Charles Bulfinch

Charles Bulfinch is often called the first American born professional architect. A Boston gentleman, he turned his travels in Europe into a career, and his calm, elegant Federal style shaped his native city before President Monroe made him Architect of the Capitol in Washington in 1818, where he finished the building and its first dome.

On the Freedom Trail you meet him twice. He designed the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill and was paid only $1,400 for it; its dome was first wooden shingles, was sheathed in copper by Paul Revere's company in 1802, and was gilded in 1874. He also enlarged Faneuil Hall in 1805 to the size you see today. On our Harvard walk, the white granite University Hall behind the John Harvard statue is his as well.