Monticello

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This article is about the Jefferson residence. For other uses, see Monticello (disambiguation).

Monticello

Thomas Jefferson's Monticello (cropped).JPG

Location Albemarle County, near Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.

Coordinates 38°00′37.01″N 78°27′08.28″WCoordinates: 38°00′37.01″N 78°27′08.28″W

Built 1772

Architect Thomas Jefferson

Architectural style(s) Neoclassical, Palladian

Governing bodyThe Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF)

UNESCO World Heritage Site

Official name Monticello and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville

Type Cultural

Criteria i, iv, vi

Designated 1987 (11th session)

Reference no. 442

Region Europe and North America

U.S. National Register of Historic Places

Designated October 15, 1966[1]

Reference no. 66000826

U.S. National Historic Landmark

Designated December 19, 1960[2]

Virginia Landmarks Register

Designated September 9, 1969[3]

Reference no. 002-0050

Monticello is located in VirginiaMonticello

Location of Monticello in Virginia

Monticello and its reflection

Some of the gardens on the property

Monticello (/ˌmɒntɪˈtʃɛloʊ/ MON-tih-CHEL-oh) was the primary plantation of Thomas Jefferson, the third
president of the United States, who began designing Monticello after inheriting land from his father at
age 26. Located just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, in the Piedmont region, the plantation was
originally 5,000 acres (20 km2), with Jefferson using the labor of enslaved African people for extensive
cultivation of tobacco and mixed crops, later shifting from tobacco cultivation to wheat in response to
changing markets. Due to its architectural and historic significance, the property has been designated a
National Historic Landmark. In 1987, Monticello and the nearby University of Virginia, also designed by
Jefferson, were together designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The current nickel, a United States
coin, features a depiction of Monticello on its reverse side.

Jefferson designed the main house using neoclassical design principles described by Italian Renaissance
architect Andrea Palladio and reworking the design through much of his presidency to include design
elements popular in late 18th-century Europe and integrating numerous ideas of his own. Situated on
the summit of an 850-foot (260 m)-high peak in the Southwest Mountains south of the Rivanna Gap, the
name Monticello derives from Italian meaning "little mountain". Along a prominent lane adjacent to the
house, Mulberry Row, the plantation came to include numerous outbuildings for specialized functions,
e.g., a nailery; quarters for enslaved Africans who worked in the home; gardens for flowers, produce,
and Jefferson's experiments in plant breeding—along with tobacco fields and mixed crops. Cabins for
enslaved Africans who worked in the fields were farther from the mansion, out of Jefferson's sight both
literally and figuratively.[4]

At Jefferson's direction, he was buried on the grounds, in an area now designated as the Monticello
Cemetery. The cemetery is owned by the Monticello Association, a society of his descendants through
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson.[5] After Jefferson's death, his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph
sold the property. In 1834, it was bought by Uriah P. Levy, a commodore in the U.S. Navy, who admired
Jefferson and spent his own money to preserve the property. His nephew Jefferson Monroe Levy took
over the property in 1879; he also invested considerable money to restore and preserve it. In 1923,
Monroe Levy sold it to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF), which operates it as a house museum and
educational institution.

Contents

1 Design and building

2 Preservation

3 Decoration and furnishings

4 Quarters for enslaved laborers on Mulberry Row

5 Outbuildings and plantation

5.1 Programming

5.2 Land purchase

6 Architecture

7 Representation in other media

8 Replicas

9 Legacy

10 Gallery

11 See also

12 References

13 External links

Design and building

Jefferson's home was built to serve as a plantation house, which ultimately took on the architectural
form of a villa. It has many architectural antecedents, but Jefferson went beyond them to create
something very much his own. He consciously sought to create a new architecture for a new nation.[6]

Work began on what historians would subsequently refer to as "the first Monticello" in 1768, on a
plantation of 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares). Jefferson moved into the South Pavilion (an outbuilding) in
1770, where his new wife Martha Wayles Skelton joined him in 1772. Jefferson continued work on his
original design, but how much was completed is of some dispute.[6] In constructing and later
reconstructing his home, Jefferson used a combination of free workers, indentured servants and
enslaved laborers.[7]

After his wife's death in 1782, Jefferson left Monticello in 1784 to serve as Minister of the United States
to France. During his several years 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 tenure as the first U.S. Secretary of State (1790–1793),
Jefferson began rebuilding his house based on the ideas he had acquired in Europe. The remodeling
continued throughout most of his presidency (1801–1809).[8] Although generally completed by 1809,
Jefferson continued work on the present structure until his death in 1826.
Under the dome

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 interior is centered on two large rooms, which served as an entrance-hall-museum,
where Jefferson displayed his scientific interests, and a music-sitting room.[6] 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 be reached only 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 and black checkered floor.[9]

Summertime temperatures are high in the region, with indoor temperatures of around 100 °F (38 °C).
Jefferson himself is known to have been interested in Roman and Renaissance texts about ancient
temperature-control techniques such as ground-cooled air and heated floors.[10] Monticello's large
central hall and aligned windows were designed to allow a cooling air-current to pass through the
house, and the octagonal cupola draws hot air up and out.[11] In the late twentieth century, moderate
air conditioning, designed to avoid the harm to the house and its contents that would be caused by
major modifications and large temperature differentials, was installed in the house, a tourist attraction.
[12]

Before Jefferson's death, Monticello had begun to show signs of disrepair. The attention Jefferson's
university project in Charlottesville demanded, and family problems, diverted his focus. The most
important reason for the mansion's deterioration was his accumulating debts. In the last few years of
Jefferson's life, much went without repair in Monticello. A witness, Samuel Whitcomb Jr., who visited
Jefferson in 1824, thought it run down. He said, "His house is rather old and going to decay; appearances
about his yard and hill are rather slovenly. It commands an extensive prospect but it being a misty
cloudy day, I could see but little of the surrounding scenery."[13]

Preservation

The logo at Monticello's official website, hosted by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation

After Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, his only official surviving daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph,
inherited Monticello. The estate was encumbered with debt and Martha Randolph had financial
problems in her own family because of her husband's mental illness. In 1831, she sold Monticello to
James Turner Barclay, a local apothecary. Barclay sold it in 1834 to Uriah P. Levy, the first Jewish
commodore (equivalent to today's admiral) in the United States Navy. A fifth-generation American
whose family first settled in Savannah, Georgia, Levy greatly admired Jefferson and used private funds to
repair, restore and preserve the house. The Confederate government seized the house as enemy
property at the outset of the American Civil War and sold it to Confederate officer Benjamin Franklin
Ficklin. Levy's estate recovered the property after the war.[14]

Levy's heirs argued over his estate, but their lawsuits were settled in 1879, when Uriah Levy's nephew,
Jefferson Monroe Levy, a prominent New York lawyer, real estate and stock speculator (and later
member of Congress), bought out the other heirs for $10,050, and took control of Monticello. Like his
uncle, Jefferson Levy commissioned repairs, restoration and preservation of the grounds and house,
which had been deteriorating seriously while the lawsuits wound their way through the courts in New
York and Virginia. Together, the Levys preserved Monticello for nearly 100 years.[15]

Monticello depicted on the reverse of the 1953 $2 bill. Note the two "Levy lions" on either side of the
entrance. The lions, placed there by Jefferson Levy, were removed in 1923 when the Thomas Jefferson
Foundation purchased the house.

In 1923, a private non-profit organization, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, purchased the house from
Jefferson Levy with funds raised by Theodore Fred Kuper and others. They managed additional
restoration under architects including Fiske Kimball and Milton L. Grigg.[16] Since that time, other
restoration has been performed at Monticello.[17]

The Jefferson Foundation operates Monticello and its grounds as a house museum and educational
institution. Visitors can wander the grounds, as well as tour rooms in the cellar and ground floor. More
expensive tour pass options include sunset hours, as well as tours of the second floor and the third floor,
including the iconic dome.[18]

Monticello is a National Historic Landmark. It is the only private home in the United States to be
designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Included in that designation are the original grounds and
buildings of Jefferson's University of Virginia. From 1989 to 1992, a team of architects from the Historic
American Buildings Survey (HABS) created a collection of measured drawings of Monticello. These
drawings are held by the Library of Congress.[19]

Among Jefferson's other designs are Poplar Forest, his private retreat near Lynchburg (which he
intended for his daughter Maria, who died at age 25), the "academic village" of the University of
Virginia, and the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond.[20][21]
Decoration and furnishings

Much of Monticello's interior decoration reflects the personal ideas and ideals of Jefferson.[22]

In a time before refrigeration, Jefferson had the pond stocked with fish, to be available on demand.

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 those he enslaved.[23] 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 the cross-country expedition commissioned by Jefferson to explore the Louisiana Purchase.
Jefferson had the floorcloth painted a "true grass green" upon the recommendation of artist Gilbert
Stuart, so that Jefferson's "essay in architecture" could invite the spirit of the outdoors into the house.
[citation needed]

The south wing includes Jefferson's private suite of rooms. The library holds many books from his third
library collection. His first library was burned in an accidental 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
Washington in 1814.[24] This second library formed the nucleus of the Library of Congress.[24]

As "larger than life" as Monticello seems, the house has approximately 11,000 square feet (1,000 m2) of
living space.[25] 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).[26]

In 2017 a room identified as Sally Hemings' quarters at Monticello, adjacent to Jefferson's bedroom, was
discovered in an archeological excavation. It will be restored and refurbished. This is part of the
Mountaintop Project, which includes restorations in order to give a fuller account of the lives of both
enslaved laborers and free families at Monticello.[27][28]

The west front (illustration) gives the impression of a villa of modest proportions, with a lower floor
disguised in the hillside.[citation needed]

The north wing includes two guest bedrooms and the dining room. It has a dumbwaiter incorporated
into the fireplace, as well as dumbwaiters (shelved tables on casters) and a pivoting serving door with
shelves.[29][30]
Quarters for enslaved laborers on Mulberry Row

Further information: Thomas Jefferson and slavery § Monticello slave life

Jefferson located one set of his quarters for enslaved people on Mulberry Row, a one-thousand-foot
road of slave, service, and industrial structures. Mulberry Row was situated three hundred feet (100 m)
south of Monticello, with the quarters facing the Jefferson mansion. These cabins were occupied by the
enslaved Africans who worked in the mansion or in Jefferson's manufacturing ventures, and not by
those who labored in the fields.

Plaque at Monticello about enslaved laborers

At one point, "Jefferson sketched out plans for a row of substantial, dignified neoclassical houses" for
Mulberry Row, for enslaved blacks and white workers, "having in mind an integrated row of residences."
Henry Wiencek argues: "It was no small thing to use architecture to make a visible equality of the
races."[31]

Archaeology of the site shows that the rooms of the cabins were much larger in the 1770s than in the
1790s. Researchers disagree as to whether this indicates that more enslaved laborers were crowded into
a smaller spaces, or that fewer people lived in the smaller spaces.[32] Earlier houses for enslaved
laborers had a two-room plan, one family per room, with a single, shared doorway to the outside. But
from the 1790s on, all rooms/families had independent doorways. Most of the cabins are free-standing,
single-room structures.[32]

By the time of Jefferson's death, some enslaved families had labored and lived for four generations at
Monticello.[32] Thomas Jefferson recorded his strategy for employing children in his Farm Book. Until
the age of 10, children served as nurses. When the plantation grew tobacco, children were at a good
height to remove and kill tobacco worms from the crops.[33] Once he began growing wheat, fewer
people were needed to maintain the crops, so Jefferson established manual trades. He stated that
children "go into the ground or learn trades" When girls were 16, they began spinning and weaving
textiles. Boys made nails from age 10 to 16. In 1794, Jefferson had a dozen boys working at the nailery.
[33] While working at the nailery, boys received more food and may have received new clothes if they
did a good job. After the nailery, boys became blacksmiths, coopers, carpenters, or house servants.[33]

Six families and their descendants were featured in the exhibit, Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello:
Paradox of Liberty (January to October 2012) at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American
History, which also examines Jefferson as an enslaver. Developed as a collaboration between the
National Museum of African American History and Culture and Monticello, it is the first exhibit on the
national mall to address these issues.[34]

In February 2012, Monticello opened a new outdoor exhibit on its grounds: Landscape of Slavery:
Mulberry Row at Monticello, to convey more about the lives of the hundreds of enslaved laborers who
lived and worked at the plantation.[35]

Outbuildings and plantation

Jefferson's vegetable garden

Plaque commemorating Monticello Graveyard, owned and operated separately by the Monticello
Association

Monticello Graveyard

Jefferson's gravestone, with an epitaph written by him, does not mention that he was President of the
United States.

The main house was augmented by small outlying pavilions to the north and south. A row of
outbuildings (dairy, a washhouse, store houses, a small nail factory, a joinery etc.) and quarters for
enslaved laborers (log cabins), 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, an enslaved woman who worked in the
household who is widely believed to have had a 38-year relationship with the widower Jefferson and to
have borne six children by him, four of whom survived to adulthood. The genealogist Helen F.M. Leary
concluded that "the chain of evidence securely fastens Sally Hemings's children to their father, Thomas
Jefferson."[36] Later Hemings lived in a room in the "south dependency" below the main house.

On the slope below Mulberry Row, enslaved laborers maintained an extensive vegetable garden for
Jefferson and the main house. In addition to growing flowers for display and producing crops for eating,
Jefferson used the gardens of Monticello for experimenting with different species. The house was the
center of a plantation of 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) tended by some 150 enslaved laborers. There are also
two houses included in the whole.

Programming
In recent decades, the TJF has created programs to more fully interpret the lives of enslaved people at
Monticello. Beginning in 1993, researchers interviewed descendants of Monticello enslaved people for
the Getting Word Project, a collection of oral history that provided much new insight into the lives of
enslaved people at Monticello and their descendants. (Among findings were that no enslaved people
adopted Jefferson as a surname, but many had their own surnames as early as the 18th century.[37])

New research, publications and training for guides has been added since 2000, when the Foundation's
Research Committee concluded it was highly likely that Jefferson had fathered Sally Hemings's children.

Some of Mulberry Row has been designated as archeological sites, where excavations and analysis are
revealing much about life of enslaved people at the plantation. In the winter of 2000–2001, the enslaved
African burial ground at Monticello was discovered. In the fall of 2001, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation
held a commemoration of the burial ground, in which the names of known enslaved people of
Monticello were read aloud. Additional archeological work is providing information about African-
American burial practices.[38]

In 2003 Monticello welcomed a reunion of descendants of Jefferson from both the Wayles's and
Hemings's sides of the family. It was organized by the descendants, who have created a new group
called the Monticello Community.[39] Additional and larger reunions have been held.