problems Jefferson was having in his effort to get the French architect to
design a building for his American clients.
At the time Peter Charles L'Enfant, the designer of the Federal City, refused to
continue working if it meant subordinating himself to the commissioners, he had
not yet submitted a single design for its buildings.8 In the midst of those final negotiations, Jefferson complained that "five months and more have been lost" since the
idea of soliciting designs from others had been brought up the previous August.9
That may have been when Jefferson made a diagrammatic plan for a circular Capitol.
It was the same size as the Roman Pantheon, whose interior geometry fascinated
Jefferson: a hemispherical dome covering a cylindrical space whose height equaled
its radius. Jefferson did not put his plan forward then or later; he is not known to
have shared this plan with L
'Enfant or anyone else. L
'Enfant continued working with
Fig. 1. Pantheon at Rome,
engraving by Piranesi.
