Benjamin Henry Latrobe is, in two ways, not Pierre L’Enfant—he was not, despite his surname, French; and he does not enjoy the same fame (nor is there a prominent square or plaza in Washington, D.C. named after him). But while Latrobe didn’t build Washington itself, he did build the first iteration of the U.S. Capitol, befriend multiple presidents and, among much else, plan and construct Philadelphia’s first waterworks, work on steamboats with Robert Fulton, and furnish the White House with Dolley Madison.
“Seven years after his arrival in the United States, Benjamin Latrobe had signed on to design the US Capitol.” So begins Building America: The Life of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, by Goucher College professor Jean H. Baker. The expansive biography follows the early American architect and émigré from his English and German childhood in the authoritarian-communitarian Moravian Church to his financially troubled but successful American career.
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