Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/650208
24 the Capitol to be in accord with his interiors. ese designs were not just wishful thinking because Latrobe included these funda- mental additions in his estimates until 1816 when he replaced the propylaea with the west wing built to accommodate the Library of Congress and provide for congressional committee rooms. Six weeks aer the Capitol was burned, Latrobe wrote a Capitol Hill resident that he didn't believe the Capitol could be "repaired." He was most concerned about rebuilding the House of Representatives; he had been informed that the "Columns are gradually falling down." 9 I know exactly what it would be best to do, but I cannot intrude my advice & Mr. Madison will never employ me again, I am told. All I can do is lie by and wait. If called upon I will give all my talents & industry to restore or to build something new & better & cheaper & more beau- tiful in the place of the former room. Perhaps Congress may call upon me. 10 On 17 April 1815, when Latrobe visited the Capitol to view the "melancholy spectacle" of the ruins from the British visit the summer before, he was encouraged by what remained intact. [M]any important parts are wholly uninjured, and what particularly is gratifying to me, the picturesque entrance of the House of Representatives with its handsome col- umns, the Corn Capitals of the Senate Vestibule, the Great staircase, and all the vaults of the Senate chamber, are entirely free from any injury which cannot be eas- ily repaired…. In fact the mischief is much more easily repaired than would appear at first sight, and I was less chagrined than I had prepared myself to be. 11 Latrobe was mistakenly optimistic; as the difficulties of rebuild- ing became apparent, he wrote Jefferson that he wished the British had burnt the Capitol to the ground so he could have started anew. His thinking about how to express the Capitol's multiple meanings was evolving. Latrobe's over-arching theme in design- ing the Capitol's interiors during both of his building campaigns was seamlessly to combine historical styles of the great eras of architecture in the Western tradition—Eg yptian, Greek, Roman, and Medieval—in such ways as to invent new and meaningful symbolic emblems and architectonic spaces. Latrobe's synthesis of these traditions might have been meant to reflect either or both of two broad themes in American history. America was a nation of immigrants, its colonists largely drawn from several European countries, some of whom imported slaves from Africa. In addi- tion, the Founding Fathers examined and debated western sys- tems of government—ancient through modern—as they framed the Constitution. As a Neoclassical architect Latrobe believed abstract representations of ideals rooted in classicism were eter- nal and appropriate for a new nation composed of immigrants. 12 e ancients used the Classical orders of architecture as alle- gories of peoples and status of building types. Latrobe attached meanings to the orders to represent the structure of the new form of government. All three of Latrobe's designs for the Supreme Court chamber were similar in shape and construction: the cen- tral space a room within a room, a semicircular arcade defining this space. A screen of columns faced east, those in the second and third iterations separated the main space from the justices' retir- ing room. Classical architectural rules dictated that, as a ground floor room, the Supreme Court's columns ought to be Doric. Latrobe chose the earliest known Greek Doric from Paestum (fig. 6) for his second and third chambers. Paestum's Doric temples were built near the dawn of Greek columnar architecture, identi- fied by the exaggerated echinus (bowl-shaped molding ) of their capitals. Latrobe chose Paestum capitals to reflect allegorically the Court's purpose, the chamber where Justices protected the Constitution, the beginning of the United States that protected American liberties. Sculptural decorations for the first courtroom are unknown, but for the second, Latrobe initially designed two reliefs to decorate the impost blocks atop the columns, a mask of Justice alternating with her scales. He finally settled on heads of Minerva (Wisdom) and Blind Justice. When Latrobe rebuilt the court- room in 1815-1817 he reengineered the vaults, increased the number of Paestum columns to six, and relegated all the symbolic sculpture to the wall that faced the justices. In May 1817 Carlo Franzoni modelled, then cast in plaster, the three-part relief of seated Justice as the central figure (fig. 7). She holds scales in her le hand and rests her right hand on the sword of justice. Latrobe's former student Robert Mills later wrote that the sword points down rather than being raised because "American justice is not punitive." Although Franzoni's alternate sketches for Justice show her blindfolded, his finished Justice was clear-sighted. On Justice's le an eagle protects law books and on her right a young winged figure holding the Constitution is seated in front of a radiant sun. Latrobe added the eagle and the sun, and positioned the sword as specifically American symbols. He represented the Constitution as a book rather than a charter because the Court's rulings interpreting the Constitution continued to be written, ensuring the rights of Americans. Integrating American symbols with ancient personifications was a hallmark of Latrobe's second tenure as the Capitol's architect, a change that seems to have been stimulated by the responses of senators and Members of Congress. 13 Latrobe's ground-story corn capital vestibule, finished in 1810, immediately south of the Supreme Court, also led to the Senate chamber above it. It survived the fire and contains the first of Latrobe's three famed American orders (fig. 8). ey contin- ued a European tradition of newly invented national orders for great public buildings. Latrobe may have seen or was told about America's first national order invented by Peter Charles L'Enfant for the Senate chamber in Federal Hall in New York, the old City Hall repurposed to house the First Federal Congress. L'Enfant's American order included stars, rays of the sun, and the cipher U.S. amidst leaves referring to emblems on the Great Seal. Latrobe approached his American orders in an entirely differ- ent way, by using the imagery of native American plants to rep- resent the occupations of the nation's population. e six corn