Significantly, the nation's leaders associated their young republic with those of the ancient world. Thomas Jefferson, a leader in introducing to the colonies a more advanced neoclassical design in his home, Monticello (1770-75), designed the new state capitol at Richmond directly after a Roman temple, the Maison-Carée at Nîmes, France. The neoclassical, based primarily on Roman sources and the work of Adam and the English architect Sir John Soane, became the official and popular style of the new nation, and it filled the new city of Washington, D.C. Benjamin Latrobe, born and schooled in England, was the first fully trained architect to work in the U.S., where he produced the country's finest neoclassical buildings, such as the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1806-18) in Baltimore.
 

The neoclassical style was followed by the Greek Revival, which reflected the heaviertaste of the late Regency in England and became (1820-50) what might be called the national style. The pedimented and colonnaded Greek-temple form was preferred for public and domestic structures alike; the best-known examples are surviving southern plantation houses. About 1850 a wider range of romantic revival styles was being employed as well; Gothic and Tuscan revivals, which display asymmetrical floor plans and picturesque groupings of architectural components, were favored. The financial panic of 1857 and the disruptions of the American Civil War, however, brought to a close this building phase.