Lost Capitol Hill: Resurrecting Washington

In writing these columns, and those I do for the Hill Rag, the toughest part is always working out what should be left out. Often the most interesting stories I come up with simply don’t fit in the context of the current column and must therefore be left out. In broadening the column I wrote recently here about Washington’s houses on Capitol Hill in order to make it a column for the Hill Rag, I came across a story that had to be left out of that column — but that I couldn’t not write up.

William Thornton is best known as the original architect of the Capitol — as well as George Washington’s houses on Capitol Hill. Those who point out that his plans were not, actually, very good like to mention that he was, in fact, a doctor. Which is true, to an extent. What is also true is that he wasn’t much of a doctor.

After George Washington fell sick with the sore throat that would eventually kill him, Thornton made the pilgrimage to Mount Vernon, figuring he could relieve Washington’s suffering though a tracheotomy. Given what we know now about the general’s illness, this might actually have worked – had Washington been alive. Unfortunately, Thornton arrived to find that the general had passed on and had, in fact, been frozen. Thornton was unfazed. His response was as follows (and understand that this was not written by some appalled bystander, but – proudly –  by Thornton himself many years after the incident)

I proposed to attempt his restoration, in the following manner. First to thaw him in cold water, then to lay him in blankets, and by degrees and by friction to give him warmth, and to put into activity the minute blood vessels, at the same time to open a passage to the lungs by the trachæa, and to inflate them with air, to produce an artificial respiration, and to transfuse blood into him from a lamb.

Martha Washington demurred, and the good doctor retired from the scene.

This was not, however, Thornton’s last attempt to make Washington immortal. His next effort was a refashioning of the rotunda of the Capitol, adding a round hole in the middle so that those visiting the rotunda could gaze down onto Washington’s grave. Once again, Martha Washington intervened, and the father of our country was buried, as he had requested, at Mount Vernon.

George and Martha Washington's final resting place in Mount Vernon.

The hole in the rotunda was, in fact, built in the 1820s, but was closed in 1828 when it was discovered that the damp drafts from the crypt harming the pictures hung in the rotunda.

Thornton himself went on to become the chief of the patent office, and in 1814, while two of his creations were being burned on Capitol Hill, he convinced the British tasked with the burning of the Patent Office to desist, as the models displayed within were not publicly, but privately owned.

For more on George Washington’s houses on Capitol Hill, see my column in the February Hill Rag