Monticello

Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, located in south-central Virginia, U.S., about 2 miles (3 km) southeast of Charlottesville. Constructed between 1768 and 1809, it is one of the finest examples of the early Classical Revival style in the United States. Monticello was designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987.

Jefferson’s masterpiece

Monticello was largely finished when Jefferson left for France in 1784 as the American minister to that country. During his five years there his ideas about architecture changed drastically, as he was influenced by the work of contemporary Neoclassical architects and by ancient Roman buildings.

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Jefferson began drawing up plans for altering and enlarging Monticello in 1793, and work began in 1796. Much of the original house was torn down. The final structure, completed in 1809, is a three-story brick and frame building with 35 rooms, 12 of them in the basement; each room is a different shape. There are two main entrances: the east portico, which provides access to the public portions of the house; and the west portico, the private entrance, which opens on the estate’s extensive gardens. The windows on the second story start at floor level and are joined with the first-story windows in a single frame, which gives the impression that there is only a single story. A central octagonal dome dominates the structure. Below it a continuous balustrade runs around the edge of the roof. Eighteenth-century French one-story pavilions such as the Hôtel de Salm were the inspiration for this plan; the dome was the first in the United States.

Jefferson filled the house with ingenious devices. A dial on the ceiling of the east portico supplies a reading from a weather vane on the roof. Above the east entrance is a large clock with two faces, visible from the inside and outside. The fireplace in the dining room conceals a dumbwaiter that communicates with the wine cellar. Jefferson’s arrangements for lighting and ventilation were equally inventive, and he designed many of the pieces of furniture himself.

Monticello after Jefferson

When Jefferson died at Monticello on July 4, 1826, he left his heirs more than $107,000 in debts. Thomas Jefferson Randolph—Jefferson’s grandson and the executor of his estate—put Monticello on the market to try to raise cash to pay off the debt. In 1827 Randolph and his mother auctioned off Jefferson’s slaves, household furniture and furnishings, supplies, grain, and farm equipment. Then they sold or gave to relatives nearly all of his artwork, along with thousands of acres of land he owned.

In 1831 the Randolphs sold the house and 552 acres (223 hectares) to James Turner Barclay, a Charlottesville druggist, for about $7,000. Barclay sold it and 218 acres (89 hectares) in 1834 to U.S. Navy Lieut. Uriah Phillips Levy, an ardent Jefferson admirer. Levy, the first Jewish American to make a career as a U.S. Navy officer, made much-needed repairs to Monticello and opened the house to visitors.

During the Civil War the South seized Monticello because it was owned by a Northerner. It was briefly owned by Benjamin Ficklin, a Confederate army officer, but returned to the Levy family after the war. When Uriah Levy died in 1862, his heirs challenged his will, which directed that Monticello be used as an agricultural school for the orphans of navy warrant officers. Seventeen years of legal wrangling ensued, during which time Monticello fell into near ruin.

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In 1879 Uriah Levy’s nephew—Jefferson Monroe Levy, a prominent New York City lawyer, stock and real estate speculator, and three-term U.S. congressman—bought out the other heirs and gained title to Monticello. He immediately began repairing and restoring Monticello and its grounds.

By 1911 a national movement was in full swing to take the house from Jefferson Levy and turn it over to the federal government to be used as a shrine to Jefferson. Bills were introduced in Congress that would have done so; none became law. In 1919 Levy put Monticello on the market. The newly formed private nonprofit Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation bought Monticello and its 640 acres (259 hectares) from Levy in December 1923 for his asking price of $500,000. Levy died soon thereafter.

Jefferson’s vision restored

The foundation—now known as the Thomas Jefferson Foundation—restored the house and grounds, brought back many of the original furnishings, recreated the gardens as Jefferson had designed them, and reacquired hundreds of acres of land that Jefferson had once owned. The estate of Monticello now includes Jefferson’s home and interior furnishings, orchard, vineyard, flower and vegetable gardens, and plantation covering some 2,500 acres (1,012 hectares). In 1994 the foundation established the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, which includes an archaeology department that conducts fieldwork throughout the Monticello grounds. Large visitor and education centres opened in 2009. Monticello today functions as a museum and is a major tourist attraction.