ABSTRACT
In 1795, Samuel Blodget – an economist, banker, and real estate developer – completed the First Bank of the United States in Philadelphia. This essay situates Blodget’s neoclassical design for the First Bank within tensions between Enlightenment ideals and the realities of an enslavement economy. As superintendent for the construction of Washington, D.C., Blodget played a key role in integrating the land Federal District into northern financial networks while privately developing its land. The First Bank, likewise, aimed to establish an economic infrastructure connecting southern plantations to northern finance networks, transforming the commodities produced by enslaved people into financial instruments for the national economy. The paper explores the contradiction within liberal economics that abhorred forced labor but defended the sanctity of private property. It discusses how Blodget’s neoclassical design for the First Bank sought to reconcile this contradiction by using architecture to sanitize and legitimize the slave-based economy as a project of enlightenment.
