Robert Mills: America's First Architect

The first architect trained in America, Robert Mills is best known as the designer of many iconic buildings in our nation's capital: the Washington Monument, the Department of Treasury headquarters, the Patent Office Building (now National Portrait Gallery), and the Post Office Headquarters. Mills, whose career spanned the period 1810 to 1855, was a colleague of James Hoban, architect of the White House, and Thomas Jefferson, designer of Monticello and the University of Virginia. He trained with Benjamin Henry Latrobe, designer of the Virginia State Capitol and the Bank of Pennsylvania. With this circle of friends, Mills was instrumental in creating the physical design of the new republic. Robert Mills: America's First Architect is the first complete monograph on this pivotal architect--beautifully illustrated with never-before-published watercolors and renderings and new color photography commissioned for the book. Author John Bryan, a best-selling historian and wonderful storyteller, weaves the history of Mills's architectural designs and engineering inventions together with the lives of the individuals who most influenced him, and shows how he can rightly be called our founding father of architecture.