Life
James Hoban was raised on an estate belonging to the Earl of Desart in Cuffesgrange, near Callan in Co. Kilkenny. He worked there as a wheelwright and carpenter until his early twenties, when he was given an 'advanced student' place in the Dublin Society's Drawing School on Lower Grafton Street.
He excelled in his studies and received the prestigious Duke of Leinster's medal for drawings of "Brackets, Stairs, and Roofs." from the Dublin Society in 1780. Later Hoban found a position as an apprentice to the headmaster of the Dublin Society School the Cork-born architect Thomas Ivory from 1759 to 1785 .
Following the American Revolutionary War, Hoban immigrated to the United States, and established himself as an architect in Philadelphia in 1785.
Hoban was in South Carolina by April 1787, where he designed numerous buildings including the Charleston County Courthouse (1790–92), built on the ruins of the former South Carolina Statehouse (1753, burned 1788). President Washington admired Hoban's work on his Southern Tour, may have met with him in Charleston in May 1791, and summoned the architect to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (the temporary national capital) in June 1792.
In July 1792, Hoban was named winner of the design competition for the White House. His initial design seems to have had a 3-story facade, 9 bays across (like the Charleston courthouse). Under Washington's influence, Hoban amended this to a 2-story facade, 11 bays across, and, at Washington's insistence, the whole presidential mansion was faced with stone. It is unclear whether any of Hoban's surviving drawings are actually from the competition.
Hoban was also one of the supervising architects who served on the Capitol, carrying out the design of Dr. William Thornton.
Hoban lived the rest of his life in Washington, D.C., where he worked on other public buildings and government projects, including roads and bridges. He also designed Rossenarra House near the village of Kilmoganny in Kilkenny, Ireland in 1824.
Hoban's wife Susanna Sewall was the daughter of the prominent Georgetown "City Tavern" proprietor.
Hoban was also involved in the development of Catholic institutions in the city, including Georgetown University (where his son was a member of the Jesuit community), St. Patrick's Parish, and the Visitation Convent founded by another Kilkenny native, Teresa Lalor of Ballyragget.
Hoban died in Washington, D.C. on December 8, 1831. He is buried at historic Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
Read more about this topic: James Hoban
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign,—is it not? of new vigor, when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)