Explore the grand home of one of America’s founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson.
Looking for presidential history? Well, go to Charlottesville, Virginia! The outskirts of Charlottesville not only have one home of a former president but three, James Madison, James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson. I only had time to explore one so, of course, I chose Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.
At the age of twenty-six, Thomas Jefferson inherited the land that would become the plantation of Monticello. It was a normal plantation of the time with cash crops, food and other materials produced for sale. Jefferson, himself, was not farming or producing, but had his slaves do all the work. No surprise there.
The plantation also had a large plantation house for Jefferson to entertain and study in. Jefferson designed his grand home himself, bring together French, Italian and American neoclassical designs. The biggest influence was that of the Italian Renaissance architect Palladio, who is known for reintegrating Ancient Greek and Roman architectural themes into European designs. While Palladio lived in the 16th century, his ideas by future architects spread through Europe well into the 19th century and even today. (Examples include Chiswick House outside of London and many of the churches in Venice.) Palladian themes also greatly influenced the American Federal style, used in many American governmental buildings.
With these ideas in mind, Jefferson built a pretty unique building for its time in America. It was built in an Italian villa style with a central dome, temple-like front portico and wings on the side, kind of like the Pantheon in Rome but with wings. Simple but elegant, with little additions that make Monticello simply unique.
Just look at that fancy house.
I took a morning to explore the grounds and home of Monticello. I mostly went for the house tour. Even if it wasn’t Jefferson’s house, I would have still gone. I really like the style. The tour was a brief free-range exploration of the first floor. To see other levels of the home, a special guided tour is needed. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any the morning I was there. So, I saw the first floor of the house and the open areas of the grounds and basement or cellar.
The tour starts on the side of the house, which would have been the main entrance. A tour guide hid behind the pillar to stay out of our pictures. Nice lady.
The foyer would have been filled with artifacts Jefferson found around the country, including looted remains from Native American burial mounds and a giant mastodon jaw.
A giant mastodon jaw like this one.
Jefferson designed a special clock that not only told you the time but also what day it was.
The clock sat prominently above the doorway and had a clock face facing outside as well.
Martha Jefferson Randolph, Jefferson’s adult daughter, used this room as a sitting room when she lived at Monticello and helped Jefferson manage the home and estate.
Now we enter Jefferson’s personal suite of rooms, starting with his library. He probably used this area to go through incoming mail, store science apparatuses, and, of course, keep his books.
This neat little table was commissioned by Jefferson and used to store unanswered mail in labeled drawers. One key could lock all the drawers. Pretty nifty.
The library extended through this corridor of sorts towards the next room.
Jefferson referred to this room as his cabinet. You can kind of think of it as a private study. It was here that Jefferson usually answered his mail, recorded the weather and results of science experiments and managed his plantation.
This cool contraption is a polygraph. In the days before Xerox, there was no way of making copies without rewriting the paper as a whole. The polygraph allowed you to make a copy while you write a letter. Jefferson would keep the copy, of which we have many.
My favorite part of this room is that he literally could roll out of bed into his study. The pocket doors allowed the rooms to be separate or open for better airflow.
Yes, that is a clock above his bed. Early alarm clock, maybe?
The parlor was the main entertaining room in Monticello. It was the site of gatherings, weddings and playing games.
You can’t have an 18th century party without a harpsichord. Jefferson himself played the violin and also had a pianoforte, an early form of piano.
The very yellow dining room, with the tearoom through the archway.
The sides of the fireplace open up to a wine dumbwaiter which lifted wine from the cellar below.
The tearoom was also used for entertaining and as a sitting room for the Jefferson family. Jefferson had busts of his friends and American heroes around this room.
Now from below the main house. There was a long passageway along the width of the house, with service rooms on both sides. There were also two privies down here, too.
The wine cellar where the wine would have been hoisted up to the dining room fireplace.
The kitchen would have been staffed by slaves, but the lady of the house would have been closely supervising them. The kitchen moved a couple of times. I was surprised to see it under the main house because kitchens were usually separate buildings of large homes of the time, like George Washington’s.
Leaving the main house, many of the plantation workshops and some of the slave cabins were located on what was called Mulberry Row.
This reconstructed cabin is to represent the home of John and Priscilla Hemmings, long time slaves of Jefferson. The bare dirt floors and the rough walls were common in many homes of the time period, whether they were the homes of the enslaved or poor rural whites.
This workshop is an original building that has served many uses over the years. Jefferson had a small textile “factory” here to make rough cloth to be used on the plantation or sold after Great Britain placed a trade embargo on the young United States. Before the factory was moved here from an outlying farm, the Stone House was used for living quarters of free or enslaved skilled laborers.
The contraption on the right helped weave the cloth faster than on a regular loom.
Jefferson was laid to rest on his plantation. His tombstone seen here is a replacement of the original. Today, the graveyard is still being used by descendants of Jefferson.
Monticello is a fantastic museum dedicated to Thomas Jefferson and his plantation. The private Thomas Jefferson Foundation has not shied away from some of Jefferson’s more problematic actions and his ownership of enslaved people or his relationships with them. Sally Hemmings and her children with Jefferson are not ignored, nor Jefferson’s relationship with them. I was impressed by the foundation’s actions about addressing the problems surrounding Jefferson.
You can take an awesome virtual tour on the Monticello website!
Check out my next update where I will be exploring the Virginia portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway!
