George Hadfield Architect Of The Federal City

During his lifetime, the work of architect George Hadfield (1763-1826) was highly regarded, both in England and the United States. Since his death, however, Hadfield's contributions to architecture have slowly faded from view, and few of his buildings survive. In order to reassess Hadfield's career and work, this book draws upon a wide selection of written and visual sources to reconstruct his life and legacy. After a general introduction, the book begins with an outline of Hadfield's early years and moves on to look in detail at the extant major buildings in Washington, D.C. that he worked on: the Capitol, Arlington House and Old City Hall. Hadfield's contributions to the Capitol and other Federal buildings are fully researched and assessed for the first time and Arlington House is set in context and shown to have been much more influential than has been appreciated hitherto. New material is presented on City Hall, which is another major and unjustly neglected contribution to the architecture of Washington. The complicated interlocking circles of his family and friends, his fellow architects, and his patrons and clients, including the transatlantic connections, are also explored, revealing much about the course of his career and American architecture in general. Subsequent chapters and the Catalogue explore the other projects that Hadfield was involved with, ranging from office buildings, jails, theatres, factories and banks to a mausoleum and monuments. The book ends with a reassessment of Hadfield's qualities and influence, arguing that these were greater than is often acknowledged. By offering explanations as to why his work was particularly admired by contemporaries, it is concluded that Hadfield's architectural style has been influential from his own times to the present and has been disseminated throughout the United States.

The Papers of George Washington, a grant-funded project, was established in 1968 at the University of Virginia, under the joint auspices of the University and the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, to publish a comprehensive edition of Washington's correspondence. Letters written to Washington as well as letters and documents written by him are being published in the complete edition that will consist of approximately ninety volumes. The work is now (2011) more than two-thirds complete. The edition is supported financially by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, the University of Virginia, and gifts from private foundations and individuals. Today there are copies of over 135,000 Washington documents in the project's document room. This is one of the richest collections of American historical manuscripts extant. There is almost no facet of research on life and enterprise in the late colonial and early national periods that will not be enhanced by material from these documents. The publication of Washington's papers will make this source material available not only to scholars but to all Americans interested in the founding of their nation. - Publisher.

History of Washington D. C. and its city planning.

Historians have dismissed the ten years it took to ready the new capital as nothing more than man's inability to tame a swamp. In a brilliant narrative Bob Arnebeck shows how with slave axe-men, lawyers' writs, and speculators' greed a hilly, well wooded paradise was turned into a land of stumps, ruts, shacks, and isolated mansions.The stories of slaves and workers are at last told.