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COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR Fig. 13.William Thornton's premiated design of the U.S. Capitol, 1793. for Thornton to return to the task of making a workable plan of his own design ideas. He took full advantage of that opportunity when he was appointed to be one of the commissioners of public buildings in 1795. From that point onward the plan of the Capitol has been Thornton's, as modified, adapted, and enlarged by other, far more able architects. Nevertheless, the core ideas were his, centered on his great rotunda, which ended up precisely on the major cross axis of the city. It is an irony of cartographic history that no published map of the city ever had Thornton's plan at its center. Instead, the plan that got Hallet fired appeared there repeatedly until, after 1830, it was replaced by Bulfinch's (fig. 7P) and then Walter's. The Capitol has evolved and grown over the years, but in the middle of the composition, as projected by L'Enfant, engraved by Ellicott, drawn by Thornton, and approved by Washington, is a huge rotunda. Don Alexander Hawkins is an architect and an almost lifelong Washingtonian. His interest in the city's early history became focused on the city's geography and development during his studies for a Master's Degree in Urban Design at Catholic University. Several of his maps describing the beginnings of Washington have appeared in Washington History magazine and other publications. He has contributed numerous articles to Washington History's series on unbuilt Washington. His reconstruction of William Thornton's lost design of the U.S. Capitol has been published widely in scholarly works by others. As Chairman of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, Hawkins is an active advocate for design that adheres to the principles that guided L'Enfant and the MacMillan Commission. He is currently summarizing his studies in a forthcoming book about Washington's L' Enfant Plan. 14 THE CAPITOL DOME SUMMER 2013