Benjamin Henry Latrobe

Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe, born May 1, 1764, and dead of yellow fever on September 3, 1820, was a British-American architect who brought neoclassical style to the young United States. He was among the first formally trained professionals in his field to arrive in the newly independent nation, blending ideas from Italian travels with the work of British and French neoclassicists like Claude Nicolas Ledoux. After immigrating in his thirties, he designed the U.S. Capitol on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and the Old Baltimore Cathedral—later called the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary—which stands as the first cathedral built for any Christian denomination in America. He also created the Merchants' Exchange in Baltimore, at that time the largest structure in the country, featuring balconied atriums along its wings and a central rotunda beneath a low dome that dominated the city skyline; completed in 1820 after five years of work, it survived into the early 1900s.

Latrobe left England for America in 1796, first settling in Virginia, where he worked on the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond. He then moved to Philadelphia to establish his practice. In 1803, he became Surveyor of the Public Buildings of the United States, spending much of the next fourteen years on projects in the new capital of Washington, D.C., serving as the second Architect of the Capitol. He also designed the porticos of the White House. His later years were spent in New Orleans, Louisiana, working on a waterworks project, and he died there in 1820 from yellow fever.

Often called the "father of American architecture," Latrobe was the uncle of Charles La Trobe, the first lieutenant-governor of Victoria, Australia.

Born on May 1, 1764, at the Fulneck Moravian Settlement near Pudsey in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, he was the son of Benjamin Latrobe, a Moravian Church leader of Huguenot ancestry, and Anna Margaretta Antes, whose father was German and maternal line Dutch. Anna was born in Pennsylvania but sent to England by her wealthy father to attend a Moravian school at Fulneck. His father, responsible for all Moravian schools and establishments in Britain, had a wide circle of high-ranking friends and stressed education, scholarship, and social exchange, while his mother fostered his curiosity about America. From a young age, Latrobe enjoyed drawing landscapes and buildings. He was the brother of Moravian leader and composer Christian Ignatius Latrobe.

At twelve, in 1776, he was sent to the Moravian School at Niesky in Silesia, near the border of Saxony and Prussia. At eighteen, after months traveling Germany, he joined the Royal Prussian Army, befriending a distinguished U.S. Army officer. He may have briefly served in the Austrian Imperial Army, suffering injuries or illness. Recovering, he embarked on a Grand Tour through eastern Saxony, Paris, Italy, and elsewhere. Through his education and travels, he mastered German, French, ancient and modern Greek, and Latin, with advanced ability in Italian and Spanish and some Hebrew. In 1815, he was elected to the American Antiquarian Society.

His son, Benjamin Henry Latrobe II, worked as a civil engineer, joining the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1827 and designing the curving Thomas Viaduct, the longest and most challenging bridge on its initial route. Another son, John Hazlehurst Boneval Latrobe (1803–1891), was a civic leader, lawyer, author, historian, artist, inventor, architect, and social activist in Maryland; as Baltimore’s Park Commissioner, he co-founded the Baltimore Zoo and invented the Latrobe Stove, a cast-iron coal-fired parlor heater. A grandson, Charles Hazlehurst Latrobe (1834–1902), son of Benjamin Henry II, continued the family tradition as an architect and engineer building bridges for Baltimore and the B&O Railroad, fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Another grandson, Ferdinand Claiborne Latrobe, served seven terms as mayor of Baltimore. Latrobe Park in south Baltimore and Latrobe Park in New Orleans’ French Quarter bear the family name.

Returning to England in 1784, Latrobe apprenticed with John Smeaton, engineer of the Eddystone Lighthouse. Around 1787 or 1788, he briefly worked in the office of neoclassical architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell. In 1790, he was appointed Surveyor of the Public Offices in London and opened his own practice the next year. His first independent commission came in 1792 for Hammerwood Lodge near East Grinstead in Sussex, followed by Ashdown House in 1793. He also worked on the Basingstoke Canal in Surrey with engineers Smeaton and William Jessop. In spring 1793, he was hired to plan improvements to the River Blackwater from Maldon to Beeleigh, aiming to help the port of Maldon compete with the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation, but Parliament denied approval in early 1795, ending the project.