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:This article is about the elder Benjamin Latrobe. For his son, see Benjamin Henry Latrobe, II
Benjamin Henry Latrobe (May 1, 1764 - September 3, 1820) was a British-born American architect best known for his design of the United States Capitol.
Biography
Benjamin Latrobe was born in England at the Moravian community at Fulneck in 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 he emigrated to America where he soon achieved eminence as the first professional architect working in the country.
As an engineer, he was responsible for the water supply to Philadelphia and, with his son (Henry Sellon Boneval Latrobe), New Orleans, Louisiana, where he died of yellow fever.
Principally, he was responsible for setting public architecture in the United States in the Greek Revival style. He complained in jest that after building just the Philadelphia Waterworks and the Bank of Pennsylvania, the whole town copied him, and his influence on public architecture endures.
In 1814 Latrobe partnered with Robert Fulton in a steamship venture based at Pittsburgh.
Works
Latrobe's many architectural works include:
- The United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.
- America's first Catholic Cathedral, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Baltimore, Maryland
- The building known today as Davidge Hall, completed in 1812 in Baltimore, Maryland, part of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the oldest building in the Northern Hemisphere in continuous use for medical education *
- The Pope House (Lexington, Kentucky)
- Adena in Chillicothe, Ohio
- St. John's Church and Decatur House (Washington)
- The White House Porticos
External links
- Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
- Hammerwood Park
- Detailed chronology
1764 births | 1820 deaths | Architects | Architects of the Capitol | History of Washington, D.C.
"Benjamin Latrobe"