Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/216603
ALL LIBRARY OF CONGRESS A B Fig. 12. Drawings before and after prize winning proposal. A) Vertical sketch on reverse of Tortola drawing. B) Thornton east elevation of Capitol after 1793. 12 THE CAPITOL DOME Thornton would design within two months, this sketch is extremely significant. After conversing with a friend who was privy to the progress of the competition and the influence of Secretary of State Jefferson, the next step for Thornton was to assemble the elements of an acceptable design into a single set of drawings. He had to consider three questions that related to the scale of the drawings and of the building: 1. The Tortola plan was very close to the same length as Hallet's designs, but it was made of small disconnected and varied parts. Thornton would overcome this by composing his next building of fewer, more similar, and more continuous masses. 2. Hallet made his drawings at the medium small scale of 1:200. Tortola was drawn at the very small and unimpressive scale of 1:240. For his next submission Thornton doubled the scale of his drawings to 1:120. 3. Thornton probably recognized the power of the oversized Ellicott rotundas to help focus the plan of the Federal City on the Congress in the center of the city. The large rotunda on his design indicates a realization that his Capitol needed to be centered on a three-dimensional counterpart to the bold circle on the engraving. From his attempt at revising the Tortola plan he salvaged the basic idea of three SUMMER 2013