Public Architecture.

American architecture did more than reflect Americans' political and cultural aspirations; it would also help the nation achieve them. Modeled on the Maison Carree, a Roman temple in Nimes, France, Thomas Jefferson's classical design for the new Virginia State House in Richmond would serve a dual purpose, he argued in 1785. Jefferson, whose preference for Roman classicism was influenced by the writings of the sixteenth-century Venetian architect Andrea Palladio, called the design for the new state capitol "very simple," but added, "it is noble beyond expression, and would have done honour to our country as presenting to travellers a morsel of taste in our infancy promising much for our maturer age." Furthermore, he asked, "how is a taste in this beautiful art to be formed in our countrymen, unless we avail ourselves of every occasion when public buildings are to be...