The Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe (Series 4): Volume 1 4-1, 1784-1804

by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, John C. Van Horne (Editor), Lee W. Formwalt (Editor)

This volume is the first of what will be three volumes of selected correspondence and miscellaneous papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), America’s first professional architect and engineer.
Of the 235 documents in this volume the majority are letters to and from Latrobe, interspersed with his pamphlets, newspaper articles, government reports, and scientific papers. The first section traces Latrobe’s formative years in England and Germany and his early professional career in England before his emigration to America in 1795. By 1800 Latrobe had designed the Virginia State Penitentiary, the Bank of Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia Waterworks. In 1803 President Jefferson appointed him surveyor of the public buildings in Washington, and thereafter he began to take on more important commissions. Thus a great deal of this volume is given over to Latrobe’s work on the Capitol and the President’s House as well as his work as surveyor and engineer of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company. In 1804 Latrobe accepted an appointment as engineer to the Navy Department and also began work on his monumental Baltimore Cathedral.
This book comprehends both Latrobe’s personal and professional beginnings and at least the genesis of the major works of his professional career.

Published for The Maryland Historical Society

616 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 1985

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.