Background.

Americans achieved their first artistic successes in architecture, which appears in many ways to have been the form of art best suited to a republican nation. Because architecture served a practical purpose, it was exempted from traditional republican objections to art as a decadent product of aristocratic luxury. Their ideological concerns infused even the architectural styles that Americans favored, and the classical style was compatible with republican ideals. It was only fitting for Americans to imitate the architecture of the ancient Greek and Roman republics, whose political institutions had provided the models for the system of government in the United States.

Benjamin Latrobe.

One of the most influential figures in the classical revival was Benjamin Latrobe, a British architect who immigrated to the United States in 1796. He designed the building for the Bank of Pennsylvania, the first public edifice built in the...