Monticello - a revisit

Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "All my wishes end where I hope my days will end, at Monticello."

Monticello, in Charlottesville, Virginia, the only private home in the United States that has been designated a World Heritage Site, was Thomas Jefferson's home for the remaining fifty-six years of his life. He spent forty years between 1784-1909 designing it, building it, tearing it apart, redesigning it, and finally putting it all back together. While serving as Minister to France, he filled almost a hundred crates with furniture and various works of art for the many rooms at Monticello. While in France he would collect fruit trees and bring them with him on the long boat trip home.

Monticello, a low, red-brick structure with a white dome and doric portico, perched atop a hill in the Piedmont of Virginia, served as a laboratory for his ideas and reflected his interest in the neo-classical style, an architectural movement that he learned about during his years as American Ambassador in Paris He combined elements of Roman, Palladian, and 18th-century French design with features expressing his personal inventiveness.

Work on Monticello began when Jefferson was only 25. The original main entrance, as it is today, 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 his outdoor laborers. The clock reflects the time shown on the "Great Clock", designed by Jefferson, in the entrance hall. He built this now famous astronomical clock because his old less-accurate clocks caused him to miss the eclipse of 1811.

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 Library of 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.

The house itself has approximately only 1000 square meters of living space. Jefferson considered much furniture to be a waste of space, so 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). As one guest wrote, "The President had his Bed placed in a Door way."

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.

One of the most unique aspects of Jefferson's design for Monticello was his incorporation of the "dependencies," or essential service rooms, beneath raised, L-shaped terraces extending from either side of the house. This enabled Jefferson to locate the dependencies next to the house without having them visible from the level of the primary entrances. The dependency wings were connected to one another through the cellars in the basement by an all-weather passageway.

The estate included vineyards and historic gardens which served as a botanic laboratory during his lifetime. It also has its own graveyard which covers the graves of Jefferson, his wife, his two daughters, and of Governor Thomas Mann Randolph, his son-In-law. It remains the property of Jefferson's descendants and continues to be a family burying ground.

Jefferson chose his gravesite, and in 1826, wrote in his account the inscriptions to be cut on his tombstone. He made no note that he had been President of the United States, but wished simply to be most remembered for founding the University of Virginia, for writing the Declaration of Independence and Virginia's Act for Religious Freedom. The last line was to read: Died July 4, 1826.

Note:
The first time I visited Monticello was in the summer of 1982, and this video included some old and color-faded photos of that first visit. My last visit was In the spring of 2010, and because we arrived at past 4pm, there was very little time to capture everything on video, especially after dusk came in early at 6 and the shuttle ride back to the visitors center arrived promptly.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Monticello
• Charlottesville
• Thomas Jefferson