Monticello
Monticello was the primary residence and plantation of Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third president of the United States. Jefferson began designing Monticello after inheriting land from his father at the age of 14. Located just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, in the Piedmont region, the plantation was originally, with Jefferson using the forced labor of enslaved black 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 United States nickel has featured a depiction of Monticello on its reverse every year since 1938 with the exception of 2004–05.
Jefferson designed the main house using neoclassical design principles pioneered 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 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 slaves 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 slaves who worked in the fields were farther from the mansion.
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. After Jefferson's death, his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph, apart from the small family graveyard, sold Monticello for $7,500. In 1834, it was bought and saved from ruin by Uriah P. Levy, a commodore in the U.S. Navy, for $2,500, who admired Jefferson and spent significant funds to preserve the property. His nephew Jefferson Monroe Levy took over the property in 1879; he also invested considerable funds to restore and preserve it. In 1923, Monroe Levy sold it for $500,000 to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which operates it as a house museum and educational institution.
Design and building
Jefferson's home was built to serve as a plantation house, which ultimately took on the architectural form of a villa. Work began on what historians would subsequently refer to as "the first Monticello" in 1768, on a plantation of. Jefferson moved into the South Pavilion 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. In constructing and later reconstructing his home, Jefferson used a combination of free workers, indentured servants, and enslaved people.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 extensively remodel and rebuild his own home may date from this period. In 1794, following his tenure as the first U.S. Secretary of State, Jefferson began rebuilding his house based on the ideas he had acquired in Europe. The remodeling continued throughout most of his presidency. Although generally completed by 1809, Jefferson continued work on Monticello until his death in 1826.
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. 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.
Summertime temperatures are high in the region, with indoor temperatures of around. 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. 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. 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.
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."
Preservation
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, for $7,500. Barclay sold it in 1834 to Uriah P. Levy for $2,500, the first Jewish commodore 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.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 speculator, and stock speculator, 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.
In 1909, Maud Littleton, the wife of Martin W. Littleton, visited Monticello. Following her visit, Littleton launched a nationwide antisemitic campaign to have Monticello expropriated from Jefferson Levy. Littleton took her campaign to the press as well as to Congress, with two bills to expropriate Monticello from Levy failing to pass. Littleton used veiled antisemitic remarks to disparage Levy, such as calling him an "alien", "oriental", and a "rank outsider" who had allegedly altered the character of "the house that Jefferson built and made sacred." Littleton also made attempts to purchase Monticello. Angered by Littleton's antisemitism, Levy refused to sell his property. However, due to strained finances, Levy reluctantly sold Monticello to a foundation. Maud Littleton became the organization's first executive director. For the next 60 years, mention of the Levy family was erased by the foundation, despite the fact that Levy's mother Rachel is buried at Monticello. Neglected for decades, Rachel's grave was refurbished in 1985, under the foundation's new executive director Daniel Jordan.
In 1923, a private non-profit organization, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, purchased the house from Jefferson Levy for $500,000 with funds raised by Theodore Fred Kuper and others. They managed additional restoration under architects including Fiske Kimball and Milton L. Grigg. Since that time, other restoration has been performed at Monticello.
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.
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 created a collection of measured drawings of Monticello. These drawings are held by the Library of Congress.
Among Jefferson's other designs are Poplar Forest, his private retreat near Lynchburg, the "academic village" of the University of Virginia, and the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond.