Customer Reviews:
 An autobiographical architectural wonder April 3, 2008
18 out of 29 found this review helpful
"In its design, history, symbolism and metaphor, Monticello is the quintessential example of the autobiographical house" (2). Not only did the house remain in a state of architectural momentum for forty years, but it also was the site of its master's involvement in governmental structure. Thomas Jefferson was the architect of his mansion and the key builder of his country.
When young Thomas decided to study at William and Mary, he focused on classical studies and mathematics, while independently trying to put together an architectural foundation. Architecture as a profession did not exist in the colonies of his day.
Thus, Monticello became a dwelling in flux and a site to try out new ideas as he learned them. Herculaneum and Pompeii had been discovered in 1738 and 1740, respectively. These preserved ruins became the basis for the dignity, majesty, beauty, and facade of permanence of the buildings of a new country. Again, Thomas Jefferson was the architect of ideas and substantiating them.
I bought this book years ago and used it when I taught the Declaration of Independence in high school American literature. I wanted to show students the man behind the words. Monticello was great evidence of a man of the Enlightenment--rational thinking, classical studies, science as the basis for philosophy, Deism as religion. The Great Watchmaker creates the world and leaves man to run it. When various people say that our Founding Fathers built this country on religion, I try to tell them that they must mean the Settling Father--the Pilgrims and Puritans, who did establish their settlements on the basis of a New World free from religious tyranny. (The witch hunts are certainly an example of that.) The true founders were inevitably Deists in a time of Enlightenment.
Jefferson's incessant adding to and taking away whole parts and various parts so exemplifies the Enlightened thinker. I am Man. I can make it better. A beautiful winding staircase graced the front entry. Jefferson decided one day that the stairway took up too much room. He removed it and built a little tiny, skinny one large enough for only one person to ascend or descend at a time.
He did not like the kitchen near the dining room so he put it under the main floor on the other side of the mansion. Servants had to carry food from one end to the other, then slip into the dining room to serve. That intrusion annoyed him, so he invented the dumb waiter. Servants--out of sight, out of mind. He hated wasting space for beds, so he built them into walls, including his own. Next to his, leading to the attic, "where he stored his clothes" and Sally Hemmings had her "official" bed, was a built-in ladder.
Many of his inventions are displayed all over the house. He thought of everything: week-long day clocks, windows that can be pulled down or up, a widow's walkway around the property looking out over Richmond's University of Virginia, whose Rotunda he designed. He experimented with many many plants--flowers, fruits, vegetables.
"Jefferson's Monticello" is just one of many books about this man and his architectural gem, but it is the one I own and love. It is a reminder of my tourist visit there.
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