Dr. Kimball and Mr. Jefferson: Rediscovering the Founding Fathers of American Architecture
by By Howard, Hugh
Category: Architecture , History , General

In 1914, Fiske Kimball made the first of the discoveries that rewrote the story of American architecture. An industrious young scholar with a keen eye, Kimball tracked down important drawings and other documents that revealed an untold tale: Thomas Jefferson had been an architect of great skill. Until Kimball's arrival on the scene, historians had hailed Jefferson as a brilliant statesman - but the design of his beloved home, Monticello, had been attributed to someone else. For nearly a century, his designs for the Virginia Capitol and the University of Virginia had gone unrecognized.Kimball's research revealed Jefferson's central role in inspiring America's first generation of imaginative designers. The earliest practitioners included not only Jefferson but Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Charles Bulfinch, Dr. William Thornton, and Robert Mills, the first American-trained professional architect. Kimball profiled the key figures who transformed the craft of building into the art of architecture, the men who set the aesthetic tone for the young country. From the competitions that invited the public to submit drawings for the nation's Capitol and President's House to the controversies decades later surrounding the erection of the national monuments in Washington, D.C., from the homes of founding fathers in Virginia and Annapolis to the fine Federal mansions of Salem, Massachusetts, and Boston's Beacon Hill, Hugh Howard charts the triumph of Neoclassicism in early American architecture.