Robert Mills Architectural Drawings

Two elevation drawings (front and side), and three floor plans (basement, principal, and chamber floors) for a house designed by Robert Mills for Richard Potts of Frederick, Maryland.

Robert Mills (1781-1855), a native of South Carolina, was the first American-born and -trained professional architect. He learned his trade from James Hoban and Benjamin Latrobe and from extensive reading in the library of Thomas Jefferson. Mills worked with Latrobe in Philadelphia. From 1815-1820, he worked in Baltimore, where he had moved in order to supervise the construction of his design for a monument to Washington in that city. In 1830, he settled in Washington, D.C. and became Architect of Public Buildings, as a result of which he designed a number of government buildings, including the Treasury Building and the Washington Monument. Mills’ wife, Eliza Barnwell Smith of Virginia, was a distant relative of Richard Potts.

The Potts house was completed in 1819; it was located at the southeast corner of Court Square in Frederick, Maryland. In 1894, another story was added. In 1946, the house was subdivided into apartments. The house was still standing and inhabited in 1982.