Thornton, William

▪ American architect and inventor

born May 20, 1759, Tortola, British Virgin Islands

died March 28, 1828, Washington, D.C., U.S.

      British-born American architect, inventor, and public official, best known as the creator of the original design for the Capitol (Capitol, United States) at Washington, D.C.

      Thornton studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh (1781–84) and received his M.D. from the University of Aberdeen (1784). After travel on the European continent he returned to Tortola and then immigrated to the United States in 1787. In the following year he became a U.S. citizen and settled in Philadelphia. Without any formal study of architecture, Thornton in 1789 won a building design competition promoted by the Library Company of Philadelphia.

 From 1790 to 1792 he was again at Tortola, where he first heard of the important competition for the Capitol at Washington. He submitted designs that were received months after the competition closed; yet the judges, not satisfied with those previously submitted, selected Thornton's. His revised Georgian design of 1795 was executed as the exterior of the north and south wings adjacent to the central rotunda, though Benjamin H. Latrobe (Latrobe, Benjamin) completely redesigned the interiors. From 1794 to 1802 Thornton was a commissioner of the city of Washington. He designed several residences in the city, including the Octagon (1798–1800), which was used in 1814 by President James Madison after the White House was burned. The Octagon is now the national headquarters of the American Institute of Architects.

      From 1802 to 1828 he served as first superintendent of the Patent Office. He and a fellow inventor, John Fitch (Fitch, John), were among the first developers of the paddle-wheel steamboat. In Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats (1814) Thornton defended their experiments done between about 1778 and 1790 against Robert Fulton (Fulton, Robert)'s later claims of first inventing a steam-powered boat. Thornton also patented eight inventions between 1802 and 1827 for improving such devices as firearms and stills.

Additional Reading

Elinor Stearns and David N. Yerkes, William Thornton: A Renaissance Man in the Federal City (1976); Beatrice Starr Jenkins, William Thornton: Small Star of the American Enlightenment (1982), edited by Starr Jenkins.

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