Research and Writing by James Veverka
In 1792, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Johnson placed of an advertisement announcing a Capitol architectural contest in a Philadelphia newspaper. The ad contained rules and requirements for the sizes and numbers of rooms and such. The judges of the competition were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Commissioners of the District of Colombia. The philosopher Jefferson, a classically educated man like most of the founders, saw in temple designs like the Temple of the Sun, the Parthenon and the Roman Pantheon a symbolism of democracy science, and philosophy resurrected. Jefferson, Washington and the committee thought that the new capitol building should symbolize a Temple of Liberty in a secular sense. Entries were mostly Renaissance Palladian, a classical revival style of the that period. But the truly classical entrees from classical antiquity were the most liked by all. The committee took the symbolic nature of the Capitol seriously. For them, the design must symbolize the functions and themes of the capitol.
According to the Library of Congress' online exhibit regarding the conception and building of the Capitol Building, titled The Temple of Liberty, Thomas Jefferson was inspired by classical temple architecture for the pattern of the Capitol. A source of this was a print of the Pantheon in Claude-Antoine Jombert, 1779 book called "Les edifices antiques de Rome". The print, called Elevation de la face du Pantheon, a Rome was done by Antoine DesGodetz. Being classically educated and a son of the Enlightenment, this is not surprising. Jefferson was well read regarding classical philosophers and cited them many times in his letters. A print in Robert Wood's 1753 book, The Ruins of Palmyra impressed Jefferson for the Capitol's new east portico design. (See also prints from Manhattan Rare Books site.) The print was Wood's conception of the Temple of the Sun (small image below), which is also the temple of Bel, or Ba'al, the God of the Sky and the Sun; the Father in the divine 'Trinity of the Sun God'. Iarbibol, with crown of sun, was the Messenger of the Sun, and Agribol was of the Moon. Woods made his print based on the archeological evidence suggesting what it looked like before it fell to ruins. Another source of inspiration to the people involved in planning the Capitol was a picture (Plate 22) in Volume I of the 1715 Vitruvius Britannicus. The print by Colen Campbell is called The First Design of the West Front of Wansted. This image is interesting because the drawing has Goddesses on the corners and peak of the roof, a common element of classical temples.
