In Boston, the Massachusetts State House, designed 1787-88 and built 1795-98 by Charles Bulfinch, derived from English Neoclassical models. By far the most gifted architect working in the United States in these years was Benjamin Latrobe. Latrobe was born in England, where he was trained by the innovative architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell. He evidently became familiar with the radical work of Dance, Soane, and Ledoux and of engineers such as John Smeaton. In 1796 he went to the United States, where he worked as the first fully professional architect and eventually became known as the father of the American architectural profession. A characteristic early building is his Bank of Pennsylvania (1798-1800), in Philadelphia, which was then the largest American city and was, indeed, the U.S. capital from 1790 to 1800. The bank is a novel reinterpretation of ancient temple architecture, with a Greek Ionic portico at each end but no classical order on its long side walls. It was also fireproof, being the first American building to be vaulted in masonry throughout. The shallow top-lit saucer dome in the central banking hall recalls the work of Soane, as does Latrobe's Roman Catholic Cathedral at Baltimore (1805-18). Drawing on the Pantheon and on Soufflot's Sainte-Geneviève, the cathedral contains a dome resting on segmental arches perhaps inspired by Soane's interiors at the Bank of England. Latrobe's most poetic and inventive work is a series of interiors at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., which he executed in his capacity as surveyor of public works, a position to which Jefferson appointed him in 1803. The Supreme Court Chamber (1815-17), with its strange lobed vault resting on stunted Doric columns, suggests a search for a new architecture, as do the capitals of corn (maize) and tobacco leaves that he invented for use in other parts of the building. Jefferson responded warmly to Latrobe's attempt to symbolize in architecture the values of the newly founded republic. (S.Mi./D.J.Wa.)
