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To place Monticello within the larger universe
- In an ongoing effort to place Monticello within the larger universe, Thomas Jefferson established a museum in his double-story Entrance Hall, complete with maps of the world, European paintings and sculptures, and examples of items from the New World.
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In an ongoing effort to place Monticello within the larger universe, Thomas Jefferson established a museum in his double-story Entrance Hall, complete with maps of the world, European paintings and sculptures, and examples of items from the New World.
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Why did Thomas Jefferson build a museum in Monticello's entrance hall?
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Why did Thomas Jefferson put Monticello on the market?
Why did Thomas Jefferson send a letter to Congress?
The Great Clock in the Entrance Hall is one of most memorable features of Monticello. The room held many maps of the world including one of Virginia as surveyed by Jefferson's father, Peter Jefferson, and Joshua Fry.
One of Monticello's iconic features is the Great Clock, designed by Jefferson, built by Peter Spruck in 1792, and fully functional today. The clock, with both an interior and exterior face, regulated the schedule of the entire plantation, inside the house and out. On the outside wall, the clock has a single hand to incrementally mark the hour.
May 27, 2024 · By examining Monticello‘s nearly 60-year evolution from 1768-1826, we can trace how Jefferson‘s political philosophy, aesthetic tastes, and dependence on enslaved labor shaped his self-designed home—and the paradoxical legacy he left behind.
- Overview
- Jefferson’s masterpiece
- Monticello after Jefferson
- Jefferson’s vision restored
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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, orch...
- Marc Leepson
Jefferson’s desire to include a museum among the spaces at Monticello, as well as the genesis of his collection of Native American objects, long predated the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but it is clear that the material fruits of the Expedition were central to his establishment of the “Indian Hall” in Monticello’s Entrance Hall.
President Thomas Jefferson sent a letter to Congress on January 18, 1803 from his home, Monticello. In this letter he asked for $2,500 to finance a trek to the American West - up the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. It would become known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
