Conclusion

The conclusion covers the life of Latrobe’s widow and children after his death. On the advice of Latrobe’s friend Robert Harper the family settled in Baltimore, where Harper could serve as a surrogate father, giving advice and financial support. In this city, Latrobe’s sons John and Ben became civic leaders, while unmarried Julie stayed at home with her mother. Both sons worked in different capacities with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad; both contributed to the community. The chapter ends with a brief summary of Latrobe’s contributions to the early republic. Benjamin Latrobe left professional legacies, principally his architecture such as the US Capitol, the Bank of Pennsylvania, the Baltimore Basilica, and the Merchants Exchange. His design for nearly seventy private homes established a more rational model for American domestic arrangements. He had adapted the classical style known in Europe to the climate, habits, and political ideals of his new homeland. Latrobe’s buildings and his engineering projects affected every aspect of life in the early republic—its worship, governance, communication, education, and domesticity.

Introduction

This introduction presents Benjamin Latrobe as a rebel who left the Moravian Church and remade himself as an architect and engineer in the United States. It emphasizes his rapid ascension as an architect and engineer in the new republic as well as his very American penchant for speculation. The themes in this short introduction are his constant moving, his chronic debt, and his commitment to buildings that expressed American exceptionalism and connected the United States to the admired republics of ancient Greece and Rome. The introduction also previews the themes of the book: his life spent in motion, his chronic debilitating headaches along with his optimism and resilience, and his family as a sanctuary. It establishes the six cities he lived in as important background for his struggles and discusses the monumental National Endowment for the Humanities project that published his letters and drawings.