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Thomas Jefferson: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Architecture
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13394 |
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THE ARTS
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9 / 1987 |
2,402 Words |
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Melvin Haft
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Thomas Jefferson, statesman, president, and author of the Declaration of Independence is known to every school child. But do they know that Thomas Jefferson is the father of American architectural thought? A true son of the Enlightenment, Jefferson was a gifted and imaginative architect. His major creations - his home at Monticello, the University of Virginia, and the state capital in Richmond - are enduring monuments to the diversity of his talents.
The son of a surveyor and cartographer, Jefferson came naturally by his ability to visualize spatial relations, teaching himself to draw by observing his father. As a young man, he traveled around on the East Coast, noting that early American architecture left much to be desired. Colleges, hospitals, and government buildings, he found "are rude, misshapen piles which, but that they have roofs, would be taken for brick-kilns."
When young, Jefferson studied architecture and design through the use of illustrations in books. They served as his chief inspiration. In the American colonies, architecture was virtually a monopoly of carpenters, craftsmen, masons, and related tradesmen. As a profession, architecture simply did not exist in the colonies when Jefferson attended college.
The house and gardens of Monticello present an unsurpassed personal legacy of Jefferson. It is almost impossible to separate the life of the house from that of its architect and builder. Monticello, by design, history, and symbolism, is a unique example of an autobiographical house. A pilgrimage to his estate is like experiencing a quick glimpse of Thomas Jefferson's remarkable personality.
Early in his public career - after being elected to the House of Burgesses in 1768 - Jefferson became aware of the larger symbolic purposes of architecture, which he termed "the elegant art," in a new society based on political, social, and cultural values different from those inherited from Europe. At the height of the American Revolution, Jefferson deplored the fact that in the new state of Virginia, "the first principles of art are unknown" and that there were no adequate models to set standards for the new society.
Love of Architecture
It is probably impossible to separate Jefferson's designs and his love of architecture, particularly in his most personal creation - Monticello - from those social and political ambitions that shaped his hopes and dreams for the new nation.
In 1809, aged sixty-six, Thomas Jefferson officially retired from public life. Blessed with a probing mind keenly interested in most fields of human endeavor, Jefferson devoted himself to the kind of life he craved. He had been a scientist, a large-scale farmer, a philosopher, a scholar, a diplomat, and an architect. Most of his time in retirement was spent drawing, designing, or sketching. As an architect, he drew blueprints for many buildings, some of which still stand as monuments to the many-faceted genius of their creator.
In writing to James Madison from Paris, in 1785, when he was America Minister to France, Jefferson spoke of his selection of the Maison-Carree as the model for the new capitol building in Richmond. This Roman
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