{"id":54,"date":"2013-05-23T11:11:35","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T11:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/user44356.vs.easily.co.uk\/?page_id=54"},"modified":"2018-09-10T09:56:02","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T08:56:02","slug":"benjamin-la-trobe","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/?page_id=54","title":{"rendered":"Benjamin La Trobe"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The White House, Washington, with its gracious portico, and the Capitol’s imposing outline are often flashed on our television screens, yet few in this country\u00a0realise that an Englishman, Benjamin Henry La Trobe, was the architect involved\u00a0with much of their structure.<\/p>\n

B.H. La\u00a0Trobe was born on 1 May 1764 at No.34 Fulneck, son of the minister, Rev. Benjamin La Trobe, and his American wife, Anne Margaretta Antes. Young Benjamin Henry was educated at Fulneck School and later at the Church’s academy in Niesky, Germany.\u00a0After a\u00a0 period in the Prussian army, B.H. La Trobe returned to England and studied architecture under Samuel\u00a0Pepys Cockerell then worked with him on the Admiralty building in Whitehall. La Trobe\u00a0designed several buildings in England,\u00a0including Ashdown House and Hammerwood House, both in Sussex.<\/p>\n

After\u00a0various frustrations in business and the death of his young wife, Lydia Sellon,\u00a0by whom he had two children, he emigrated to America in 1795. He married Mary Elizabeth Hazlehurst in Philadelphia,\u00a0his mother’s hometown, on 2 May 1800. Mary was to prove a devoted wife and\u00a0mother, especially when he brought his two children, Henry and Lydia, over from England. The couple had more\u00a0children.<\/p>\n

La Trobe’s first major American commission was for the State Peniten\u00adtiary in Richmond Va.(1787)\u00a0and he was soon flooded with work. Its scope shows his amazing versatility.\u00a0 Among his designs were plans for banks, a military academy, hospitals, a custom house, churches, a cathedral, a naval dry dock, private residencies and\u00a0cemetery monuments! La Trobe was one of the first to revive the style of\u00a0ancient Greece\u00a0with its graceful columns and simplicity of ornament. La Trobe also designed interiors and fittings. The interior of the R.C. Cathedral of Baltimore, for instance, is his design down to the altar and family monuments. His plans for the\u00a0building caused controversy at first, as revolutionary designs often do, but on\u00a0completion the trustees wrote, “the various details form one grand and\u00a0beautiful whole.” La Trobe gave his services gratis for plans of religious\u00a0and educational establishments, possibly influenced by his Moravian Church background.<\/p>\n

Thomas\u00a0Jefferson (American President 1801-1809) was a life-long friend. He appointed\u00a0La Trobe Surveyor of Public Buildings and asked him to remodel the White House.\u00a0Besides structural work there remains in the House today a chair and fireplace\u00a0with over mantel mirror which La Trobe designed. La Trobe\u00a0started work in 1803 on the lengthy process of completing the Washington Capitol. It was burned down in 1814. La Trobe said that he was repairing\u00a0“a most magnificent ruin.” He had a free hand with the interior decoration\u00a0and brought the landmark still nearer completion.<\/p>\n

No less\u00a0remarkable were La Trobe’s engineering achievements. Before leaving Yorkshire\u00a0he had trained under the noted Leeds bom\u00a0engineer, John Smeaton, who built the Eddystone Lighthouse. With Yellow Fever\u00a0rife in America\u00a0a supply of clean water was essential for the health of the nation. La Trobe devised a scheme to bring river water to the city of Philadelphia, using steam pumps. His son writes that, on 21 June 1801, his father “with three gentlemen, his friends, and one of his workmen, kindled a fire under the boiler and set the ponderous machinery in motion while the city was buried in sleep.” Next\u00a0morning the citizens awoke to “water gushing from the hydrants.” La\u00a0 Trobe collaborated with Robert Fulton, the pioneer of steam navigation, until Fulton’s death in 1815.<\/p>\n

La Trobe’s\u00a0talented drawings and water colours leave an account, not only of his architectural and engineering achievements, but are also an invaluable record\u00a0of the young American republic. His whole collection of papers constitutes the\u00a0largest known of any architect in the world, approached only by that left by\u00a0Sir Christopher Wren. In America,\u00a0before La Trobe’s time, there were only the inspired amateur builders. La Trobe left an enduring school of qualified architects, stemming from his personally\u00a0trained pupils.<\/p>\n

Benjamin\u00a0Henry La Trobe must have saved many lives through his water projects, but\u00a0unfortunately Yellow Fever claimed him and he died of it on 3 Sep. 1820, aged\u00a0fifty-six. He was one of the foremost architects of his time and his\u00a0illustrious American career spanned twenty-five years. (La\u00a0Trobe’s two surviving sons distinguished themselves in the construction of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad).<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/strong> A commemorative\u00a0plaque given by \u201cThe Yorkshire Society\u201d is on No. 34 Fulneck at the West side\u00a0of the Church. The Pulpit in the Church was designed by the architect’s father. Rev. Benjamin La\u00a0Trobe.<\/p>\n

Information taken from the leaflet ‘<\/em>EMINENT MORAVIANS No. 1′ (1995) by Margaret Connor and available at Fulneck Museum<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The White House, Washington, with its gracious portico, and the Capitol’s imposing outline are often flashed on our television screens, yet few in this country\u00a0realise that an Englishman, Benjamin Henry La Trobe, was the architect involved\u00a0with much of their structure. B.H. La\u00a0Trobe was born on 1 May 1764 at No.34 Fulneck, son of the minister, … Continue reading Benjamin La Trobe<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":25,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-54","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1808,"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54\/revisions\/1808"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}