Britannicus have handed down their pretentious ugliness to an admiring posterity. But the disciples of these masters who found a modest field for their talents in the American colonies were fortunately prevented by the smallness of their opportunities from emulating the achievements of their teachers. On the limited scale of even the grandest of the colonial houses a very little architecture went a great way. A simple order of pilasters or engaged columns at the main entrance, with an entablature and pediment, an Italian cornice at the eaves, perhaps enriched with dentils or modillions, quoins at the main angles of the building, a hipped roof of rather low pitch crowning the whole,such is the most common type of the better class of colonial dwelling-houses in the generation just preced

FIG. 2.-Christ Church, Philadelphia.

ing the Revolution. Wood was the usual material throughout, but in the exceptional instances where the walls were of brick or stone the ornaments were always of wood, cut stone being practically unknown. In the interior an equally rigorous simplicity prevailed. The houses were extremely simple in plan, an entrancehall, seldom more than 10 to 12 feet wide, running through the middle from front to rear, with a straight staircase on one of its walls and two square rooms opening from each side. The staircase was commonly the most elaborately designed feature of the house, and much ingenuity of invention was often bestowed on its newel-posts, its twisted balusters, its carved string, and its panelled soffits. The walls of the hall and stairway and of the principal rooms were usually wainscoted in square panels of no great height. In rare instances the best parlor was graced with a wains

FIG. 4.-Spanish Cathedral, St. Augustine, Florida.

There were, however, two outlying settlements where the conditions which produced this general type of colonial architecture did not prevail. Florida and Louisi

ana were, during the period of which we are now speaking, as thoroughly Spanish and French as the Thirteen Colonies were English. The architecture of St. Augustine and New Orleans reflected its continental origin. St. Augustine indeed remains to this day a town of the Old World, with its original physiognomy substantially unchanged; with its cathedral (fig. 4), its town-gate, its narrow streets, its balconied houses, its high gardenwalls, its ancient fortress, its rude masonry constructed of that curious conglomerate of shells known as coquina, to which the moist and warm climate has imparted in the course of two hundred years an aspect of venerable age which in another latitude would require thrice the time to produce.

FIG. 5.-French Cathedral, New Orleans, La.

In New Orleans also, though to a less remarkable degree, the ancient European character of the town has been preserved. The growth of the modern city has left the old French quarter essentially untouched, and its aspect is still that of a provincial town in the centre of France. There are few conspicuous buildings, either public or private, but the old cathedral of St. Louis (fig. 5) still stands in the centre of one of the sides of Jackson Square, fronting the river, and flanked by two similar municipal buildings of eighteenth-century architecture, the three buildings occupying the whole breadth of the square and forming a group of remarkable picturesqueness.

The steady growth of the English colonies in wealth and taste was rudely interrupted by the War of the Revolution. The close of the war found the people in a condition of exhaustion from which it required the rest of the century to recover. A new nation had, however, been created, which required an outfit of public

VOL. I.-T

buildings for its various governmental departments. The new capital on the Potomac was to be the scene of active building operations for a generation. In 1792 the Federal commissioners advertised in the newspapers of all the principal cities and towns for designs for a Capitol building and President's house. They had grand ideas of "expressing in some degree in the style of their architecture the sublime sentiments of liberty. . . by exhibiting a grandeur of conception, a republican simplicity, and that true elegance of propriety which corresponds to a tempered freedom." Their ideas of the interior accommodation required were much more modest. The advertisement specified for the Capitol a building of brick, with a conference-room and a Representatives' chamber to contain each three hundred sittings, a Senate chamber with an area of 1200 square feet, lobbies for the two legislative chambers, and twelve rooms, each of 600 square feet area, for committees and clerks. A premium of $500 and a city lot was offered for the accepted design. A considerable number of plans were received, which were duly examined by the board of commissioners, assisted by Gen. Washington; and the premiums were at length awarded to Dr. Thornton and Mr. Hoban for the Capitol and the President's house respectively. Washington preferred for the Capitol a design of "Judge Turner," because it had a dome. It appears to be true that of all the plans received only one was the work of a professional architect. The greater number were mere pictorial sketches, of no architectural character whatever, and for the most part quite incapable of translation into practicable form. Even the drawings of Dr. Thornton included neither ground-plan, geometrical elevations, nor sections. They were therefore put into the hands of Stephen Hallet, who was directed to perfect his own design and to embody in it as much as possible that was characteristic in Dr. Thornton's. He was especially to preserve what Jefferson called "that very capital beauty," the portico of the east front.

Hallet was thus installed as the first architect of the Capitol. Born in France, he received there a professional education, and, coming to the United States shortly before the war, lived in Philadelphia until the Capitol competition called him to Washington. The corner-stone of the new building was laid by Washington in Sept., 1793, and the work proceeded. But Hallet's position as architect was rendered uncomfortable by conflicts with Dr. Thornton on the one hand and Hoban on the other; the latter holding the position of superintendent of public buildings and exercising a certain authority over the architect. Hallet, therefore, resigned his office at the end of two years. His place was taken by George Hadfield, an Englishman, who had received in England a professional training, and had carried off the Royal Academy's prize for architectural design, in virtue of which he had spent four years in travel and study. Hadfield found, on beginning his work at the Capitol, that the drawings left by his predecessor for the execution of his design were insufficient. In proceeding to make good this deficiency he wished to incorporate in the design some ideas of his own. In this desire he was overruled by the commissioners, and quarrels ensued with them and with Hoban the superintendent, which brought his connection with the works to a close in 1798, after three years of service. For five years the works were carried on slowly without an architect, under Hoban's direction, until in 1803 the appointment was given to Benjamin H. Latrobe. Latrobe was born in England in 1764, and after being educated in Germany had been regularly trained in England to the profession of architecture, studying in the office of Cockerell, an architect of good standing in London, creating afterwards a respectable private practice, and still later filling the office of surveyor of the public offices and architect and engineer of the city of London. He came to America in 1796, and was extensively employed both as architect and engineer, building the State penitentiary at Richmond, the Bank of Pennsylvania at Phila

delphia, many private houses, and the water-works of Philadelphia. His Virginia practice brought him into acquaintance with Jefferson, who while President offered to Latrobe the position of architect of the Capitol. It was at once accepted, and Latrobe held the office, not without frequent difficulties and conflicts, until, upon the breaking out of the War of 1812, the work was suspended. The progress up to that time had been very slow; the north and south wings, containing the two legislative chambers, were all that had been completed, the two wings being connected by a rude corridor of wood. During the brief occupation of Washington by the British the interior of both these wings was burned by the British troops and left in a ruined condition.

mony with that of the original Capitol, but the interior architecture is lamentably inferior in every respect. The old legislative chambers were noble rooms, not without a character of serious dignity befitting their use. The new chambers are square, commonplace halls, almost destitute of architectural character.

Meanwhile, the other buildings of the Government at Washington, the President's house (fig. 6) and the offices of the executive departments, had all been begun and finished under the direction of James Hoban as surveyor of public works. They were all built in a similar style, of which the motive was to be found in the Italian Renaissance as treated by the French architects of the last century, but without the mansard roof which was so prominent a characteristic of the French buildings. The same general style prevailed in the public buildings which arose in the early years of the republic in the older cities. The State-house at Boston (fig. 7) was begun at nearly the same time with the

FIG. 6.-White House, Washington, D. C. When, at the close of the war, Latrobe was called to Washington to recommence the work, it was found necessary to rebuild entirely the interior portions of the building. It was then that the old Representatives' chamber took the semicircular form which it retains today. In 1817, Mr. Latrobe resigned his position. He was succeeded by Charles Bulfinch of Boston, an architect of eminence and of long experience in his own city. Mr. Latrobe's plans for the central portion of the Capitol were so far matured that Mr. Bulfinch's work was for the most part confined to carrying his predecessor's designs into execution. This work he performed with fidelity and good judgment. Some changes were, however, made in the former plans: a greater elevation was given to the central dome, and the approach to the west front was greatly improved by the effective series of terraces and steps. Under Bulfinch the original Capitol was brought to completion in 1827. It had cost about $2,500,000. In less time than had been occupied in its erection it was found to be altogether insufficient to the growing needs of the country, and in 1851 work was commenced on its extension, which was prosecuted with vigor and without interruption, even during the War of the Rebellion, under the charge of a single architect, Mr. Thomas U. Walter, until its completion in 1867. Of the Capitol in its present form (Pl. IV) the original building finished by Bulfinch is but a fragment, enclosed on either side by wings nearly as large as itself, and surmounted by an overwhelming dome, which is a noble feature in itself, but which dwarfs everything beneath it. The old dome, which was removed to make way for the new structure, was of wood, of the diameter of the rotunda below, on which it rested, of less than hemispherical height, and without a lantern. The new dome is of iron, 288 feet high from the ground, of which 217 feet are above the roof balustrade of the building-an unprecedented and exaggerated proportion, born of ambition. Its diameter is 135 feet at the lower colonnade, the diameter of the rotunda on which it rests being about 99 feet. The exterior design of the additions, with the exception of the dome, is sufficiently in har

FIG. 7.-State-House, Boston, Mass. Capitol at Washington, from the designs of Charles Bulfinch. It is a building of great simplicity, depending for its effect on the projecting centre with unadorned round arches in the first story, supporting a fine Corinthian colonnade with a pediment, above which rises a hemispherical dome. But the disposition of parts is so just and their treatment so broad and dignified that the building has a monumental effect which we miss in most public edifices of greater size and costliness.