Benjamin Latrobe

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This article is about the elder Benjamin Latrobe. For his son, see Benjamin Henry Latrobe, II.

Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe (May 1, 1764 - September 3, 1820) was a British-born American architect best known for his design of the United States Capitol.

1 Biography
2 Works
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Benjamin Latrobe was born in England at the Fulneck Moravian Settlement, near Pudsey in West Yorkshire. At the age of 7 he was sent away to the Moravian School at Niesky in Silesia on the borders of Saxony and Poland. After a continental Grand Tour he returned to England in 1784 and entered apprenticeship to John Smeaton the engineer (of Eddystone Lighthouse fame), and later, the eminent architect C.R. Cockerell.

In the early 1790s he entered private practice, and Hammerwood Park (link below) near East Grinstead in Sussex was his first independent work in 1792. In 1793 Ashdown House was built nearby. Both houses still stand. In 1795, after bankruptcy, his wife's death, and losing custody of his child, he emigrated to America.

There he soon achieved eminence as the first professional architect working in the country.<ref name=roth>Roth, Leland M. (1993). Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History and Meaning, First, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 117-8, 415. ISBN 0-06-430158-3.</ref> He is best known as the designer of Baltimore's cathedral and the U.S. Capitol (his interiors still remain).<ref name=roth/>

Latrobe was a friend of Thomas Jefferson and likely influenced Jefferson's design for the University of Virginia; he was Aaron Burr's preferred architect. He knew many of the principal people of his time, both illustrious - like presidents Jefferson and James Monroe - and - ill-famed - like New Orleans architect/pirate Bartholomy Lafon. Latrobe's illustrated journals from his wide travels are a record of the young United States. Latrobe trained William Strickland in the art of architecture as there were no formal architecture schools in the United States at that time.<ref name=roth/>

As an engineer, he was responsible for the water supply to Philadelphia and, with his son (Henry Sellon Boneval Latrobe), for a scheme for steam powered pumps to help de-salt water for New Orleans, Louisiana. Both he and his son died of yellow fever there, once again bankrupt.

Principally, he was responsible for setting public architecture in the United States in the Greek Revival style. He complained in jest that after building the Philadelphia Waterworks and the Bank of Pennsylvania that the whole town copied him; his influence on public architecture endures.

In 1814 Latrobe partnered with Robert Fulton in a steamship venture based at Pittsburgh. The first Mississippi steamboat "New Orleans" had as passengers Latrobe's daughter and her husband Nicholas Roosevelt-a great uncle of President Theodore Roosevelt.