With the exception of the winning design by the Irish-born and -trained architect James Hoban, entries in the 1792 competition for the President's House were by builder-architects rather than the few academically trained architects then practicing in this country. Hoban was awarded the $500 premium on 17 July 1792; the cornerstone was laid on 12 October for a building one-fifth larger, at President Washington's suggestion. During construction...more

The relationship between the architecture of the Supreme Court and its landscaping is one of the most successful in Washington. The architect, Cass Gilbert, effectively disguised the irregular trapezoidal plot on which the building sits while totally controlling the approach, entrance, and passage through the building. The building is composed of three parts, a dominant temple of Roman derivation flanked by two wide horizontal wings. The temple, literally conceived of as the temple of justice,...more

The tallest structure in the world when it was completed in 1884, the Washington Monument is the one work of architecture in the city that it is impossible to erase mentally, so inevitable does it seem, so deeply rooted, and so crucial symbolically, as the icons of American history and government revolve around it. Its greatness lies in the initial conception to make such a stupendous mark on the land and to achieve such purity of geometric form on such a scale.more

The sense of quiet and repose essential to the experience of the Lincoln Memorial derives from its placement in the extended landscape created especially for it and from the perfectly balanced relationship between Daniel Chester French's great statue of Lincoln and the equally great architecture that Henry Bacon designed to shelter and display it. The ideal of monumental Beaux-Arts public architecture was the dynamic fusion of... more