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Chapter 1 covers Latrobe’s early life from his birth in 1764 in a Moravian community, his rebellion against the church, and his expulsion from a seminary in Barby, Germany. It describes his thirteen years in London where he studied architecture and engineering and set up his own practice. Latrobe achieved success as an architect in London, but amid the successes there were disturbing signs of his inability to manage his financial affairs, especially when the city experienced an economic downturn. He continually complained that his Moravian background had sheltered him from negotiating the realities of finance. The chapter also describes his marriage and the devastating death of his wife and third child. Suffering from this loss and forced into bankruptcy, Latrobe made the decision to emigrate to the United States.

This chapter focuses on the sale of Morris's properties along with his other holdings. It describes English-born architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe's critique of Morris's house on Chestnut Street and the dismantling of the house and resale of its materials. In the end, the mansion found its primary use through its metaphor-laden destruction. And that destruction was necessarily incomplete. Even today, remains of the storied building lurk below the city's sidewalks.

Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe, an architect who had previously worked in Washington D.C. before running afoul of President Madison, arrived in New Orleans with his family in 1819 after his son Henry’s death. Latrobe was surprised by many things in the city, including the racial and cultural diversity, the dances in Congo Square, African funeral customs, and the cruel treatment of slaves. He documented much of what he saw in his journal and drawings. Latrobe died on September 3, 1820 from yellow fever, leaving behind a widow and an unfinished waterworks construction for the city. General Lafayette visited New Orleans in 1825 as part of his tour of America, and the city funded a lavish reception for him. Antonio Sedella’s indifference to church law throughout his long tenure led to more clashes with the Vatican, who tried and failed to oust him a second time in 1815. Sedella died on January 19, 1829, receiving a grand state funeral and leaving behind a lasting legacy. His death began the slow transition from a Church in solidarity with slaves to one attached to white supremacy and the cause of the Confederacy.

The original first State House in Raleigh was a plain, simple, no-nonsense cubic block building typical of North Carolina structures in the late eighteenth century. It was designed and built by Rodham Atkins and completed in 1794. In 1815, as waves of patriotism were still engulfing the newly formed country, the North Carolina General Assembly commissioned a sculpture of George Washington by world-renowned classical sculptor Antonio Canova. The life-size sculpture of a tunic-clad Washington clearly overwhelmed the simple governmental building. Officials turned to Nichols, the state architect, for “professional assistance.” Nichols, ever the opportunist, saw this as an opportunity to transform the unadorned building into an elaborate classical edifice. His persuasive appeals to the legislature worked and Nichols was commissioned to completely remodel the existing State House befitting the elegant Roman replica of our country’s founding father. The newly “remodeled” State House completely obliterated the original building design. Influenced by Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s remodeling of the U.S. Capitol, Nichols designed a building befitting a bicameral republican government. The State House was the first of Nichols’s three design statements on American democracy. Unfortunately, fire destroyed it in 1832.

This introduction presents Benjamin Latrobe as a rebel who left the Moravian Church and remade himself as an architect and engineer in the United States. It emphasizes his rapid ascension as an architect and engineer in the new republic as well as his very American penchant for speculation. The themes in this short introduction are his constant moving, his chronic debt, and his commitment to buildings that expressed American exceptionalism and connected the United States to the admired republics of ancient Greece and Rome. The introduction also previews the themes of the book: his life spent in motion, his chronic debilitating headaches along with his optimism and resilience, and his family as a sanctuary. It establishes the six cities he lived in as important background for his struggles and discusses the monumental National Endowment for the Humanities project that published his letters and drawings.

In the Epilogue, the author compares Nichols with other notable early nineteenth century American architects, namely Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Alexander Jackson Davis, and Minard Lefever. Nichols was extremely influential within the context of Southern architecture. He redefined the large residence in the Deep South by blending vernacular traditions with Grecian and later Greek Revival precedents. He helped define the modern university campus and the state capitol as a “Temple of Democracy,” giving bicameral government its architectural form in the South more so than any other architect. The author closes the book by stating that this book is his small contribution to the extraordinary legacy of architect William Nichols, master of his profession in the American South.