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THE CAPITOL DOME 29 straight center band of the hippodrome, twenty-five feet in length, would be shaped by intermediate cubic structures of sandstone (the entry cabinet and the Speaker's cabinet) and above, a strong vaulted support for the half domes to thrust upon. Jefferson did not want to deviate from the plan by changing the room's approved shape from an ellipse to a hippodrome. But after Latrobe's polite pre - sentation and an ensuing discussion, Jefferson conceded to the architect. e exterior walls, three and a half feet thick and buttressed at the corners with giant sandstone piers, essentially poché for the figural space of the Hall, were vaulted inward ten feet to meet the hippodrome- shaped roof support system consisting of entablature, twenty-four support columns and support wall. Another conflict arose between Latrobe and Jefferson, however. ey disagreed on the architectural order for the main columns. Jefferson wanted to use a Roman Doric from the eater of Marcellus and Latrobe wanted to use the Corinthian from the Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. Latrobe demonstrated to Jefferson in a drawing that a Doric order in the Hall would not work because of the inability to achieve square metopes at the cur - rent column spacing. Jefferson, the stickler for classical rules, again demurred to the architect. Latrobe suggested using Jefferson's favorite entablature as a compromise (a sim- plified version) from the Temple of Jupitor Stator in Rome, also known as the ree Columns in the Roman Forum. 8 Latrobe now had a clear mandate to build the chamber in his own aesthetic vision with his own structural solution. Essentially, building the Capitol's chambers inside of ornton's Baroque box became an infill project for Latrobe, not unlike Sir John Soane's Bank of England, or Robert Adam's 1760s infill of the Syon House whose exterior walls dated to the 16th century. All Latrobe had to do was maintain ornton's design for the exterior elevations (fig.3), which he disliked and thought laughingly old-fashioned. T h e H a l l e a u x b l é s Now that the South Wing's major parameters were estab- lished, and the brick and sandstone walls of the roughly 120- foot by 94-foot edifice rose, Jefferson and Latrobe turned their attention to the roof that would rise above the entablature inside the hippodrome. Here, the last major design conflict would arise between the architect and the client. In 1804, Jefferson suggested strongly to Latrobe that the Hall should have a skylit roof, similar to what he'd seen at the Paris grain market (Halle aux blés) in 1785, when he was United States minister to France. Jefferson thought the grain market's roof the most dazzling display of light he'd ever seen. He first saw it on an excursion with the pretty Maria Cosway, a married twenty-six-year-old Italian-English artist (fig. 4). e forty-three-year-old Jefferson (fig. 5), a recent widower, was smitten with Cosway and visited many sites around Paris with her. In his famous Head and Heart letter to her, the future American President described the market as, "the most superb thing on earth." 9 Latrobe resisted the Jefferson's suggestion for a glass roof Fig. 5. Jean-Antoine Houdon, Bust of omas Jefferson, 1789. T HOMA S JEFFER SON FOUNDAT ION, INC.