During this difficult period, the president-elect survived an assassination attempt on February 15, 1933, when an unemployed bricklayer named Giuseppe Zangara fired at Roosevelt.
Building this intricate complex took 12 years and employed thousands of skilled craftsmen and artisans, from masons and bricklayers to masters of pietra dura and calligraphy.
The Common Reader Volume 1 26 Essays on Jane Austen, George Eliot, Conrad, Montaigne and Others
And, the man adds, Tom Topcroft, the mad bricklayer, has broken loose again and ranges the country half-naked, threatening to kill any one who approaches him.
Forced into the uncongenial trade of his stepfather, a master-bricklayer, he soon deserted it to enlist among the English soldiers to fight Spaniards in the Low Countries.