacular profits; he besieged La- 
trobe with suggestions, wanted a partnership in the concern, and boasted 
of all the money he could bring in he even intimated that the original 
idea was his. Latrobe was forced to write him (August n, 1811): "I am 
very sensible I am under obligations to you of the most important kind, 
but certainly not for the idea of these waterworks . . ." Later Bollman 
declared to Latrobe that everyone with whom the architect dealt was 
"a ruined man" -a harsh accusation indeedbut sent a list of people he 
thought he could interest. Latrobe wanted none of them but later he 
relented enough to offer Bollman the privilege of selling the stock, when 
and if he could, on a definite percentage commission. 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807-1813 357 

Actually the financing was largely done through the always helpful 
and solid Jacob and Louis Mark, who handled the New York end, and 
through Godfrey Haga of Philadelphia and Frederick C. Graff of Bal- 
timore. 10 Money came in easily at first, then more and more slowly as 
the shadow of the oncoming war grew darker, and finally in a trickle 
only. Latrobe began by selling one half of his privilege to Jacob Mark, 
for $40,000, and pledged his other half to his agents Haga and Graff as 
security that the work would be completed; it was of course Mark's cash, 
supplemented by Latrobe's, that enabled the work to go ahead. 

As soon as the basic layout was completed, the next and most expen- 
sive requirement was the steam engine and here began a long and com- 
plicated story that was not to end until several years later. 

Latrobe's favorite engine builder, after Roosevelt had embarked in 
other pursuits, was James Smallman, of Philadelphia, who had built the 
engine for the Navy Yard. But Smallman's prices were mounting, and 
just at this moment (in 1811) he was engaged in a long business con- 
troversy with the Philadelphia iron founder Large, who was evidently 
becoming a feared rival. The controversy ended with Smallman's pur- 
chase forced on Large by want of cash of all of the Large interests. 
Except for Oliver Evans, Smallman now had a monopoly, at least in 
Philadelphia, and he was fully aware of the advantage he had gained. 

The result was that eventually Latrobe, disgusted with Smallman's 
antics, decided to build the engine himself, buying the castings from 
Foxall who was a great Methodist zealot as well as an excellent foundry- 
man in Washington. The plan seemed to offer many advantages. La- 
trobe's position at the Capitol had become ever more precarious as the 
war grew closer; in 1811 no appropriation for his salary was made. With 
commerce to England closed, American manufactures seemed to have 
a flourishing future ahead, and the demand for steam engines was in- 
creasing. What better means could there be of assuring himself an in- 
come? So now Stuart's old painting room found another use; to it La- 
trobe added a few necessary sheds and there he set up his factory. Its 
first job was the engine for New Orleans. He wrote Jacob Mark (August 
24, 1811) : "I have now a shop & men waiting." For the project he wanted 
Samuel Hughes of Havre de Grace to cast the iron pipe as well as the 
engine cylinder; he bought boiler iron from Bishop & Malin at Bishop's 



10. Letter of May 18, 1809, to Louis Mark. 



2-g THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

Mills, near old Chester in Pennsylvania; and he ordered other castings 
from FoxalL Everything seemed ready for rapid progress. But Hughes 
could not cast the cylinders, and the order went to FoxalL There was 
a flurry of correspondence throughout August and September about the 
project, and many letters were sent to prospective investors. Haga dropped 
out of the scheme; others had to be interested. And then, as if to cap the 
climax, the Latrobe children fell sick, and the architect was obliged to take 
them out of the city for three weeks. On his return from this necessary 
but worried rest, uncertainty arose about the house the family was living 
in, now since Alexander's death the property of his estate. Then, in De- 
cember, Graff withdrew as Haga had done was it because they foresaw 
the delays and difficulties the war would bring? To compensate for these 
setbacks, however, the city of New Orleans itself, in May, 1812, bought 
twelve shares, and later in the same year Latrobe persuaded Graff to 
reconsider and re-won his support. 

Meanwhile Henry had returned from New Orleans and was helping 
his father as his emissary in New York and Philadelphia; but now, what 
with the engine under way and the controversies about the site still 
going on for Congress had refused to validate the title it seemed best 
to have him in New Orleans again. In January of that year he sailed, 
never to return. 

The certainty of war in June, 1812, brought a sudden end to this opti- 
mistic planning. Latrobe already had thirty-three cases of machinery 
ready to ship and few ships were sailing. Could such a valuable cargo 
be risked? He wrote Henry (June 7, 1812) : ". . . of course my 33 boxes 
and all my castings will remain at Baltimore till I can send them by land 
to Pittsburgh. At Pittsburgh, also, I shall have to build my boiler . . ." 
It was just at this juncture that Latrobe received from Henry an order 
for another steam engine for New Orleans not for the waterworks but 
for the sugar mill of one Chevalier de la Croix and with it came a 
welcome draft for $1,500 to cover the preliminary expenses. At once he 
rushed to enlarge his plant, bought more land adjacent to the "painting- 
room lot," ordered fire bricks and crucibles for brass founding, and 
built a new shed to house the new machinery. But, alas, suddenly came 
news that De la Croix had failed, and the draft became uncollectible. 11 



ii. The De la Croix engine was apparently the one that was later completed and sold to 
Mr. Hartshorne of Baltimore for a grist mill. When Hartshorne gave up the mill idea, Latrobe 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807-1813 359 

Everything Latrobe touched that year seemed to have a curse upon it. 

It was during this troubled time that B. H. Latrobe almost became a 
New Yorker. New York had fascinated him ever since his early visits in 
1799 and 1800; he had close ties there with the Marks, and both Aaron 
Burr and for a time at least Robert Fulton seemed anxious for him 
to move to the rapidly growing city. He had been disappointed in the 
outcome of the competition for the City Hall (1802) and he had refused 
the job o regulating the Collect Pond and the city drainage. But that 
had been in 1804, when professional opportunities in both Philadelphia 
and Washington seemed glowing. By 1808, however, his Philadelphia 
prospects had almost vanished, his Washington future was already fogged 
with doubts, and he felt increasingly distressed at being so constantly 
the Federalists' target and the democrats' scapegoat. 

Accordingly offers of jobs outside of Washington became ever more 
attractive as time wore on, and the growing tensions between Great 
Britain and the United States only increased Latrobe's desire to get away. 
At one time as early as his visit to New York in August, 1808 he was 
consulted by his New York friend Colonel Jonathan Williams, a co- 
founder and the president of the Military Philosophical Society, 12 about 



tried to sell the engine to various other individuals to benefit both Hartshorne and himself, 
for the payments on it had not yet been completed. 

12. See Sidney Forman, West Point, a History of the United States Military Academy (New 
York: Columbia University Press, 1940), pp. 20-35. The Society was formed by the engineer 
officers of the United States Army at the suggestion of Col. Jonathan Williams, the first 
superintendent of West Point, on November 12, 1802. Its purpose was to stimulate the study 
of all the sciences and arts which had any bearing on military or naval problems; thus in- 
cluded were astronomy, navigation, geography, and all the forms of engineering. The Society 
sponsored the publication of several important scientific pamphlets and was directly respon- 
sible for the fact that the United States Military Academy in the years after the War of 1812 
furnished the best technical, scientific, and engineering education to be found in the country. 
Membership in the Society meanwhile had widened to include men like Madison, Monroe, 
Marshall, DeWitt Clinton, Bushrod Washington, Joel Barlow, and Latrobe. The Society was 
dissolved at a meeting in New York City on November I, 1813, because of confusion re- 
sulting from the War of 1812 and the fact that many Army men were hostile to it and its 
influence. Latrobe's good friend Colonel Williams was himself an extraordinary individual, a 
grand-nephew of Franklin. Born in Boston in 1750, he was in France during most of the 
American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson thought that he resembled his famous grand-uncle 
in the breadth of his scientific interests. It is noteworthy, too, that Joseph G. Swift, one of 
the first cadets to graduate from West Point as an army engineer, also became a good friend 
of the architect in his later Washington years. 

Latrobe was in New York in August, 1808, having been sent by the Navy Department to 



260 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

a house John McComb was designing there for one o Williams's friends. 
Williams sent the drawings to Latrobe, who returned them with sketches 
showing the alterations he would suggest. In the covering letter Latrobe 
concludes: "I hope Mr. McCombe [sic] will not be offended at the altera- 
tions. If I come to New York ... I shall certainly have the inclination 
to help him . . ." Did he hope to become McComb's partner? 

The same year he designed a "hydraulic temple" for the famous Dr. 
Hosack, whom he had met during former visits to the city. And, when 
in November Lydia married Roosevelt and went to live with the Marks 
at 62 Greenwich Street, there was still another thread pulling him north- 
ward. The flurry of fortification that followed the Chesapeake-Leopard 
battleif such an unjustified attack on an unprepared ship can be called 
a battle offered another opportunity. Latrobe wrote General Morton, in 
New York, asking to be considered as a "practical engineer" to carry out 
the works his friend Colonel Williams had suggested, and saying 
frankly (February 2, 1809) : "My wish for some years has been to reside 
in New York, and as my daughter has lately chosen her residence in 
that city, I have an additional inducement . . . Any certain engagement 
producing not less than $3,000 per annum would be a sufficient induce- 
ment . . ." Significantly enough, he wrote on the same day to Orris 
Paine in Richmond: "It is my opinion, from my own experience, . . . 
that the worst situation a man with a family can be in is to be a salaried 
officer under U. States Government . . ." And he had still another vain 
dream of going to New York, for, as he wrote to Thomas Carpenter of 
Philadelphia (April 9, 1807), he was being considered as the architect 
to redecorate and complete the Park Theater there; he writes of it as a 
probability disappointment again. 

But of far greater appeal to him was the most important engineering 
job in the United States in those years the design and construction of 
the New York Western Navigation the Erie Canal. Latrobe's pros- 
pective connection with this came from two sources the first, and most 
significant, his part in Gallatin's controversial road and canal bill; the 
second, but more immediate, his friendship with Robert Fulton. When 
Gallatin had his daring vision of enormous public improvements to be 
financed by government surplus funds, roads and canals occurred first to 



report on the condition of the navy yard in Brooklyn. His letter to Colonel Williams was 
written shortly after his return to Washington. 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE! 1807-1813 361 

him as the most necessary objectives, and he asked both B. H. Latrobe 
and Robert Fulton to make reports. 13 Latrobe's was a complete analysis 
of the communication needs of the eastern part of the country, and in 
it he emphasized canals; he laid out a comprehensive system which 
largely anticipated actual improvements that have since been made and 
which called for a Cape Cod Canal, a Raritan-Delaware Canal, the re- 
sumption of work on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, the im- 
provement and enlargement of the Dismal Swamp Canal, and various 
minor connections between rivers farther south. To this system the West 
would feed its products and its trade by two means: first, the connection 
of the Great Lakes and the Hudson River (already projected and in 
part begun by the state of New York) ; and, second, a canal from the 
Potomac River or Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River. Fulton's report 
dealt largely with railroads for horse-drawn traffic. 

During late 1809 and early 1810 Gallatin's bill was the subject of wide 
interest and controversy. Latrobe wrote letter after letter to his friends and 
associates about it; according to him this was the time, if ever, when 
such a bill could pass. The chief problem was whether Congress could 
constitutionally take such action, Finally presented by Senator Pope on 
January 5, 1810, the bill received its third reading in the Senate on Janu- 
ary 10 and then quietly went to sleep. But Latrobe's activities in con- 
nection with the project did not go unperceived. He was in large meas- 
ure its initiator; as he wrote Richard Rush in Philadelphia (December 
31, 1809) : "A plan which I conceived some time ago, for the general im- 
provement of the internal navigation . . . which appeared to be so 
Utopian, & if not beyond the means, yet so far beyond the temper of 
our national government, I never even produced it till about a month 
ago. ... In a few days you will see the features of the gigantic infant 
in the newspapers." One of the indefatigable workers for this ambitious 
scheme was Colonel H. P. Porter, member of Congress for New York, 
and with him Latrobe worked in close association. It was but natural, 
then, for the architect's name to come to the fore when the state decided 
to complete the New York Western Navigation and appointed a com- 
mission. He himself sent a copy of the bill to Gouverneur Morris, one of 
the commissioners, on April 10, 1810; in his letter he says: "I have been 



13. The two reports were published in the National Intelligencer, Latrobe's on September 
23, 26, and 30, 1808, and Fulton's on October 3 in the same year. 



THE CLIMAX 3PERIOD 

asked in a preliminary manner whether if the offer were regularly made 
to me, I would attend them [the commissioners] as their engineer. There 
would not be a moment's hesitation on my part . . . were I not the head 
of a large & expensive family." He goes on to enumerate the losses that 
would accrue if he left Washington and his private practice, including 
the expense of a deputy to carry on his Capitol work. "But," he writes, 
"if ... I may look forward [to it] as the employment of the rest of my 
life ... it would then be my interest ... to attend." He adds a per- 
sonal note: "Should I come to New York few circumstances would give 
me more pleasure than to see at the head of your family a lady [once 
Nancy Randolph] whom I had known in Virginia . . . who may recol- 
lect my visit to Bizarre ... in 1797." 14 The informal inquiries he refers 
to came from Governor Clinton; Latrobe wrote Roosevelt asking him to 
give the Governor his sincere thanks. 

Yet the matter was far from dead. The commissioners were evidently 
anxious to obtain Latrobe's services and took the matter up with him a 
second time a year later (in May, 1811). And again Latrobe wrote a 
noncommittal answer. "My intention and wish," he said, "is to accept of 
your proposition," but he added that circumstances would prevent his 
immediate decision. Commissioners Robert Fulton and Thomas Eddy 
had proposed that he visit New York for a conference; they wanted at 
least a consultation with him. He replied that he could be with them in 
August, provided his terms were acceptable his traveling expenses from 
the time he left Washington till his return and twelve dollars a day in 
addition. As a precedent he cited the fact that Weston, the famous Eng- 
lish engineer, had received $1,000 and expenses for a two-week trip to 
Richmond. Then at last, on August i, in a letter to Commissioners Eddy 
and Fulton, Latrobe accepted the offer to survey the New York Western 

14. Actually in 1796. Mr. Howard Swiggett, in The Extraordinary Mr. Morris (New York: 
Doubleday, 1952), suggests that this letter is a veiled threat to compel the offering to him 
of a permanent position or he will reveal, or reawaken, the scandal surrounding Richard 
Randolph's death. In the light of Latrobe's character, principles, and generosity, this seems 
absurd. As an acquaintance of several members of the Randolph family, he must have 
known of the gossip; but the reference here would seem to mean just what it says it is 
a message of greeting, a statement that can be understood to mean, "Whatever I may have 
heard, I am still her friend and would be glad to meet her again." Morris evidently answered 
that the position was far from a permanent one, and Latrobe's acknowledgment (April 29) 
is a letter the patent sincerity of which should be ample proof that there was no sinister 
threat in the reference he had made. 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807-1813 363 

Navigation. All seemed settled, and on August 20 he wrote Fulton that 
he was preparing to leave for New York. 

But again circumstances prevented. The commissioners refused to ad- 
vance funds for the trip and complained that his arrival would be too 
late for their purposes. Indubitably the trip depended on their advancing 
him the cost, for Latrobe was at this point desperately poor a man with 
many projects of the greatest importance before him, architect of the 
country's greatest building yet one whom Congress had cut off without 
a salary, a man harassed by duns and debts and almost literally without 
a cent. 15 Except with the commissioners' aid, the trip to New York was 
an actual impossibility, though he could hardly tell them this. The trip 
therefore fell through, and regretfully Latrobe refused the commission. 
He was not to be a New Yorker after all. 

Meanwhile, in Washington, the architect-engineer was constantly busy 
in all kinds of attempts to raise the cash he so drastically needed. Several 
of these were connected with the wide enterprises of the Marks in New 
York, some with his mercurial son-in-law, Nicholas Roosevelt. The 
Marks were agents for many German interests, including various manu- 
facturers of arms. Now, with the air full of rumors of war, what better 
time could there be for selling these in America? And what better per- 
son than Latrobe to act as the firm's Washington salesman? He had 
bought from the Marks much equipment for the President's House; 
here was a chance for them to reciprocate by throwing what seemed 
like sure business his way. There were swords and cutlasses, for ex- 
ample, excellent in quality and cheap in price; Latrobe devoted letter 
after letter to these in correspondence with Jacob Mark, Louis Mark, and 
the Secretary of War. The Federal government turned down the offers; 
it wished to support American manufacturers and had found a man in 
Connecticut (probably the famous Collins) who could turn out such 
equipment in large amounts at a price only slightly higher than that of 



15. A letter to Father Dubourg (November 12, 1809) is eloquent in its account of the 
situation in which Latrobe found himself in those harassed years. Dubourg was trying to 
collect from him a sum he claimed was still due on Henry Latrobe's tuition, and the archi- 
tect writes explaining why he cannot pay; moreover the bill is a surprise to him, because he 
had for one year placed Henry in the University of Pennsylvania (in order to avoid the 
cost of St. Mary's) and had returned him to the Baltimore college only because St. Mary's 
had granted Henry what Latrobe took to be a full scholarship. This was in 1809; now, in 
1811, with the imminent cessation of the Capitol salary, the architect's condition was still 
further straitened. 



364 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

the Germans. Latrobe tried the states; first Pennsylvania, then Mary- 
land, was on the verge of ordering the cutlasses for the militia, but no 
state apparently went over the verge. All his time, his letters, his contacts 
seemed futile; no orders came in. 

Then, too, there were knapsacks made by one L'Herbette. Over these 
Latrobe also labored in vain; nobody seemed to want them, excellent 
though they were. Finally, in desperation, he advertised them in the 
National Intelligencer. Week after week in 1809 the advertisement, with 
a crude engraving, appeared, with "Apply to Mr. Latrobe" as an ad- 
dress. This shows how low his sense of professional dignity had sunk 
in his frenzied efforts somehow to make ends meet, somehow to cover 
his notes and those he had so generously and so rashly endorsed for 
friends. It is tragic to think of the time and energy wasted by the bril- 
liant architect, the careful engineer, in this struggle to make money in 
"the American way"titne and energy that, had the United States ap- 
preciated what he had to give, might have been so creatively applied. 

Another will-o'-the-wisp was a projected railroad to run from the Vir- 
ginia coal mines to the waterside at Amthill. The use of coal as a fuel 
was increasing; in the East one barrier to its use was the long and ex- 
pensive trucking necessary to bring it to Richmond or Washington. A 
railroad horse or mule powered, of course would vitally expedite ship- 
ments; again the potential profits were fascinating. The scheme was first 
evolved in connection with an owner of coal lands, one Harry Heth 
of Manchester, Virginia. Latrobe wrote Eric Bollman of the plan in the 
late spring of 1809 (May 21) ; here, he thought, was a chance to bring 
Bollman into a profitable speculation. A week later he wrote him again, 
listing men he thought would be most likely to invest. But capital was 
elusive; nothing was done, and another opportunity to raise himself 
from the morass of debts vanished into oblivion. Latrobe was becoming 
desperate and bitter; as he wrote at last to his colleague and friend Gode- 
froy in Baltimore (May 20, 1812) : "I ... am every day becoming more 
a Goth. I shall at last make cloth, steam engines, or turn tailor for money, 
for money is honor." 

Among the outstanding notes that worried him, the most emotionally 
wearing were those connected with Eric Bollman. When Nixon the 
wealthy father of Bollman's late wife died, he left a certain amount of 
money to Bollman's children, and Mary Elizabeth Latrobe had been 
named their legal guardian to watch over their interests. Bollman him- 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE.* 1807-1813 365 

self, well-nigh penniless, was eking out a miserable existence in all sorts 
of strange enterprises running a factory for artificial flowers, experi- 
menting with dyes, developing chemical means of producing verdigris, 
discovering new methods of refining platinum. Some of his discoveries 
were potentially of the greatest importance, yet in the America of those 
years they went without appreciation and yielded him nothing. His 
former connections with Burr alienated possible investors, as his indis- 
creet affair with his children's nurse had alienated his rich father-in-law. 
Yet he retained his high notions of what the world owed him, and he 
determined that his children must have the best education possible. 

Bollman and Latrobe were sufficiently similar in their devotion to 
science on the one hand and architecture on the other, and sufficiently 
alike in their present ill-success, for a close bond to exist between them. 
Latrobe, though he often disapproved of Bollman's actions, could not 
help liking him and admiring the keenness of his mind. He owed him a 
deep debt of gratitude for helping him freely when Barber had ab- 
sconded in 1800, taking with him all the office assets and the office papers. 
Bollman had then been top dog, partner in a spectacularly successful 
firm. Now it was Latrobe's turn to help; poor as he was, he had a sub- 
stantial government position and contacts with the most influential men 
in Washington. To them he took every opportunity of pleading Bollman's 
cause, and now when Bollman needed money for the education of his 
children titularly under the guardianship of Latrobe's own wife what 
could he do but sign Bollman's notes? Bollman borrowed the money 
from his cousin Hoppe, and, when Bollman could not pay, Hoppe turned 
on Latrobe. What had begun as a friendly accommodation became the 
opening for Hoppe to bring continuous ajgid unpleasant pressure on the 
architect. 

Meanwhile Bollman had produced the two essays on banking that were 
to make him famous. 16 Latrobe welcomed these enthusiastically. He saw 
to it that they were widely distributed among the powers in Washington. 
At last, he thought, Bollman's brilliance had given birth to something 
that must win him popular favor and eventually some financial position 
worthy of his talents. But the essays, though generally admired and ac- 
tually of great value in the fiscal development of the country, brought 



1 6. See Fritz Redlich, Eric Bollmann and Studies in Banking, in the series Essays in 
American Economic History (New York: Stechert [01944]), 



366 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

Bollman no cash and no job; he remained as poor as ever. And his 
cousin, Hoppe, continued to harass Latrobe with threats of suit. Boll- 
man, he knew, had nothing and probably never would have anything; 
but Latrobe had a position to protect. Thus the architect was put in a 
situation where payment became imperative. Hoppe at last got the thou- 
sand dollars Bollman had borrowed got it from Latrobe, already deep 
in a morass of debt. Now it had become almost entirely a matter of 
Latrobe's borrowing on a new note to pay an old one, and the total of 
uncleared debts was little by little mounting. 

Then Latrobe became embroiled with one Henry Hiort, a manufac- 
turer of hydraulic cement in Richmond. The details of the affair are 
vague. Hiort advertised his product in the National Intelligencer at vari- 
ous times in 1809, and in the advertisement he quoted Latrobe's praise of 
the product. Latrobe admired the cement sincerely and apparently did 
everything to back it, lending money to Hiort and most recklessly en- 
dorsing his notes. But Hiort was evidently not so reliable as his cement, 
and he disappeared sometime in 1811 or 1812. All his creditors of course 
turned for redress to Latrobe as Hiort's endorser; five separate suits de- 
scended on the architect's head. He had no defense, for Hiort could not 
be found, and every single one of the claimants had to be satisfied. The 
writs of attachment were dated between 1809 anc ^ 1812; each year a few 
hundred hard-earned dollars vanished in the settlements. Hiort, Latrobe 
claimed later, joined the British in the War of 1812 and left the country 
with them, leaving Latrobe to settle his bail. 17 

The final worry was the old matter of Roosevelt's Navy copper debt 
of $30,000 to the United States government. Roosevelt was at times, La- 
trobe felt (as he wrote his son Henry in New Orleans), the sinister 
cornix of his fortune. Yet for him he performed endless services. The 
government was beginning to feel restive about this long-unpaid debt. 
Roosevelt was seeking delay after delay and apparently thought that 
Latrobe, through his contacts with the great and the powerful in Wash- 
ington, could work wonders. Throughout four years 1808 to 1812 the 
situation rankled. Again and again Latrobe was forced to write Roosevelt 
that the matter was not a personal one, that he could do no more than 

17. Records of trials in the Washington Courts, now in the National Archives, contain 
many particulars. I am deeply grateful to Professor Louise Hall, of Duke University, for a 
microfilm of all the Latrobe court records. 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807-1813 367 

he had done, that even his friend Gallatin had come to feel that Roose- 
velt's nonpayment of the debt was outrageous, and that this was no 
longer a Navy concern but one in the hands of the United States Treas- 
ury, which had received directions to collect all moneys due it at once. 

What would be the effect if the government actually entered suit 
against Roosevelt? Latrobe knew his son-in-law's nebulous financial po- 
sition well enough to realize that a sudden suit might be disastrous. And 
how would it affect the life of his beloved Lydia? Financially, to be sure, 
Latrobe was no longer involved in the affair, but emotionally it was all 
deeply troubling, and he wrote repeatedly to Roosevelt to force him to 
take the initiative in arranging a settlement. But Roosevelt still procras- 
tinated, hoping as usual for miracles. It was all a continuing threat to 
Latrobe's peace of mind. 

Nor were these the only disturbing problems. With all sorts of finan- 
cial entanglements, with his salary for the Capitol work at an end, with 
a drastic need for money to carry on the New Orleans waterworks 
both for eastern materials and for construction at New Orleans Latrobe 
whirled around like a squirrel in a cage, continually evolving new 
schemes that were to make the family fortunes. For instance, he entered 
into a partnership with Louis Mark in a steam-powered plant to make 
furniture ornaments, buttons, and other articles of stamped metal; the 
agreement is dated January 8, 1811. Nothing came of the scheme, for 
capital could not be found. As financial matters grew worse, Latrobe's 
correspondence mounted, letter after letter not only to carry on his ordi- 
nary professional work but to get cash for New Orleans, to extend notes 
anything to keep his head above water. 

The button factory may have been the most grotesque of the enter- 
prises Latrobe considered, but the most heartbreaking was the plan for 
weaving cottons on a power loom. Here, surely, with English manufac- 
tures barred from the country, would be a bonanza. Sometime in the 
summer of 1810 the architect had been introduced by a Massachusetts 
congressman to a certain Samuel Blydensburg, then in Washington to 
interest the government, obtain a patent, and collect capital for a new 
model power loom he had invented. 18 In Latrobe he found his ideal in- 



18. About Samuel Blydensburg little can be found. He was actually granted a patent for 
a power loom in 1815, but it is unclear if it was ever widely adopted. He evidently con- 
tinued his interest in textiles, for in die 1 840*5 he appears as the editor o the periodical The 



368 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

strument, and the architect's imagination fired at once. Always excited 
by the problem of the simplification of manufacturing by the use of 
power, Latrobe was prophetically aware of both the immense social bene- 
fits and the massive profits that would accrue from the industrialization 
of the United States. He had come from a country where at the very 
time of his departure industrialization was proceeding by leaps and 
bounds, and he realized full well that America's dependence on Eng- 
land for all kinds of manufactured goods and especially for cheap cloth 
was not only dangerous but also, granted the proper support of Amer- 
ican enterprise, unnecessary. The new country's quarrel with England 
made the opportunity particularly favorable. Blydensburg undoubtedly 
had a loom that worked; Latrobe had himself seen it produce "50 yards 
of excellent plain cloth a day" by the mere turning of a crank. 19 The 
machine was as yet crude, but with some development would it not 
soon be immensely useful? 

Latrobe entered into the scheme with immense enthusiasm. In 1810 his 
position at the Capitol still seemed secure, and he poured into the loom 
project his capital, his enthusiasm, his time. Yet he appears to have been 
almost totally unaware of the details of the other vast developments in 
the New England cotton industry, or of the fact that Blydensburg was 
far from the only creator of power looms. He at once sought a mill site 
for water power this time and found one on the canal at Georgetown, 
where he could rent all the power he needed at $450 a year, and where a 
good water wheel already existed. On August 14 he wrote Blydensburg 
of his determination to back him; on August 26 he was already writing 
to his wealthy Baltimore friend William Lorman, telling of his discovery 
of the mill site and his plan to build there a factory (20 by 30 feet) to 
hold forty looms, and explaining the terms under which Lorman could 
share in the scheme. Lorman accepted; then caution reasserted itself and 
he withdrew. So sanguine was Latrobe of success that he wrote Blydens- 
burg that he welcomed Lorman's withdrawal it would mean more for 
them! 

But others were prospecting the field, apparently to Latrobe's surprise. 
The Washington Manufacturing Company had advertised a plan to in- 



Sil% Worm, and his Manual of the Sil% Culture was appended to I. Richard Barbour's The 
Silk Culture in the 'United States (New York: Grcclcy & McElreth, 1844). 

19. Letter of September i, 1810, to Isaac Hazlehurst. But Latrobe adds that Blydensburg's 
loom is "loose and badly constructed." 



PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: 1807-1813 369 

stall power looms designed by another inventor, and Latrobe warned the 
company that he was likely to enter suit against it for patent violation. 
Then he heard of a third loom, and a fourth -all seeking patents and 
wrote Blydensburg, again back in Massachusetts, of his perplexity. But 
evidently Blydensburg, a tardy and un-co-operative correspondent and 
an even more slippery partner, was sometimes in Massachusetts, then 
again in Rhode Island. Continually seeking more money to improve and 
refine his loom, he promised to send looms to Latrobe's waiting factory 
"soon." And Latrobe, refusing to lose faith, sent on what money he could; 
his hope, he wrote Blydensburg (January 18, 1811), was eventually to 
build a steam-powered weaving factory in the city itself, "the present 
water-powered plant being merely a preliminary experiment . . ." And 
(June 20, 1811): "In the meantime I have been patient, because I have 
been very poor, & in fact I have been poor because I have been patient. 
Let me know what you are about . . ." 

So it continued for nearly two futile years. "Send on the Looms," 
wrote Latrobe again and again. At last thoroughly aroused, he wrote 
Blydensburg (February 2, 1812): "One year & 3 months have elapsed 
since you were to furnish me with ten looms. I have paid you $1600 
. . . 400 for a mill site rent & 600 for a building . . . Can you inform 
me how I am to get back to the point from which I started?" Nothing 
happened; four months later Latrobe besought him to send looms and 
to return the little polygraph the architect had lent him. A month later: 
". . . at least send 2 looms ... I must do something to support my fam- 
ily ... If I had 10 looms here I know I could work them most advan- 
tageously." Again in August he pleaded for his two looms, but in vain. 
That was his last despairing note. So far as Latrobe knew, Blydensburg 
had vanished into thin air, taking his backer's two thousand and more 
dollars along with him. And this was no longer 1810, when Latrobe as 
Surveyor of the Public Buildings and Engineer of the Navy had the se- 
curity of a government salary; it was now 1812, with the Capitol work 
stopped and even the Navy job problematical a time when every cent 
was precious indeed. There remained but one hope Robert Fulton, 
friend and close associate, wealthy and ambitious, full of schemes for 
making continually more money by widening his steamboat empire. 
Could the future lie here? 



CHAPTER 

16 



Prelude to Pittsburgh: Steamboats and War 



NICHOLAS ROOSEVELT was both indirectly and directly the cause o La- 
trobe's becoming a steamboat constructor and of his choosing Pittsburgh 
as the place where at last he might rebuild his fortune and find the se- 
curity he had lost when work on the United States Capitol ceased. And 
again, as in the case of the Philadelphia waterworks, Roosevelt became in 
part the agent of the architect's financial ruin. Yet still the two remained 
friends; Latrobe in his new position as Roosevelt's father-in-law now 
found himself the protector of his daughter's interests as well as of his 
own. 

In the winter of 1798-9, it will be remembered, Latrobe had gone to 
New York to contract with Roosevelt for the Philadelphia steam pumps. 
It was in this year that Chancellor Livingston, John Stevens, and Nicho- 
las Roosevelt were up to their ears in steamboat experiments; the future 
possibilities and the design of steamboats, the power plants they required, 
and especially the matter of how power should be applied had become 
their chief interest, their chief subject of conversation and of speculative 
thinking. During his visit to Roosevelt Latrobe met both the other men; 
naturally, too, he visited the steamboat they had built, for it lay in front 
of Roosevelt's place on the Passaic, Laurel Hill. He was told that the 
vessel had made a bona fide run from New Jersey to New York but 
that its speed was only three miles an hour in still water; 1 this was not 
sufficient to secure the hoped-for monopoly of steamboat service on the 
Hudson. Two years later Livingston was appointed Ambassador to 
France. When he sailed from Philadelphia, Latrobe saw him there on 



i. See letter o October I, 1798, from Roosevelt to Livingston reprinted in John H. B. 
Latrobe, A Lost Chapter in the History of the Steamboat, Fund Publication 5 (Baltimore: 
Maryland Historical Society, 1871). 

370 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 371 

the eve of his departure and Livingston urged him to do anything he 
could to help Roosevelt and Stevens carry the steamboat project to a 
successful conclusion. Then Livingston apparently forgot them, for in 
France he met Robert Fulton at Joel Barlow's and the rest is history. 
In due time the Clermont appeared; Fulton and the Chancellor received 
the New York monopoly, but it was granted to them alone; Stevens 
and Roosevelt had been dropped by the wayside. 

A sequel was to follow. Roosevelt had suggested the use of side paddle 
wheels to Livingston, and Livingston had refused to adopt them. Yet he 
never forgot the suggestion, and when he met Fulton in Paris and they 
discussed steamboats- a passion with both of them he passed on (so 
Roosevelt and Latrobe both believed) Roosevelt's side-wheel suggestion; 
Fulton at once adopted it as the basis of his future work. 2 

Roosevelt had not yet patented his notion; his later patent is dated 
December i, 1814. The success of the Clermont, nevertheless, put Roose- 
velt in a dilemma. Should he sue Fulton and Livingston at once for the 
share he felt was his due and thus antagonize the two men who were 
most able to make his own invention useful and association with whom 
would be warrant of immediate prosperity? Or, instead, should he try to 
make with them some kind of new arrangement that would express their 
recognition of his part in the creation of steamboats? He chose the lat- 
ter course and, knowing the intimacy between Latrobe and Fulton in 
Washington, brought in the architect as his emissary. At the beginning 
of 1809 Roosevelt was in dire need of both money and a job; only recently 
married, he was without any single project or commission, and prompt 
action was imperative. His father-in-law was the obvious person to help 
him. 

Accordingly Latrobe wrote Fulton (February 7) suggesting that there 
should be a new "union of all three interests and abilities" Fulton's, 
Livingston's, and Roosevelt's to further the good cause of steamboat 
monopolies in an equitable manner profitable for them all Whether 



2. See John H. B. Latrobe, op. dt. f for significant Livingston-Roosevelt correspondence in 
1798. A letter of 1802 from Barlow in Paris to Fulton in Brest, given in Charles Burt Todd, 
Life and Letters of Joel Barlow (New York: Putnam's, 1886), is also revealing. Barlow is 
telling of a conversation he had just had with Chancellor Livingston. In the course of it 
Livingston stated that Fulton's "wheels over the side" were not patentable, since they had 
been suggested earlier "by someone else.*' Evidently Fulton later overcame Livingston's 
scruples! 



2^2 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

Fulton was afraid of Roosevelt's prospective patent or not, he was favor- 
able to the suggestion claiming he acquiesced out of pure friendship 
for Latrobe and as a result, when the Mississippi Steamboat Navigation 
Company was organized, Roosevelt appeared as one of the founders and 
was appointed the company agent to build the first boat at Pittsburgh and 
to collect company subscriptions there. This was in the spring of 1809, 
and when Lydia wrote her father asking his advice about the whole mat- 
ter he answered (May n): 

As to Fulton's scheme of sending your husband to the Ohio I highly approve 
of it so far. It will give you a charming jaunt, & will effect a separate house- 
keeping, an object of the first importance to your happiness. . . . 3 

My great objection to the Western water scheme (independently of your 
distance from us) is the unhealthiness of that country, and the sacrifice of 
Mr. Roosevelt's commercial pursuits, which he understands better than the 
steamboat business, & which he can always live by. But on the footing on 
which you have now put it I think it a very good scheme. . . . 

He went on to suggest that Louis and Jacob Mark be brought into the 
scheme, and continued: 

Fulton I respect & love & believe him to be honest, tho' devoted to his 
interest. Of the Chancellor I have no good opinion. I hope your husband 

will treat safely with them, & not be in a hurry to conclude. 


Lydia, it may be noted in passing, had inherited from her father a strong 

sense of adventure and love of new experiences; for, when it became 
Roosevelt's first duty to explore thoroughly the possibilities of direct navi- 
gation between Pittsburgh and New Orleans, his wife, then pregnant, 
accompanied him on the long voyage now tedious, now perilous down 
the Ohio and the Mississippi on a flatboat borne by the swelling current. 
Actually, things did not work out as Latrobe had hoped; in Roose- 
velt's case they scarcely ever did. The Marks did not come in, and Roose- 
velt sold far fewer shares in Pittsburgh than the company had planned. 
But he did build the boat the New Orleans and in the fall of 1811, 
with Lydia along and again pregnant, made the passage down the Ohio 



3. The reference to "separate housekeeping" is interesting. Roosevelt made his New York 
home with Jacob Mark, at 62 Greenwich Street, and it was there that Lydia and he lived 
whenever they were in the city. Mark, as we have seen, was one of Roosevelt's partners, and 
for his wife at least the Latrobes had a warm affection. Yet they resented a little their 
daughter's transfer so wholly into another household. 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 373 

and Mississippi from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in this the first steam 
vessel to make the run. It was an exciting and at times a terrifying trip, 
with earthquakes, floods, and washouts so serious as to change the shores 
of the Mississippi. That autumn of 1811 was a famous time of strange 
natural phenomena in the West; yet through it all the little boat puffed 
her way down, day after day, somehow escaping snags and new shoals, 
finding new channels, and at last arriving at her goal. In every civilized 
town or settlement along the banks she was received with enthusiasm, 
acclaim, or dire predictions of future disaster. Nevertheless she succeeded, 
and the trip ever after was a treasured memory to Lydia and, through 
her, to later generations of Roosevehs and Latrobes. 4 In New Orleans 
the vessel was placed in the Natchez-New Orleans trade and was run 
under the supervision of Edward Livingston, the Chancellor's much 
younger brother. Enormous profits were made on every trip, and all 
looked fair for the Roosevelts. 

But Fulton and Roosevelt could never work happily together. Fulton 
cast disapproving eyes on Roosevelt's fame as well as on his accounts. 
All the local papers along the river route were full of tales of Roosevelt's 
accomplishments and of his heroism in making the dangerous trip on a 
vessel people feared would blow up at any moment. Fulton and Liv- 
ingston were not mentioned; that rankled. And the boat cost far more 
than Fulton had dreamed it would. At once the company arranged mat- 
ters (for Roosevelt's one-third interest could always be outvoted) so 
that not only did Roosevelt receive none of the profits that should have 
been his when the boat started actually to work but he was also con- 
fronted with threats of a suit to recover much of the company funds he 



4. See John H. B. Latrobe, The First Steamboat Voyage on the Western Waters, Fund 
Publication 6 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1871). The New Orleans was delayed 
by low water at Louisville, where she arrived on October 4, 1811. She took the occasion to 
make a return trip to Cincinnati, thus proving that she had speed enough to go upstream 
as well as down. She remained at Louisville for some time; it was there that Lydia's second 
child was born. Shortly afterward the river started rising and reached a level to permit the 
boat to pass the "Falls of the Ohio," where the river poured over an almost continuous 
ledge of rock. They passed in safety, and almost immediately the earthquakes began. John 
H. B. Latrobe's account, based on the memories of his sister Lydia, is vivid and valuable. 

The New Orleans, 371 tons, was 148.5 feet long, 32.5 feet beam, with a molded depth of 
12 feet. She was wrecked and sank in July, 1814, but her engines were recovered and re-used 
in the second New Orleans, a slightly smaller vessel of 324 tons. See Louis C. Hunter and 
Beatrice Jones Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers ... in Studies in Economic His- 
tory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949)* 



374 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

had expended in Pittsburgh. Furthermore, Fulton refused to have any- 
thing more to do with him. Unfortunately Fulton's action was not en- 
tirely without justification, for Roosevelt was as careless in his account- 
ing as he was dilatory in writing letters and the letters he had written 
en route and mailed along the way were all lost in transit. 

Disagreements flared. Early in 1812 Fulton refused to pay Roosevelt 
amounts actually due, and Latrobe was again called in by Roosevelt as 
a sort of ambassador. The architect saw Fulton in New York, they talked 
over the matter at length, and Fulton again, as he claimed, solely be- 
cause of his friendship for Latrobe agreed not only to cancel the unjust 
claims but also to pay Roosevelt something on account of the profits, this 
amount to be made over to Lydia and her heirs in view of keeping it 
safe against any action the Federal government might undertake to re- 
cover the old Navy copper debt. But Fulton sought to delay his pay- 
ments by substituting a six-month note for cash, and Latrobe was forced 
to write him a letter (February i, 1813), in which he also objected to 
the terms Fulton had used in a letter to him about the affair: 

There is in the remarks, some reason, & I think as you are on the high 
ground it would be tynd in you to let the thing go as they wish it. ... I, 
as you know am only the Gobetween, & give no opinion. In fact, believing 
as I do, that Roosevelt is an honest man, altho' one of the most wrong headed 
in the world, I want the thing done with because while it remains afloat, 
my poor daughter will know no peace, & God knows, her afflictions of mind 
& body since her marriage have exceeded those of any woman I have known, 
& will most assuredly, in their permanent consequence, make an old woman 
of her before her time. For instance in her first trip down the river [in the 
flatboat], her husband being sick, & every hand on board laid up, she for 
three weeks cooked & baked for the whole crew, at a time when she was 
within 2 months of her own confinement, nursed all the sick, scoured & 
washed what was absolutely necessary, & one night at Natchez, the crew 
being ashore, & Roosevelt & her maid sick, the boat got aground on the mast 
of a sunk vessel ahead, & the water falling fast, the stern of the boat, badly 
caulked, leaked so much, that they would have gone to the bottom had she 
not baled her with all her might from Nine in the evening till One in the 
morning when the crew returned. In the steamboat, when her boy was a 
fortnight old, the Earthquakes began, & continued without intermission until 
their arrival at Natchez. Their effects, as described by her, were indeed tre- 
mendous. All this & a thousand times more, together with the pecuniary 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 375 

difficulties of her husband, while they have matured her understanding & 
given her the air of a much older woman, have . . . depressed her courage, 
& very materially injured her constitution. I am hardly able sometimes to 
contain my silent anger against her husband for exposing her to such hard- 
ships, and yet she makes his defense with much affectionate zeal, & attributes 
it all so entirely to her own determination to share every fatigue with him, 
and in fact is so entirely attached to him, that nothing can be said upon the 
subject. He indeed appears attached to her, for which I do not thank him; 
for no man of sense or feeling would be insensible of so much merit & loveli- 
ness as belong to her, united with possible talent. 

All this I have written perhaps very imperfectly but with that confidence 
which always inspires me when I write to you. . . . 

The handwriting shows that this letter, which apparently was efficacious, 
was written at terrific speed and under deep emotional stress. Latrobe's 
paternal love obviously blinded him to the fact that what to his more 
mature hindsight seemed terrific hardship may have been for Lydia and 
Roosevelt high adventure as well as evidence of a new kind of complete, 
almost modern, partnership between them. 

The same letter, however, concludes with a bit of welcome news: the 
virtual end of the Navy copper affair, which for years had been a mill- 
stone around the necks of both Roosevelt and Latrobe. As we have seen, 
Roosevelt had contrived to clear up the architect's personal financial in- 
volvement. But emotionally Latrobe was still deeply enmeshed; he could 
not see the matter otherwise than as a threat both to the future and to 
the good name of his daughter's husband if not to Lydia herself. Roose- 
velt for years had sought some way of clearing off the obligation with- 
out sacrificing any of his capital; but, though he felt the whole situation 
a deep injustice to himself, his income was so precarious and his cash 
position always so uncertain that no solution had offered. At last he 
made up his mind to the inevitable, as the final paragraph of Latrobe's 
letter to Fulton suggests : 

Mr. Roosevelt is gone to Philadelphia finally to conclude his business with 
the U. States. He has about $50,000 worth to offer them as security which 
sets him completely free for 7 years, & as most of this security is land, valued 
in his inventory at $2 p. acre, there is every reason to believe that it will 7 
years hence be much more valuable. He will return in to days. Lydia in the 



376 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

meantime remains with us, & is daily increasing our regret that we cannot 
always be together. 

Mrs. Latrobe joins me in sincere respects to Mrs. Fulton & yourself, & 
children. 

The triumph o the Mississippi boat, which was astonishing the world 
and piling up profits in its regular trips between Natchez and New 
Orleans, proved conclusively that steamboats on the western rivers could 
be hugely profitable. A second boat, the Vesuvius, was being built in 
Pittsburgh; John Livingston, Mrs. Fulton's brother, 5 was Fulton's agent 
in this project, and Staudinger, one of Roosevelt's early associates, was 
foreman. But even more profitable would be steamboat commerce on 
the Ohio and its tributaries. If Fulton wished to corner that rapidly 
growing market he would have to hurry. In these years he was in a 
state of chronic anxiety: his monopoly was being attacked on every 
side, his basic patent itself was threatened, and rival boat builders were 
already contemplating work at Pittsburgh. If the monopoly legislation 
was to be held illegal and his monopoly on steam commerce should 
therefore fail, at least he must be the first in the field; he knew well 
the prestige his name held and the confidence it engendered. 

Accordingly he and his New York collaborators set up a new com- 
pany, the Ohio Steamboat Navigation Company. A trusted agent was 
required to build the boats; who better than Latrobe? Fulton knew that 
Latrobe, in 1812, was out of a job and harassed by debts and that his 
architectural prospects were dim. He knew that because the British 
blockade had disrupted coastwise commerce the engines for the New 
Orleans waterworks, which by now were desperately needed, would 
have to be completed inland and floated down the Ohio and Mississippi, 
and that Latrobe was already considering a move to Pittsburgh to build 



5. The Livingston clan was deeply enmeshed in Fulton's steamboat affairs. After the Chan- 
cellor's death, his younger brother Edward acted for his heirs and handled the Mississippi 
business from his home in New Orleans. Mrs. Fulton was a Livingston; Latrobe refers to 
her as the Chancellor's niece and in a letter to Captain Tingey (June 22, 1808) calls her 
"a very learned lady, somewhat stricken . . . rich, elegant, spirited & able to manage any 
man" but actually she was the daughter of Walter Livingston, the Chancellor's second 
cousin. 

The profits earned by the early steamboats were fabulous. Thus in 1814 the New Orleans 
cleared a net $20,000 on a capitalization of $40,000, and in 1818 the Vesuvius in one trip 
up the river received freight charges of $47,000, of which over half was clear profit. See 
Hunter, op. ctt. p. 20. 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 377 

them. 6 Was it friendship or a shrewd sizing up of affairs and a clever 
seizing upon another's hardships as a means of furthering his own ends 
that prompted Fulton? His character was so volatile, his actions were 
occasionally so erratic, and his record of turning against former asso- 
ciates was so chronic that today, as in his own time, it is impossible to 
make any final judgment. Latrobe believed implicitly in Fulton's good 
will and acknowledged his gratitude to him for settling the Roosevelt 
affair. And Fulton in those years had become more than a business 
friend; he was a welcome visitor at the Latrobe home. 7 

Evidently they discussed the move to Pittsburgh during the visit 
Latrobe made to New York in the autumn of 1812 (September 27 to 
October 9), as well as steamboat projects for the Washington area. 
When he departed he traveled by steamboat to New Brunswick and 
on his way spent two days at Clover Hill, where he had left his wife. 
It was on this visit that he finally made up his mind, and from then 
on he devoted his keen attention to the whole steamboat situation. On 
October 15 he wrote Fulton from Philadelphia about Daniel French's 
steamboat at Cooper's Ferry French was one of Fulton's most serious 
rivals and he wrote Cooper his opinion of the French boat. The same 
day he wrote to Roosevelt to find the "actual rate of going" of the 
Mississippi boat; then a day later he wrote Fulton again about business 
conditions in the West, the possible competitors on the Ohio, and the 
lowering of river freight rates which the mere threat of steamboats had 
already forced; much of this information he had obtained from a Mr. 
Gratz, "who does by far the greatest quantity of western business in 
this city." Again from Washington he wrote Fulton more about com- 
petitors (October 28) : 



6. Latrobe had written Roosevelt as early as July I, 1812: "I am very well convinced that 
I must go to Pittsburgh & organize affairs there. I have a serious intention of being there 
as soon as I can get money to bear my expenses." And the next day in a letter to Jefferson 
he said: "I intend as soon as possible to employ myself in some manufacturing occupation, 
& to quit, if I can, the public service in which my mind has suffered a very disadvantageous 
change." 

7. Much of the material dealing with the relation of Roosevelt and Latrobe to the develop- 
ment of steamboats comes from a long letter Latrobe wrote to a Pittsburgh attorney, Henry 
Baldwin, Mrs. Barlow's brother, on October 10, 1814. This is so important a source that it 
is given complete in the Appendix. See also James Thomas Flexner, Steamboats Come True 
. . . (New York: Viking, 1944). There is a small amount of interesting material dealing 
with the Mississippi and Ohio companies in the Gilbert Montague Collection of Robert 



378 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

[Roosevelt] has promised to look up Baker for me. [Baker, who had been 
the engineer of the New Orleans, was desired as a mechanic for Pittsburgh.] 
. . . He found him in your service, & ascertained his terms , . . the same 
offered him by Oliver Evans, who is going to build boats on the Ohio. . . . 
I fear this opposition of Oliver Evans will knock us up as to filling our sub- 
scriptions [note the "our"]. ... As French uses wheels [on his boat] in the 
Delaware without opposition, from you or Stevens, I fear Oliver will be 
emboldened to adopt the same plan. . . . The races & the incessant rain have 
prevented a meeting of the gentlemen who wish to put forward the George- 
town-Alexandria boat. E. Riggs of this place heads the subscription list with 
$1000. . . . The Potomac Creek boat is not likely to take so well. I cannot 
get Forrest to move in it. ... 

By January, 1813, he had definitely decided on moving to Pittsburgh and 
wrote the news to his brother Christian in London (January 13) : 

It is a long time since I have heard from you. But this unfortunate war 
accounts for everything that is abominable. I expect it will end either in a 
few months or last for many years, in which case your Congreve Rockits 
[sic] may be tried on our towns & our Torpedoes under the bottoms of your 
ships. Hitherto in the Naval engagements which have occurred the Yankees 
have had the better, twice with small odds in the point of weight of metal 
& once (in the case of the Frolic) against superior force. But against your 
ships our few Frigates can't long have an existence so we'll say no more 
about it. ... 

This war has among many other changes, totally changed my plan. It is 
my intention to resign my public situation & go & live at Pittsburgh in Penn- 
sylvania. My reasons are these. The new demands on the Treasury for the 
expenses of the War, have occasioned a suspension of all work on the Legis- 
lative building in this city, which I have so far completed as to accommodate 
the houses of Congress, & the Supreme Courts of the U. States now admirably. 
What remains to be done is not immediately necessary & may be postponed. 
The Navy Yard in this place which is entirely of my creation is also pretty 
well compleated. I have done enough for my reputation here. I have there- 
fore engaged with Mr. Fulton in the establishment of steamboats to the West- 
ward, and next year I shall build at least three at Pittsburgh of 3 to 400 tons 
each. I have already compleated a line of boats from hence to Potomac Creek 
where the land carriage to Richmond necessarily commences, & from hence 
to Norfolk steamboats of 400 tons will compleat the line to Norfolk. I gave 

Fulton Manuscripts in the New York Public Library; there are also many letters dealing 
with the subject among the Livingston Papers in the New-York Historical Society. 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 379 

you in my last a full account of this new mode of navigation. If I live to 
finish what I have undertaken & which will occupy three or four years, I shall 
very probably be able to sit down at my leisure [the ever hopeful Latrobe!] 
for the rest of my life & deliver the Bar at which I have pulled devotedly so 
long to my son Henry now at N. Orleans, where he is as industrious & active 
as I could possibly wish him to be. A second edition of the same boy is 
growing up in John, now 9 years old. Our next Juliana is 8, and our youngest 
Benj. Henry a great rogue of 6. I wish I had your half dozen boys here. 
We have business for them all, and I am afraid, in spite of the victories of 
Lord Wellington the same embarrassment exists in England respecting the 
provisions for children which existed 20 years ago. . . . 

. . . We expect in a few days Lydia & her husband here, with her two 
children, a boy & a girl. Thus I am a generation ahead of you. This goes 
by a Cartel which takes over Mr. Baker late Secretary of Legation to Mr. 
Foster. He is a very well informed & I believe well disposed man, but can 
do no good between the two nations. . . . 

Two weeks later (February i), through George Poe, he rented a house in 
Pittsburgh belonging to James O'Hara; when his delay in Washington 
prevented his using it, he wrote O'Hara in April asking that it be turned 
over to John Livingston for the time being. But nine full months were to 
elapse before he could finally leave Washington probably, as he thought, 
for good and it was already July before he went to New York again to 
make the final agreements with Fulton. 

Many things caused the delay. The Potomac Steamboat Company, 
which had elected Latrobe its secretary, required much work. The state 
of North Carolina had granted the exclusive privilege of steam naviga- 
tion within its waters to Stevens, not to Fulton, and to counter this 
action Fulton's agent DeLacy 8 was working with North Carolina con- 
gressmen. Latrobe arranged for DeLacy to get an opinion on the validity 
of the Fulton-Livingston patent from Robert Goodloe Harper, who re- 



8. John Devereux DeLacy, or Delacy, was a charming, improvident, optimistic, ambitious 
Irish-born gentleman who for some time acted as one of Fulton's traveling agents. In 1815, 
in a letter to Henry Latrobe on February 23, the architect gives his final summing up of the 
ebullient Irishman: "But he has proved himself a very honest man lately, and he certainly 
is a man of most excellent understanding, & of a true good Irish heart. He however over- 
whelms his excellent qualities by manners the most extraordinary. He left Ireland at 14 and 
has lived in America ever since, and yet it is not easy to find a more intolerable brogue than 
he has. ... He is a handsome man of about 40, with an iron constitution, and a counte- 
nance of unblushing but good natured candor. Such a man is the Knight errant that has 
arisen in defense of our family * . ." 



ogo THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

ported: "The powers of the central government expressly given by the 
Constitution extend over the whole U. States, and are paramount to the 
powers of the states; among these is the securing to the inventor the 
fruits of their [sic] ingenuity." But the legislature of Virginia, on the 
other hand, as Latrobe wrote Fulton (March 3), had granted "us" a 
charter on both the James and the Potomac for fifteen years; Latrobe 
also was seeking a similar grant from the legislature of Illinois to cover 
steamboats on the upper Mississippi, the Wabash, and the Illinois. 

Another controversy arose over the question of towboats. Fulton had 
heard of certain proposals to use steam tugboats, and he hurried to assert 
his rights by applying for a patent on the idea. Latrobe sent to Secretary 
of State Monroe (June 10, 1813) a formal application for the patent 
signed "B. H. Latrobe, attorney for and on behalf of Robert Fulton." 
But Fulton's claim was contested by a certain New Englander named 
Sullivan who claimed priority in the scheme. The Secretary of State, 
as was usual at that time, referred the matter to a three-man commis- 
sion, each claimant appointing one member and the third being ap- 
pointed by the Secretary, At Fulton's suggestion Latrobe named Eli 
Whitney, the famous Connecticut inventor, to represent the Fulton in- 
terests (as he wrote Fulton September 3). There the matter rested so 
far as the architect was concerned, swallowed up in the larger interest 
of the war. 

During this last Washington summer, Roosevelt and Lydia on their 
way home to New York from New Orleans visited the Latrobes briefly, 
and the architect took the occasion to discuss with his son-in-law the 
state of steamboat affairs in Pittsburgh, including the size and equip- 
ment of the building yard (then at work on the two additional Missis- 
sippi boats, the Vesuvius and the Etna), so that he might be thoroughly 
prepared. He learned too of Roosevelt's investments in Pittsburgh, for 
the incorrigible plunger while he was a resident in that city had bought 
a whisky distillery and a snuffbox factory. 

In addition to all these steamboat affairs, other engineering matters 
required the architect's attention. There was, for instance, Roosevelt's 
scheme for an engine to be driven by gunpowder a scheme into which 
Roosevelt was pouring his immense energy, trying vainly to interest 
New York financiers in his invention. 9 And there was the matter of 



9. Latrobe was not sanguine of its success. On March 22 he wrote Roosevelt: "... I have 
also a letter from Mr. Graf, which very much embarrasses me. He puts me on my honor 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 381 

Latrobe's own steam-engine factory. This, though busy, was an expense 
instead of a profit maker, for the war rendered deliveries from Wash- 
ington difficult if not impossible and the purchasers paid only on de- 
livery. Something had to be done with the enterprise. Latrobe felt he 
had sunk so much capital in it that to liquidate at once would en- 
danger whatever credit he possessed. Finally he succeeded in making an 
arrangement with his associate in the business, John Wark, an Alexan- 
dria (Virginia) millwright, who assumed the direction and the owner- 
ship of the works without loss or gain, for that matter to Latrobe. 
He was thus well rid of a concern that in those precarious years of war 
and inflation was bound to become a grievous burden; but with its pas- 
sage from his hands went another vain hope of financial security. It 
was a bitter blow, yet the pain of it was buried under his new great 
hope a fortune from steamships! 

And there was still some architectural work to be finished before he 
could move from Washington the Marine Hospital, for instance. This 
great scheme, which had occupied him intermittently from 1808 on, was 
alive again under the stimulus of wartime needs, and Latrobe was busy 
making a complete set of final drawings; his bill for $300 for consulta- 
tion and drawings went to the Secretary of the Navy on March 27, 1813. 
Then, too, he was still in charge of some work at the Navy Yard and 
had to make a final report on it, and the steam engine he had installed 
there required constant supervision. 

He also had many other architectural and engineering interests to 
hold him. There was a mill for George Brent, in Washington. There 
were odds and ends in connection with the Washington Canal, for, as 
Latrobe had foreseen, maintenance of the wooden locks was a constant 
problem. There was some work on the Marlborough courthouse 10 and 
some for the courthouse at Allentown, Pennsylvania. There was a portico 
for Charles Carroll of Bellevue. And Henry Clay's residence, Ashland, 
in Lexington, Kentucky, then under construction, required many draw- 



as to my opinion on your machine, which I find you after all proposed to him. I told him 
I had had the same sanguine spirit which animated me 25 years ago ... but that I was 
considerably cooled by disappointment ..." 

10. July 7, to William Beanes, Marlborough, Maryland: "It will be utterly impossible to 
put up the bars at the court house on the 13*. My part is done, but the castings [being 
made by Henry Foxall] will delay the business." 



382 



THE CLIMAX PERIOD 




Courtesy Clay Lancaster 

FIGURE 22. Henry Clay House, Ashland, Lexington, Ky. From Latrobe's sketch 
in a letter to Clay. 

ings. 11 There were the drawings for Transylvania College, also in Lex- 
ington, for the same client an ambitious scheme that failed to material- 
ize at that time. There was a house for J. C. Williams of Baltimore. 
This was evidently a project of considerable size, and Latrobe gave it 
his best efforts. But its construction was postponed, probably because of 
the war, and Latrobe, anxious to collect as many of his bills as he could 
before he left for Pittsburgh, billed the client for the work to date. 
Williams refused to pay, in a letter (written in November, 1813) that 
only reached Latrobe in Pittsburgh several months later a missive so 
galling to Latrobe's notions of professional standing that it drew from 
him a full and angry letter expressive of the difficulties under which he 
labored: 



n. August 15, to Henry Clay: "As to your house, I think you said that you had reversed 
the use o the wings. ... I also understood that you are at present engaged in building the 
wing containing the chambers & nursery. . , , In the meantime I shall make my design 
without regard to the corner houses . . . and shall send you the drawings." He sent an 
additional plan on September 5. 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 383 

Pittsburgh, April 3, 1814 
Sir 

Your letter of Nov. ... 1813 arrived here while I was confined to my bed 
by a dangerous illness, and withheld from me by the kindness of my wife, 
for a long time. I have delayed to answer it chiefly by my astonishment at 
its contents. It is in point of fact the greatest insult I ever received in my life, 
& yet I am so well persuaded that every man acts with as much propriety as 
he is capable of, that I am readily conscious that you did not mean to insult 
me. You have besides a further excuse, you acted upon false information. 
I will now put the case in a form which will be intelligible to you. 

Supposing you were to offer a cargo to Mr. Gilmore, & demand a certain 
price for it and Mr. Gilmore, taking the matter into consideration were to 
offer you one third of the price you ask, & were moreover to tell you that 
you were either so ignorant of the practice of your profession, or so inclined 
to impose upon your customers, that you had exceeded by 200 per cent the 
demands of the very first merchants for the article, & that he had this infor- 
mation from persons, whom he did not name. If on receiving this answer you 
had knocked him down, I for one would have given you great credit for 
doing so. 

I asked you 150$ for a design which detained me two days in Baltimore, 
out of which had you executed it, all the conveniences & elegance of the best 
house in Baltimore would have arisen, & you offer me 50$ & tell me into 
the bargain that 10 Guineas is the common charge for a design by the first 
architects in Europe! 

Whoever gave you the information knew nothing of the matter. That in 
Europe there are men of talents who are starving is certain, & that many 
young artists feed their profligacy & dissipation by selling their productions 
at an under value is also certain, just as merchants sell an article with which 
the merchant is overstocked at a loss, if they cannot afford to keep it on 
hand. But that any architect of character & eminence in England or France 
ever made a design for such a house as yours for 10 Guineas is a ridiculous 
error, not to say a falsehood. I have been in no inconsiderable business in 
England myself; and . . . Shaffer, Harris, Wyatt, Soane, Grave, Harrison, 
Cockerell etc. would not make a design unless to be executed under their 
direction. For their direction & the design they charged, for fair drawings, 
a set is 50 Guineas, for each consultation half a Guinea, from 5 Guineas to 
20 Guineas per day for going into the country to view the grounds & per- 
sonally to direct the work, & 5 per cent commission on all monies expended. 
Having been 3 years in Mr. Cockerell's office & made many of his designs, 



384 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

I must know this in detail, & my intimacy with other architects proved to 
me that these charges are uniform. Being very young I charged at first 3 
Guineas per day in attending Mr. Fuller's & Sperling's houses in Sussex, 12 but 
5 Guineas in attending parliament on the Marsden Canal business; I received 
100 Guineas as gratuity on the success of my evidence. The English Courts 
have decided that for a perfect design, which is ordered but not executed 2% 
per cent on the estimated cost is a fair charge. And with us even the Car- 
penters receive 3 per cent only for measuring & valuing the work, without 
any design. You must therefore in England have paid me 500$, & had you 
built your house you must have paid 600 for measuring it. And I have 
charged you only 150$. 

In order to close the business however, I am willing to receive 50$, you 
paying the same to Mr. Hazlehurst who will give you a receipt in full and 
returning him the drawings. If this is agreeable to you there will be an end 
of this very unpleasant business, which if further correspondence is necessary, 
I shall beg leave to transfer to Mr. Harper [Latrobe's attorney]. 

Respectfully Yrs. 
B. H. Latrobe 

More and more, however, as the year 1813 passed, it was the war that 
filled the architect's mind and his days. Latrobe was intensely patriotic 
and deeply distressed as events seemed to be turning more and more 
against the United States. Chesapeake Bay was now to all intents and 
purposes British territory. British fleets navigated it at will; they lay off 
Norfolk, and, a hundred strong, British warships barricaded the entrances 
to Baltimore and Annapolis. All coastwise commerce was at an end, 
and land transport was jammed on the roads. 

In connection with this blockade there is a curious note so character- 
istic of the unreal character of that peculiar war, strangely compounded 
of chivalry and wanton destruction concerning the steamboat (then 
being built in New York) which the newly organized Potomac Steam- 
boat Company wished to buy from Fulton. The boat had been ordered 
before the British blockade was complete; but now, with the British in 
command of Chesapeake Bay, how was it to be delivered? Christened 
the Washington, it was eventually delivered, after the war, in May, 1815. 
But by that time Latrobe's company had dissolved and a new one (in 
which he had no interest) managed her operation. Latrobe in a letter 

12. Hammerwood Lodge and Ashdown House. See pages 44-6. 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 385 

to Fulton (May 8, 1813) on the general condition of affairs remarks 
that he supposes the danger "which surrounds us will assuredly prevent 
the steamboat being brought around." Yet in the middle of August the 
Potomac Steamboat Company was still expecting its delivery from New 
York, and Latrobe was forced to write twice to Fulton about the im- 
patience of the company. No passport difficulty was expected, for the 
scheme had august backing, it appeared: "The President & Mr. Monroe 
[Secretary of State], it seems, have both interested themselves exceedingly 
about the boat, and have given assurances that an arrangement for get- 
ting her round would be made . . ." Conceivably the President and his 
Secretary of State could have somehowperhaps through a friendly 
legation put before the British admiral their desire that the steamboat 
be permitted to pass the British blockade; but what an extraordinary 
request that would have been! And the company's confidence that such 
a request would be granted is even more remarkable. Whether or not 
some preliminary inquiries had already been made we do not know, but 
the entire episode reveals a kind of give-and-take between hostile forces 
that is almost unprecedented. Three weeks later the company was still 
waiting, and Latrobe pled with Fulton (September 5) to do something 
to quiet the impatient purchasers: "They are outrageous. They accuse 
me. It seems they had a license to bring her round to Annapolis in a 
cartel, which is expired or expiring." A week later the architect left 
Washington, and the matter is not referred to again. 

The defenses of Washington seemed to Latrobe inconceivably chaotic, 
the entire Washington administration shot through with incompetence 
and confusion, the army authorities arrogant, over-confident, and plan- 
less. These impressions come out in letter after letter, as in this to 
Adjutant General Duane at Philadelphia (March 13, 1813) : 

I shall remove to Pittsburgh this summer. I offered my services once to 
General Dearborn. He told me engineers were of not much use in our Army; 
anybody could dig a fosse and that they ranked with Brigade [infantry?] at 
the commencement of the present war. I waited on Dr. Eustis & pressed him 
exceedingly to do something for the Corps of Engineers, & offered him the 
services of 5 or 6 French officers, among the rest of Godefroi (Count La 
Mard), men hating the English, & royalists whose French attachments were 
worn out, who were married here, etc., etc. "I know it, I know it," says he, 
"but we do not want them till we are at the walls of Quebec." Our honest, 
patriotic, firm, but influenced President tells me plainly, that he dare not 



386 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

employ me, because I am unpopular** So I am going to be a blacksmith at 
Pittsburgh: & there the feathers which I have for many years pulled from 
my pen, to keep her down to the level of my dependent state will again 
sprout . . . 

and in one to Mr. S. Gordon of Philadelphia (January 14, 1813), about 
another French engineer seeking service: 

There is, you know, a violent prejudice among the Federalists against 
everything French. ... It arises partly from the inveterate habit of the nation 
before the Revolution, which is not yet worn out. . . . With the exception 
of Colonel de La Croix, whose position has arisen from very peculiar patron- 
age, not a single Frenchman has, since the Revolution, been entrusted with 
public duties, and those who were in the army, Rivardi, Rochefontaine, 
Vermanet, Toussard & many others have been, by degrees, got rid of. ... 
The Republican party entertain a violent jealousy against all foreigners, 
Frenchmen particularly. I have been laboring these six years to get employ- 
ment for Mr. Godefroi (Count La Mard). . . . General Dearborn told me, 
they had no occasion for engineers, that he never would consent to employ 
foreigners, especially not Frenchmen . . . 

To his son Henry he unburdens his soul with respect to the Washington 
scene: 

[January 14:] ... Mr. Madison, whom your mother, in her way, compared 
to a little shrivelled spider, in the midst of a large flabby cobweb shaking in 
the wind, will be nobody at all. Mr. Gallatin has in fact been president for 
some time. . . . [January 24:] There has been miserable work under Granny 
Dearborn to the Northward. But your apprehensions about the Indians have 
not the least foundation. Tecumseh is prisoner, & they have already broken 
up. Pittsburgh, at all events, is safe, let things go as they will. . . . [February 
21, with good news of the capture of the British frigate Java by Commodore 
Bainbridge in the Constitution:} She was so crippled, he was obliged to blow 



13. On April 24, 18139 Latrobe sent Secretatry Jones of the Navy a long letter which is 
an apologia for his way of life: "My time has been fully employed. I have had no assistance 
in the most laborious parts of my operations. My family has been my greatest, and almost 
my only scene of short relaxations & of enjoyment I could only have devoted my evenings 
to the members of Congress, scattered thro' an extent of 4 miles in length, had I had the 
talent or inclination to visit & to entertain them. But, in truth, I neither felt the wish nor 
the propriety of appearing to consult anyone on my designs, or the mode of my operation, 
while I felt myself competent to perform my duty without assistance. . . . 

"My unpopularity therefore has arisen [from my character and my ideals of public service], 
not from extravagance." 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 387 

her up. Br. 60 killed, 170 wounded. Am. 9 killed, 29 wounded. This uniform 
disparity is astonishing and inexplicable. 

A month later, in a letter to Fulton (March 13), he is bitter: 

There is now a most formidable force at Norfolk, at which the Federalists 
here rejoice, saying that it will bring Madison to his senses. I have by this 
time convinced myself that we have no national honor to defend, & therefore 
had as well make up the quarrel as well as we can, & go to making children, 
tobacco & flour as hard as possible, giving up Detroit & what else we have 
lost, appointing a committee of merchants to govern the country, & offering 
our trade to European nations at auction under the hammer of Mr. L. 
Davis . . . 

The next day he writes to Henry Baldwin in Pittsburgh: 

General Wilkinson is to have command of the Northern Army, an express 
having been dispatched for him 10 days ago. Norfolk is in a state of siege, a 
formidable British force being in Hampton Roads. But they are not afraid, 
having 30 gunboats, the Constellation & a narrow channel, with two tolerable 
forts & 3000 men in arms. Oh, the folly of this War . . . 

As matters worsened and spring wore into summer, he wrote General 
Duane at Philadelphia (May 2) : 

There are now in the Bay, perhaps 100 British ships of war. ... At the 
Navy Yard are 3 or 400 guns . . . [they] lie in rows on rotten logs like sea 
lions snoring on the ice. Not a carriage on which to mount them. To be sure 
we have some very fine soldiers. 100 marines at the barracks. Major General 
Van Ness, Lt. Col. Tayloe, lately appointed over the heads of all the majors 
. . . Capt. Thornton's troop of horse, himself, a trumpeter & i trooper, Capt. 
E. B. CaldwelPs troops, 40 strong, a good corps, quo ad horse, men & courage, 
Capts. Cassin, Lenox & Davidson, 60 strong ... 2 rifle corps, I believe in all 
perhaps 400 men, as many in Georgetown, & as many or more in Alexandria, 
good stuff, rather more like soldiers than mahogany logs are like dining 
tables. And yet the constant cry, "Oh, they won't come" . . . There is no 
more preparation at Alexandria than at Cape May. Fort Washington, Dear- 
born's design, the magazine the most conspicuous spot on the top of the 
hill . . . 

Latrobe could not even get his regular work at the Navy Yard per- 
formed properly and was forced to write William Jones, the Secretary 
o the Navy (May 7) : 



388 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

I have, by direction of Com. Tingey . . . given such directions for the driv- 
ing of the piles in the new slip as appeared to be necessary. ... I acknowl- 
edge the support of the principal commanding officer . . . but from the 
counteraction of others my efforts are useless, & the public interest suffers. 
I therefore solicit either to be relieved from all responsibility in respect to the 
slip, or to receive such authority as shall ensure obedience to my instruc- 
tions . . . 

The British had burned Havre de Grace and Frederick; these attacks 
Latrobe referred to as "Cockburn's fires," for that redoubtable admiral 
was rapidly accumulating the burden of hatred for his ruthlessness that 
has pursued him ever since. On May 8 the architect wrote Fulton of the 
danger to Washington: 

An express arrived this morning stating that the British were preparing to 
burn Annapolis. . . , The postboy who is since come in, says that no bom- 
bardment however has taken place. . . . Madison and [General] Armstrong 
declare that there is not any danger. A town meeting, however, this evening 
has appointed a committee of vigilance, & will, I hope, rouse the sleeping 
administration a little. . . . 

And the same day, in a letter to Samuel Hazlehurst in Philadelphia., he 
made a prophecy that turned out to be all too true: "I have little doubt 
of this city faring exactly as did Havre de Grace." 

Latrobe wished desperately to have some part in the defense. Largely 
in vain, he busied himself trying to get commissions for various engineer 
and architect friends. For several harmless English acquaintances he 
obtained exceptions from the military order that Englishmen had to 
leave the eastern coastal regions, though he complained that one of them, 
a certain Mr. Greatrakes, talked too much against the government. An- 
other of those he helped to remain was William James, who had briefly 
been his pupil and draftsman in London and of whom he wrote to 
General Mason (May 31) : "While I was in England I knew his family 
intimately. His father put him into my office, but his tendencies led him 
more to the turf than to the fine arts & I advised him to change his 
profession." 

But this vicarious activity could not satisfy his desire to be of use. He 
offered suggestions to Brigadier General Young at Alexandria (May 15) 
that the authorities use fire rafts, moor the frigate New Yor% as a float- 
ing battery, mount the ample supply of guns, commandeer the stage 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 389 

horses for cavalry, form a company of riverboatmen and merchant sea- 
men for shore defense, cut abatis in the woods and he sent a sketch to 
make sure the general understood the last of these recommendations. 
But above all, Latrobe says, the government must wake up and do 
something. 

He had tried, too, to sell various useful arms or supplies to the gov- 
ernment for the Marks: hemp for rope, sauerkraut, and, most impor- 
tant, a large ship described in a letter (March 12) to William Jones, 
Secretary of the Navy, as "the American Eagle, 1000 tons, cost $125,000, 
pierced for 28 guns on gun deck, 16 guns on upper deck, fully 
found . . ." But this was also in vain; the hemp, the sauerkraut, and 
the American Eagle had all been refused, as Latrobe wrote Louis Mark 
(March 16) : 

The Secretary told me that the law would not permit the purchase [of the 
vessel]; that an appropriation was made ... to purchase vessels of a certain 
description, namely sloops of war carrying their guns on one deck, vessels light 
& not expensive, such as could be built & equipped for $60,000. That your ship 
was in fact a 28 gun frigate, too large to be employed as a sloop of war, too 
small to lay alongside any of the enemy's ships on our coast, . . . The Secre- 
tary informed me that the Government had resolved to build all their vessels 
themselves, on one particular mould and of a particular size & timber . . . 
[and] that the purchase of merchant vessels in the year 1798 had proved 
ruinous . . . 

Nevertheless, he did at last find his niche and, in its way, a not un- 
important one. It arose out of his close connection with Fulton on the 
one hand and with Secretary Jones on the other. Fulton had for years 
been interested in submarine vessels and submarine torpedoes; here was 
the ideal situation in which to test them. Here were great groups of 
hostile warships, arrogantly holding complete control of the waters but 
for that very reason over-confident and careless. Latrobe, keenly aware 
of the possibilities, wrote to Fulton (March 21) : "If I were unmarried, 
& under 25, 1 would borrow a few pairs of torpedoes, & if I am not much 
mistaken, they should succeed in some stormy night at Norfolk, with 
the aid of two canoes ... or, rather whaleboats. The more dreadful the 
wind is, the darker, the better . . ." Both he and DeLacy had lobbied 
for the passage of Senator Bradley's bill to grant a bounty of half the 
value of every enemy ship destroyed by citizens not commissioned by 
the United States, and he had written. Fulton (March 12) about a certain 



THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

Mr. Perkins x * o Boston, a man of great practical acumen, who was pro- 
posing a range o torpedoes across the Narrows in New York harbor "to 
be set on fire by an electric wire." 

By the middle of March the prospects of using the Fulton torpedoes 
had brightened, Latrobe had succeeded in interesting the Secretary of 
the Navy, and orders for the necessary materials were being prepared. 
"We shall hear more of this, I think," he wrote Fulton (March 29). The 
result was that Latrobe himself became the secret agent through whom 
the whole enterprise funneled, and he in turn worked through his friend 
General Duane in Philadelphia. Several of Fulton's torpedoes were in 
Washington; they had been sent over from France years before, along 
with Fulton's model submarine, by Joel Barlow, who had been Fulton's 
patron. On March 27, Latrobe devoted hours to searching for them. 

I found them [he writes Fulton], with some difficulty in an upper story 
thrown into a heap, some in a barrel, others lying about. ... I spoke to the 
storekeeper, Mr. Buller Cocke, a Norfolk man, & told him you had delivered 
these things to Mr. Barlow [and] you wished me to inquire where they were. 
... I requested him to say nothing. ... He became very anxious that they 
should be used in Norfolk and said ". . . 12 desparate fellows . . . could 
easily be found to hang a pair of them across a hauser." 

The torpedoes were dismantled. How to get them into use secretly? 
It was here that General Duane came in. Latrobe had implicit faith in 
him, and he in Latrobe. Since he was in the army rather than in the 
navy, his was the ideal address to which the torpedoes could be sent 
without giving any notion to the rank and file of what they were or 
what their ultimate destination was; they were consequently packed and 
shipped to him. The Secretary of the Navy told Latrobe that no Navy 
money could be expended on the project itself but that gunpowder, boats, 
and men volunteers would be at Fulton's command. Three weeks later 
the commander of the expedition was chosen: Elijah Mix. Latrobe writes 
Fulton (April 13) about the torpedo volunteers; he has engaged a Cap- 
tain Lawton, and had been considering a Commodore Kennedy, who was 
in charge of a flotilla of gunboats, for the command, 

but [he continues] today the Secretary has sent me a man born for the service 
. . . Captain Elijah Mix . . . He is here to claim & receive half the value of 



14. Jacob Perkins, inventor and industrialist, chiefly remembered for his invention of a 
widely used machine for making nails. 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 39! 

the Emolus, supposed to be lost by accident, but, in fact, run ashore by Mix, 
then a prisoner on her. He, at the same time, took & brought back her dis- 
patches, & he has since contrived to procure the treasonable Bostonian cor- 
respondence, which will come out next meeting of Congress. ... I shall be 
the means of getting him the necessary boats & hands, confidentially from the 
department. 15 

On April 24 Latrobe informs Fulton that he is sending Mix to see him 
and that the mouth of Chesapeake Bay should be the first scene of 
action, for Mix has a friend at Old Point Comfort, "a creek at the door, 
a solitary house/' and "a few leagues from the house, often only a few 
miles, the ships lie at anchor. . . . God bless you, my dear Fellow, & 
prosper your torpedoes, as he has done your steamboats for the benefit 
of humanity." 

By May 7 the expedition has largely crystallized, and Latrobe writes 
Edward Johnson, the mayor of Baltimore, enclosing a letter of instruc- 
tions for Captain Mix. "If the enterprise miscarries, it will be in con- 
sequence of its becoming the subject of conversation," he warns; "if 
Capt. Mix succeeds, your city, indeed all the cities of our seaboard are 
safe." And to make secrecy doubly sure, the enclosed letter to Mix merely 
asks him to call on Captain Gordon, commander of the flotilla at Balti- 
more, for further orders. At the same time, Latrobe is busy forwarding 
the torpedo parts to General Duane at Philadelphia; they are sent care- 
fully boxed in several crates marked "Mathematical Instruments." The 
torpedoes are soon assembled, and Mix and his crew are already on their 
way, so that on May 15 Latrobe can write Fulton: "Mix should be at 
Old Point Comfort. The English Fleet is collected in Lynnhaven Bay." 
Yet secrecy in the navy is hard to preserve. Captain Stewart of the Con- 
stellation is in Washington on June 5, and Latrobe is distressed to hear 
him talk about the proposed attack on the frigates before Captain 
Tingey and others who are unsympathetic to the bold scheme. 

Then comes the first attempt a total failure, but a near success. La- 
trobe has had a letter from Mix, he tells Fulton (June 10). Mix, in the 
dark, had hooked the hauser of a "74" instead of its rudder, and had 
been forced to flee, leaving the torpedo behind him; but the next night 



15. The Emolus that Latrobe refers to was probably the British Navy cruiser brig Emulous, 
lost early in the war. Elijah Mix was commissioned a Sailing Master on January 12, 1813, 
and in the winter and spring of 1812-13 served on Lake Ontatrio as commander of the 
Growler. 



3Q2 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

he had boldly gone out and retrieved the torpedo safely. The Secretary 
of the Navy is afraid Mix's unsuccessful attempt may have given warn- 
ing to the enemy, and through Latrobe he sends Mix more directions 
for another attempt. The moon is waning, and they are to wait till the 
dark of the moon. Latrobe writes Mix on June 17: "I watch the decline 
of the moon with more anxiety than I ever watched her increase." But 
on June 24 Mix with his men is back in Washington, swearing that he 
will eventually succeed, and that the British fleet is bombarding Norfolk. 
Mix needs more money; Latrobe writes Secretary Jones that he is lending 
him what he needs, hoping for an advance on the fire engine Latrobe 
has designed for the United States Navy frigates. 16 Mix tries again in 
the moonless period of July; four successive nights see him seeking the 
Plantagenet, chosen for destruction, and each time he is forced to return 
because of untoward accidents or near discovery by the enemy* Then 
he makes a fifth and final attempt; it is almost successful, but actually 
a failure. Latrobe writes Mix in Norfolk (August 15) : 

I wrote to you while in New York [where Latrobe had gone to settle final 
points about the Pittsburgh scheme], and have since then seen in the news- 
papers the account of your attempt on the Plantagenet, which had so nearly 
proved successful, that had you been 20 feet nearer her, she must no doubt 
have been destroyed. 17 



1 6. Apparently neither Mix nor the Navy ever reimbursed Latrobe. Four years later (June 
15, 1816) Latrobe wrote Jacob Mark in New York: "Enquire for me . . . after Elijah Mix, 
who, I understand keeps an auction store in New York. He owes me some hundred 
dollars," 

17. According to T. H. Palmer, editor, The Historical Register of the United States 
(Washington: the editor, 1814), Part n, vol. n, Mix made his attempted torpedo attacks on 
the nights of July 18, 19, 20, 22, and 24; Palmer does not mention the attack in June. It 
was the last attempt, so nearly successful, to which Latrobe refers. Palmer's account is vivid. 
He tells us that Mix dropped his torpedo 100 yards from the Plantagenet , and goes on: "It 
was swept along by the tide, and would have completely effected its errand but for a 
cause not proper to be named here, but which may easily be guarded against in future experi- 
ments: it exploded too soon. The scene was awfully sublime . . . [The tremendous column 
of water thrown up] fell in torrents on the deck of the ship, which rolled into the yawning 
chasm below and almost upset . . . [The red glare of the explosion revealed] that the fore- 
channel of the ship was blown off, and a boat which lay alongside with several men in 
her, was thrown up by the dreadful convulsion of the waters . . . and they are certain that 
nearly the whole ship's crew hastily betook themselves to the boats." 

According to a letter of Captain Mix in the Navy archives, the Secretary had issued him 
a sharp reprimand for not continuing his attempts to sink the Plantagenet. 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 393 

He goes on to tell Mix of Fulton's latest scheme: cannon that fire under 
water. One of these has sent a loo-pound ball through twelve feet of 
water and three feet of oak, and Fulton has designed a boat for them 
a sort of bombproof craft with sides of pine seven feet thick, designed 
to carry four of his heavy underwater cannon. Thus ends Latrobe's ac- 
tive connection with the war, resulting only in another disappointment. 
Meanwhile the question of a possible peace was being discussed every- 
where. As early as January 10, 1813, the architect had reported to Charles 
Gwynn at Baltimore that peace "is the talk of the day ... but it takes 
two nations to make peace, while only one can provoke war, & declare 
it." Latrobe was bitter at the English behavior and wrote Thomas John- 
son at Frederick (January 4) : 

I am of your opinion as to English art. I love it as much as I detest the 
morality of the English Government, by far the most unprincipled & cruel of 
modern times in its conduct to foreign nations, & the most unjustifiably so, 
as she pretends to uncommon humanity, justice & religion . . . 

The burning of Havre de Grace like the later burning of Washington 
seemed to him inexcusable in its wanton brutality. He wrote to Gode- 
froy (May 6) : "Fools, not to suppose that this is the only possible method 
of uniting the nation, & rousing us from the sleep of ignorance & folly 
in which we are sunk.'* Yet despite the prevailing American wrath it 
was obvious that little could be done by the Americans save to prolong 
a stalemate. Peace was inevitable, and it was equally desired by the 
American and the British governments by the American in order to 
save its own seaboard and resurrect its sea-borne commerce, by the 
English to rebuild its economy shattered by the French war. To his 
father-in-law, Isaac Hazlehurst, Latrobe wrote on May 23: ". . . Peace 
in the autumn, Mr. Madison says so without reserve . . ." 

In June came rumors that the Russians were offering their services. 
The Latrobes were socially intimate with several Russian diplomats, 
whose charm and unfailing courtesy had made them much loved and 
everywhere trusted in Washington. Latrobe himself knew especially well 
Paul Svenin, the Russian consul at Philadelphia and a fellow artist, 18 as 



1 8. Svenin, Svinin, or Svcnnin, as Latrobe spells the name, was an amateur artist who 
left a sketchbook (now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York) containing superbly 
accurate water-color impressions of many facets of American life. A selection of those has 
been published in Avrahm Yarmolinsky's Picturesque United States of America, 1811, 1812, 



394 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

well as the legation counsel Swertchkoff, When in early June it became 
known that the Russians were unexpectedly leaving the country, Latrobe 
wrote Svenin (June 5) that he had hoped to send him a finished set 
of the plans of the Capitol; he had been too rushed to complete them, 
but in their place he was sending mere outlines which his Russian artist 
friend could complete at his leisure. Incidentally, he took the occasion 
of the Russians' departure to help Mrs. Madison with her servant prob- 
lem, for one of the legation employees had a valet who would be left 
jobless. Perhaps this man, Latrobe wrote Schwertchkoff, would be willing 
to serve as the Madisons' major domo; "if so, for the bien etre of our 
Queen, you will add to the obligations we owe you . . ." 19 

Reporting Washington gossip to General Duane in Philadelphia 
(June 27), Latrobe wrote: 

Gallatin, it seems, said, or procured it to be said, thro' Richard Brent, in the 
Senate, that the Russian minister had expressly asked that he [Gallatin] should 
be of the mission [the peace commissions] . On the other hand, it is stated that 
he had also arranged with the President that he should retain the Secretary- 
ship . . . The senate say that Armstrong complains bitterly. It is asserted that 
as to the issues of money G. has left positive orders that they shall not exceed 
i l /z million a month, so that though absent his ghost still governs us ... 

As the summer wore gradually away, the Russians departed and so did 
the American negotiators. 20 But the war was to drag on for many more 



j; Being a Memoir on Paul [Pavel Pavlovitch] Svinin, Russian Diplomatic Officer, 'Artist, 
and Author (New York: Rudge, 1930). 

19. On September 4 Latrobe wrote to Mr, Douhar, this prospective steward, that Mrs. 
Madison could not use him till November i. He then enumerates his duties: "Your duty 
will be to undertake the business of confectionery & cooking with a woman & a young man, 
pretty good cooks, under you; to market, to set out the table, & superintend the waiting 
upon the guests, & the arrangement during the dinner in the dining room, to keep correct 
accounts. . . . Your wages are to be thirty dollars a month." To Mrs. Madison, the same 
day, he described Douhar as a litde man wearing spectacles and "very decent in his 
exterior." 

20. Albert Gallatin and James Bayard, But the Senate refused to approve Gallatin's ap- 
pointment unless he resigned from the Treasury Department, and at the same time the 
British refused to negotiate through the Russian good offices. Gallatin did resign as Secretary 
of the Treasury, and the British agreed to negotiate directly; Latrobc later said that Eric 
Bollman, then in England, did much to persuade the British government to undertake nego- 
tiations. The peace commissions met finally in Ghent; the third American member was John 
Quincy Adams, then minister to Russia. (The Peace Treaty as inconclusive as the war 
itself was signed on Christmas Eve, 1814.) 



PRELUDE TO PITTSBURGH: STEAMBOATS AND WAR 395 

bloody months. Washington would be burned and Latrobe's decade of 
work in the Capitol largely destroyed. Andrew Jackson would win the 
battle of New Orleans after peace had already been signed in far-off 
Europe. 

Meanwhile Latrobe's financial position became steadily worse; suit 
after suit, chiefly for amounts that were small but frightening in their 
sum, descended upon him. Writs against him multiplied as the year wore 
on and he could not collect his bills. Finally he found himself compelled 
to part with a pair of horses, valued at $200, to satisfy a long-due claim 
a claim that had started originally with an unpaid bill of less than 
$15 and by 1813 had climbed, with damages and interest, to over $100. 
He was in despair, and anxious how anxious to leave the doomed 
city, to flee the process servers, but chiefly to get to Pittsburgh where he 
could get on with creative work again. Fulton, too, was eager to start 
the new boats and finally lent Latrobe $1,500 to clear the Washington 
debts and provide cash for the trip. Latrobe sent Fulton's note to Roose- 
velt in New York, for money was scarce in the capital, and wrote 
frankly of his position (September 12). He could not even collect the 
$600 the government owed him for his work on the Marine Hospital 
and the furnishing of the President's House; he owed Graff for material 
he had bought for the New Orleans waterworks; he owed Barker, of 
Philadelphia, for a cylinder Barker had cast for him. Going on, he writes: 

I have got thro' all my heavy affairs but Graf. I cannot raise a dollar on my 
shares as yet [the stock he had received in payment for his services on the 
Washington canal]. But I have some hopes left. If I can only get $500 I will 
take the whole, or even 400$, & send it to Graf. I do not write to him for fear 
of a quarrel. I shall set all to right if I can only raise 500$. . . . My best love 
to Lydia. I fear we cannot see her. I shall stay only one day in Philadelphia 
& two at Cloverhill I am heartily sorry for it but tho' one of the dearest 
wishes of my heart is to have her with me as often as possible I must forego 
it as I do so many others. 

And to Fulton on the same day: 

May you never have 10 years engagement with the public to wind up, neither 
you nor your children after you. Several times I had nearly thrown myself 
into the Potomac. I cannot receive 600 [$] on two appropriations (the Presi- 
dent's furniture & Marine hospital). 



396 THE CLIMAX PERIOD 

But by mid-September, thanks to Fulton's loan, Latrobe was free to 
leave the chaotic city and, by way of Baltimore and Philadelphia, to 
travel west to a probl