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THE CAPITOL DOME 44 were in the forefront of the local rebuilding effort. ey were one of the wealthiest families and they had the most to lose if the federal government moved from Washington. Marcia Burnes was the daughter of the Scottish planter David Burnes upon whose 600-acre Potomac plantation much of the new American seat of government was built. She was enriched as his heir in 1799 as the new city grew up on the city lots bequeathed to her. Well educated for her time, at age twenty in 1802, she married John Peter Van Ness, a wealthy Democratic- Republican congressman from New York. Together and sepa - rately, they were inseparable from the history of the City of Washington during their lifetimes. In 1815 she founded the Washington City Female Orphan Home and remained its major supporter. Her husband was a colonel and later the general of the Washington militia, mayor of Washington, and founder of one of the city's first banks. e site of her family's original farmhouse at 18th Street and Constitution Avenue (then B Street) became the site of their new home, the largest house built thus far in Washing - ton. Completed in 1816 according to a design by Latrobe, it was a sign of faith in the city's future as the national capital that marked the rebirth of the city out of the ashes of war (fig. 3). It became the social center for the legislators living "as though monks" in their boarding houses. Latrobe designed it in the Greek revival style for which he was the foremost early proponent. e house Latrobe designed for the Van Nesses was just one of his contributions. His extensive plan for the long-awaited national university at the west end of the National Mall was not fulfilled. However, he helped create the outlines of what still remains as Lafayette Park. Located between the twin population centers of the Navy Yard and Georgetown, the President's Square was the residential area around the executive office buildings. In the spring of 1815, almost immediately following the Treaty of Ghent, a group of local residents on the west side of town including Van Ness and John Tayloe, owner of the Octagon House, advertised for contractors to build a "Protestant Episcopal Church" accord - ing to Latrobe's design. As a result, the cornerstone of St. John's Church (fig. 4) was laid in a Masonic ceremony on September 1815. e National Intelligencer noted the symbolic importance of this ceremony in marking the rebirth of that area just one year after the burning of the President's House by the British. A simple Greek cross of four equal sides, the design origi - nally did not contain a porch or tower, these were added in the 1820s. e center of the church was crowned by a dome with a cupola and lantern. e interior had a gallery along three sides supported by columns. e narrow chancel brought the altar close to the congregation. e church was consecrated in December 1816. Its vestry reflected the leading inhabitants Fig. 3. e south façade of the dilapidated Van Ness mansion photographed sometime between 1900 and its demolition in 1908 to make way for the Pan American Union Building. L IBR ARY OF CONGRE S S PRIN T S AND PHOTO GR APHS DIVISION