JAMES HOBAN (1758-1831) OF DESART

AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

 

An account by Denis Bergin contributed to the special publication

'Callan 800: 1207-2007: History and Heritage', 

marking the 800th. anniversary of the granting of a charter to the town of Callan

 

Part II

 

 

 

DEPARTURE FOR AMERICA AND EARLY LOCATIONS

 

James Hoban arrived in Philadelphia about 1785. There he must have quickly become

familiar with other Irish personalities in the newly-emerging republic – including the

Irish-born or descended signers of the Declaration of Independence (Smith, Thornton,

Taylor); Irish members of the Continental Army and Congress (1774-1788) and other

notables such as Stephen Moylan, Washington's quartermaster; Commodore John

Barry, founder of the American Navy; and Matthew Carey, publisher.

    Irish-born or connected southern delegates to Congress were prominent in the city too, and many – including John Rutledge (who possibly shared a Callan connection with Hoban), Philip Lynch and Sir Pierce Butler – had strong links with Charleston, South Carolina, then the largest U.S. city after Philadelphia.  These latter contacts may have been the reason for Hoban's move to Charleston, where he arrived about 1787.

    We know that – as in Philadelphia – Hoban established himself quickly in

Charleston, but sadly we have no definite record of what projects he worked on in this

early period. Within two years, however, he was able to purchase a property at 42-43

Trott (now Wentworth) Street, paying over £250 for his half share, which contained a

house. From there he operated a design/build partnership (sometimes mangled as Purcell

and Hobourne) with Pierce Purcell, who had bought the other half share. Hoban

continued to own that property until long after he had settled in Washington, and possibly

as late as 1799. He had established a drawing school there much in the tradition of

the Kilkenny and Dublin institutions that he was familiar with as a youth – his students

included the future architectural pioneer Robert Mills, who worked with Hoban as an apprentice in Washington ten years later, but may have taken his first steps in drawing as

a nine or ten year-old in Hoban’s junior classes.

    There is some suggestion that Hoban married during his Charleston residency,

but the number of people in his household may have been the result of several siblings

who emigrated to join him; in 1795, we find a reference to the death of a Philip Hoban at

that address, his will being executed by Joseph Hoban, described as an overseer.

Of his Charleston work, we know that Hoban submitted or was about to submit a

plan for the Orphan House eventually designed and built by Thomas Bennett, a well

known local builder, miller and builders' supplier. Bennett, together with Thomas Gadsden,

George Hall, and Daniel Cannon vouched for Hoban when he set up his drawing

school. We also know that in 1792 English theatrical interests commissioned a new

theatre building and engaged Hoban to prepare drawings. Hoban designed a large

(7000 sq. ft.) plain building with a 56ft.-wide stage, three tiers of boxes, 'each with window

and Venetian blind' and elaborate decoration. The project was supervised by theatre

manager Thomas West and completed by Captain Anthony Toomer, an established

builder and retired revolutionary army officer, after Hoban's departure for Washington.

The building we now know as Charleston's Historic Courthouse was constructed

as a British colonial state house in 1753 by Samuel Cardy of the Irish building

family who were also responsible for two buildings (St. Michael’s Church, still standing,

and the Old Guard House, now long gone) of the four at the junction of Broad and

Meeting Streets in Charleston.

    After the Statehouse burned in 1788, little more than thirty years after it had been

built, there was an issue of what to do with it. A new statehouse had begun construction

in Columbia in 1786 (despite the many attributions of this to Hoban, it is unlikely that he

had anything to do with it). There was some belief that if the Charleston statehouse was

restored or even expanded, minds might be changed about the location of the state

capital. And so a commission was appointed under William Drayton and plans were

drawn up for a three story building based on the rehabilitation of remaining outer walls

of the old building (although Drayton is often given the credit for the design, it is almost

certain that Hoban was the architect for the reconstruction). Once it was acknowledged

that the battle for the statehouse was lost, the work proceeded on the creation of an

elegant centre of the law.

Now that the Commons House of Assembly, the State Council Chamber, and offices

for the Speaker, State Secretary and clerks were no longer needed, the floor layouts

were amended to allow more space for the different types of courts and offices

needed in the new administration – courts of session, common pleas, and equity; registries

of equity and mesne conveyance; U.S. district court; juries and grand juries; sheriff

– as well as for the state treasurer and comptroller. There was even room for the

Charleston Library Society and Museum on the third floor. After two centuries of

amendment, expansion and architectural infelicity, Charleston’s Historic Courthouse

was returned to its 1792 layout and decorative glory in 1998.

 

THE WASHINGTON CONNECTION

 

It was his work in Charleston that recommended James Hoban to George Washington,

America’s first President, then nearing the end of his first term. He had heard about Hoban’s

reputation during a visit to Charleston in 1791, though it is doubtful if the two ever

met at this stage.

    Seeking an alternative to the mercurial French planner and army officer L’Enfant,

who had laid out a grand plan for the new capital of the United States but was unwilling

to deliver detailed drawings of the principal buildings, President Washington sought out

Hoban. The President arranged to meet him and provided the information that gave the

Irishman some advantage in the architectural competition administered by Thomas Jefferson

for an Executive Mansion or President’s House.

    In the eight-year period of construction, Hoban became renowned for his efficiency,

attention to detail and leadership. The project he had undertaken involved what

was then the largest building ever constructed in the United States, with thirty-two

rooms – not all of which were properly fitted out when President John Adams moved in

in 1800 (George Washington, who retired from the presidency in 1797, died two years

later and so never saw the building completed).

    Hoban’s abilities to organise, motivate and organise a diverse group of suppliers,

craftsmen and labourers (many of them slaves), and his own skills in carpentry and project

management, resulted in a relatively smooth progress for the Executive Mansion,

so much so that when the building of the U.S. Capitol ran into problems, he was appointed

to head that project also, becoming America’s first tenured Surveyor of Public

Buildings (his predecessor had lasted only a short while in the position).

   Though he lost that title in 1803 (to B. Henry Latrobe, son of a Dublin-born Moravian

preacher who had emigrated to England), Hoban continued to work on presidential

projects for the next thirty years.

    He rebuilt The President’s House after the damage it sustained in The War of

1812, when (in August 1814) it was set on fire by the British and completely gutted. He

was also a trusted adviser to many of the early Presidents of the United States, counselling

them on the fitting out and maintenance of the official residence and assisting

them with work on their private dwellings and estates.

    In 1829, when he was seventy-one, he supervised the construction of the familiar

curved south portico to the Executive Mansion, ironically to an earlier design by Latrobe,

whose career had declined in the years before he died at age of fifty-six in New Orleans

in 1820.

    Hoban was also involved in the design and construction of the Department of

Treasury, the Department of War and Blodgett’s Hotel (which later housed the Patent

Office and the Post Office), though all of the original buildings were destroyed by fire

almost within his lifetime (the Patent Office fire destroyed the entire building and all of

the patents recorded in the new republic since its foundation, despite the fact that the

city fire department was located in the same building).

     He acted as ‘measurer’ on the Tayloe house project (The Octagon), later developed

as a museum and exhibit area by the American Institute of Architects, whose

modern headquarters building it adjoins.

 

PERSONAL AND CIVIC CONNECTIONS

 

Hoban was an extensive property owner in the Washington area and had many other

commercial interests. With his wife Susan or Susannah Sewell, whom he married in

1799 when he was forty-one, he had 10 children and their household also included nine

slaves.

    Although there is no definite confirmation of her ancestry, Susannah is more than

likely the daughter of that name born to Henry and Mary Sewell in 1776. Her brother

Clement was already married to Eleanor Carbery, a member of a prominent Irish family

in Maryland and Georgetown, and aunt of Thomas Carbery, Mayor of Washington City

from 1822 to 1824 (Mayor Carbery was an executor of James Hoban’s will). The cure of

Thomas Carbery’s sister Ann Mattingly from cancer through the intercession of a German

priest-prince, then still living, became a sensation and is generally taken as being

the first documented miracle to take place on American soil.

    Hoban himself, like Thomas Carbery, and Robert Brent, the first mayor of the city,

was a lifelong member of St. Patrick's Catholic Church, whose establishment he secured,

bringing the Dominican Fr. Caffrey from Dublin to act as pastor. Fr. William Matthews,

who was the church’s pastor from 1805 until twenty years after Hoban died, was

among the architect’s most trusted friends, being nominated in his will to take complete

charge of the education of his young sons.

    James Hoban is also credited with an involvement in the design of St. Peter’s

Church, the second Catholic Church to be built in the city, being a member of the committee

that supervised its construction (the original church served from about 1802 to

1867, when it was replaced by a more imposing structure).

He was closely connected to the Jesuit community, who staffed Georgetown University,

and also knew members of the Visitation Sisters community alongside, where

Kilkenny-born Alice Lalor was one of the founders.

James Hoban’s civic involvement was notable and he acted at various times as

militia leader, census taker, and member of a number of district bodies, including Washington

City Council where he served for more than a quarter of a century (the actual city

of Washington, then a small settlement within the D.C. triangle in the Maryland portion,

has now expanded well beyond the original boundaries. The original plan for a 100

square-mile district straddling the Potomac River, and including portions of Virginia and

Maryland, was not realised, and the Virginia portion was handed back to that state).

    As well as being a leading figure in Catholic circles, the distinguished Kilkennyman

was also (through a special dispensation granted by Bishop Carroll) a founding

member of the First Federal Lodge of the Freemasons, a connection that is honoured to

the present day.

    James Hoban died in 1831, and was buried in St. Patrick's, then later at Mount

Olivet Cemetery, where his gravesite and memorial stone were refurbished in 1998. His

children all enjoyed good positions in Washington society, his son James becoming a

prominent lawyer and district attorney before his untimely death in 1845 while still in his

mid-forties.

    Although he is not known to have visited Ireland again after his departure in

1785, the design of Rossenarra House (c. 1824) near Kilmoganny is attributed to him

and the recent National Architectural Building Survey documentation on Kilkenny also

gives him credit for two other buildings in the Kells area. Although he may have maintained

links with family and acquaintances in Ireland, it is unlikely that he was involved

in anything other than very general advice on these projects.

 

COMMEMORATING HOBAN

(note that this section has been updated since its original publication; a more extended account of the Hoban Commemoration can be found under Commemoration in this section of the website)

 

A wooden desk made by James Hoban was donated to White House in 1974 (this desk was put on display in the revamped White House Visitor Center exhibit in 2014) 

    In 1976 a commemorative plaque to mark his birthplace was unveiled by the then American

Ambassador to Ireland, The Hon. Walter P. Curley. Commemorative stamps featuring

Hoban and the White House were issued in 1981 in Ireland and the United States.

    In 2006, the 175th. anniversary of his death, James Hoban Societies in Ireland

and the United States organised a number of commemoration events in Kilkenny and

Callan, built around a one-day seminar on Hoban and the Irish architectural tradition in

the United States, sponsored by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local

Government.

    In 2008, the 250th. anniversary of Hoban’s birth was celebrated on both sides of

the Atlantic. A major Hoban exhibit developed by the White House Historical Association

was mounted at the White House Visitors' Center, near The White House itself, and the

material from this exhibit was made available for display in Ireland. A full programme of

conferences, publications and events also took place on both sides of the Atlantic.

    The Hoban birthplace site was enhanced by a memorial arbor that also incorporated

a striking installation designed and constructed by a team of students from the Architecture

School of the Catholic University of America led by Associate Professor

Travis Price. The installation is one in a worldwide series under the title ‘Spirit of Place’;

there are four others in Ireland, all in County Mayo.

    The official opening of the Hoban memorial took place in September 2008, when

the principal guest and speaker was William Allman, the curator of The White House.

He was also a guest at a symposium and exhibit on Hoban organised by the Royal Dublin

Society, at whose school of architecture Hoban received his early professional education.

There are no remains of the Desart Court mansion itself – it was burned in the

Irish Civil War period, rebuilt, and then taken over by the Land Commission in the mid

1940s. The estate land was redistributed and the house allowed to fall into disrepair. It

was eventually demolished in the early 1950s though some remains of the surrounding

features (part of the stableyard and a seven-acre walled garden) are still visible. Three

of the Desart Court gatelodges also survive, although some (including the one nearest

the Hoban birthplace site), have been adapted for modern living.

    There is little doubt that James Hoban is one of the most important, if not the

most important, Irish-born emigrant ever to have operated in a professional capacity in

the United States. His ability, humility and good grace made him the very model of excellence

and achievement, and he was the only one of a dozen architects involved in

the early planning and construction of the U.S. capital to survive into old age (all of the

others fell victim to illness, poverty or disgrace).

    Plans are currently (2015) in hand to add a small interpretive installation at the Hoban Memorial site near Callan, and to commemorate in 2017 the 200th. anniversary of his rebuilding and restoration of the President's House after the disastrous fire set by the British during the War of 1812.