The Virginia Journals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1795-1798

by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Edward Carter (Editor), Angeline Polites (Editor)

The publication of the Virginia Journals in two volumes inaugurates the Yale edition of The Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, a projected ten-volume selection from the writings, watercolors, and architectural and engineering drawings of the father of the American architectural profession.
Latrobe (1764-1820), English-born architect of the United States Capitol under Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, set the course for a vast amount on nineteenth-century American architecture with such works as the Capitol, the Bank of Pennsylvania, and the Baltimore Cathedral. A pioneering engineer as well, he designed the nation’s first comprehensive steam-powered waterworks in Philadelphia. Latrobe combined his professional concerns with an astonishing range of other interests and an acutely observant eye. His papers form one of the finest existing literary and pictorial descriptions of the young republic.
The first two volumes comprise eleven journals written between 1795, when Latrobe arrived in America, and 1798. They are supplemented by selections from his sketchbooks and correspondence and his “Essay on Landscape,” an illustrated guide to elementary watercolor. The journals record Latrobe’s personal and professional life during his Virginia sojourn and contain many interesting anecdotes and observations on Virginia society, manners, and politics, as well as descriptions of topography, flora, and fauna. In addition, they reveal the means by which a highly educated and engaging European accommodated himself to a new society and the democratic spirit.
These volumes also include a biographical appendix giving detailed sketches of the people Latrobe encountered. It constitutes an important scholarly resource and tool for both genealogists and historians of collective biography and social stratification.

Published for The Maryland Historical Society

575 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 1977

About the author

Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe was a British-American neoclassical architect who emigrated to the United States. He was one of the first formally trained, professional architects in the new United States, drawing on influences from his travels in Italy, as well as British and French Neoclassical architects such as Claude Nicolas Ledoux. In his thirties, he emigrated to the new United States and designed the United States Capitol, on "Capitol Hill" in Washington, D.C., as well as the Old Baltimore Cathedral or The Baltimore Basilica, (later renamed the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary). It is the first Cathedral constructed in the United States for any Christian denomination. Latrobe also designed the largest structure in America at the time, the "Merchants' Exchange" in Baltimore. With extensive balconied atriums through the wings and a large central rotunda under a low dome which dominated the city, it was completed in 1820 after five years of work and endured into the early twentieth century. He is the father of Benjamin Henry Latrobe II.