William Nichols and Robert Mills: Taking the Attic Order South
2013; Volume: 103; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2325-9264
Autores Tópico(s)Architecture and Art History Studies
ResumoRegardless of his contribution to the Capitol's design and construction, it was apparently either his dilatoriness in completing the rebuilding or, as Latrobe preferred to believe, the jealousy and enmity of other architects and political figures that forced him to resign the Surveyorship on November 20, 1817. As he wrote President Monroe, given the choice between resignation and the sacrifice of all self respect, he chose the former.85 Three years later, while residing in New Orleans, he died, but the Capitol remained and continues to be respected as his greatest monument. What is striking about his successors, whether Charles Bulfinch who most immediately worked toward completing his plans or, after midcentury, Thomas Ustick Walter who expanded the Capitol well beyond anything he might have imagined, is that each retained respect for Latrobe's general design and detailing. Curiously, a marker of this continuing esteem, notably for Latrobe's attempts at introducing Greek notes into the building, was, as shall be seen, a lingering use of the Attic order.Most immediately, however, and well away from Washington, Latrobe's former student William Strickland used Attic capitals in Philadelphia. Under his guidance from 1801, when he entered an apprenticeship, until 1805 or 1807, it is evident that Latrobe was critical to Strickland's stylistic development.86 Certainly it was Latrobe who introduced him to the Antiquities of Athens, on whose plates he regularly relied throughout his professional life.87 Indeed, in an 1818 Philadelphia competition for the Second Bank of the United States, which requested a chaste imitation of Grecian Architecture, Strickland's winning entry, a close copy of the Parthenon as published in the second volume of Antiquities of Athens, was selected over those, among others, of his onetime fellow student Robert Mills and their common master, though Latrobe would claim that there were uncomfortably striking similarities between the winning design and his own proposal.88It was in 1820, still in Philadelphia, that Strickland turned to the Attic, including it on the facade of the second Chestnut Street Theatre.89 Latrobe's original edifice had burned in April and by May Strickland was offering proposals for the rebuilding. Discarding the Tuscan doorway of his initial drawing, the theatre as built had a rusticated ground floor with arched openings and above a portico of four Temple of the Winds columns in antis, with the facing pilasters similarly decorated (Figure 27). Completed in this manner in 1822, the capitals were carved in Italy due to the enduring scarcity of skilled craftsmen that had previously plagued his mentor. Short lived, Strickland's theatre was demolished in 1856.To return to the nation's capital, Bulfmch's appointment as Architect to the Capitol became effective in January just after Latrobe's resignation; he would remain in that office until his death in 1829.90 Working initially as a gentleman amateur, his work on the Massachusetts state house demonstrates that he was not an especial admirer of Greek architecture. He preferred instead English work of a more decidedly Roman bent, notably that of the Adam brothers and William Chambers, examples of which he had seen when traveling abroad as a young man.91 In approaching the Capitol, however, Bulfmch saw his primary task as the fulfillment of Latrobe's plans. Writing to his wife immediately after taking office, he observed:I feel the responsibility resting on me, and should have no resolution to proceed if the work was not so far commenced as to make it necessary to follow the plans already prepared for the wings; as to the centre building, a general conformity to the other parts must be maintained. I shall not have credit for invention, but must be content to follow in the prescribed path.92One of Bulfinch's major contributions was new quarters for the Library of Congress, which prior to the 1814 fire had been located in the Senate wing, but whose space in the aftermath was given over to committees and offices. …
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