The Financial Misadventures of Charles Bulfinch

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The Financial Misadventures of Charles Bulﬁnch

jay wickersham

HIS is a story about money: how Boston architect Charles T Bulfinch (1763–1844) went bankrupt; how his leading client, Harrison Gray Otis (1765–1848), grew wealthy; and how the architect felt about the two men’s relative failures and suc- cesses. It is also a story that dramatizes the difficulties of architectural practice in the early years of the United States, showing how the choice of career and the pursuit of status, riches, and influence could make or break a man. The relationship between Bulfinch and Otis is one of the foundation myths of American architecture, for rarely have two men collaborated to shape a city as Bulfinch and Otis shaped Boston between 1794 and 1817. Bulfinch, in his dual roles as first selectman and police superintendent, headed Boston’s municipal government and effectively served as its first town planner; acting as an architect, he designed most of the town’s major public and private buildings. Otis, a successful lawyer and politician, was a pioneer of large-scale real estate development; he built his fortune through the development of Beacon Hill, which would become Boston’s most expensive residential enclave. Bulfinch planned and designed all of Otis’s major projects, including his three homes, each one larger than the last. Bulfinch’s architectural vision gave outward form to Otis’s ambitions, and Otis’s projects gave Bulfinch a canvas on which he could express his artistic talents. Yet Bulfinch and Otis were not close. Otis was a prolific correspondent, but there are almost no letters extant between the two men. Otis was famous for the parties he gave at his Bulfinch-designed homes, but there is no evidence that the

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 414 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY architect was ever among his guests. Although they worked together for years, financial dependency and debt finally drove the two men apart. Otis and Bulfinch tracked each other’s lives like a pair of shadow-boxers, in a series of mirroring moves and countermoves. Bulfinch was haunted by Otis’s success. Early in his career, Bulfinch lost his family’s fortune in the Tontine Crescent, a real estate development that he had conceived, designed, and financed. Although conventional accounts assert that this failure transformed Bulfinch from a gentleman amateur into a profes- 1 sional architect, sources indicate that he was never able to support himself as an architect while he was in Boston. In fact, again trying to emulate Otis, Bulfinch made a second foray into real estate development—with equally disastrous results. His memoir narrates his rising hopes, his dashed expectations, and the continuing shame he experienced in the town of his birth. Where Bulfinch failed by trying to copy Otis’s success, Otis succeeded by learning from Bulfinch’s failure. Otis’s artistic tastes were conventional; he saw architecture and real estate primarily as a way of making money to finance his political career. He presided over the settling of Bulfinch’s Tontine Crescent debts—including the surrender of his 20 percent interest in Otis’s own Beacon Hill project. Using Bulfinch as his counter-example, Otis successfully structured Beacon Hill and his subsequent developments to minimize business risks and generate long-term profits.

Bulfinch and Otis first became associated in business in 1794, when both men were in their early thirties, but they had known each other all their lives (see figs. 1 and 2). They had grown up across the street from each other in Bowdoin Square, a residential enclave on the north slope of Beacon Hill. Both had well-educated fathers, of relatively modest means, who had married into Boston’s colonial gentry. The sons had grad- uated from Harvard two years apart—Bulfinch in 1781,Otisin

1 Harold and James Kirker, Bulﬁnch’s Boston, 1787–1817 (New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1964), p. 76.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 415 1783. Yet despite these parallels, their family backgrounds and temperaments had formed the two men quite differently. Bulfinch had absorbed an interest in architecture during his youth. His father, a doctor who had trained in Edinburgh and Paris, had married Susan Apthorp, the daughter of the richest merchant in colonial Massachusetts. The Apthorps were pa- trons of two significant Neo-Palladian churches, King’s Chapel in Boston and Christ Church in Cambridge, both designed by Peter Harrison, a gentleman-architect from Newport, Rhode 2 Island. As a child, Bulfinch pored over English and French editions of Vitruvius and Palladio in the family libraries, and he 3 doodled classical columns in the margins of his schoolbooks. In 1785 Bulfinch’s parents used a bequest from an Apthorp uncle to send their son to Europe. Bulfinch was abroad for a year and a half, visiting London, Paris (where he met Jefferson, then the United States minister to France), south- ern France, and Italy, reaching as far south as Rome. From the trip he received a firsthand knowledge of European architecture unmatched by any American of his generation. But the Roman, Renaissance, and Baroque buildings that Bulfinch saw in France and Italy would have far less influence upon his 4 work than what he saw in England. Particularly in London, Bulfinch observed that a mercantile society demanded new

2 Carl Bridenbaugh, Peter Harrison: First American Architect (Chapel Hill: Univer- sity of North Carolina Press, 1949), pp. 54–63, 112–17. See also William H. Pierson Jr., American Buildings and Their Architects: The Colonial and Neo-Classical Styles (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 142–50. 3 Harold Kirker, The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch (Cambridge: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1969), pp. 1–4. 4 Pierson, American Buildings and Their Architects, pp. 246–61; Kirker, Architec- ture of Bulfinch, pp. 1–12 (intro.) and subsequent descriptions of individual buildings. A recent article argues that Bulfinch’s early work was more heavily influenced by contemporary French neoclassical architecture, such as the recently completed church of Saint-Sulpice, than has been previously acknowledged (Thomas E. Conroy, “‘Charmed with the French’: Reassessing the Early Career of Charles Bulfinch, Architect,” Histor- ical Journal of Massachusetts 34:2 [Summer 2006]: 104–31). However, Kirker estab- lishes English precedents for these works also (Architecture of Bulfinch, pp. 11–12). Bulfinch continued to order books on architectural subjects from England throughout his career, a fact that further reinforces evidence of English influence; see James F. O’Gorman, “Bulfinch, Buildings, and Books,” in American Architects and Their Books to 1848, ed. Kenneth Hafertepe and O’Gorman (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), pp. 91–107.

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Fig. 1.—Mather Brown, portrait of Charles Bulﬁnch, 1786, oil on canvas, 76.5 × 64 cm (30 1/8 × 25 3/16 in.). Image courtesy of Harvard Art Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Portrait Collection, gift of Francis V. Bulﬁnch, 1933,H428.

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Fig. 2.—Gilbert Stuart, portrait of Harrison Gray Otis, 1809. Image courtesy of Historic New England.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 418 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY types of buildings, built quickly and sparely: warehouses, banks, courts, hospitals, and houses for the middle class. The emer- gent architecture, of taut brick planes and ﬂattened ornament, produced subtle effects by means of the proportion and ar- 5 rangement of simple rectangular volumes and voids. Looking back on his European trip from retirement, Bulﬁnch wrote in his memoir:

This tour was highly gratifying. ...Iwasdelightedinobservingthe numerous objects & beauties of nature & art that I met with on all sides, particularly the wonders of Architecture, & the kindred arts of painting and sculpture . . . but these pursuits did not conﬁrm me in any business habits of buying & selling, on the contrary they had a 6 powerful adverse inﬂuence on my whole after life.

Throughout his life, despite the pleasure it afforded him, architecture would be a source of internal reproach and pain to Bulfinch. Bulfinch began designing houses and churches soon after he returned from Europe. For several years he practiced as an unpaid gentleman-amateur architect. As he said, he “passed a season of leisure, pursuing no business, but giving gratuitous advice in Architecture, and looking forward to an establishment in 7 life.” He lived off family investments, including the shares he and his father each bought in the voyages of the ship Columbia, which opened up the Pacific Northwest fur trade. The quality of his designs rapidly improved, from crude early work that relied on colonial models to more sophisticated reworkings of the Neo-Palladian and neoclassical buildings he had seen in London. In 1793 Bulfinch received commissions for two major

5 On eighteenth-century London architecture generally, see John Summerson, Geor- gian London (rev. ed., London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1988). 6 Charles Bulfinch, memoir, c. 1835, Bulfinch Family Papers, Ms. N-1960,box2, Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS), Boston. Long excerpts from the memoir are quoted in Ellen Susan Bulfinch, The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch (1896;repr. New York: Burt Franklin, 1973); this passage appears at p. 42. Wherever appropriate, subsequent references also cite the Life and Letters; however, quoted passages follow the punctuation of the original. 7 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 58.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 419 public buildings: the new Connecticut State House in Hartford, and the Boston Theatre. There is no evidence that he was paid 8 for either design. Unlike the Bulﬁnches and Apthorps, who avoided politics and cultivated knowledge of the arts and sciences, the Otises thrived on controversy. Otis’s uncle, James Otis, had been a close ally of Samuel Adams’s and John Hancock’s. His aunt, Mercy Otis Warren, was a political satirist who wrote the ﬁrst history of the American Revolution. But despite the family’s prominence in the independence movement, the Otises did not sail gloriously into the post-war period. James Otis lost his wits and in 1783 was struck dead by lightning. Otis’s maternal grandfather, Harrison Gray, a prominent loy- alist, left Boston in 1776 for permanent exile in London. In 1785 the family trading business failed, and Otis’s father went bankrupt. He eventually secured the job of permanent secretary to the United States Senate and left Boston to live out the rest of his life in New York, Philadelphia, and ultimately 9 Washington. Young Harry Otis, as his friends always called him, had planned to study law in London, but his father’s bankruptcy quashed that hope. Instead, John Lowell, a leading Boston lawyer and family friend, took him on as a pupil. Lowell trained Otis well. He introduced him to prominent politicians in the emerging Federalist Party, and his sons Jack and Francis would 10 become important law and business partners for Otis. But Otis quickly saw that lawyerly success would not bring him the wealth he wanted—and wealth was required to afford him the

8 On the Connecticut State House, see Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, pp. 54–58. His son Stephen reported that he provided the theatre design gratis (Stephen Bulfinch, untitled biographical sketch of C. Bulfinch, Boston Daily Advertiser, 20 February 1869). The contention is supported by the existence of a medal, given by the theatre trustees in 1795, that entitled the architect to a seat for life (Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, p. 70). 9 On Otis’s family background, see John F. Waters Jr., The Otis Family in Provincial and Revolutionary Massachusetts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968); see also Samuel Eliot Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, 1765–1848: The Urbane Federalist (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), pp. 1–40. 10 Morison, Otis, pp. 39–42; on Lowell, see Ferris Greenslet, The Lowells and Their Seven Worlds (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946), pp. 60–84.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 420 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY 11 leisure necessary for a political and civic career. In 1790 Otis wrote to his grandfather Harrison Gray in London, “Our profession in this Country is not lucrative and I feel already that I 12 am doomed to a hard life and scanty fortune.” In the early 1790s, in short, both Bulfinch and Otis were looking about for ways to be active and make money. Boston’s population had expanded by over 30 percent since 1780,and it would continue to do at the same rate into the first two decades of the nineteenth century, increasing from approxi- mately 10,000 in 1780 to over 43,000 in 1820.Thisgrowth fueled a demand for housing among well-to-do lawyers, doctors, merchants, and other professionals and businessmen who wanted a comfortable and attractive house in town. In developing the Tontine Crescent and Beacon Hill, Bulfinch and Otis sought to satisfy this demand.

The twin strands of Bulﬁnch’s ambitions, architectural and ﬁnancial, intertwined when he drew together a small group— himself, his wife’s brother-in-law Charles Vaughan, and a merchant named William Scollay—to purchase a three-acre site just steps from Marlborough (today Washington) Street, the town’s commercial spine. On 7 July 1793, Vaughan, acting on 13 behalf of the group, bought the land for $17,500. (To put real estate values from the era in contemporary perspective, a comparative index of unskilled wage rates would cause one to multiply by between 200 and 300; for example, $10,000 in 14 1795 would be worth roughly $2.77 million in 2009.)

11 Robert F. Dalzell Jr. makes this argument about Otis’s Federalist contemporaries, including his real estate partner Francis Cabot Lowell, who pioneered the New En- gland textile industry (Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987], pp. 51–67, 77–82). 12 Harrison Gray Otis to Harrison Gray, 14 January 1790, quoted in Morison, Otis, p. 52. 13 Deed, Barrell to Vaughan, 7 July 1793, Suffolk County Registry of Deeds (now at Massachusetts State Archives, Boston), vol. 177,fol.37. Dates for registry references are the date of execution, not the date of recording. 14 See the unskilled wage index data given at http://www.measuringworth.com/ uscompare/. According to this source, the effective multiplier would decrease to 195 by the year 1810.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 421 Bulfinch developed an ambitious and architecturally sophisticated plan for the site. The first phase, known as the Tontine Crescent, was composed of sixteen townhouses arranged in a shallow curve (fig. 3). The crescent form drew upon the example of English residential projects that Bulfinch knew from his travels or his books. For architectural expression, he looked to the chaste neoclassicism of the Adam brothers, as evident 15 in their Adelphi development and other London projects. Monumental three-story pilasters marked paired houses at either end of the composition. At the center of the crescent, a new street entered the development through an archway, sur- mounted by a raised pavilion in which half-columns supported a grand triangular pediment. The rooms above the archway were donated to two recently founded cultural institutions: the Boston Library Association and the Massachusetts Historical 16 Society. Bulfinch’s original plan anticipated two crescents, facing 17 each other across an oval garden. Because only one crescent could be fit on the site, however, he ultimately designed the second phase of the project, known as Franklin Place, to be comprised of four individual two-family houses. The oval garden was installed, ornamented by a large urn imported from England to commemorate Benjamin Franklin, the Boston native who had been born nearby (fig. 4). On the day the land purchase closed, an advertisement appeared in the Columbian Centinel, Boston’s Federalist

15 Although there is no direct evidence that Bulfinch drew his inspiration from any specific buildings in London, his letters and the well-thumbed copy of his guidebook, James Ralph’s Critical Review of the Public Buildings, Statues, and Ornaments in and about London and Westminster (London: John Wallis, 1783), now at the Rotch Library at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, confirm that he studied the city’s architecture extensively on his trip. “I have been engaged ever since my arrival in gratifying my curiosity with the sight of buildings, . . . & find I have still a great deal to see” (C. Bulfinch to [father] Thomas Bulfinch, 12 August 1785, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 44). On the Tontine Crescent, see Pierson, American Buildings and Their Architects, pp. 243–48. 16 Deed, C. Bulfinch, Vaughan, and Scollay to Massachusetts Historical Society, 6 November 1794, Suffolk Deeds, 179:98; deed, C. Bulfinch and Scollay to Boston Library Society, 4 February 1796, Suffolk Deeds, 182:125. 17 E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 102.

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Fig. 3.—Charles Bulﬁnch, elevation and plan drawings of Tontine Crescent, published in Massachusetts Magazine, February 1794.

Fig. 4.—Charles Bulﬁnch, arch and Franklin memorial urn at Tontine Cres- cent, completed 1794, photograph c. 1853. Image courtesy of The Bostonian Society/Old State House Museum.

newspaper: “The public are hereby informed that a plan is proposed for building a number of convenient, and ele- gant houses, in a central situation, and a scheme of tontine

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18 association.” The advertisement reflected the developers’ original plan for raising money: selling subscriptions to invest in a tontine, a form of limited liability association that originated in early-eighteenth-century France. Like a corporate stockholder, the member of a tontine is liable to outside creditors only for the amount of his investment; but unlike shares of corporate stock, which can be passed down to one’s heirs, tontine shares are divided at one’s death among the survivors. In other words, a tontine involves two levels of speculation: the investor is bet- ting not only upon the success of the venture but upon his or her own life expectancy as well. From the start, the project was called the “Tontine Crescent”; even the legal deeds refer to the “so-called Tontine buildings.” But although the idea of a tontine seized the popular imag- ination, the legislature was less receptive. At this time, every form of limited liability business venture required an individual state charter. For unknown reasons, the Massachusetts legisla- 19 ture failed to pass the proposed bill for the project. Bulfinch, Vaughan, and Scollay were undaunted. Calling the project the “Tontine Crescent” was a misnomer, since no tontine was ever formed; but as a reflection of the investors’ sporting spirit, it 20 was all too apt. Construction began almost immediately, in August 1793. Inthespringof1794, with the crescent half completed, Vaughan was having misgivings about the endeavor. To diver- sify risk, the developers turned to an alternative legal structure: the tenancy-in-common. A tenant-in-common has some of the same rights and liability protections as a corporate shareholder: one’s ownership share in a property can be mortgaged, sold to outsiders, or bequeathed to one’s heirs, without the consent of the other owners. Between May and June, Vaughan sold his entire interest in the east half of the crescent to twenty- two separate individuals, each of whom received shares as

18 Quoted in Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, p. 78. 19 Kirker and Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston, p. 66. 20 On speculation and financial bubbles in Boston after the Revolution, see Jane Kamensky, The Exchange Artist (New York: Viking, 2008), pp. 33–48.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 424 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY 21 tenants-in-common. The largest investors were Bulfinch’s brother-in-law George Storer, who bought a 30 percent interest, and Bulfinch and Scollay, who each committed to 14 percent. Vaughan remained the sole legal owner of the crescent’s west building and of the undeveloped portion of the site. By the end of 1794, the crescent buildings were largely fin- ished, but not a single house had been sold. Vaughan wanted 22 to withdraw entirely. Bulfinch now made two disastrous business decisions. Rather than attracting new investors to share the risk, Bulfinch bought out the entirety of Vaughan’s consid- 23 erable investment. Bulfinch then compounded his mistake by launching the second phase of the project, the construction of 24 the Franklin Place houses. To raise the necessary capital, Bulfinch began to borrow. As contemporary deed records show, Boston’s lending market was robust. Mortgage loans were issued by one’s peers—other well-to-do individuals in the same social milieu. The strength of one’s financial credit was tied up with one’s personal honor; a man who failed to honor a debt was putting his social standing 25 at risk. Mortgage loans were short term, typically due between one and three years, and they were secured by a personal re- course note that put all of the borrower’s assets at risk. Lenders often required a family member’s or a friend’s guaranty. The majority of Bulfinch’s loans on the Tontine Crescent were

21 Deed, Vaughan to Scollay, C. Bulfinch, Tudor, Storer, and 17 others as tenants in common, 5 May 1794, Suffolk Deeds, 178:107 (ownership shares as follows: Vaughan, 8/50; Scollay, 7/50; C. Bulfinch, 7/50; Tudor, 5/50; Storer, 2/50;and17 others, 21/50); deed, C. Bulfinch, Vaughan, and Scollay (and wives of each) to Storer, 13/50 share, 31 July 1794, Suffolk Deeds, 178:224. 22 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 98–99. 23 Deed, Vaughan to C. Bulfinch, 27 December 1794, Suffolk Deeds, 179:171. 24 Charles A. Place, Charles Bulfinch, Architect and Citizen (1925; repr. New York: Da Capo, 1968), p. 63; Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, p. 89. Place’s description of the Tontine development, which relies on the documents in Ellen Bulfinch’s Life and Letters and on limited deed research, has served as the basis for all subsequent accounts. 25 Bruce H. Mann, Republic of Debtors (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 8–9, 16–17, 258–62.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 425 cosigned or guarantied by his father, his brother-in-law Storer, or both. Finally, there was a well-developed secondary market, in which the original lender could sell or assign a note or mortgage. Nine of the eleven major loans Bulfinch took out on the Tontine Crescent project were ultimately conveyed to another creditor. The new holder might not be constrained by the same ties of family or friendship as the original lender and therefore might enforce the loan more aggressively when it came due. To buy out Vaughan, Bulfinch gave him notes worth $12,320, payable in one year and secured by mortgages on four houses in the west building. Vaughan quickly sold Bulfinch’s notes to two merchants from Beverly, Massachusetts, John Cabot and Isaac Thorndike, and was now effectively free of any risk asso- 26 ciated with the project. Bulfinch, meanwhile, had presumably assumed full liability for all unpaid construction costs on the crescent even though he had no income to cover those liabili- ties. To build the Franklin Place houses, he borrowed $16,440 from Otis, with whom he had recently partnered in the development of Beacon Hill (described below), and from David 27 Sears, another lawyer. As construction on the Franklin Place houses progressed throughout 1795 and the Tontine Crescent houses languished unsold, the financial pressure on Bulfinch mounted. Boston was suffering a business slump brought on by international politics—always a concern in the port, whose economy de- pended heavily on trade. England, at war with the revolutionary Republic of France, had been seizing American ships that violated its blockade. When United States envoy John Jay negotiated a treaty with Britain to resolve the dispute, its terms were denounced as too weak. In August 1795 theSenatehad, reluctantly, confirmed the Jay Treaty and President Washington had signed it, but Jefferson and the Republican-Democrats in the House were still trying to undermine its implementation;

26 See deed, C. Bulfinch to Cabot, 6 February 1795, Suffolk Deeds, 179:257; deed, C. Bulfinch to Thorndike, 17 February 1795, Suffolk Deeds, 179:259. 27 Mortgage deed, C. Bulfinch to Otis and Sears, 18 December 1794, Suffolk Deeds, 179:172.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 426 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY they would not give up until April 1796, when the House narrowly voted to authorize the necessary funds and the treaty took effect. Bulfinch, his credit backed by his father and brother-in-law, kept borrowing—yet another $11,112 in mortgage loans be- 28 tween May and July 1795. Meanwhile, the Bulfinches began selling some of the family’s investment properties, which 29 brought in $24,245. In September, Storer apparently asked to withdraw from the project (although his name remained on some of the loans as a guarantor). Bulfinch bought his entire 30 percent interest in the east building of the crescent for $10,000; to do so, he borrowed money from Jonathan Mason—another partner in the Beacon Hill deal and a lawyer who, like Otis, was active in the Federalist Party—pledging his shares as se- 30 curity. Bulfinch was now the sole owner of the west crescent building and Franklin Place, and he was the largest investor in the east crescent building as well, with 44 percent of its shares. He was obligated to move forward with construction, for the terms of several of the mortgages threatened to hold him in default if the pledged houses were not completed “with 31 all possible dispatch.” In October 1795, Otis and Sears insisted that their loan, 32 which had come due, be paid in full. Bulfinch turned to Henry Jackson, a lawyer who served with him as a trustee of the Boston Theatre and who would soon become a participant in the Beacon Hill deal as well. Jackson lent him $20,000, secured by mortgages on two Franklin Place houses and on the

28 Mortgage, C. Bulfinch to John Cabot, 9 May 1795, Suffolk Deeds, 180:152 (marginal notation indicates that Cabot had bought the note originally given to Storer on 8 April); mortgage, C. Bulfinch to Josiah Quincy, 20 June 1795, Suffolk Deeds, 180:223; mortgage, C. Bulfinch to William Prescott, 24 July 1795, Suffolk Deeds, 181:36. 29 See the following five deeds to various parties, dated between 15 June and 26 September 1795, in Suffolk Deeds: 180:209; 181:33; 181:34; 181:42;and181:188. 30 Deed, Storer to C. Bulfinch, 26 September 1795, Suffolk Deeds, 181:185;two mortgages, C. Bulfinch to Mason, Suffolk Deeds, 181:186, 187. 31 See Suffolk Deeds, 179:257,and180:152. 32 Marginal note on mortgage, Suffolk Deeds, 179:172.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 427 house that Bulfinch had just built for himself on the back side of Beacon Hill. Jackson’s loan was secured by guaranties from 33 the senior Bulfinch and Storer. By December 1795, Bulfinch’s total investment exceeded $130,000. He was heavily leveraged, having borrowed approx- imately half of that amount. Most of the debt was also guarantied by his father, brother-in-law Storer, or both. And by that date, Bulfinch’s income from the project totaled only $18,333, from the sale of three houses, out of twenty-four (see table 1A). Bulfinch’s investment significantly outstripped the income he could reasonably have expected from the sale of the houses (compare table 1A, which tabulates the known cash investments and loans for the Tontine project, with table 1B, which shows reasonable projections of income, expenses, and profits). At the heart of Bulfinch’s troubles were out-of-control construction costs. During this phase in his career, Bulfinch’s ability to manage a project budget was shaky. The final cost of the Boston Theatre, completed in 1794, was double Bulfinch’s original es- timate; the Massachusetts State House, under construction be- 34 tween 1795 and 1798, went four times over budget. Henry Jackson wrote to another of his clients that the price tag for the client’s Bulfinch-designed house would be “twice the sum you 35 mention.” Bulfinch himself admitted, in a letter to his State House clients, that “my own experience . . . has convinced me of 36 the fallacy of estimates.” Tables 1Aand1B indicate that construction costs on the Tontine Crescent exceeded projections by over 75 percent—either because Bulfinch was unwilling to simplify his design or because the builders were padding their bills (or both).

33 Two mortgages, C. Bulfinch to Jackson, 24 October 1795, Suffolk Deeds, 181:255, 256. 34 Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, pp. 69, 103. 35 Henry Jackson to Henry Knox, 13 April 1794, quoted in Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, p. 97. 36 Bulfinch to legislative committee, 21 January 1795, quoted in Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, p. 103.

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Cash Amount Comments

Bulfinch’s purchase of $4,667 14% share in east building of Crescent; shares from Vaughan assume this was applied toward land acquisition cost. Other investors 41,500 Cash paid by investors other than Bulfinch to Vaughan, to buy 86% share in east building of Crescent and other outlying parcels. Assume that balance was applied by Vaughan toward construction costs,andthathedidnottakeanyprofit. Bulfinch family cash 24,245 Sale of family properties; assume this was investments applied entirely toward construction costs, since lending was not reduced prior to January 1796. Sale of houses 18,333 2 houses sold in Tontine Crescent; 1 in Franklin Place. Total cash investment $88,745 Presume $20,000 applied toward land acquisition and other costs (see Table 1B); balance applied toward construction costs.

Bulﬁnch Loans

Josiah Quincy (2)$10,864 Due November 1795; June 1796. William Cabot (2) 8,912 Due January 1796;April1797; guarantied by father (both) and Storer (1). Isaac Thorndike 6,720 Due January 1796; guarantied by father and Storer. Jonathan Mason 10,200 Due 7 April 1796; assigned (effectively guarantied) by father. Henry Jackson 20,000 Due 24 October 1797; guarantied by father and Storer. Other loans 11,383 At least 4 other loans, due between March 1796 and September 1798; several guaranteed by father or Storer. Total borrowing $68,079 Principal only; no record of interest charges. Presume that all borrowing applied against construction costs. Total investment to $156,824 This total already exceeds the potential date (cash and income from sale of houses (see Table loans) 1B) by more than $12,000.

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TABLE 1A (contd.)

Cash Amount Comments

Estimated construction $136,824 Total investment, less $20,000 presumed costs paid to date applied toward land acquisition and other costs (see Table 1B). Estimated unpaid 44,122 Total cash raised by the Bulﬁnches starting construction costs in January 1796 ($108,190), less payoff of total outstanding loans, plus 10% (the discount that Bulﬁnch states the builders were forced to accept). This presumes no interest was paid to lenders. Estimated total $180,946 This estimated total indicates a construction costs construction cost overrun exceeding 80% (compare with Table 1B).

TABLE 1B Projected Income and Expense Statement for Tontine Crescent

Income Amount Notes

Sale of Tontine Crescent $80,000 16 houses sold @ $5,000 each (based on houses actual sale prices, 1795–96) Sale of Franklin Place 64,000 8 houses sold @ $8,000 each (based on houses actual sale prices, 1795–96) Total income $144,000

Expenses

Land acquisition $17,500 Construction costs 100,000 Maximum budgeted cost, based on projected income, to produce 20% profit Other costs 2,500 Total expenses $120,000 Profit $24,000 20% projected profit

The story of Bulﬁnch’s ﬁnancial crash unfolds in a series of transactions recorded in the Suffolk County deed books between 13 and 21 January 1796. With the Jay Treaty still

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 430 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY uncertain, trade and investment in Boston remained at a standstill; buyers were scarce; loans and bills had come over- due. As soon as one creditor demanded payment, the inexorable logic of the law drove other creditors to capitalize on any nonpayment of interest or other default to help them secure a share of Bulfinch’s assets. In addition to creditors’ demands, Bulfinch faced a stack of unpaid invoices from builders. But here the prevailing organi- zation of the building trades in Boston favored the developer. At that time, construction projects were not managed by a single general contractor; instead, the developer contracted with each individual craftsman. In a case of nonpayment, the ag- grieved craftsman would have to hire his own lawyer and sue 37 to recover his individual debt. In due course, a mechanic’s lien statute would be passed whereby builders received auto- matic priority over other creditors on a construction project. But in 1796 there was no such law, and none of the lawsuits filed against Bulfinch appears to have issued from his builders. It was his mortgage lenders, men from the same social class as Bulfinch, who brought him down. Bulfinch never identified who precipitated the crash. But among his creditors, three held loans, totaling over $20,000, that had matured by January 1796: Josiah Quincy, a young Boston lawyer and close friend of Otis’s, and the two merchants from Beverly, Cabot and Thorndike. Some or all of them may have been under pressure from their own creditors. Cabot and Thorndike may have felt less inhibited about enforcing their debts because they were from out of town and, therefore, were not subject to the social and political ties that bound together members of the Boston gentry. Although Bulfinch referred to his failure as a bankruptcy, 38 the term is legally anachronistic. The first federal bankruptcy law, which provided a governmental structure for resolving

37 Lisa B. Lubow, “From Carpenter to Capitalist: The Business of Building in Postrevolutionary Boston,” in Entrepreneurs: The Boston Business Community, 1700– 1850, ed. Conrad Edick Wright and Katheryn P. Viens (Boston: Massachusetts Histor- ical Society, 1997), pp. 189–95. 38 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 99.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 431 and discharging a borrower’s debts, was not passed until 1800. Under existing Massachusetts law, a lender who won a court judgment could have the borrower’s goods seized and sold at auction. Judgments were sustained indefinitely and could be enforced against the borrower’s spouse and heirs. The only types of property that were safe from seizure were house- hold goods, the tools of one’s trade, and “necessary wearing apparel.” Ultimately, the lender could have the borrower ar- 39 rested and jailed until the judgment had been paid. This threat gave lenders enormous leverage to exact favorable private settlements. A group of lenders might join in a private process of “composition,” agreeing among themselves to al- locate the borrower’s available assets in proportion to their 40 claims. Another man would have fought, would have bluffed and even lied to his creditors, would have done everything possible to keep control of his project until business recovered. Bulfinch didn’t have such a temperament. He sought the private “composition” of his debts, and he turned to Otis to manage the process. With Otis’s help (the lawyer’s name appears on the deeds for all of the major transactions as either a witness or a 41 buyer), Bulfinch and his father rapidly liquidated the family’s remaining real estate assets. Joseph Coolidge, a rich merchant whose son was engaged to Bulfinch’s sister Elizabeth, bought the Bulfinch family homestead in Bowdoin Square, the pasture across the street, and 42 Bulfinch’s own house, for a total of $34,000. Otis himself 43 bought two large tracts of land, for $16,000. Bulfinch was able to sell the rest of the unsold houses in the Crescent and

39 William Nelson, The Americanization of the Common Law (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1975), pp. 41–42, 147–53; Mann, Republic of Debtors, pp. 78–108. 40 Nelson, Americanization of the Common Law, pp. 152–53; Mann, Republic of Debtors, pp. 69–71. 41 See documents cited in next two notes and Suffolk Deeds, 182:91. 42 Deed, C. Bulfinch to Coolidge, 21 January 1796, Suffolk Deeds, 182:90;deed,T. Bulfinch to Coolidge, 21 January 1796, Suffolk Deeds, 182:90. 43 Two deeds, C. Bulfinch to Otis, Suffolk Deeds, 19 January 1796, 182:92,and2 July 1796, 184:71.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 432 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY 44 Franklin Place. In all, the Bulfinch family raised a total of more than $105,000 in just over a week. Yet even this sum was not enough. On 1 September 1796, Bulfinch’s wife Hannah wrote in her diary: “creditors hard and unfeeling refuse to my Husband that settlement which again would leave him free to exert his faculties for the support of 45 his family. We are consequently still dependent.” The last of Bulfinch’s debts would not be discharged for another six 46 years. The crash devastated the family. Bulfinch lost all of his interest in the Tontine Crescent and Franklin Place. He lost his own house; he, Hannah, and their children had to share 47 a small rented house with the Storers. The Bulfinch family gave up control of several large parcels on the back side of Beacon Hill that would, in the coming years, become highly valuable. Bulfinch’s parents were saved only by Coolidge’s generosity. After buying the Bulfinch homestead, he transferred its title into the name of his son, Joseph Junior. Joseph and his wife took in Bulfinch’s parents, who lived out the rest of their 48 lives as guests in the house they had once owned. Finally, as we shall see, Bulfinch had to surrender his one-fifth share in the development of Beacon Hill, which would become the foundation for Otis’s fortune. Bulfinch and Otis drew very different lessons from these events. When Otis served in Congress between 1796 and 1800, he was a leading sponsor of the first federal bankruptcy law. In a well-reported speech, he contrasted the “great leviathans

44 Various deeds, 13–21 January 1796, Suffolk Deeds, 182:78, 182:81, 182:91, 182:92, 182:94. 45 Hannah Bulfinch, diary, 1 September 1796, quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 107. 46 Between June and September 1796, Bulfinch and his father had to sell three more properties (one to Otis, as referenced above, n. 43), which raised another $11,167.See Suffolk Deeds, 183:160, 184:71,and184:83. The latest recorded transaction relative to the Tontine Crescent was the discharge of a mortgage to William Prescott on 17 February 1802, Suffolk Deeds, 201:274. 47 H. Bulfinch, diary, 10 May 1797, quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 108; Abbott Lowell Cummings, “Charles Bulfinch and Boston’s Vanishing West End,” Old-Time New England 52:2 (October–December 1961): 36–40. 48 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 100; Cummings, “Bulfinch and Boston’s Vanishing West End,” p. 38.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 433 of speculation” who may recover from financial misfortunes with “the widows and orphans, the fair merchants, industrious tradesmen, and credulous friends, who are involved in the same whirlpool, [and who] rise no more.” The goal of the bankruptcy law, argued Otis, was to “rescue the honest but unfortunate 49 insolvent from the oppression of a vindictive creditor.” Bulfinch did not fully share Otis’s rational point of view. For him, insolvency was not the result of impersonal market forces; 50 it was evidence of a moral failing. Bulfinch’s sense of honor compelled him to attempt to repay every debt he had incurred: “I had some satisfaction in knowing that not one of my creditors was materially injured, many were secured to the full amount, and the deduction on the balance due to workmen did not 51 exceed 10 [percent] on their entire bills.” His singling out of the “workmen” as having obtained less favorable settlements than his peers supports the assumption that the builders did not cause Bulfinch’s downfall. Bulfinch considered his family’s ruin to be the result of his own weakness and folly. Indulging himself in art and architecture was a fulfilling but dangerous pleasure that exerted a “powerful adverse influence.” Recounting the Tontine Crescent affair in his memoir after he had retired, he was still flagellating himself. With what remorse have I looked back on these events, when blindly gratifying a taste for a favorite pursuit, I involved for life myself & wife with our children, my Father & Mother & Sisters, who all held the 52 utmost confidence in my measures & pride in my expected success!

In the aftermath of the Tontine debacle, Bulfinch struggled to find a way to support his family and restore his financial

49 Annals of Cong., 5th Cong., 3rd sess., 9:2660 (15 January 1799), quoted in Mann, Republic of Debtors, p. 212. 50 On changing attitudes toward bankruptcy during this period, see Mann, Republic of Debtors. 51 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 99. 52 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 99.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 434 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY and social standing. On 27 January 1796, a week after the liquidation of his assets, the following notice appeared in the Columbian Centinel:

The feelings of our fellow-citizens of this town, are arrested by the recent, and unhappy embarrassments of one of its best supporters. . . . Mr. B. (we all know) has sacrificed the best part of his time, nay, his interest also, in ornamenting and beautifying the town—and shall he be suffered to remain in this involved situation, without receiving from that town, a helping hand? Since he fails in a public 53 cause, shall he not from the public find redress? But it would take three years for Bulfinch to find his “redress.” Twice he ran for public office, as town notary and then as county treasurer. Both times he lost. Meanwhile, his architectural assignments had dried up; he received only three new commissions between 1797 and 1799, compared with thirteen projects begun during the previous four years. At long last, in 1799 Bulfinch was nominated for Boston’s board of selectmen on the Federalist slate and subsequently elected by town meeting. The selectmen then chose him their chairman, the highest post in Boston’s government. But the first selectman, despite his prestige and power, received no salary. So a second, paid position was created especially for Bulfinch: superintendent of police, with an annual salary of $600. Bulfinch would hold both posts continuously for the next eighteen years. As first selectman, he chaired a board that met on average two to three times a week to debate and vote on town ordinances, taxes, and budgets. Despite his personal shortcomings in financial matters, Bulfinch was extremely conservative in managing the town’s budget. He was proud of the fact that the total municipal debt in 1818,whenheleftoffice, was only $14,000, a figure that he claimed had ballooned to 54 $1.6 million by around 1840. As police superintendent, Bulfinch was charged with the day- to-day enforcement of the board’s laws and policies. He and his

53 Quoted in Kirker and Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston, p. 85. 54 C. Bulfinch, memorandum, c. 1840, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 136–38.

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Although this employment was irksome & little suited to my taste or character, I undertook to discharge its duties, & it enabled me, with my personal attention as Architect, to support my family in respectful 56 simplicity, which my dear wife submitted to with cheerfulness.

While the story of the Tontine Crescent was still unfolding, Bulfinch joined Otis in another major real estate project: the development of Beacon Hill. This project followed a very different business model. For forty years, Otis demonstrated his skill as a patient, long-term investor as he controlled the nature and pace of development and reaped its financial rewards. Bulfinch would design many of the houses on or adjacent to the Hill, including three for Otis. But except for two separate, smaller endeavors of his own, one successful and one not, Bulfinch would never share in the profits of the project. In the early 1790s, Beacon Hill, the tallest point on the Boston peninsula, was seen as unfashionably far from the center of town; it was called “Mt. Whoredom” because of the brothels and taverns on its back (north) slope. But Otis recognized two concurrent opportunities: the availability of twenty acres of

55 Kirker and Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston, pp. 86–92. 56 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 100.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 436 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Beacon Hill pastureland owned by John Singleton Copley, the Boston-born painter who had moved permanently to London in 1774, and the construction of a new State House in Boston, to be designed by Bulfinch. With the goal of making Copley an offer, Otis drew together five investors: himself, Bulfinch, Scollay, Mason, and Joseph Woodward, a Boston merchant. Aware that Copley had previously turned down an offer of $8,000, Otis’s group offered him $14,000. In June 1794 Copley, acting through his Boston agent, Samuel Cabot, agreed in principle to sell the land. The Otis group commissioned a survey to establish the property’s boundaries, which they sent to Copley to review and 57 confirm. While negotiations with Copley were proceeding, Otis, as member of a committee appointed by Boston town meeting, was helping choose the site for the new State House. The committee selected the pasture owned by John Hancock’s widow, just uphill from Copley’s; the recommended purchase price was 58 $4,000. As Otis well knew, the State House location would greatly enhance the value of the Copley property. The site selection also benefited Otis directly and immediately. The Hancock estate owed a significant sum to Otis’s loy- alist grandfather, Harrison Gray, who, like Copley, was living 59 in London. Shortly after the town bought the Hancock pasture, widow Hancock agreed to a discounted settlement of the debt to Gray. After clearing the obligation, the Hancock estate netted $1,700; Otis received a 25 percent commission from 60 his grandfather amounting to $556. Circumstances strongly suggest that Otis informed Mrs. Hancock that her land was

57 Allen Chamberlain, Beacon Hill: Its Ancient Pastures and Early Mansions (Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin, 1925), pp. 61–69. Chamberlain’s detailed account of the development of Beacon Hill is generally accurate, but he did not always compare the depositions of Bulﬁnch and other participants, given up to forty years after the events in connection with continuing lawsuits by various claimants to the title of the Copley lands, with the deeds. 58 See deed, Town of Boston to Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 2 May 1795, Suffolk Deeds, 182:144. 59 Morison, Otis, pp. 61–63. 60 Morison, Otis, p. 63.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 437 being considered as a site for the State House and that the agreement to settle Gray’s debt (and to pay Otis’s collection 61 fee) was a kickback for his steering the selection her way. In February 1795 the legislature endorsed both the Beacon Hill site and Bulﬁnch’s design for the State House (ﬁg. 5). The Otis group now moved quickly to secure land for future development. On 1 June 1795, they closed a transaction to buy an eight-acre tract known as the Allen pasture, which adjoined 62 the Copley land, for $6,100. Two weeks later, on 17 June, Cabot, acting on Copley’s instructions, signed a binding con- 63 tract. The Otis group immediately dispatched a Boston sea captain, James Scott, to deliver Copley his payment in London and bring back the executed deed. But Copley refused to give Scott the deed. He had learned of the pending State House construction. He thought that he had been cheated and that his agent, Cabot, had colluded with the Otis group. In February 1796, Copley sent his son, a talented young lawyer who would in later life become Lord Chancel- lor, to Boston. Attorney Copley examined the documents and concluded that Otis’s drafting was iron-clad. The deal was con- summated: Copley got his money, and the Otis group had the 64 deed and their land.

61 Otis tried to conceal his conflict of interest in the matter; he wrote his uncle (his grandfather having died) that he had settled the Hancock debt by threatening to sue James Scott, the fiance´ to widow Hancock, in an English court (Otis to Harrison Gray Jr., 1795, quoted in Morison, Otis, p. 63). But since Scott was acting as a go- between for Otis in the negotiations with Copley, Otis would hardly have put either the relationship with Scott or with Copley at risk in this manner. 62 Deed, James Allen and Martha Brown to Otis, Mason, and Woodward, 1 June 1795, Suffolk Deeds, 180:191. All five Mount Vernon Proprietors participated in two smaller purchases of adjacent land during 1795. Deed, Josiah Danforth to Otis, Mason, C. Bulfinch, Scollay, and Woodward, 2 July 1795, Suffolk Deeds, 180:284; deed, Joseph Pierce to Otis, Mason, C. Bulfinch, Scollay, and Woodward, 15 December 1795, Suffolk Deeds 183:247. 63 See C. Bulfinch, deposition, 23 November 1836, Suffolk Deeds, 387:253,with memorandum of 17 June 1795 agreement attached. 64 Deed, Copley to Otis and Mason, 22 February 1796, Suffolk Deeds, 182:184. On the Copley dispute, see Chamberlain, Beacon Hill, pp. 61–69; Morison, Otis, p. 76. Despite young Copley’s opinion, other claimants to the title continued to launch unsuccessful suits against the Proprietors for more than forty years (see Chamberlain, Beacon Hill, pp. 65–66; Morison, Otis, pp. 76, 220).

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Fig. 5.—Charles Bulﬁnch, elevation and plan drawings of Massachusetts State House, 1795. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, & Photographs, I. N. Phelps Stokes Collection.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 439 Once the Copley purchase was resolved, the Mount Vernon Proprietors, as the group now called themselves, moved forward. Bulfinch drew up the development plan: a loose grid of new streets and sixty lots for large, free-standing houses (fig. 6). At the center of the development would be a substantial private park, located at the top of the hill (its position would have straddled the current axis of Mt. Vernon 65 Street). On 3 August 1796, the Proprietors placed their first advertisement, extolling the area’s “genteel and airy situations” and “proximity to the new State House,” in the Columbian 66 Centinel. At this point, the project stalled for several years. There were two reasons for the delay: Otis’s political ambitions, and the reorganization of the Mount Vernon Proprietors. In 1796, having been elected to Congress, Otis moved to Philadelphia, where the federal government was located. For the next four years, lasting over two Congressional terms, Otis was largely 67 absent from Boston. Before he left town, Otis had built the first of his three Bulfinch-designed houses (fig. 7). The house was originally to be sited on Beacon Hill, but delays in establishing clear title, coupled with Otis’s impatience, presumably prompted him to 68 build on Cambridge Street in Bowdoin Square. The design of the house reflects the client’s aspirations more than the architect’s artistic leanings, for it lacks the exterior pilasters, curved room shapes, and other Adamesque features that characterize the Tontine Crescent and Bulfinch’s other designs from the

65 C. Bulfinch, plan, 1796, attached to his 1836 deposition at Suffolk Deeds, 387:271; reproduced in Chamberlain, Beacon Hill, facing p. 70. 66 Quoted in Chamberlain, Beacon Hill, p. 44. 67 Otis’s record as a congressman (1796–1800) was mixed. Morison calls his fierce partisanship of the Federalist Alien and Sedition Acts, one of the great blots on the history of American civil liberties, “the worst mistake of his political career” (Otis, p. 118). Otis’s principal achievement was to help secure passage of the first federal Bankruptcy Act, in 1800. After the Republican-Democrats took control of Congress, they repealed the act in 1803 (see Mann, Republic of Debtors, pp. 192–220). 68 A note on Bulfinch’s elevation, thought to have been written by Otis’s wife, Sally Foster Otis, reads: “Designed by C. Bulfinch about 1796 for Copley land” (Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, pp. 118–19).

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Fig. 6.—Charles Bulﬁnch, plan of Beacon Hill, 1796, superimposed over later Withington plan. Image from Allen Chamberlain, Beacon Hill: Its Ancient Pastures and Early Mansions (Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin, 1925), facing p. 70.

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Fig. 7.—Charles Bulﬁnch, elevation drawing of ﬁrst Otis House, 1795. Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

69 period. Instead, the conservative Neo-Palladian fac¸ade and plan copy the Philadelphia mansion of Federalist Senator William Bingham, the richest and most cultivated grandee of the Federalist Party, who served as a mentor and role model 70 for Otis. Bulﬁnch had sketched the Bingham mansion several years earlier, on a visit to Philadelphia; at the time he criticized the style of the house as “a palace [that was] far too rich for any

69 Despite its atypical position among Bulfinch’s work, the first Otis house has become an enduring symbol of New England’s Federalist architecture. It served as a model for Samuel McIntire, the Salem architect-builder, and Asher Benjamin, author of popular patternbooks, and through them was widely disseminated throughout the region. See Pierson, American Buildings and Their Architects, pp. 228–32 (although he does not directly link McIntire’s work with the first Otis house). A century later, the house was preserved and restored by William Sumner Appleton as the headquarters for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England), and it was a popular inspiration for Federalist-revival houses of the early twentieth century. 70 On Otis’s relations with Bingham and his family, see Morison, Otis, pp. 82, 131– 38, 230–32.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 442 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY 71 man in this country.” But Otis’s desire to emulate Bingham evidently overcame the architect’s scruples. While he was serving in Congress, Otis was also reorganizing the Mount Vernon Proprietors. The five original partners— Otis, Bulfinch, Scollay, Mason, and Woodward—each held 20 72 percent shares. However, because of the financial pressure Bulfinch was experiencing on the Tontine Crescent, he could not come up with the cash to cover his portion of the costs of the Copley transaction; between November 1795 and Jan- uary 1796, he was forced to borrow $1,708 against his share 73 from Otis and Mason. When the Tontine crash forced him to liquidate all his real estate holdings, among the property he surrendered was “all right, title and interest to the Cop- ley lands.” For this release, Bulfinch received $1,314.50 from 74 Otis and Mason, plus forgiveness of the outstanding debts. At the same time, Scollay released his interests in the Copley and 75 Allen purchases to Otis and Mason. In 1797, Woodward also 76 sold his remaining share in Beacon Hill to Otis and Mason.

71 C. Bulfinch to Thomas and Susan Bulfinch (parents), 2 April 1789, quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 75–76. 72 Although there is no evidence that this arrangement was ever formalized in a written partnership agreement, Bulfinch testified to its terms under oath in 1836 (C. Bulfinch, deposition, 23 November 1836, Suffolk Deeds, 387:253). His memory is confirmed by the 17 June 1795 letter of instruction, signed by all five proprietors, which they gave to Captain Scott (see Bulfinch’s memorandum of the letter, attached to his deposition at Suffolk Deeds, 387:253). 73 These transactions are described in a release, C. Bulfinch to Otis and Mason, 10 January 1796 [may be misdated; document refers to a transaction that occurred on 14 January], Harrison Gray Otis Business Papers, box 1,folder11, Historic New England (HNE), Boston, Mass. 74 Release, C. Bulfinch to Mason and Otis, 10 January 1796, Otis Business Papers, box 1,folder11, HNE. A few days earlier Bulfinch and Scollay had jointly surrendered all their interests in the smaller Danforth and Pierce purchases. Deed, C. Bullfinch and Scollay to Mason and Otis, 1 January 1796, Suffolk Deeds, 183:247. 75 Release, Scollay to Mason and Otis, 18 January 1796, Otis Business Papers, box 1,folder11, HNE. Bulfinch and Scollay later sold their interests in five small lots at the foot of the Hill, which they had bought in July 1796, to Otis and Mason (Deed, C. Bullfinch and Scollay to Mason and Otis, 30 April 1798, Suffolk Deeds, 189:233). They received only $20—a loss of $740 on their original purchase. This below-market transaction likely represents further compensation to Otis and Mason for covering Bulfinch’s and Scollay’s share of the Copley and Allen land purchases. 76 Deed, Woodward to Mason and Otis, 20 January 1797, Suffolk Deeds, 189:106. The price of $400 is well below Woodward’s share of the original purchases, implying

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Fig. 8.—Charles Bulﬁnch, Swan house, completed c. 1796, photograph by Ogden Codman, c. 1890. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Odgen Codman Collection.

After Bulfinch, Scollay, and Woodward had withdrawn, their places among the Proprietors were taken by Dr. Benjamin 77 Joy, the brother of one of Bulfinch’s early clients, and Mrs. Hepzibah Swan, a rich heiress and another Bulfinch client (one of his most original early works was the mansion he designed for her on a Dorchester hilltop, probably in 1796 78 [fig. 8]). Otis and Mason expanded their own shares in the

that Otis and Mason had covered most of his share, too, at the time of the closings. See also a previous transaction: Release, Woodward to Mason and Otis, 25 June 1795, Suffolk Deeds, 183:246. 77 Forty years later, Bulfinch testified that his one-fifth share in the Proprietors was bought in 1797 by Dr. Joy (C. Bulfinch deposition, 23 November 1836, Suffolk Deeds, 387:253). It seems likely that Bulfinch interested Joy in the deal and then introduced him to Otis and Mason. But the actual transfer of ownership was from Otis and Mason to Joy: on 5 September 1799, they sold Joy a 20 percent interest in the Copley, Allen, and associated parcels for the nominal price of $5 (Deed, Mason and Otis to Joy, 5 September 1799, Suffolk Deeds, 192:184). This transfer implies that Joy, acting on Bulfinch’s behalf, may have already helped compensate Otis and Mason for the architect’s share of the Beacon Hill purchases. 78 I have not discovered any document of the conveyance to Swan; however, starting in August 1799, her name appears on every subsequent conveyance by the Proprietors as a tenant-in-common. Her husband, Colonel James Swan, was engaged at the time in business speculations in France, where he was ultimately imprisoned for tax fraud (Kirker and Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston, p. 163). In Colonel Swan’s absence, his wife’s property was managed by trustees; first Jones and Russell, later replaced by Henry Jackson, the lawyer who was skeptical of Bulfinch’s cost estimates.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 444 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY project to 30 percent each, while Joy and Swan each took 20 percent interests. By August 1799, the Proprietors had been reconstituted in the form that would endure for the next forty years: Otis and Mason as the controlling developers, and Joy and Swan as passive investors. The example of the Tontine Crescent had taught Otis that he must manage risk by collaborating with other equity investors and by avoiding exposure to short-term lenders who could jeopardize a project by calling in their loans. The pattern of ownership and land sales that Otis set for the Proprietors successfully addressed these risks. The very name, Mount Ver- non Proprietors, was purely a marketing term, without legal significance. The Proprietors, like the investors in the Tontine Crescent, held their lands as tenants-in-common. This arrangement allowed for relatively simple transfers of ownership interest, but it did not provide a limited liability entity to shield the investors from responsibility for construction cost overruns or interest charges on unsold buildings. To minimize their exposure, Otis and the other Proprietors structured their developments in a way that would shift these risks to future builders and homeowners. From 1799 onward, each time the Mount Vernon Proprietors elected to develop a portion of the Hill, they first subdivided the land into individual house lots. The lots were allocated, or “partitioned,” among the four proprietors, proportional to their relative ownership per- 79 centages. Thereafter, each proprietor would sell his or her undeveloped lots, either individually or in groups, to builders and homeowners. The end-buyers would be responsible for costs and risks associated with designing and building the houses. This configuration took an aesthetic toll, for it reduced the Proprietors’ control over the project’s architectural appearance. At the Tontine Crescent, Bulfinch had committed himself to a large, master-planned venture that cried out to be built all at once. The generous civic gestures of constructing a central garden and donating rooms over the archway to cultural institutions had imposed further financial strains. By contrast,

79 See agreements of partition among Mason, Otis, Joy, and Swan (Jones and Russell, trustees), 13 August 1799, Suffolk Deeds, 192:198; 3 November 1806, Suffolk Deeds, 217:15.

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80 See indenture between Mason and Joy, 13 December 1820, Suffolk Deeds, 269:304 (conﬁrming 1801 agreement). 81 Withington, plan, attached to agreement of partition, 13 August 1799, Suffolk Deeds, 192:198; reproduced in Chamberlain, Beacon Hill, facing p. 70. 82 Mason to Otis, 28 May 1798, quoted in Nancy S. Seasholes, Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), p. 138. Morison

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 446 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY The project got off to a slow start financially. With land purchases, settlement of claims, surveying and legal fees, and the expenses of leveling the hillside and filling the flats, the initial costs to the Proprietors exceeded $40,000.Meanwhile,sales 83 were “slow and far between.” To spur development and establish the area’s character and desirability, all four Proprietors built Bulfinch-designed houses for themselves or their children on the Hill. Otis even sold the Cambridge Street mansion he had constructed only five years before in favor of a new house on Mt. Vernon Street, at the top of the Hill—a move that clearly indicates how critical he thought the project was to his financial future. With Otis’s second house, Bulfinch employed his full reper- toire of Adamesque design motifs (fig. 9). On the ground floor, blind brick arcades convey a feeling of weight and mass. Pairs of wooden, two-story Corinthian pilasters sit on top of the arcades to mark the end bays. At the roofline, a continuous balustrade provides an ornamental flourish above the cornice. By plac- ing the entrance on the side of the house, Bulfinch did away with the conventional central hall, allowing the main reception rooms to enjoy the full length, and sunlight, of the front garden. The façade of this second Otis house is uncannily similar to the house Bulfinch had built for himself in Bowdoin Square in 1794: a house he had mortgaged to Otis and Sears as security for the Franklin Place loan and ultimately had to surrender to other creditors. (Although no original drawings survive of that house, a reconstruction by architectural historian David Van Zanten shows the strong resemblance between the two designs 84 [see fig. 10].)

attributed this letter as written by, not to, Otis (Morison, Otis, p. 219). The cor- rect attribution, discovered by Seasholes, gives rise to skepticism regarding Morison’s characterization of Otis’s strait-laced sexual mores (see Morison, Otis, pp. 59, 213–14). 83 Otis, memorandum, 1837, quoted in Chamberlain, Beacon Hill, p. 62. 84 On Bulfinch’s first house, and David Van Zanten’s reconstruction, see Kirker, Ar- chitecture of Bulfinch, pp. 74–77. The second Otis house remains in private ownership; the front façade is largely intact, although the floor plan has been considerably altered over time. Ann Beha Architects recently completed a comprehensive restoration of the entire house.

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Fig. 9.—Charles Bulﬁnch, second Otis house, completed 1801, photograph 1968. Image from Library of Congress, Prints & Pho- tographs Division, Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Reproduction No. HABS MASS.13-BOST.114-1.

Fig. 10.—Charles Bulfinch, elevation of Bulfinch house on Mid- dlecot Street, 1793. Reconstruction drawing by David Van Zan- ten, originally published in Harold Kirker, The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 77; image reproduced by courtesy of the artist.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 448 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY In due course, development picked up. By 1814 the Hale map of Boston shows at least twenty-four houses on the upper reaches of the Proprietors’ lands and several more structures on the filled-in tidal flats along Charles Street (fig. 11). Well before that date, the most prestigious residential locations on Beacon Hill, and indeed in all of Boston, were no longer found at the summit of the Hill, along Mt. Vernon Street, but fronted on Boston Common. Otis, always attuned to nuances of location and status, decided that it was time to move again. The third Otis house, completed in 1806, still stands at 45 Beacon Street, facing onto the Common (fig. 12). The house is one of Bulfinch’s greatest achievements; its architecture syn- thesizes and distills everything the architect had learned in the 85 previous fifteen years. On the façade, ornament is reduced to a minimum; its effects are achieved by means of proportion and materials. The shapes and planes of red and grey—brick walls, windows of varying heights marked by stone keystones and surrounds— move visually up and down, in and out, with the subtlety (to 86 modern eyes) of a composition by Josef Albers. The mixture of sophistication and restraint carries through to the interior, where the visitor is conducted through a sure-handed progres- sion of spaces. The walls of the entry and stairway form a series of curves, smoothing the flow of movement. Halfway up the stairs, a brimming, two-gallon punch bowl stood in a niche, 87 ready to quench the thirst of Otis’s guests. At the head of the stairs, double doors lead into the oval ballroom; across the front of the house, the drawing room and dining room form an

85 For a detailed and appreciative analysis of the third Otis house, see Pierson, American Buildings and Their Architects, pp. 262–68. The house is now owned by the American Meteorological Society; the front façadeandfirstandsecondfloorsremain largely true to Bulfinch’s design, although the ornament in the main reception rooms has been considerably changed. Anmahian Winton Architects recently completed a rehabilitation of the house and the attached stables. 86 Even the one modification to Bulfinch’s façade works to its advantage. At some point (probably in 1831, when Otis built the house next-door for his daughter), the shallow brick arches of the ground floor were replaced by uniform courses of granite. By removing the element of shadow, this change further lightens and dematerializes the building’s appearance. 87 Morison, Otis, p. 208.

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Fig. 11.—Map of Beacon Hill, showing Mount Vernon Proprietors’ Land and Bulﬁnch’s Beacon Hill Flats. Map created by Jennifer French, superimposed on John G. Hales, Map of Boston, 1814.

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Fig. 12.—Charles Bulﬁnch, third Otis House, completed 1806. Photograph C Jane Messinger, 2010.

interconnected suite, with tall triple-hung windows looking out over the Common. Unlike the first house, there is no evidence that Otis strongly influenced the aesthetics of Bulfinch’s design for this third home. Otis’s artistic tastes were conventional; along with his Beacon Hill neighbors, he commissioned the young painter

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[I]t has not fallen to my lot to meet a man more skilled in the useful art of entertaining his friends than Otis; ...hisgraceful Deport- ment, his sportive wit, his quick intelligence, his eloquent ﬂuency, always made a strong impression upon my Mind; while his warm do- mestic Affections, his active Friendship, and his Generosity, always 89 commanded my esteem.

Beacon Hill’s development lagged during the War of 1812 and the business slump that followed it (a period when Otis was again in Washington, serving as a United States senator between 1816 and 1822). When he returned to Boston, Otis’s energy once again revived the development process. Under his leadership, the Proprietors developed the lower stretches of Mt. Vernon and Chestnut Streets, constructed Louisburg Square, 90 and expanded the tidal-ﬂat ﬁll area below Charles Street. In each of these subdivisions, the percentages of ownership and

88 Morison, Otis, pp. 235–36. On the general poverty of artistic taste in Boston during the Federal era, see Kirker and Kirker, Bulﬁnch’s Boston, pp. 217–20. 89 John Quincy Adams to John Adams, 29 October 1816, quoted in Morison, Otis, p. 193. 90 Platting and division of land among Proprietors, 19 April 1823, Suffolk Deeds, 282:210 (lower Chestnut Street); 1 June 1826, Suffolk Deeds, 312: 217 (Louis- burg Square); 25 April 1828, Suffolk Deeds, 330:65,and330:276 (Charles Street ﬂats). See Chamberlain, Beacon Hill, pp. 187–89, and Seasholes, Gaining Ground, pp. 141–42.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 452 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY profit had remained unchanged since 1799: 30 percent each to Otis and Mason, 20 percent each to Joy and Swan. Although Otis wanted to be known as a politician and states- man, his real genius was for real estate development. Profits from Beacon Hill and his other property investments consti- 91 tuted the bulk of his considerable fortune. In 1837, three- quarters of Otis’s wealth was estimated to be in real estate ($400,000), with the balance ($133,000) in manufacturing. In 1846, two years before his death, a popular booklet identified Otis as the thirteenth richest man in Boston, with a fortune of 92 $800,000. The following advice, written in 1811 by Francis Cabot Lowell, Otis’s co-venturer at India Wharf (and the son of Otis’s legal mentor), characterizes Otis’s business practices as well:

“Making too much haste to grow rich” is the great stumbling block ofenterprisingmen....[W]hatyouhave to guard particularly against is being tempted to extend your business beyond all reasonable bounds. . . . You ought to ﬁx some ultimatum for your debts and when you have come up to that nothing ought to tempt you to go beyond it. Let the speculation be ever so good even if you are sure

91 The full story of Otis’s real estate dealings is yet to be told. Morison focuses almost solely on Otis’s political career in his biography; he fails to acknowledge that Otis’s greatest skills and achievements lay in business, not politics. There is a short but thoughtful overview in Lawrence W. Kennedy, Planning the City Upon a Hill: Boston Since 1630 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1992), pp. 23–41. The accounts in Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History (2nd ed., Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. 60–88, and Kirker and Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston, pp. 147–64, 185–94, are full of detail but not analytical. The only significant financial analysis appears in Matthew Edel, Elliott D. Sclar, and Daniel Luria, Shaky Palaces: Homeownership and Social Mobility in Boston’s Suburbanization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 198–205, which draws heavily upon Jane G. Morris, “Harrison Gray Otis and the Development of Boston Real Estate” (M.A. the- sis, Queens College, New York, 1976). Seasholes, Gaining Ground, discusses Otis’s Front Street (pp. 240–43) and Dorchester Neck developments (pp. 287–89)aswellas the Mill Pond and India Wharf projects described below. Kamensky, The Exchange Artist, pp. 200–217, describes Otis’s attempt to restore profitability to the Exchange Coffee House, the tallest building in Boston, after the original developer’s insolvency. In addition to his development projects, Otis diversified his real estate investments by buying existing buildings with commercial or residential tenants. The 1798 tax records for Boston show that in addition to his Cambridge Street house and his interests in Beacon Hill, Otis already owned seven buildings and one undeveloped parcel of land, worth a total of over $50,000 (Morison, Otis, p. 529). 92 Morison, Otis, p. 454.

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of 100 percent proﬁt you ought not to be tempted. For it is better to forego now and then a certain good proﬁt than break a rule which 93 ought to be kept so sacred.

These were lessons that Bulﬁnch would never learn.

While Otis was establishing his fortune with the Beacon Hill development, Bulfinch, in the aftermath of the Tontine debacle, was struggling to support his family and restore to them some measure of financial and social stability. Central to the mythology of Bulfinch’s career is the notion that his financial disaster turned him from an amateurish dilettante into a working professional architect. A statement by his wife, Hannah, would seem to support that contention: “My husband made Ar- 94 chitecture his business, as it had been his pleasure.” Nearly all subsequent writers have accepted this pronouncement at face value. Bulfinch’s biographers, the Kirkers, write, “as the stimulant in the development of Bulfinch’s life from leisured amateurism to professional achievement, financial ruin was the 95 proverbial blessing in disguise.” But this ostensible movement from “leisured amateurism” to “professional achievement” carries with it several assumptions, none of which apply to Bulfinch’s condition in Boston. First, he lacked the attributes that professional status implies today: specialized academic training, fellowship with colleagues, 96 and governmental licensing. In his Harvard mathematics class, Bulfinch had developed sufficient drafting techniques to make simple plan, section, and elevation drawings and, on occa- 97 sion, a crude one-point perspective of an interior or exterior. During his Boston career, he worked on his designs at a small table in the family parlor, equipped with “a few rulers, his only

93 Francis Cabot Lowell to Patrick Jackson, 16 November 1811, quoted in Dalzell, Enterprising Elite, p. 9. 94 H. Bulfinch, diary, quoted in Kirker and Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston, p. 87. 95 Kirker and Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston, p. 76. 96 On evolving standards of professional practice during this era, see Mary N. Woods, From Craft to Profession: The Practice of Architecture in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 9–26. Woods is perhaps the only author to note that Bulfinch was unable to support himself with his design fees (p. 14). 97 Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, pp. 4–5.

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98 outfit,” and drawing on small pieces of vellum. He learned the ABCs of construction from building manuals, such as The Builder’s Dictionary, a 1731 English publication that came to him from Thomas Dawes, Boston’s leading builder, or from 99 experience on the job site. Throughout his career, Bulfinch was self-conscious about his lack of formal training. Unlike lawyers and doctors, who trained with mentors and associated both formally and informally with one another, architects had not formed any organized group, nor did they 100 possess any special legal status. Between 1793 and 1803, only two other men in Massachusetts possessed any expertise at architectural design: Thomas Dawes in Boston, and Samuel McIntire in Salem. Both had taught themselves the skill, having been trained as artisans—Dawes as a mason, McIntire as a wood carver. They were proud of their proficiency, and Dawes at least was somewhat resentful of Bulfinch’s success (class, 101 and even political tensions, played a part in the bad feeling). During the early 1800s, two more self-styled “architects,” Pe- ter Banner from England and Asher Benjamin from Vermont, arrived in Boston, but they did not diminish Bulfinch’s sense of isolation. In his later Boston years, he complained that his income had been reduced by “other competitors in works of 102 architecture.” When five founding members established a Boston Architectural Library in 1810, Bulfinch was not among 103 them. Although Bulfinch was referred to during his career as a “professional” architect, the term indicated class status as much as it

98 E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 82. 99 Bulfinch’s copy of The Builder’s Dictionary is now in the Rotch Library, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. On Dawes, see Frederic C. Detwiller, “Thomas Dawes: Boston’s Patriot Architect,” Old-Time New England (Summer–Fall 1977): 1–18. 100 The Boston Society of Architects was not organized until 1867; Massachusetts did not pass a law licensing architects until 1941. 101 Detwiller, “Thomas Dawes,” pp. 11–13. 102 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 187. 103 Jack Quinan, “Some Aspects of the Development of the Architectural Profession in Boston between 1800 and 1830,” Old-Time New England (Summer–Fall 1977): 32–37.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 455 104 did training and expertise. Noah Webster, the Boston Fed- eralist, defined the word “professional” as synonymous with the “learned professions,” such as clergyman, lawyer, doctor, or university lecturer. “[T]he word is not applied to an occupation merely mechanical,” he pronounced. An architect, in his view, stands on the professional side of the divide, for he is a “person skilled in the art of building: one who un- derstands architecture, or makes it his occupation to form plans and designs of buildings, and superintend the artificers 105 employed.” The contention that financial pressures matured Bulfinch as an artist is also not historically accurate, for he created three of his most original designs while still working as a gentleman amateur: the Tontine Crescent (designed 1793), the Massachusetts State House (designed 1795), and the Swan house (presumably designed by 1796). Conversely, Bulfinch produced a number of mediocre buildings during the busiest phase of his career, between 1800 and 1810, perhaps because he had to work more quickly on more projects so that he might support his family— although during this period he also enjoyed a few strong accom- plishments, including the third Otis House and (as described below) India Wharf. The economics of contemporary architectural practice help explain Bulfinch’s predicament. Then, as today, an architect’s services were divided into two separate categories: his design work in preparing the drawings and specifications from which the project would be built, and his role as the client’s represen- tative in overseeing construction. According to English-trained Benjamin Latrobe, who preceded Bulfinch as Architect of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., the standard payment schedule for architects in England, France, and Germany was 5 percent of the construction cost: 2.5 percent for design, and 2.5 percent

104 Upon the completion of the New North Church in 1805,theColumbian Centinel wrote: “The building reflects honor upon the professional talents of the architect, Charles Bulfinch, Esq.” (quoted in Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, p. 168). 105 Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (one-volume facsimile of two-volume 1828 first edition; San Francisco: Foundation for American Christian Education, 1967), 2:44, 1:12.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 456 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY 106 for construction supervision. In the United States, however, 107 Latrobe rarely, if ever, received payment at that level. Nei- ther did Bulfinch. For the design of major public buildings, he typically received only $100 (uniformly less than 0.25 percent of the construction cost); for smaller projects, $40–50 was the standard. The only large fees Bulfinch ever received for construction supervision—on the Massachusetts State House ($1,096 in 1795–97) and the State Prison in Charlestown ($1,400 in 1804–5)—each amounted to less than 1 percent 108 of construction costs. Table 2 provides a year-by-year tabulation, 1795–1817,of Bulfinch’s estimated income as an architect compared with his salary as a public servant during his career in Boston. The table shows a wide fluctuation in Bulfinch’s annual salary as an architect—from no income in some years to a high of $1,090 in 1805 (more than half of which was his fee for supervising construction of the State Prison). Over this period, Bulfinch’s architectural income averaged just over $200, considerably less than he earned as police superintendent. Clearly, Bulfinch was never able to devote himself to architecture full time while he lived in Boston. As Boston’s police superintendent, Bulfinch received an an- 109 nual salary of $600 (later raised to $1,000 in 1810). The scope of the position was extremely broad; among other duties, it effectively granted Bulfinch status as America’s first permanent town planner. He improved and widened streets; he planted trees and laid down gravel walks on Boston Common. Bulfinch also designed all of Boston’s civic buildings, including schools, markets, and the enlargement of Faneuil Hall, the seat of town government.

106 Benjamin Latrobe to Governor James Wood (Va.), 14 February 1798,inCorre- spondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, ed. John Van Horne and Lee Formwalt, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 1:77–78. 107 Woods, From Craft to Profession, p. 24. 108 As the basis of these calculations, Kirker pegs the total construction cost of the State House at $52,307.42 and of the Prison at “about $160,000”(Architecture of Bulﬁnch, pp. 104, 211). 109 Minutes of Board of Selectmen, 5 December 1810,inRecords Relating to the Early History of Boston, vol. 33 (Boston: Municipal Printing Ofﬁce, 1904), pp. 459–60.

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TABLE 2 Bulﬁnch’s Estimated Income, 1795–1818

Government Architectural salary commissions Total Notes

1795 $347 $347 Agent for construction of State House ($800 over three years) 1796 347 347 Construction of State House continues 1797 563 563 Additional $296 for State House 1798 100 100 1799 $600 140 740 Appointed Police Superintendent 1800 600 120 720 1801 600 100 700 1802 600 0 600 1803 600 280 880 1804 600 1,090 1,690 Agent for construction of State Prison ($1,400 over two years) 1805 600 920 1,520 Construction of State Prison continues 1806 600 100 700 1807 600 0 600 1808 600 0 600 1809 600 80 680 1810 1,000 200 1,200 Police Superintendent salary increased 1811 1,000 80 1,080 1812 1,000 0 1,000 1813 1,000 100 1,100 1814 1,000 470 1,470 Agent for construction of University Hall, Harvard ($250) 1815 1,000 0 1,000 1816 1,000 0 1,000 1817 1,000 280 1,280 1818 2,500 2,500 Appointed Architect of Capitol

General Notes: Specific amounts are based on Harold Kirker, The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969). Where the amounts are unknown, I have assumed $100 for the design of courthouses and other public buildings, and $40 for the design of small commercial buildings and houses. I have assumed Bulfinch received no payment for designing buildings for Boston, which he did in his capacity as a government official, or for the design of churches. I have also assumed that Bulfinch did not receive any payment for construction supervision, because of the time required by his public duties, from 1799 onward, unless there is documentary evidence to the contrary (for example, at the State Prison). Design fees have been attributed to the year in which the commission was granted. Fees for construction supervision have been allocated in level annual amounts over the course of construction.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 458 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Bulfinch’s policies often antagonized artisans and workers, especially his labors to straighten and widen streets, which ap- propriated private property in crowded neighborhoods for public use, and his attempts to regulate and close down taverns and 110 brothels on the north slope of Beacon Hill. Bulfinch was particularly proud of Boston’s new building code, which required that all structures over ten feet high be built of noncombustible masonry. The ordinance was supported by the Massachusetts Mutual Insurance Company, the first company to offer fire insurance, but it was strongly opposed by artisans and builders who wanted to construct wooden houses and tenements. In 1822, after Bulfinch had left office, his building code was over- 111 whelmingly repealed. In his dual role as first selectman and police superintendent, Bulfinch was an invaluable asset to Otis and the Federalist elite as they strove to rationalize and beautify the town—and 112 to advance their own development projects. But propos- als for large development projects sparked some of Boston’s strongest political passions. In 1804 the Independent Chroni- cle, the Republican-Democratic paper, voiced its fear that “a few chattering lawyers in combination with men who are able to monopolize every dollar in the banks, will henceforth gen- erateprojectafterproject...andunder a pretended act of generosity will eventually bear down every opposition to their 113 plans.” A few weeks later, the Chronicle expanded on its theme with the following jaundiced definition of a “project”: Akindofcontrivance which depends on an adroit maneuver, and by a magical management, may produce a considerable profit to the projectors.Theterm“project” is of late coinage, and means a 114 “contrivance.”

110 Place, Charles Bulﬁnch, pp. 95–96, 198–201. 111 Ronald P. Formisano, “Boston, 1800–1840: From Deferential-Participant to Party Politics,” in Boston 1700–1980: The Evolution of Urban Politics, ed. Formisano and Constance K. Burns (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1984), pp. 37–39. 112 Kennedy, Planning the City, pp. 35, 39–41. 113 Boston Independent Chronicle, 24 January 1804, quoted in Seasholes, Gaining Ground, p. 241. 114 Boston Independent Chronicle, 16 February 1804, quoted in Seasholes, Gaining Ground, p. 46.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 459 In addition to the development of Beacon Hill, Otis was a leading figure in many of the notable real estate “contrivances” of the era. In 1804, along with other investors, he successfully petitioned the state for a corporate charter to fill in the Mill Pond, a small tidal bay that separated the North End from the West End. After several years of debate, the town allowed the work to proceed in accordance with Bulfinch’s official plan for the area. The architect laid out a triangular pattern of streets, canals, and public buildings (hence the name given to the area today: the Bulfinch Triangle [fig. 13]). Although development lagged for many years, by the 1830s the area had developed around Boston’s northern railroad terminus, with associated 115 warehouses and workers’ housing. Otis’s long-term investment had reaped its rewards. Otis found his way into an even more ambitious and successful endeavor: new, modern shipping facilities on Broad Street and India Wharf. Bulfinch drew the overall plan and the architectural designs for the project, which was over one-half mile long and comprised ninety individual buildings (fig. 14). Behind a new stone wharf, seven blocks of uniform, four-story brick warehouses were built between two parallel streets, Broad Street and India Street. Bulfinch’s prototypical warehouse design, a few examples of which survive today, was simple and spare: arched door and windows on the ground floor, and rectangular punched openings above, with horizontal stone string- courses and lintels to offer relief. At the end of Broad Street, India Wharf angled off into the harbor. A single, immense brick block, 425 feet long and over 70 feet tall, ran down the center of the wharf (fig. 15). Within this structure, Bulfinch celebrated the project’s scale and ambition, merging the individual units (32 separate stores) into a single unified architectural expression. Ships approach- ing India Wharf were greeted by a seven-story pedimented facade. The combination of a tall central bay and lower side wings suggested the basilica form of the great churches

115 Seasholes, Gaining Ground, pp. 76–92; Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical His- tory, pp. 78–84.

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Fig. 13.—Charles Bulfinch, plan of Mill Pond filling (Bulfinch triangle), 1808. Image courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

of Europe. For his designs, Bulﬁnch was paid a total fee 116 of $140. Otis was not one of the original venturers for Broad Street and India Wharf. The driving force behind the project was Uriah Cotting, a self-taught engineer and builder, who ﬁrst brought in two other investors, James Lloyd and Francis Cabot

116 Kirker, Architecture of Bulﬁnch, pp. 188, 240.

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Fig. 14.—Charles Bulﬁnch, plan of Broad Street and India Wharf projects, 1803. Image courtesy of Historic New England, Harrison Gray Otis Business Papers.

Fig. 15.—Charles Bulﬁnch, India Wharf, completed 1807, photograph c. 1862. Image courtesy of The Bostonian Society/Old State House Museum.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 462 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY 117 Lowell. Otis bought into the project as a minority investor 118 when it was already underway. Over time he increased his stake; by the completion of construction, at the end of 1807,he had become the venture’s leader. On Christmas Eve 1807,the investors divided up $206,000 from the sale of thirty stores on 119 India Wharf. Three months later, their accounting showed a further $328,460.95 from sales of Broad Street properties, compared with expenses of $211,168.60,fora55 percent proﬁt 120 of $117,292.35.

Bulfinch’s first financial crash had been rapid and spectacular. The second was a slow, torturous descent over a period of eight years. Once again, he lost everything: control over his investment properties and the ownership of his own home. Once again, his family and friends had to rescue him from the consequences of his economic collapse. This time Otis did not play a leading role in Bulfinch’s demise, but his client’s presence continued to haunt the architect as a symbol of the success he yearned for but once more had failed to achieve. Bulfinch’s difficulties began, like most bankruptcies, in a time of optimism and ready cash. The early years of the new century were very good to Boston. Trade and business were booming. Otis and his associates were engaged in developing Beacon Hill, filling in the Mill Pond, and constructing Broad Street

117 Seasholes, Gaining Ground, pp. 41–46; Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical His- tory, pp. 84–88; Abbott Lowell Cummings, “The Beginnings of India Wharf,” Pro- ceedings of the Bostonian Society (1962): 17–24. The project was developed by two separate, unincorporated entities: the Broad Street Association (Cotting, Lowell, and Lloyd) and the Proprietors of India Wharf (the same three, plus Rufus G. Amory, who apparently withdrew before the project was completed). 118 Between 1804 and 1807, Otis made at least nine separate investments, totaling $87,906, to buy interests from Cotting and Lowell in various parcels of land (Otis Business Papers, HNE). 119 Accounting of Proprietors of India Wharf, 24 December 1807, Harrison Gray Otis Papers, MHS, reel 4, cited in Kirker, Architecture of Bulﬁnch, p. 190.Thesaleof the India Wharf stores was well timed; it took place just days after Jefferson’s embargo on trade with Great Britain had been passed by Congress, before the news would have become widely public in Boston. One author suggests that Otis and his associates may have proﬁted from inside information—perhaps passed to them by Otis’s father, secretary of the U. S. Senate (see Edel, Sclar, and Luria, Shakey Palaces, p. 209). 120 Accounting of Broad Street Association, 9 March 1807, HGO Papers, MHS, reel 4, cited in Seasholes, Gaining Ground, p. 46.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 463 and India Wharf. Bulfinch, too, was doing well. He received seven paying architectural commissions in 1803, eight in 1804, and four more in 1805, the latter two being the first (and only) years in Boston in which the money he received for his architectural services equaled or exceeded his government pay (see 121 table 2). After the Tontine debacle, Bulfinch and his family had shared a house with the Storers in Bowdoin Square. Then, in August 1799, shortly after Bulfinch’s appointment as police superintendent, the family moved into their own rented house. Their new home was just uphill from the family homestead at the corner of Bulfinch and Howard Streets, on land that had formed part of the pasture his parents had been forced to surrender after the Tontine crash. Hannah wrote in her journal, “At last we find ourselves established in a comfortable house, with a moderate 122 income, in which state we hope to remain for several years.” In 1801 Bulfinch bought the house from his landlord, William Clapp, for $4,800, half of which he borrowed through a seller 123 mortgage. As soon as his finances and his social position had stabilized, Bulfinch began rebuilding the family’s real estate holdings. His choice of investments reflected his desire to reclaim his family patrimony and to rival Otis. In 1801 Bulfinch repurchased por- tions of three properties lost in his crash: a parcel in the North End that had belonged to his father; a commercial building on Blossom Street in the West End; and four adjoining parcels along the western shoreline of Beacon Hill, including the rights 124 to the tidal flats extending out into the Charles River. Otis, who had originally assumed the West End building and the

121 Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, pp. 173–241. 122 H. Bulfinch, diary, 23 January 1800, quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 142–43. 123 Deed, William Clapp to C. Bulfinch, 27 February 1801, Suffolk Deeds, 196:286; seller mortgage, Suffolk Deeds, 196:287. See also Cummings, “Bulfinch and Boston’s Vanishing West End,” pp. 40–42. 124 Deed, Moses and Mary Tyler to C. Bulfinch, 9 December 1801, Suffolk Deeds, 199:226; deed, Otis to C. Bulfinch, 7 March 1801, Suffolk Deeds, 197:11. I have not discovered the deed showing Bulfinch’s purchase of the Blossom Street property; the purchase is referenced in later transactions from 1806 onward.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 464 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY flats parcels in settling Bulfinch’s Tontine debts, had agreed to sell them back to him. Following Otis’s lead, Bulfinch decided to fill in his portion of the Beacon Hill flats. In doing so, he seemed to have learned from his earlier mistakes. He found outside sources of capital; he limited his construction costs by subdividing and selling raw land rather than building the houses himself; and he paid his contractors at least in part in land rather than cash. He did not start actively developing the flats until 1805, after Otis and the Mount Vernon Proprietors had filled in their area of the shoreline and created building lots on either side of Charles Street, a newly laid out road. Bulfinch planned to extend Charles Street to the north, bending it slightly to conform to the curve of the shoreline, and connect it to Cambridge Street just at the point 125 where the West Boston Bridge began (see fig. 12). To finance the project, Bulfinch raised $9,000 from nineteen different investors, Otis and Mason among them, in relatively 126 small loans of $500 or $250. He also refinanced the mort- 127 gage on his own home. Bulfinch then hired Whitney, the Proprietors’ contractor, to begin the filling. He avoided cash outlays by granting Whitney, conditional on his completion of the work, the title to two new lots subdivided from the rest of 128 Bulfinch’s holdings. Otis and the Proprietors were coopera- tive; they allowed Bulfinch to use fill from their land at the top

125 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 187; C. Bulfinch, depositions, 14 November 1836, Suffolk Deeds, 387:253,and27 December 1839, Suffolk Deeds, 436:130. See also Place, Charles Bulfinch, p. 115, and Seasholes, Gaining Ground, p. 141. Previous authors have followed Bulfinch’s accounts written, many years after the events, and have not indepen- dently researched the deeds and other legal records. 126 See deed, Samuel Parker to creditors of C. Bulfinch, 4 August 1807, Suffolk Deeds, 222:285, for a full description of the lenders and amounts due each. According to Bulfinch’s later deposition (Suffolk Deeds, 436:130), he had raised $2,400 in “subscriptions” at this time; it is unclear whether he misremembered the loans or whether this was a separate source of equity investment. If the latter, there is no record that the investors received any ownership stake in the property as tenants-in-common. 127 Mortgage deed, C. Bulfinch to Clapp, 21 February 1804, Suffolk Deeds, 208:26; assignment of mortgage, Clapp to Lucy Watson, 15 March 1805, Suffolk Deeds, 211:104; mortgage deed, Bulfinch to Martha Watson, 29 December 1807, Suffolk Deeds, 224:73. 128 Two deeds, C. Bulfinch to Silas and John Whitney, 31 August 1805, Suffolk Deeds, 213:136,and22 March 1806, Suffolk Deeds, 215:54.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 465 of Beacon Hill, apparently at no cost, which further reduced 129 his expenses. Between 1805 and 1807 Bulfinch continued to expand his investments—in almost every case, by buying into an Otis- developed project. He made a substantial profit on a double house he built and sold on Mt. Vernon Street, immediately downhill from the second Otis house, one of his few success- 130 ful real estate ventures. He joined the Broad Street project 131 when he bought two warehouses from Cotting. He purchased two parcels of land in Otis’s Mill Pond development, 132 along with eighty shares in the Boston Mill Corporation. He bought a half-interest in an undeveloped parcel of land in Otis’s 133 development of Dorchester Neck. After selling the Blossom 134 Street parcel, he bought it back a year later. Finally, he pur- 135 chased a building on Fish Street in the North End. Nearly all of these acquisitions were accomplished with borrowed money. By the end of 1807, Bulfinch’s real estate borrowing totaled more than $37,000, an enormous sum for an individual whose annual income rarely exceeded $1,000 (table 3). Even as Bulfinch continued to buy up new properties, his Beacon Hill flats project was running into trouble. The land 136 was boggier than expected; more soil was needed. By the

129 C. Bulfinch, depositions, 14 November 1836, Suffolk Deeds, 387:253,and27 December 1839, Suffolk Deeds, 436:130. 130 Deed, Mason to C. Bulfinch, 25 October 1805, Suffolk Deeds, 215:47;seealso Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, pp. 219–21. 131 Purchase money mortgage, C. Bulfinch to Uriah Cotting, 4 March 1807, Suffolk Deeds, 219:109. 132 These parcels, and the corporate stock, were ultimately sold by Bulfinch in 1810; I have not discovered the original land purchase document. See deed, C. Bulfinch to Benjamin Joy and Isaac Davis, 18 January 1810, Suffolk Deeds, 231:170. 133 Deed, James Humphreys to C. Bulfinch and George Blake, 17 July 1805, Suffolk Deeds, 212:276, with purchase money mortgage, Suffolk Deeds, 213:122. 134 Deed, Makepeace to C. Bulfinch (subject to prior mortgage held by Otis), 29 December 1807, Suffolk Deeds, 224:71; mortgage, C. Bulfinch to Lucy Watson, 29 December 1807, Suffolk Deeds, 224:72; mortgage, C. Bulfinch to Benjamin Watson, 29 December 1807, Suffolk Deeds, 224:74. 135 Purchase money mortgage, C. Bulfinch to Nathaniel Smith, 24 October 1807, Suffolk Deeds, 223:149. 136 C. Bulfinch, depositions, 14 November 1836, Suffolk Deeds, 387:253,and27 December 1839, Suffolk Deeds, 436:130.

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Amount Ultimate disposition of debt

Beacon Hill ﬂats $13,000 Properties sold to brothers-in-law and other buyers, mortgages discharged, 1811–12. Bulﬁnch house 3,600 Property sold to brothers-in-law and mortgages discharged, 1814. Broad Street warehouses 11,500 Properties sold and mortgages discharged, 1808–9. Blossom Street 4,333 Property sold at nominal price to brother-in-law, 1822; mortgage presumably discharged, but no record at Registry. Fish Street, North End 4,000 Property sold, 1810, but mortgage not discharged. South Boston land 1,220 Mortgage sold at discount, 1817; ultimate disposition unknown. Total debt $37,653

time the work was complete, in 1807, costs had soared well beyond Bulfinch’s available cash. He sold off several parcels 137 of land, but apparently he wasn’t able to cover his debts. Bulfinch had repeated his old mistakes. He had staked most of his capital on a single, highly speculative venture. Land sales were lagging. He had no equity partners to share the risk. And once again, national and international politics had deeply unsettled the markets. Britain and France had been at war, on and off, for fifteen years. Enforcing their blockade of the French-controlled conti- nent, the British navy stopped American ships to search for contraband and British deserters. In June 1807 the British naval ship Leopard fired on the American frigate Chesa- peake after she refused to allow an inspection; twenty-one American sailors were killed. That December, Jefferson and the

137 Deed, C. Bulfinch to Silas and John Whitney, 26 August 1806, Suffolk Deeds, 216:296; deed, C. Bulfinch to Royal Makepeace, 4 November 1806, Suffolk Deeds, 217:290; two deeds, C. Bulfinch to Silas Whitney, 9 January 1807, Suffolk Deeds, 218:193,and24 January 1807, Suffolk Deeds, 218:254.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 467 Republican-Democrat-controlled Congress declared an embargo of all international trade. The embargo plunged the Boston economy, heavily dependent on shipping, into a deep recession. As Bulfinch told the story years later in his memoir, Jefferson’s Embargo had caused his second financial failure: I was encouraged to this undertaking by the proceedings of the Com- pany of Msrs Otis, Mason & Joy who had formed in the same way a large tract of land, from which it was supposed they would real- ize great profits. I accordingly made great efforts to continue their project, & just when I had completed a junction with the bridge & offered a plan of lots for sale, the aspect of affairs in our country was again clouded by the affair of the Frigate Chesapeake, & that of the President with the British ship “Little Belt,”—& the declaration of war which soon followed. This again produced another stagnation of business. The Company of Otis & Co., men of large capital, were able to wait for better times for sale of their lands, from which they have since realized immense profit—but no sales could be then made by me, & demands were pressing with accumulating interest,—that I was obliged once more to surrender all property, & was even more reduced than before, & we were obliged to leave our neat & com- 138 modious home for a humble & inferior one. As we shall see, Bulfinch has compressed and simplified a long and tangled story. What is most striking about the account in his memoir, however, is the prominence he gives to Otis, who once again had succeeded where Bulfinch had failed. In September 1807, just after the Embargo was declared, Bulfinch’s situation reached a crisis. Otis, Mason, and the other investors in the Beacon Hill flats banded together and forced Bulfinch to put the filled land, along with the Broad Street 139 warehouses, into a trust as security for their loans. For the

138 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 187. 139 Terms of trust, Parker to creditors of C. Bulfinch, 4 August 1807, Suffolk Deeds, 222:285; deed, C. Bulfinch to Parker (conveying properties into trust), 1 September 1807, Suffolk Deeds, 222:284; deed, C. Bulfinch to Benjamin Joy and Isaac Davis (as replacement trustees), 18 January 1810, Suffolk Deeds, 231:170. On creditors’ use of the trustee process to control a debtor’s property, see Nelson, Common Law, pp. 151–52.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 468 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY next three years Bulfinch’s investment properties were controlled by his creditors. He could take no action without the consent of the trustees (at first Samuel Parker, who was then replaced by Benjamin Joy, one of the Mount Vernon Propri- 140 etors, and Isaac Davis). Bulfinch’s financial distress worsened. In July 1808 he bounced two checks, for a total of $290; the recipient sued 141 him for nonpayment and won. In July 1809 he stopped making payments on two mortgages, from Mrs. Lucy Watson and 142 her sister Martha, that he had taken out on his own house. The Watsons also held the mortgage on Bulfinch’s investment property on Blossom Street; he let that loan fall into default as 143 well. Between September 1809 and January 1810, Bulfinch received from private lenders four separate unsecured loans, totaling $1,456, each due in sixty days. He failed to make good on 144 any of them, and in April 1810, the creditors all filed lawsuits. That same month, Bulfinch took out two more unsecured

140 When buyers appeared for one of the Broad Street warehouses and a small parcel in the flats, they were removed from the trust and replaced by the Blossom Street property. Consent of creditors, 11 January 1808, Suffolk Deeds, 231:271; release (Broad Street and Charles Street parcels), Parker to C. Bulfinch, 16 July 1808, Suffolk Deeds, 226:95; deed into trust (Blossom Street), C. Bulfinch to Parker, 16 July 1808, Suffolk Deeds, 226:96; deed (Broad Street parcel), C. Bulfinch to William Sullivan, 6 October 1808, Suffolk Deeds, 227:1; deed (Charles Street), C. Bulfinch to Ashael Goodenow, 12 January 1809, Suffolk Deeds, 227:239. Meanwhile, Bulfinch borrowed a further $4,000 from his brother-in-law Joseph Coolidge, secured by a second mortgage on a portion of the flats. Mortgage deed, C. Bulfinch to Coolidge, 30 June 1808, Suffolk Deeds 226:46. 141 Bond v. C. Bulfinch, Suffolk County Court of Common Pleas (SCCCP), Mas- sachusetts Archives, reel 52, 1810 record book, vol. 2,p.394 (23 May 1810). 142 Mortgage deed, C. Bulfinch to Clapp, 21 February 1804, Suffolk Deeds, 208:26; assignment of mortgage, Clapp to Lucy Watson, 15 March 1805, Suffolk Deeds, 211:104; mortgage deed, C. Bulfinch to Martha Watson, 29 December 1807, Suf- folk Deeds, 224:73, assigned to Benjamin Watson, 26 November 1808, Suffolk Deeds, 227:132. 143 Two mortgage deeds, C. Bulfinch to Lucy and Horace Watson, both 29 De- cember 1807, Suffolk Deeds, 224:72, 74; assignments of mortgages to Benjamin M. Watson, both including power to sue “in case of the continuance of the nonpayment,” 3 July 1812, Suffolk Deeds, 240:187,and13 March 1815, Suffolk Deeds, 246:17. 144 Union Bank v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 53, 1810 record book, vol. 3,p.544; Cruft v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 55, 1810 record book, vol. 5,p.49;Burrv.C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 55, 1810 record book, vol. 5,p.81; Andrews v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 55, 1810 record book, vol. 5,p.110.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 469 sixty-day loans, for another $515. Those creditors also even- 145 tually sued him. Bulfinch failed to appear in court for three of the cases; each time a default judgment was issued against 146 him. For the other three cases, he hired a lawyer, Peter Thacher; Thacher argued two cases successfully but lost the third, which involved a debt of $356 to Benjamin Andrews, a 147 Boston hardware merchant. Even when he made a profit, Bulfinch found a way to turn it into a loss. In October 1809 he sold the Broad Street ware- 148 houses, earning a profit of $6,000 (less any interest charges). Instead of setting the money aside or using it to settle his debts, Bulfinch immediately put his cash back at risk: he made four unsecured sixty-day loans, totaling $7,800, to one Thomas Bangs. He then assigned Bangs’s notes to three other individuals, presumably receiving cash in return. But when Bangs failed to pay the note holders, they turned around and sued Bulfinch 149 as the party responsible for Bangs’s debts. As the financial pressures mounted, Bulfinch was able to work with one group of creditors, comprised largely of family and friends, to complete the development of the Beacon Hill flats. On 10 April 1810, he filed a plan with the Registry of Deeds to subdivide his land into nineteen individual house 150 lots, with one larger parcel along the waterfront. In a series of transactions between that date and the following January,

145 Wood v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 56, 1811 record book, vol. 1,p.616;Wales v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 58, 1811 record book, vol. 3,p.130. 146 Cruft v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 55, 1810 record book, vol. 5,p.49; Wood v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 56, 1811 record book, vol. 1,p.616; Wales v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 58, 1811 record book, vol. 3,p.130. 147 Union Bank v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 53, 1810 record book, vol. 3,p.544 (judgment for Bulfinch); Burr v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 55, 1810 record book, vol. 5, p. 81 (judgment for Bulfinch); Andrews v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 55, 1810 record book, vol. 5,p.110 (judgment for Andrews). 148 Two deeds, C. Bulfinch to John Peck (two Broad Street warehouses and Fish Street property in North End), both 19 October 1809, Suffolk Deeds, 230:181, 182. 149 Jones v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 53, 1810 record book, vol. 3,p.584 (judgment for Bulfinch); Thompson v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 55, 1810 record book, vol. 5, p. 49 (judgment for Thompson); Burr v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 55, 1810 record book, vol. 5,p.81 (judgment for Bulfinch). Because Thacher prevailed in the two larger cases, Bulfinch was ultimately held liable for only $300 of Bangs’s total debt. 150 Plan of land, 10 April 1810, Suffolk Deeds, 233:7.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 470 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY he was able to sell his entire holding, raising over $25,000. His brothers-in-law Storer and Apthorp, together with the trustees 151 Joy and Davis, bought a total of twelve lots. Bulfinch sold the others to individual buyers, including his other brother-in-law, 152 Joseph Coolidge, while the Town of Boston purchased the 153 new public streets he had laid out. But this success was atypical; in other actions, Bulfinch played to form. In November 1810 he sold the Fish Street property in the North End, which, less the amount still due on his mortgage, yielded a potential profit of $2,000. But Bulfinch did not pay off the mortgage; instead, he apparently used the money to settle other debts. The mortgage holders sued him 154 for possession of the property. In 1811 Bulfinch’s finances irrevocably collapsed. Lucy and Martha Watson had initiated a proceeding to foreclose on the mortgage they held on his house. On 10 January 1811, Bulfinch stood on the steps of his modest house at the corner of Bulfinch and Howard Streets and surrendered its key to their nephew, 155 Benjamin Watson, acting as attorney for his creditors. Less than six months later, on 2 July, Bulfinch surrendered himself to the bailiff of the town jail on Court Street. Benjamin Andrews, a creditor with an unsatisfied court judgment, had invoked the legal right to imprison Bulfinch for an unpaid debt 156 that now amounted to $409.50. One can only speculate on

151 Deed, C. Bulfinch to Benjamin Joy, John T. Apthorp, Isaac Davis, and George Storer (lots nos. 3–6, 11–14, 17–19, and unnumbered parcel); confirmatory deed, Joy and Davis to William Sullivan; and confirmatory deed, Sullivan to Joy, Apthorp, Davis, and Storer; all 13 November 1810, Suffolk Deeds, 234:209, 210,and211. 152 Various entries in Suffolk Deeds, 232:237, 238 (lot no. 1, to James and Thomas Perkins); 232:281, 282 (lot no. 8, to Samuel Parkman); 232:290, 291 (lot no. 9,to Coolidge); 233:6, 7 (lot no. 10, to Storer); 233:153 (lot no. 2, to Thomas Amory); 234:37, 38,and238: 22, 23 (lot nos. 15 and 16, to Jeremiah Gardner); and 234:244, 245 (lot no. 7, to Nathan Gritchet and Zepheniah Wood). Deed, C. Bulfinch to Coolidge (lot no. 20), and confirmatory deed, Joy and Davis to Coolidge, both 9 May 1810, Suffolk Deeds, 232:280, 281. 153 Deed, C. Bulfinch to Town of Boston, 19 January 1811, Suffolk Deeds, 235:88. 154 Lynde and Gay v. C. Bulfinch, SCCCP, reel 57, 1811 record book, vol. 2,p.106. 155 Memorandum by Benjamin M. Watson, as attorney for Lucy Watson, recorded 23 December 1813, Suffolk Deeds, 243:107. 156 Suffolk County Sheriff, debtors calendar, 2 July 1811 (in Massachusetts Archives, CY 2.13,ser.408X).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 471 why this relatively small debt sent Bulfinch to jail when he had successfully negotiated a much more complex and threatening set of circumstances surrounding the Beacon Hill flats. Four hundred dollars would have been a considerable sum to a merchant such as Andrews, whose hardware business had been in the same modest location, at 4 Union Street near the mar- 157 kets, for over twenty years. Perhaps Andrews believed that Bulfinch was concealing his resources and that sending him to 158 jail would force him to reveal hidden assets. Perhaps the dispute was heightened by personal animus; the storekeeper may have resented what he saw as the arrogance of the well-bred, well-connected police superintendent who refused to pay what he owed. Well-to-do debtors in the Boston jail were housed in “clean, white-washed rooms,” located on a different floor from the criminals’ cells. Upon payment of a bond, a debtor could enjoy the “liberty” of moving freely about town during the day, even visiting his home and office, so long as he surrendered 159 himself to the jailor at night. But Bulfinch apparently could not afford a bond, and none of his clients hurried to help him. He was absent from the monthly meeting of the board 160 of selectmen in July 1811. For the first selectman and superintendent of police to remain locked up in his own jail was a special humiliation—and another reminder of Bulfinch’s dependent status. It was not until August, a full month after he had surrendered himself to the bailiff, that some benefactor 161 paid for a bond or cleared Bulfinch’s debt. Hannah recorded

157 Benjamin Andrews is listed at this address in the Boston Directory (Boston: Edward Cotton) for 1809, 1810,and1813. His father, John Andrews, was previously listed as a hardware merchant at the same address in 1789. “John Hann Dexter and the 1789 Boston City Directory,” ed. Ann S. Lainhart, New England Historical and Geneological Register 140 (January 1986): 32. 158 During this same period, two other creditors sued the trustees who had controlled Bulfinch’s real estate holdings but were not successful. See Thompson v. C. Bulfinch et al., SCCCP, reel 61, 1812 record book, vol. 2,p.64; Cruft v. C. Bulfinch et al., SCCCP, reel 61, 1812 record book, vol. 2,p.65. 159 Nelson, Common Law, p. 150, and Kirker and Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston, p. 95. 160 Place, Charles Bulfinch, p. 114. 161 Suffolk County Sheriff, debtors calendar, note 156, listing Bulfinch as “sworn out” on 2 August 1811.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 472 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY in her diary: “the trial is over, he returns to the bosom of his family, and they once more enjoy serenity and content, soothed by the kindness of friends and acquitted by our consciences of intentional error; we resolve to live with great economy until 162 all debts are settled.” With the Watsons, Bulfinch reached an accommodation that permitted his family to remain in their home as rent-paying 163 tenants. In 1814, Apthorp and Storer bought the house from the Watsons and paid off the two mortgages the sisters held, 164 thus becoming their brother-in-law’s landlords. But the buyers were apparently short on cash and in the following year had to sell the house. It was at this point that Bulfinch and his family finally left their home on the former Bulfinch pasture. They moved to a smaller house at 3 Tremont Street, where Hannah Bulfinch supplemented their income by taking in two young lady boarders. In October 1815, Hannah wrote in her journal: Our own prospects are much the same. The pressure of creditors had oblig’d us to remove into a smaller house, but united among ourselves we enjoy a calm and serene life, unembitter’d except by the idea that we are not able to pay our just debts. We must wait till it is our happy 165 lot to do this, and again feel independent of unfeeling creditors.

The decade from 1807 to 1817 was hard for Bulﬁnch in many different ways. His private practice and income as an architect declined sharply after the Embargo (see table 2). The India Wharf project was the last development on which he and Otis would collaborate. For the next decade, his architectural work

162 H. Bulfinch, diary, July 1811, quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 188. 163 Place, Charles Bulfinch, p. 175. 164 Deed, Watson to Apthorp and Storer, 5 January 1814, Suffolk Deeds, 243:151; assignment of mortgage, Watson to Apthorp and Storer, 7 January 1814, Suffolk Deeds, 243:152. Somehow Bulfinch was able to retain ownership of Blossom Street; he ultimately sold the property in 1822 to his wife’s brother, John T. Apthorp (Charles and Hannah were first cousins), for the nominal price of $5 (indicating that Apthorp had assumed the mortgage and finally paid it off). Deed, C. Bulfinch to Apthorp, and confirmatory deeds, Joy to Apthorp and Davis to Apthorp, all 18 December 1822, Suffolk Deeds, 280:228, 229, 230. 165 H. Bulfinch, diary, October 1815, quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 189–90.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 473 consisted primarily of commissions for government and civic buildings, often unpaid. In 1813 he took a bad fall on the icy steps of Faneuil Hall and broke his leg, leaving him permanently lame. Bulfinch wrote that the accident “prevented that degree of personal activity for which I had been distinguished”; he also noted that it cut into his income, presumably by limit- ing the time and energy available for his outside architectural 166 work. At the March 1815 town meeting, Bulfinch failed to be re- elected to the board of selectmen. His supporters erupted when the results were announced, and the meeting was adjourned. All nine selectmen resigned in protest, and a new election had to be held. Faneuil Hall was packed; more votes were cast than in any previous election. This time Bulfinch was elected, 167 although narrowly. The next day Bulfinch gave a rare public speech. He opened by proudly proclaiming that he had “served the town with all the talents which I was possessed of” during his years as a selectman. He then listed the achievements that had caused his fellow Bostonians to look upon him with disfavor, including straightening and widening streets and attempting to clean up 168 the north slope of Beacon Hill. Although Bulfinch’s finances and his career were in tur- moil, his architecture was developing in a powerful new di- rection. He designed fewer buildings, each distinguished by the use of clean, elemental geometries: circles, triangles, and squares; cubes, cylinders, and spheres. A new building material, granite, which could now be transported affordably to Boston by means of the recently completed Middlesex canal (1804), helped drive the innovative style. Ornament is sparse or nonexistent. Bulfinch achieves his effects through simple, almost primitive, means: massive columns supporting lintels;

166 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 187. 167 Place, Charles Bulfinch, p. 198. 168 Columbian Centinel, 18 March 1815; quoted in Place, Charles Bulfinch, pp. 199–201.

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Fig. 16.—Charles Bulﬁnch, Massachusetts General Hospital, completed 1823, photograph 1941. Image from Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS, Reproduction No. HABS MASS.13-BOST.7–3.

solids pierced by the voids of window and door; the spacing of 169 joints in a wall of stone. In the Massachusetts General Hospital, Bulfinch grafted the solidity of a Greek Ionic temple-front onto a long unadorned block of hospital wards (fig. 16). In the Suffolk County Court- house and the New South Church, he experimented with mas- 170 sive octagonal forms. And in his three-story building for the Massachusetts Fire and Marine Insurance Office on State Street, he pioneered the modern skeleton frame: a grid of

169 Bulfinch’s later works shows that he had absorbed the lessons of two architects he had first encountered as a young man: the elemental geometries of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s Paris customhouse gates, which had previously inspired Bulfinch’s house for Mrs. Swan, and the neoprimitivism of John Soane, whose treatise Plans, Elevations, and Sections of Buildings (London: I. Taylor, 1788) Bulfinch owned (found today in the Rotch Library at MIT). Pierson, American Buildings and Their Architects, contains the best discussion of Bulfinch’s late style (pp. 268–85); however, he focuses on the Lancaster Meeting House, a brick structure, and not on the works in granite. 170 See Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, pp. 311–17 (hospital, completed by Alexan- der Parris, 1823); pp. 263–65 (courthouse, completed 1812 and demolished 1863); pp. 282–87 (church, completed 1814 and demolished 1868).

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Bulfinch’s career in Boston ended abruptly in 1818,whenhe accepted an appointment extended by President James Monroe to serve as Architect of the United States Capitol in Washing- ton, D.C. The episode reveals Bulfinch’s ineptitude as a business negotiator; it also represents the only time he directly expressed his feelings about the treatment he had received in his native city. In 1816 the trustees of the newly chartered Massachusetts General Hospital sent Bulfinch to other cities so that he might study their hospitals. In Washington he met president- elect Monroe, who, Bulfinch reported, “received me kindly, expressed his approval of the objects of my journey, and afterwards directed Colonel [Samuel] Lane, Commissioner of the Public Buildings, to conduct me over the ruins of the Capi- 172 tol.” The scorch marks and soot of the fires British troops had set during the War of 1812 were still visible on its stones, but workmen had cleared most of the rubble and were recon- structing the east and west wings to Benjamin Latrobe’s design. In July 1817, President Monroe traveled to Boston for a state visit. Bulfinch, in his role as first selectman, was “almost con- stantly in his [the president’s] company during his visit of about 173 a week.” Two decades of improvements had made Boston the most physically attractive city in the nation, and Monroe and his advisers were impressed. In September, Bulfinch received an unexpected letter from William Lee, one of the capitol’s

171 See Kirker, Architecture of Bulfinch, pp. 293–94. The earliest known image of the Insurance Office, completed 1814–15 anddemolishedc.1890,isan1842 lithograph, reproduced in Kirker, p. 176. 172 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 192. 173 C. Bulfinch, memoir, Bulfinch Family Papers, MHS; quoted in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 192.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 476 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY auditors. Latrobe was likely to be fired, and Lee was proposing that Bulfinch apply for the job as capitol architect. The money alone was tempting: “The Salary will be increased to four or 174 five thousand dollars.” Bulfinch answered Lee on 27 September. First, he listed all the reasons why he could not take the job. He did not want to be involved in the firing of Latrobe, whom he respected. “I have always endeavored to avoid unpleasant competition with others,” he explained. He worried that Washington was more expensive than Boston and that the post would require him to entertain. He would therefore need a salary of at least $3,500. (What a poor negotiator he was! Lee had already said that the government could pay more than that.) But as the letter continues, one senses Bulfinch becoming intrigued by the offer. He closes by saying, “We will seriously contem- plate the change and advise with you on the means to effect 175 it.” Lee wrote back immediately, on 1 October. Latrobe was still in office, but he had “many enemies” and was likely to be fired. The president and others had been queried about Bulfinch, and it was thought that “such a selection would be judicious.” Lee would push for a salary of $4,000. He also held out the prospect of private commissions on the side: “If once established here, all the public may hereafter do would no doubt be confided to you, and you would besides have a great share of all the private business in your line.” If Bulfinch wanted the job, he should write to President Monroe, providing as references Lee himself, Otis (who had been elected to the United States 176 Senate in 1816), and others. Bulfinch took two weeks to answer. He was still dithering. He said he would need an advance of several months’ salary, 177 plus payment of his moving expenses.

174 William Lee to C. Bulfinch, 14 September 1817, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 199–200. 175 C. Bulfinch to Lee, 27 September 1817, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 200–203. 176 Lee to C. Bulfinch, 1 October 1817, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 203–5. 177 C. Bulfinch to Lee, 17 October 1817, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 205.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 477 Lee answered on 23 October. He was growing impatient with Bulfinch’s hesitancy. Latrobe was still in office, but not for long. “I wish you would write a letter to the President, stating to him that it is reported a change is to take place [and] offering your services.” Bulfinch, Lee was beginning to fathom, was naıve,¨ and so he sought to calm his scruples. “These things are done 178 every day,” the worldly Lee assured him. On 15 November, Bulfinch asked Lee to withdraw his name from consideration. Latrobe was the better man, Bulfinch as- serted. “I think his talents entitle him to the place, and that he is the most proper person to rebuild what he had once so well effected.” As for himself, “I believe it is my destiny to remain here.” But perhaps a federal government job could be found in Boston: “It is probable that a bankrupt system will be adopted at the next meeting of Congress. Should that be the case and the appointment of officers under it be vested in the President, your nomination of me might be of material 179 benefit.” Bulfinch a federal bankruptcy judge? The irony and unconscious humor of the suggestion are striking. At Lee’s urging, Bulfinch evidently did at last write to Monroe. On 20 November, Latrobe resigned, his relations with the commissioner Colonel Lane having irreparably de- 180 teriorated, making his position available. On 2 December, Otis wrote to Bulfinch, describing his meeting with the president that morning. Whatever the tensions of their past relationship may have been, on this occasion Bulfinch’s former client gave the architect the help he needed. Monroe had asked Otis directly: “[W]hat is your opinion of Mr. B’s qualifications?” Otis: “I then gave him a full statement of my acquaintance with you and your family, your character, qualifications, former prospect, and present circumstances, and my opinion that you would accept the appointment.”

178 Lee to C. Bulfinch, 23 October 1817, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 205–6. 179 C. Bulfinch to Lee, 15 November 1817, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 206–7. 180 Talbot Hamlin, Benjamin Henry Latrobe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 476–79.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 478 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Monroe told him that he had already instructed Colonel Lane to write Bulfinch and offer him the job, with a salary of $2,500 181 plus all moving expenses. On 4 December, the government’s official offer was tendered in writing by John Quincy Adams, Monroe’s Secretary of State. Lee wrote that same day. He apologized for the salary: “this is not enough, but I find it is as much as they can do under 182 existing circumstances.” Bulfinch left for Washington almost immediately. When he toured the capitol and his new office, Latrobe’s accomplished drawings intimidated him: “At the first view of these drawings, my courage almost failed me,” he reported to his wife; “they are beautifully executed, and the design is in the boldest stile.” To assuage his anxieties, he told himself that his role was a limited one, not requiring artistic originality:

I feel the responsibility resting on me, and should have no resolution to proceed if the work was not so far commenced as to make it necessary to follow the plans already prepared. ...Ishallnothave credit for invention, but must be content to follow in a prescribed 183 path.

Bulﬁnch’s desire to work in “conformity” with his predeces- sor was not temporary; it characterized his entire tenure as Architect of the Capitol. When he moved to Washington, his originality as an architect virtually ceased. Yet this modest role did not trouble him; he later wrote of his government service in Washington, “I passed there twelve of the happiest years of my life in pursuits congenial to my taste, and where my labors 184 were well received.” The implicit contrast with his Boston career could not be clearer.

181 Otis to C. Bulfinch, 2 December 1817, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 207–8. 182 John Quincy Adams to C. Bulfinch, and Lee to C. Bulfinch, 4 December 1817, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 209–10. 183 C. Bulfinch to H. Bulfinch, 7 January 1818, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 213–14. 184 C. Bulfinch to “niece,” 1843 [recipient and exact date unknown], quoted in Place, Charles Bulfinch, p. 279.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 479 At the March 1818 Boston town meeting, the assembly took a vote of thanks to honor their former ﬁrst selectman. Bulﬁnch received word in Washington, via a letter from the town clerk. In a letter to Hannah, he released some of the frustration, bitterness, and pain that had built up during his years in Boston: Three letters are handed to me at breakfast. One from T. Clark, presenting a vote of the Town, expressing their thanks for my long and faithful services,—the cheap reward of republics, for which, however, 185 I am grateful.

Perhaps the most notable and poignant aspect of Bulfinch’s story is that he seems to have lived and died without fully appreciating the aesthetic quality of his own architecture. Today we regard him as one of the greatest American architects of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—and yet he seems to have viewed himself primarily as a failed businessman. Bulfinch came home to Boston in 1830, after his government services had been terminated by the administration of President Andrew Jackson. He and his wife lived quietly with Charles’s sister Elizabeth Coolidge in the family homestead on Bowdoin Place (fig. 17). Bulfinch accepted one final architectural commission, to design the state capitol in Augusta, Maine. Otherwise he was content to read and to correspond and visit with family and friends, until his death in 1844. In the memoir that Bulfinch wrote in retirement, his business failures entirely overshadow his artistic achievements. He gives the greatest prominence to his two bankruptcies: the Tontine Crescent and the Beacon Hill flats. Although Bulfinch leaves out certain painful details—his surrender of his share in the Mount Vernon Proprietors, his jailing for debt—on the whole his account is accurate and unsparing. The story breaks off with his departure for Washington and its promise of financial redemption. In the memoir, he mentions only a few of

185 C. Bulfinch to H. Bulfinch, 16 March 1818, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, p. 224.

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Fig. 17—Alvan Clark, drawing of Bulfinch, c. 1842 (location unknown). Image reproduced in Ellen Susan Bulfinch, The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch (1896; repr. New York: Burt Franklin, 1973), facing title page.

his buildings; Bulfinch never describes how he designed them 186 or alludes to any broader view or theory of architecture. It would be left to Bulfinch’s children and grandchildren to restore his stature as an architect. In 1858 the Tontine Crescent was torn down, replaced by new commercial buildings. Bulfinch’s children rescued the ornamental urn from the garden in the middle of the crescent and had it moved to Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, where it marks the architect’s grave. On the base they placed an inscription listing three achievements: Bulfinch’s service as first selectman of Boston, as architect of the Massachusetts State House, and as architect of the United States Capitol.

186 Bulfinch did compile a list of his architectural works, also during his retirement, which is organized according to the prestige of the commission: it begins with the Massachusetts State House, followed by government, civic, and commercial buildings. Individual houses are not included. C. Bulfinch, memorandum, c. 1835, in E. Bulfinch, Life and Letters, pp. 313–14. As in the memoir, there is no description or assessment of the artistic character of his designs.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00023 by guest on 30 September 2021 BULFINCH’S FINANCIAL MISADVENTURES 481 In the early 1890s a controversy erupted over whether the State House on Beacon Hill should be demolished and replaced. Charles Cummings, president of the Boston Society of Architects, founded in 1867, was a leading advocate for preserv- 187 ing the Bulfinch building. To support his mission, Cummings approached the architect’s granddaughter, Ellen Bulfinch, and 188 encouraged her to collect and publish Bulfinch’s papers. The resulting Life and Letters, released in 1896, has served as the primary source for all subsequent biographers. That same year the legislature endorsed the preservationist position; it was the first time in the United States that a building had been saved primarily because of its architectural excellence rather than for its association with historical figures or events. Since then, Bulfinch has become an emblematic founding figure for the American architectural profession. But in succes- sive retellings, the details of his story have been leached away. The myth of America’s first professional architect has replaced the man. It is the man, and his career of struggle, failure, and achievement, that I have tried to restore.

187 For a detailed account of the State House controversy, see Michael Holleran, Boston’s “Changeful Times” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 135–50. 188 E. Bulﬁnch, Life and Letters, p. vii.

Jay Wickersham, a lawyer and architect, is a partner in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, ﬁrm Noble & Wickersham LLP, where he practices environmental and construction law. He is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he teaches courses in the history and ethics of architectural practice.

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