Overview

An English �migr� who became America's first professional architect, Benjamin Henry Latrobe put his stamp on the built landscape of the new republic. Latrobe contributed to such iconic structures as the south wing of the US Capitol building, the White House, and the Navy Yard. He created some of the early republic's greatest neoclassical interiors, including the Statuary Hall and the Senate, House, and Supreme Court Chambers. As a young man, Latrobe was apprenticed to both a leading architect and civil engineer in London, studied the European continent's architectural and engineering monuments, worked on canals, and designed private houses. After the death of his first wife, he was bankrupt and emigrated to the United States in 1796 to restart his career. For the new nation with grand political expectations, he intended buildings and engineering projects to match those aspirations. Like his patron Thomas Jefferson, Latrobe saw his neoclassical designs as a way to convey American democracy. He envisioned his engineering projects, such as the canals and municipal water systems for Philadelphia and New Orleans, as a way to unite the nation and improve public health. Jean Baker conveys the personality of this charming, driven, and often frustrated genius and the era in which he lived. Latrobe tried to establish architecture as a profession with high standards, established fees, and recognized procedures, though he was unable to collect fees and earn the living his work was worth. Like many of his peers, he speculated and found himself in bankruptcy several times. Building America masterfully narrates the life and legacy of a key figure in creating an American aesthetic in the new United States.

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9780190051402

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Architecture, it has been said, is first shaped by human beings, and then shapes those human beings. In this lucid and important book, Jean H. Baker tells the engaging story of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the man whose buildings and designs have left an indelible and enduring mark on the American nation. -Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America As America's first great architect and engineer, Benjamin Henry Latrobe transferred the founders' vision of the nation to its buildings-from homes to churches, banks, municipal waterworks, and the US Capitol. Jean Baker does an admirable job of revealing the man behind the monuments. -Donald A. Ritchie, Senate Historian Emeritus Setting his life against the backdrop of the vast opportunities in the new American republic, Jean Baker gives us a compelling portrait of the frequently brilliant, often mercurial, and deeply proud architect and engineer Benjamin Henry Latrobe. -Darwin H. Stapleton, editor of The Engineering Drawings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe The life of Benjamin Latrobe as told by Jean Baker adds a unique human story to the cast of characters who built the American Republic. A peer and friend of Jefferson, an admirer of Tom Paine, and the architect of the nation's Capitol, Latrobe was no homespun American like Ben Franklin. Despite his aristocratic airs, repeated financial blunders, and chronic headaches, Latrobe managed to build the domed monuments that sheltered and symbolized the infant republic. -Mary Ryan, author of Taking the Land to Make the City: A Bicoastal History To students of the early American republic, Benjamin Henry Latrobe looms large-he brilliantly undertook some of the most notable architectural commissions of the day, including the U.S. Capitol, the Baltimore Cathedral, the Bank of Pennsylvania, and other fine buildings. In this book, Jean H. Baker critically reviews the multitudes of documents and letters Latrobe left behind and evaluates both the professional successes that ensured his national legacy and the personal flaws that led to financial ruin. With this fresh look at Latrobe's life in the Old World and the New, Baker provides us with a compelling human story and solidifies her status as among the nation's most accomplished historians. -Antoinette J. Lee, author of Architects to the Nation: The Rise and Decline of the Supervising Architect's Office [An] insightful portrait of the early republic's greatest architect... A fluid, much-needed biography of a remarkable man. --Kirkus With this fine biography, historian Baker rescues Benjamin Henry Latrobe from obscurity and restores his reputation as the 'Father of American Architecture.' --National Book Review

Author Information

Jean H. Baker is Bennett-Harwood Professor of History Emerita at Goucher College. An eminent political historian and biographer, she is the author of Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion, Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists, James Buchanan, and Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography, among other titles.

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