Tayloe’s first choice for an architect, Benjamin Latrobe, designed a home that was very traditional, rectangular in shape, and way over Tayloe’s ideal budget. Tayloe purchased his wedge-shaped plot of land (for $1000) at the corner of 18th Street and New York Avenue in 1797, rendering Latrobe’s drawings impossible to build. Tayloe turned instead to Dr. William Thornton (featured in the painting here), a physician by training, was making a name for himself in the field of architecture as his had been the winning design for the Capitol Building. Thornton’s design for Tayloe was a residence that married two different traditions – one urban, and informed by the latest London fashions; the other, that of the familiar Virginia tidewater plantation.
