Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/216603
offset blocks with hemicycles. In acknowledgment of Jefferson's attachment to Roman precedents, he proportioned the central rotunda in imitation of the Pantheon. In recognition of the English Late Renaissance tone of the most sophisticated American architecture, he reduced the number and simplified the style of his design's elements. The result was the set of drawings he asked his influential friend John Trumbull to present to George Washington in January 1793: the prize-winning design. The drawings Thornton originally submitted have been lost, but the author's reconstruction of the plan (fig. 7M), and the nearly contemporary east elevation (fig. 12B) are consistent with what is known about it. W ashington had just spent half a year watching Jefferson try to guide a Frenchman in the serial revision of distinctly French style buildings toward an "American" solution. Nothing was so unsatisfactory to President Washington as to be ignorant of the facts and terms of an issue he was required to decide, and the architecture of the French Renaissance was a perfect example of a subject of which he repeatedly professed his own ignorance. Nothing was heard from him on the topic from August until after Trumbull, the preeminent American artist of the day, had laid Thornton's drawings before him with his own positive recommendation. The relative simplicity and less exotic tone of Thornton's design immediately washed away the accumulated anxiety of Washington's period on the sidelines. We can almost hear the lift in his spirits in his letter introducing Thornton and the plan to the commissioners. "Grandeur, Simplicity and Convenience appear to be so well combined in this Plan of Doctor Thornton's, that I have no doubt of its meeting with that approbation from you, which I have given upon attentive inspection, and which it has received from all those who have seen it and are considered as judges of such things."23 Almost two years after Jefferson had sent for drawings of the Roman Pantheon, Thornton successfully incorporated one of the "ancient monuments approved by the ages" into the Capitol of a modern republic, so he liked it, too. All parties to the decision expressed their sympathies for "poor Hallet" who had spent months trying to satisfy their developing notions of what the Capitol should be. Realizing that he had been outflanked by a competitor, his first response was to create yet another design, this time in massing similar to Thornton's winning entry (fig. 8D).24 This attempt at maintaining his position was not encouraged by Jefferson, to whom he sent a descriptive letter, but the commissioners enlisted his help in analyzing Thornton's drawings "so the whole should be in the mind of one person."25 This, of course, opened the door to a frontal assault on the winning design. When Hallet's severe critique reached Washington he was chagrinned, of course, to be told that the design that felt just right to him was riddled with faults; so six months after he had thought his problems solved, he ordered the secretary of state to convene a conference of experts in Philadelphia to determine a solution to the problems raised by Hallet and, by that time, by James Hoban, the architect of the President's House.26 A thorough discussion of the difficulties inherent in Thornton's plan led to Hallet being commissioned to make another set of drawings—his seventh—that was deemed to be a practical combination of the ideas of the two designers (fig. 70).27 A cornerstone was soon laid and construction was begun on the basis of the socalled Conference Plan. When, a year later, the commissioners discovered Hallet to be making further changes to the design without their approval, the stage was set SUMMER 2013 THE CAPITOL DOME 13