In addition, Mason was a lawyer, who later became a justice of the peace and a judge. For several years before and after 1820, Hadfield was involved with the design and construction of the City Hall, which was to house the Courts of the District. Mason would have been aware of this and would probably have known Hadfield.
Certainly the design evidence of Huntley indicates the work of an architect. The structure is much too architectonic to have evolved and in many respects much too advanced for its day to have been designed by a local carpenter-builder. Perhaps at some future time we shall discover information which indicates precisely whose trained hand put all the pieces together in this highly satisfactory manner.
Until that time, the evidence strongly points to George Hadfield.
Chapter 4 Notes
[58] Paul F. Norton, "Decatur House: Design and Designer," Historic Preservation, Volume 19, Numbers 3-4 (July-December 1967), pp. 9-24.
[59] Fiske Kimball, Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic, (New York: Dover, 1966 Reprint), p. 27.
[60] Rowland, George Mason, Volume II, p. 369.
[61] H. M. Pierce Gallagher, Robert Mills (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935), p. 170.
[62] Deering Davis, Stephen P. Dorsey, Ralph Cole Hall, Georgetown Houses of the Federal Period. (New York: Bonanza Books, 1944), pp. 21-23.