Jefferson, Thomas

Jefferson, Thomas (1743–1826). Able American self-taught architect of the late C18, he excelled in many things, and was one of the founding fathers and third President of the USA (1801–9). It is known he had a fine library of architectural books, and it was largely from these (e.g. Gibbs and Leoni) that he acquired his skills. One of his first buildings was Monticello, his own house near Charlottesville, VA (1768–82—remodelled 1796–1809), the plans of which were a variation on a design in Robert Morris's Select Architecture (1755), with additional elements derived from Gibbs, and a dash of Palladio taken from Leoni's edition of the Quattro Libri. Indeed, Monticello was Palladian in layout, intelligently altered to accommodate the most convenient internal arrangements, but in its final version it suggested the Antique villa transformed by French Neo-Classicism (e.g. Hôtel de Salm, Paris, of 1783).

In 1784 Jefferson was appointed Second American Minister to Paris, a stroke of good luck enabling him to absorb up-to-date architectural ideas at first hand. He was also conveniently placed to visit England, which he did in 1786, expressly to study Picturesque gardens that attracted the admiration of Europe at that time. In France he admired the top-lighting at the Château de Chaville (1764–6—destroyed) by Boullée, as well as Legrand and Molinos's dome of the Halle au Blé, Paris (1782–3).

When it was decided to build a State Capitol in Richmond, VA, Jefferson chaired the Committee charged with arranging for this, and he himself proposed a building based on the Corinthian Roman temple, the Maison Carrée, Nîmes (16 bc—to which building he had been introduced by Clérisseau's Antiquités de France (1778), and which he greatly admired): thus he was the first to reintroduce the rectangular temple-form into public architecture (as opposed to small garden fabriques, e.g. at Stowe, Bucks.) in the West since Classical Antiquity. In the event, the State Capitol (1785–99), which was designed by Jefferson with Clérisseau as adviser, employed the Ionic Order with angular capitals of the Scamozzi type, and had pilasters rather than engaged columns as on the cella of the Maison Carrée.

From 1789, when he returned to the USA, becoming Secretary of State in Washington's Government, he involved himself in the planning and architecture of the new Federal capital, promoting French ideas when he could. Jefferson's greatest architectural achievement, however, was the University of Virginia, Charlottesville (1817–26), a series of porticoed pavilions (each with an Order from a different Roman building) linked by colonnades, on either side of a long rectangular lawn (the first campus plan) with a scaled-down version of the Pantheon in Rome on the long axis at one end. While Latrobe helped Jefferson with this design, the main scheme was Jefferson's own, though possibly based on Marly-le-Roi, the château of Louis XIV. The Rotunda at the University contained the most remarkable elliptical rooms in America, an arrangement possibly derived from the Doric column-base in the Désert de Retz near Paris, which Jefferson had seen. The University is arguably the most beautiful architectural ensemble in the American Continent. Like Monticello and the Virginia Capitol, it was more than a fine work of Classical architecture: all three were intended as exemplars from which Americans would learn the rules of architecture and civil design.

Bibliography

W. Adams (1976, 1983);
J. Boyd (ed.) (from 1950);
Brawne (1994);
Kimball (1966, 1968);
Lehman (1980);
Malone (1948–74);
Mayo (ed.) (1970);
Nichols (ed.) (1978);
Nichols & and Bear (1967);
Nichols & Griswold(1978);
O'Neal (1960);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Jane Turner (1996)