Thomas Jefferson's Legacy

Thomas Jefferson the third president of the United States was born in Shadwell Virginia in 1743. He attended the college of William and Mary but received no formal training in architecture. Essentially self-taught, he assembled an impressive library of art and architecture which included several copies of Palladio’s Quattro Libri. Overtime, Jefferson acquired an intense appreciation of Palladio’s architectural theories based on their connection to ancient Rome (Howard, 2003). Recognizing the powerful political connotations inherent in ancient Roman structures, Jefferson designed many of his civic buildings in a Neo Roman style. When he was acting as a minister of France in 1784 to 1789, Jefferson studied architectural heritage of France gaining

insight from architectural historians and site visits. From the mid-1770s he employed and worked with his distinguished contemporary Benjamin H. Latrobe on the capitol designs. In Monticello, his house outside Charlottesville, the Pantheon was domesticized in the great tradition of residential pantheons which included chiswick and Palladio’s villa Rotunda (Tucker, 1990).
Monticello was like the primordial American home that sort not only freedom and stability but also respect from the European traditions; albeit with emphasis on comfort and effort saving devices that were both conventional and of a standard of their own (Howard, 2003). Artists and architects of America today look at Jefferson as the father of the American architecture. American architecture today does attribute the roots for their profession to the sage of Monticello. Jefferson never formally trained in architecture but he did studied the structures of Europe and read extensively on the great architects of Europe.
Possessed with a liking of the arts and a natural ability for design, Jefferson set out to the wilderness of Virginia to create his architectural master piece in a community he would establish as the ideal American village i.e. the University of Virginia. He believed the architecture was the heart of the American cause and so in his mind a building was not just a mere walled structure but a metaphor for the American ideology and the process of construction was equal the task of building a nation. The task of building a structure in America should therefore be an expression of the American desire to break cultural as well as political ties with Europe through architecture. This he believed would exemplify the fulfillment of the civic life of Americans and he sought to establish the standards of a national architecture both artistically and politically. Virginia was the ground in which Jefferson planned to plant the roots of his republic. Jefferson broad vision of a republican society encompassed governmental, cultural, educational and societal institutions and activities. In his views Virginias political, legal and educational system were be reformed and modeled into an ideal republican society as a model for America and Europe (Tucker, & Hendrickson, 1990).. Once independence was near, Jefferson wanted to help draft a new constitution for Virginia.
The establishment of a government better than that of the past was the whole object of the controversy at the time. He actively attempted to reform the Virginia’s laws relating to crime, inheritance, religion, education and the slave trade. Like many of his noble peers of the enlightened age. Jefferson was convinced that science and the scientific methods was the key to learning and education in the broadest sense. He promoted the study of history, botany, archaeology and architecture. His extensive library was the largest in the United States by 1815 true evidence that all subjects of learning fell within the purview of all learned men. The University of Virginia was to become the physical model of Jefferson’s cultural and educational ideals (Giordano, 2012).
In the design of the academic village he emphasized a democratic community of scholars and students that co-existed in a single village, which united the living and learning spaces in one undifferentiated area. In the plan, he organized the space around the open expanse of the lawn and surrounded it with student rooms and central domes which house faculty members and offered common rooms for the community and crowned the space with the Rotunda, which was his monument to classicism. The impact of his design as intended to represent Jefferson’s plan for American education was progressive, yet rooted in classical disciplines. Broad based and elective but still centralized and accessible; yet still reserved for the privileged elite’s (Howard, 2003). Although expressed through education Jefferson political beliefs resound in both the theory and the design of his university. In both the layout of the buildings on the lawn and in the jumble of architectural styles Jefferson continually evoked and confound the dictates of European architecture and merges with an architectural styles of the Italian, Greek , French and the Far East influences of the Chinese and Japan. All these were cast on American building materials and presented in an academic community.
To edge further away from the classics, some of the building materials such as the pavilion were made in Italy and imported as educational material while others e.g. pavilion one was manufactured in Charlottesville. Jefferson exerted styles from European traditions and reordered them according to his own tastes, expressing his wish to cut ties with Europe and developed a unique American identity. Hence the assemblage of styles present on the lawn serves to symbolize Jefferson’s own new world order both architecturally and intellectually. The Europeans artistic traditions were studied, borrowed, incorporated and the cast in American society according to American tastes and needs. Nonetheless Jefferson’s ideas were shamelessly original for the time and to symbolize at least in essence the intellectual, cultural and political ideals for the nation (Cogliano, 2008).
He contributed his architectural statement to federal buildings as well by assisting Pierre L’Enfant in the design and layout of the new federal city of Washington and designing the state capitol in Richmond. Jefferson believed that from architecture would flow education in taste, values and ideals and therefore constructed buildings that became ideas for America. The buildings remain a symbol of and show case for those ideas but work still goes on around them. It is more likely that Jefferson’s interest in architecture began with his enrollment at the college of William and Mary in 1760. At the time his first book on architecture was probably Giacomo Leonis translated version of four books of architecture by Andrea Palladio (Howard, 2003). This would become the first work of his vast collection of books on architecture of which the most significant were James Ibbs Bokk of architecture and the Rules for drawing orders. At the time of his birth no American college offered architectural training and formal training at this time were firmly rooted in the classics.
In his early years Jefferson learned from his father Peter Jefferson farming, surveying and horsemanship. At age nine he went to boarding a private school where he was doctrine as a classical scholar first under the tutelage of the reverend William Douglas then with the reverend James Maury. By the time he was ready to enter collage Jefferson was well versed in Greek, French, Latin Italian and Spanish. His architectural awareness was also heightened by his personal contact with enlightened men of his time. He attracted the attention of Dr. William small a young professor at William and Mary who taught him mathematics and introduced him to scientific thought. Through his association he came to know George Wythe considered as being the finest Greek and Latin scholar and a great teacher of law.
This association with these men and other distinguished Virginia gentlemen heightened his classical training and enlightened his approach and appreciation of the arts, wine, music, landscape gardens and science. He embarked on a law career after completion of his studies for five years with George Wythe and it is through this association that they had numerous discussions with Taliaferro on the subject matter of architecture. At the time Jefferson first entertained ideas of designing a home for himself at Monticello in 1767. There were a few architectural resources in America from which to select. Architecture and the architectural profession as we know it did not exist in the colonies. The designs for buildings were usually selected from handbooks. Jefferson in his early years adhered to this tradition. The initial design for Monticello was derived from books and it is why some historians have portrayed Thomas Jefferson as the gentle man architect and no more. Jefferson was admitted to the bar in 1767 and law placed emphasis on logic, precision and historical precedent a training which would be craftily applied in Jefferson’s efforts to devolve into the past in order to discover the universal truths of classical architecture (Tucker, & Hendrickson, 1990)...
Jefferson was a perfectionist who maintained an obsession with compiling, listing and observing. He continually strove to find the perfect solution. This ability to observe and record the often overlooked details would serve him well in his later architectural studies of existing buildings and measured drawings. From the very beginnings of his career Jefferson regarded books as the ultimate source of knowledge. In a letter to john Adams Jefferson wrote. It was through books that Jefferson first discovered the world of architecture. Architecture was a disciplined orderly world governed by laws and principles of a world that is tangible, measurable and of repeatable relationship. In this books Jefferson discovered what he considered to be the elements of architecture, the classical orders specifically within the four books of architecture.
He found this orders illustrated, proportioned and praised by Andrea Palladio the great architectural theorist of the Renaissance.

Architecture had an immediate appeal to Jefferson probing methodical nature. Jefferson took every advantage of every opportunity to study architecture through his books and travels to the north east. In 1776 he and John Adams travelled north stopping at Annapolis, Philadelphia and New York. He was impressed by the beautiful houses of Annapolis but the public buildings were of deplorable design according to him (Cogliano, 2008). The architectural surrounding of Virginia into which Thomas Jefferson was born did not inspire him and the earliest comments on architecture are found in his notes on the state of Virginia. When Jefferson first laid plans in designing his own home at Monticello, he had become a devoted Palladian. His later drawings are those of a highly skilled draftsman and his scaled drawings are of a quality not found among his 18th century American counterparts. The drawings supplemented with written documents identified his sources and provided instructions for his work men. The precursor for modern working drawings and

specifications.
His skillful draftsmanship provided him with the invaluable power to visualize and resolve the problems of spatial relationships in a way that would not possible by 18th century traditional methods.

This practices started by Jefferson is still used by American architects. Jefferson architecture was based upon his Republican ideas. His political attitudes led him in a search for a style, which would link the political independence of the new America with an appropriate architecture. He realized that that the legacy of all great empires was epitomized through their architectural monuments. Jefferson visionary search for this ideal led him to tour the south of France to study the ancient Roman ruins. Of particular was the ruin of the Maison Carree at Nimes, which he described as the most beautiful and precious morsel of architecture left to us by antiquity. This ruin influenced his design for the state capital of

Virginia.
As a result he never again saw architecture as a tool, which could solely be derived from books. As a consequence of Jefferson’s study of Roman Architecture there was a reversal in his reverence towards Palladio to which he was a devoted follower. His years in France made him to realize that the original inspiration for Palladio’s ideas came from ancient Rome. Jefferson studied the same sources and discovered his mentor’s source, Palladio’s source shifted from mentor to that of fellow classicist. This Palladio’s and all of Jefferson’s architectural books would serve as a reference guide to be consulted and not copied. It is all these that helped shape the ideals of Jefferson and the American course (Giordano, 2012). Jefferson believed in American nationalism that only a united American nation could bring into reality and defends the moral and political principles that he cherished as uniquely American and that he knew could also inspire the world. For Jefferson the enterprise of political thought began within the context of defining a new American nation, winning its independence and deciding the meaning and use of that independence. Thus Jefferson American nationalism became the fountain from which those ideas flowed other than being the testing ground for other ideas.
Jefferson hypothesized a free independent people who launched a project of creating an America polity to give that nation institutional shape. Turning to that people’s domestic life. Jefferson through art defined those who could take part in Americas democratic constitutional self-government by reference to the others whom he excluded especially African Americans. By moving into political opposition, Jefferson sought to realign the state or government with the American in the person of its people. Jefferson nationalism had limits, he did not favor a unitary state or a federal government armed with power to coerce the states into obedience of its laws but his position grew naturally from his belief in union held together by ties of sacred affection and interest rather than coercion (Tucker, & Hendrickson, 1990).