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Who Built Washington? The Labor History of the Construction of the White House, 1793-1800, May 16, 1996
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Who Built Washington? The Labor History of the Construction of the White House, 1793-1800, May 16, 1996
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Robert J. Kapsch
May 16, 1996
Who Built Washington? - The Labor History of the Construction of
The White House, 1793-1800.
Pierre L'Enfant was the planner of Washington. President
George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson were the
principal policy makers for the new city. The designers of the
first public buildings in the new city of Washington, the White
House and the Capitol, were James Hoban and William Thornton. The
national capital was constructed under the direction of
Commissioners Daniel Carroll, Thomas Johnson, and David Stuart
These would later be replaced by Commissioners Gustavus Scott,
William Thornton and Alexander White. But who built Washington?
From the records in the National Archives, a fairly complete
picture of the work force used during the first Federal
construction program (1793-1800) can be had. It was a very mixed
bag -- black slaves worked alongside free whites and blacks and
indentured servants. The work force was actively recruited from a
number of countries, principally England, Scotland, Ireland,
Germany and, of course, America. Although women didn't work
directly work on the construction sites, they did work in support
positions for the overall construction program. Besides the
buildings themselves, the first Federal construction program had to
build the infrastructure necessary to support building operations -
- such as the Commissioners' wharves, the bridge over Rock Creek,
the Aquia Quarries, the Post road, housing for the workers, and
other facilities needed to support the construction program in a
sparsely populated area.
By happenchance, the first Federal construction program for
the
new city of Washington (1793-1800) overlapped the great
transformation of the building trades from its medieval past to its
capitalism-based present. At about the time of the first Federal
construction program, a new way of building was emerging throughout
the United States. The professional architect, such as Benjamin
Latrobe, was beginning to emerge and the traditional
master/journeyman/apprentice triad was beginning to be replaced by
the building contractor and wage labor. Traditional building
organizations, such as Washington's Architects and Builders
Society, were beginning to dissolve. Traditional building
practices, such asworking-by-the-piece, with its reliance on price
books, was beginning to be replaced by lump-sum contracts, such as
were used by Washington's Commissioners. George Washington'
building regulations for the new city, were the beginning of the
extensive regulations which are used in the building industry
today In short, the labor history of the construction of The
White House in the new Federal city, 1793-1800, provides us with a
glimpse of the major transformation that the American building
industry was experiencing and the emergence of the modern building
industry.