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After 1810 Jefferson's production of house designs declined. By 1817 he was immersed in the design and construction of his "academical village" at the University of Virginia. For Ampthill (ca. 1815) in Cartersville, Virginia he proposed a variation on his earlier scheme for additions to Farmington, located near Charlottesville. The front of the house displays a central portico between elongated octagonal bays and beyond it a transverse hall and four, modular, orthogonal rooms, a remarkable collision of the exotic and the mundane. Much more complex is his design for James Barbour's house, Barboursville (1817). Here he used the Monticello parti, again missing only the lateral, faceted walls.

Perhaps most striking about Jefferson's designs for pavilions at the University of Virginia is how dissimilar they are to his houses. The elevations, rather than involving a single theme with variations, represent multiple sensibilities, so that, as Jefferson intended, they could serve as an architectural textbook, beginning with the most traditional compositions adjacent to the rotunda and ending with the most avante garde facades at the opposite end of the lawn. The plans show none of his by-this-time-standardized motifs but, instead, are artless, almost schematic responses to function.

During this period, George Hadfield carried out at least four commissions and worked in Latrobe's office. No description survives of his arsenal built in 1803. His Washington Jail burned in 1861. He also erected a domestic building, the Commandant's Headquarters, and the adjacent Marine Barracks for a site southeast of the Capitol. The barracks building partially burned in 1829, then was razed in 1906. The Commandant's Headquarters still stands, but has been radically altered. It appears originally to have been a cube-like mass with a pyramidal roof, cupola, and dormers and to have had two, two-story, projecting, semi-circular bays facing the parade grounds. It illustrates the situation faced by scholars examining Hadfield's oeuvre: insufficient evidence to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

In 1817 Hadfield designed the Custis-Lee Mansion in Arlington, Virginia (Figure 21) for George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of President George Washington. The house's northern wing was built first, apparently intended to serve as a banquet hall, then the wing to the south, which was divided into an office and a parlor. Finally, the central block was completed, including the portico of massive unfluted Doric columns. The building's plan is remarkable only for its wide, shallow proportions, consisting as it does of a narrow central hall with single-pile orthogonal rooms to each side and in the wings. Its extraordinarily width-to-depth ratio, together with the sculptural effect of the huge columns, makes the house visually prominent when viewed from the city below. Even during construction observers took notice. Rosalie Stier Calvert who lived at Riversdale (to which Latrobe made contributions) wrote that "Custis has finished a wing of his building, which will be handsome and will be seen from all parts of Washington."42

Hadfield's Second Bank of the United States (1824) is known only through late-nineteenth-century photographs, which show a two-story block approaching a cube covered by a pyramidal roof (Figure 22). Presumably, the cornice had been altered by the time that the image seen here was created. The fenestration on the ground floor represented a Regency interpretation of ancient Roman thermal windows. The recessed entry was defined by a segmental arch. The walls were roughcast and were relieved only by the windows and doors and by recessed panels above the second-floor windows and a belt course. The disparity between the heights of the two floors suggests the presence of masonry vaulting at the first-floor ceiling.

Hadfield's most ambitious design was that for the Washington, D. C. City Hall built in 1820-26 on a prominent site north of Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and President's House (Figure 23). The scale of Hadfield's proposal, seen here as drawn by A. J. Davis in 1832, suggests that he could have dealt quite successfully with an original composition as large and complex as the Capitol. However, the rear wings and rotunda were never built. Hadfield also covered this building in roughcast, and had it struck like stone. It was sheathed in a stone veneer in the early-twentieth century, at which time Hadfield's interiors were lost.

Rendered distinctively by Davis, the plan is Schinkelesque, combining multiple orthogonal temples and an embedded rotunda with an extended, trabeated entry porch. Hadfield infilled his composition with modular groin-vaulted bays that anticipated Robert Mills's designs for the Patent Office (adjacent to the City Hall) and the Treasury Building. In fact, the entire scheme prefigures Mills's Treasury Building site plan with its long, colonnaded or pilastraded office blocks lit by windows opening into great interior courts. Perhaps the plan is most striking for its similarity to projects emanating from the École des Beaux-Arts in the late-eighteenth century. Comparing it for instance to Charles Percier's 1786 scheme for Un Edifice à rassemblar les Académies, one can see common characteristics. Both have bi-axial symmetry and are composed primarily of rectangles disciplined by a modular grid. Such compositional strategies were developed at the École only at the end of the eighteenth century.43

Hadfield's final project was the mausoleum (1826) (Figure 24) he designed for the same John Peter Van Ness for whom Latrobe designed an urban residence. It was built on H Street adjacent to the orphan asylum long supported by Marcia Van Ness, but has been moved to Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown. It is Hadfield's essay on the circular temple theme, which originated in antiquity then obsessed Renaissance designers, and it can be compared to such monuments as the Temple of Vesta in Rome, the form of which is quite similar, and Bramante's Tempietto, which includes Doric columns and a crypt.

In 1805 William Thornton undertook the design of Tudor Place in Georgetown (Figure 25). Already standing, although in what form is not clear, were two pavilions between which Thornton was to insert his house. While he would probably never have admitted it (if he had known about it), his two-story facade as built is not unlike Latrobe's Ashdown House, with its embedded, Doric, garden-front temple and three-bay parti, including tripartite windows; it has, however, a smaller percentage of mural wall surface than was Latrobe's preference. Like Ashdown's, the plan is conservative, completely orthogonal including a conventional central hall.

More interesting are the preliminary plans that Thornton developed, but that the clients, Thomas Peter and his wife Martha (granddaughter of George Washington), apparently never found acceptable.44 All combine circular, oval, and rectilinear rooms and all include a projecting circular garden-front temple. However, none fully resolves the complex, contrasting, juxtaposed room geometries.

More successful are Thornton's elevation studies for a one-story building or for a French-hôtel-inspired masking of two floors by an apparently one-story facade, all, like the plans, having an embedded temple at the garden facade. One study, without linkers or end pavilions shown, is low-slung, without an attic but with single windows inside semi-circular retreat arches to each side of a central circular temple. Left unfinished, another, still more horizontally proportioned study, has three bays of windows flanked by pilasters, each within a semi-circular retreat arch, to each side of a central circular temple. Still another, also without linkers or end pavilions shown, has a raised first floor and three niches for sculpture to each side of a central circular temple, with low windows or panels above and below them.

In his only drawing of a five-part composition, this one with the Corinthian Order, Thornton returned to the veiled two-story elevation, but with a central block dominated by its central, embedded temple. The temple is flanked on each side by only one window inside a semi-circular retreat arch. From this central block he extended linkers lit by tripartite, flat-headed windows and terminated the ensemble with hip-roofed pavilions quite like those that stand today; it is the most successful facade composition of his career and obviously the inspiration for the final, more conservative design as built. NEXT PAGE>>

FIGURE 21: Custis-Lee Mansion, Arlington, VA (1817), Exterior photograph (Fazio). In 1817 Hadfield designed the Custis-Lee Mansion in Arlington, Virginia for George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of former President George Washington. The house’s northern wing was built first, apparently intended to serve as a banquet hall, then the wing to the south, which was divided into an office and a parlor. Finally, the central block was completed, including the portico of massive Doric columns. The building’s plan is remarkable only for its wide, shallow proportions, consisting as it does of a narrow central hall with orthogonal rooms to each side and in the wings. Its extraordinary width to depth ratio, together with the sculptural effect of the huge columns, makes it unusually prominent when viewed from the city below. Latrobe’s small house for Ann Casanave, located south of the Mall, was similar in form, being shallow and wide, and for similar reasons; Latrobe wanted all of his “Capitol houses” to be monumental and impressive, befitting their location in the young nation’s capital city. back

FIGURE 22: Second Bank of the U.S., Washington, D.C. (1824), Exterior photograph of the streetfront (The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.). Long since demolished, this building is known through late-19th-century photographs, which show a two-story block (approaching a cube) covered by a pyramidal roof; presumably the cornice had been altered by the time this image was made. The fenestration on the ground floor represented a Regency interpretation of ancient Roman thermal windows. The recessed entry was defined by a segmental arch, a popular motif in the Regency work of Sir John Soane in England and one used often, particularly in public buildings, by Benjamin Latrobe. The walls were brick covered with stucco and were relieved only by recessed panels above the second-floor windows and a belt course. The expansive mural wall surface between the two floors suggests the presence of masonry vaults on the interior. The building’s overall effect of uncluttered, well-proportioned, logical construction is more like Latrobe’s work than that of any other architect at work in America at the time. back

FIGURE 23: Washington, D.C. City Hall (1820-26), Plan and front elevation as drawn by A.J. Davis (The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.). Hadfield’s most ambitious design was for this public building. While the rear wings and rotunda were never built, the scale of his proposal suggests that he could have dealt quite successfully with an original composition as large and complex as the Capitol. Hadfield constructed the building of brick covered with stucco struck like stone, but it was sheathed in a stone veneer in the early-20th century, at which time the original interiors were lost. The plan is remniscient of the work of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, combining multiple orthogonal temples and an embedded rotunda with an extended, trabeated entry porch; Latrobe used the same combinations at a smaller scale in such domestic commissions as the Pope Villa. back

FIGURE 24: Van Ness Mausoleum. Washington, D.C. (1826), Exterior photograph (Fazio). Hadfield’s final project was the mausoleum he designed for the same John Peter Van Ness for whom Latrobe designed an urban residence. It was built on H Street adjacent to the orphan asylum long supported by Marcia Van Ness, but has been moved to Oak Hill Cemetary in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. It is Hadfield’s essay on the classical circular temple theme, which originated in antiquity, then obsessed Renaissance designers, and can be compared to such canonical monuments as the Temple of Vesta in Rome, the form of which is quite similar, and Bramante’s Tempietto, which, like it, includes Doric columns and a crypt beneath the main floor. Latrobe used circular temples as embedded entry devices at Ashdown and the President’s House. back

FIGURE 25: Tudor Place, Georgetown, Washington, D.C. (1805), Exterior photograph of the front facade (Fazio). In 1805, William Thornton undertook the design of Tudor Place in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. As built, his two-story facade was quite modern, with an embedded garden-front temple, comparable to Hadfield’s mausoleum, and a three-bay central block with tripartite windows. The plan is less adventurous, completely orthogonal, including a conventional central hall. Thornton’s preliminary schemes were much more interesting, but demonstrate his inability to reconcile multiple room shapes, both rectilinear and curvilinear, within a simple, orthogonal building perimeter. For a comparable house by Benjamin Latrobe, one would have to look back to the late-18th century and his Richmond, Virginia scheme for John Harvie. back

42 Rosalie Stier Calvert to Mme. H. J. Stier, 29 December 1803 as published in Margaret Law Calcott, ed., Mistress of Riversdale, 70. back

43 See Arthur Drexler, ed., The Architecture of the École des Beaux-Arts, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977, 124-29. back

44 See Armistead, Tudor Place, images following page 80. back