Monticello ( ), located in
Charlottesville
, Virginia
, was the
estate of Thomas Jefferson, the
principal author of the United States
Declaration of Independence, third President of the United
States, and founder of the University of Virginia
.
The house, which Jefferson himself designed, was based on the
neoclassical principles
described in the books of the
Italian Renaissance architect Andrea
Palladio.
It is situated on the summit of an -high peak
in the Southwest
Mountains
south of the Rivanna Gap. Its name comes
from the
Italian "little
mountain."
An image of the west front of Monticello by
Felix Schlag has been featured on the
reverse of the
nickel minted since 1938 (with a brief
interruption in 2004 and 2005, when designs of the
Westward
Journey series appeared instead).
Monticello also appeared on the reverse of the
two-dollar bill from 1929 to
1966, when the bill was discontinued. The current
bill was introduced in 1976 and retains
Jefferson's portrait on the obverse but replaced Monticello on the
reverse with an engraved modified reproduction of
John Trumbull's painting Declaration of
Independence instead. The gift shop at Monticello hands
out two-dollar bills as change.
Monticello, along with the nearby University
of Virginia, was designated a UNESCO
World Heritage Site in
1987.
History
Work began on what historians would subsequently refer to as "the
first Monticello" in 1768. Jefferson moved into the South Pavilion
(an outbuilding) in 1770. Jefferson left Monticello in 1784 to
serve as Minister of the United States to France. During his tenure
in Europe, he had an opportunity to see some of the classical
buildings with which he had become acquainted from his reading, as
well as to discover the "modern" trends in French architecture that
were then fashionable in Paris. His decision to remodel his own
home may date from this period. In 1794, following his service as
the first U.S. Secretary of State (1790-93), Jefferson began
rebuilding his house based on the ideas he had acquired in Europe.
The remodeling continued throughout most of his presidency
(1801-09).
Thomas Jefferson added a center hallway and a parallel set of rooms
to the structure, more than doubling its area. He removed the
second full-height story from the original house and replaced it
with a
mezzanine bedroom
floor. The most dramatic element of the new design was an octagonal
dome, which he placed above the West front of
the building in place of a second-story portico. The room inside
the dome was described by a visitor as "a noble and beautiful
apartment," but it was rarely used—perhaps because it was hot in
summer and cold in winter, or because it could only be reached by
climbing a steep and very narrow flight of stairs. The dome room
has now been restored to its appearance during Jefferson's
lifetime, with "Mars
yellow" walls and a
painted green floor.
Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, and Monticello was inherited
by his eldest daughter
Martha
Jefferson Randolph. Financial difficulties led to Martha
selling Monticello to James T. Barclay, a local
apothecary, in 1831. Barclay sold it in 1834 to
Uriah P. Levy, the first
Jewish American to serve an entire career as
a
commissioned officer in the
United States Navy. Levy greatly
admired Jefferson. During the
American Civil War, the house was seized
by the
Confederate
government and sold, though Uriah Levy's
estate recovered it after the war.
Lawsuits filed by Levy's heirs were settled in 1879,
when Uriah Levy's nephew, Jefferson Monroe Levy, a prominent
New
York
lawyer, real estate and
stock speculator and member of Congress,
bought out the other heirs and took control of the property.
Jefferson Levy, like his uncle, repaired, restored and preserved
Monticello, which was deteriorating seriously while the lawsuits
wended their way through the courts in New York and Virginia.
Monticello and its reflection
A private
non-profit
organization, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, purchased the
house from Jefferson Levy in 1923 with funds raised by Theodore
Fred Kuper and it was restored by architects including
Fiske Kimball and
Milton L. Grigg. Monticello is now operated as a
museum and educational institution. Visitors
can view rooms in the cellar and ground floor, but the second and
third floors are not open to the general public due to
fire code restrictions. Visitors can, however,
tour the third floor (Dome), while on a Signature Tour.
Monticello is the only private home in the United States that has
been designated a World Heritage Site. From 1989 to 1992, a team of
architects from the
Historic American Buildings
Survey (HABS) painstakingly created a collection of measured
drawings of Monticello.
These drawings are now kept at the Library of
Congress
. The World Heritage Site designation also
includes the original grounds of Jefferson's University of
Virginia.
Among
Jefferson's other designs are his other home near Lynchburg
called Poplar Forest
and the Virginia State Capitol
in Richmond
.
Decoration and furnishings
Much of Monticello's interior decoration reflect the ideas and
ideals of Jefferson himself.
The original main entrance is through the
portico on the east front. The ceiling of this
portico incorporates a wind plate connected to a
weather vane, showing the direction of the
wind. A large
clock face on the external
east-facing wall has only an hour hand since Jefferson thought this
was accurate enough for outdoor laborers. The clock reflects the
time shown on the "Great Clock", designed by Jefferson, in the
entrance hall. The entrance hall contains recreations of items
collected by
Lewis and
Clark on their famous expedition. The floorcloth here is
painted a "true grass green" upon the recommendation of artist
Gilbert Stuart in order for
Jefferson's 'essay in architecture' to invite the spirit of the
outdoors into the house.
The south wing includes Jefferson's private suite of rooms. The
library holds many books in Jefferson's third
library collection. His first library was burned in
a plantation fire, and he 'ceded' (or sold) his second library in
1815 to the
United States
Congress to replace the books lost when the British burned the
Capitol in 1814.
This second library formed the nucleus of the
Library of
Congress. As famous and "larger than life" as
Monticello seems, the house itself is actually no larger than a
typical large home. Jefferson considered much furniture to be a
waste of space, so the
dining room table
was erected only at mealtimes, and beds were built into
alcoves cut into thick walls that contain storage
space. Jefferson's bed opens to two sides: to his cabinet (study)
and to his bedroom (dressing room).
The west front (
illustration) gives the impression of a
villa of very modest proportions, with a lower floor disguised in
the hillside.
The north wing includes the dining room—which has a
dumbwaiter incorporated into the
fireplace as well as dumbwaiters (shelved tables on castors) and a
pivoting serving door with shelves—and two guest bedrooms.
Outbuildings and plantation
Jefferson's vegetable garden
The main house was augmented by small outlying pavilions to the
north and south. A row of functional buildings (dairy, wash houses,
store houses, a small nail factory, a joinery etc.) and
slave dwellings known as Mulberry Row lay nearby to
the south. A stone weaver's cottage survives, as does the tall
chimney of the joinery, and the foundations of other buildings. A
cabin on Mulberry Row was, for a time, the home of Sally Hemings;
she later moved into a room in the "south dependency" below the
main house. On the slope below Mulberry Row Jefferson maintained an
extensive vegetable garden.
The house was the center of a plantation of tended by some 150
slaves. There are also two houses included in the whole.
In 2004, the trustees acquired the only property that overlooks
Monticello, the taller mountain that Jefferson called
Montalto, but known to Charlottesville residents as
Mountaintop Farm, Patterson's or Brown's Mountain.
Rushing to stave off
development of new homes, the trustees spent $15 million to
purchase the property, which Jefferson had owned and which had
served as a 20th-century residence as farm houses divided into
apartments for many University of Virginia students (including George Allen). The
officials at Monticello had long viewed the property located on the
mountain as an eyesore, and were very interested in purchasing the
property when it came on the market. Monticello now charges $20 for
adults and $7 for children to visit the top of the mountain and
only allows admission to the area from May to October.
Miscellaneous
The house
is very similar in appearance to Chiswick House
, another Neo-Palladian house built in 1726-9 in
London
.
A view of Monticello from the
gardens
Monticello was featured in
Bob Vila's
A&E Network production,
Guide to Historic Homes of America, in a tour which
included the Dome Room, which is only open to the public during a
limited number of tours each year, and Honeymoon Cottage.
Sidney Fiske Kimball, father of the
University of Virginia's School of Architecture, and one of the
prime movers behind the restoration of Monticello, and author of
the book
Thomas Jefferson, Architect, used Jefferson's
architectural principles to build his own retirement home outside
Charlottesville called "Shack Mountain," short for Shackelford
Mountain, the surname of a branch of Jefferson's descendants. Built
in 1935-1936, Shack Mountain is a Jefferson-style pavilion, like
Monticello, that is considered Kimball's masterpiece.
Kimball himself
advised on the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg
and Stratford Hall Plantation
. Shack Mountain was nominated as a National
Historic Landmark in 1992.
Replicas
The entrance pavilion of the
Naval Academy Jewish Chapel at
Annapolis is modeled on Monticello.
See also
References
- Fleming, Thomas. "The Jew Who Helped Save Monticello." The
Jewish Digest. February 1974: 43-49.
- http://www.monticello.org/visit/signature_tours.html
-
http://www.monticello.org/jefferson/dayinlife/sunrise/design.html
-
http://www.monticello.org/jefferson/dayinlife/entrance/design.html
- http://www.loc.gov/about/history.html
- http://www.loc.gov/about/history.html
-
http://www.monticello.org/jefferson/dayinlife/sunrise/bedroom.html
- The Virginia Landmarks Register, By Calder Loth,
Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Published by University
of Virginia Press, 1999, ISBN 0813918626
- The Architecture of Jefferson Country:
Charlottesville and Albemarle County, K. Edward Lay, University of
Virginia Press, 2000
- Fiske Kimball, Shack Mountain, University of
Virginia library, lib.virginia.edu
Further reading
- Leepson, Marc, Saving
Monticello: The Levy Family's Epic Quest to Rescue the House that
Jefferson Built, University of Virginia Press, 2003,
ISBN-8139-2219-4
- Mc Laughlin, Jack, "Jefferson and Monticello, The Biography of
a Builder", Holt, 1988.
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Search
