Charles Bulfinch

Charles Bulfinch (August 8, 1763 – April 15, 1844) was an early American architect, and has been regarded by many as the first American-born professional architect to practice.

Bulfinch split his career between his native Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., where he served as Commissioner of Public Building and built the intermediate United States Capitol rotunda and dome. His works are notable for their simplicity, balance, and good taste, and as the origin of a distinctive Federal style of classical domes, columns, and ornament that dominated early 19th-century American architecture.

Bulfinch was born in Boston to Thomas Bulfinch, a prominent physician, and his wife, Susan Apthorp, daughter of Charles Apthorp. At the age of 12, he watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from this home on the Boston side of the Charles River. Charles himself was married to Hannah Apthorp on 20 November 1788 in Boston.

He was educated at Boston Latin School and Harvard University, from which he graduated with an AB in 1781 and master's degree in 1784.

He then made a grand tour of Europe from 1785 to 1788, traveling to London, Paris, and the major cities of Italy. Bulfinch was greatly influenced by Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. He was also influenced by the classical architecture in Italy and the neoclassical buildings of Sir Christopher Wren, Robert Adam, William Chambers, and others in the United Kingdom. Thomas Jefferson became something of a mentor to him in Europe, as he would later be to Robert Mills.

Upon his return to the United States in 1787, he became a promoter of the ship Columbia Rediviva's voyage around the world under command of Captain Robert Gray (1755–1806). It was the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. In 1788, he married Hannah Apthorp, his first cousin. Their sons include Thomas Bulfinch (1796–1867), author of Bulfinch's Mythology, and Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch (1809–1870), Unitarian clergyman and author.

Bulfinch's first building was the Hollis Street Church (1788). Among his other early works are a memorial column on Beacon Hill (1789), the first monument to the American Revolution; the Federal Street theater (1793); the "Tontine Crescent" (built 1793–1794, now demolished), fashioned in part after John Wood's Royal Crescent; the Old State House in Hartford, Connecticut (1796); and the Massachusetts State House (1798). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1791.

Over the course of ten years, Bulfinch built a remarkable number of private dwellings in the Boston area, including Joseph Barrell's Pleasant Hill (1793), a series of three houses in Boston for Harrison Gray Otis (1796, 1800, 1806), and the John Phillips House (1804). He built several churches in Boston, of which New North (built 1802–1804) is the last standing.