University of Virginia Library

V. Taste for Architecture

Jefferson was always interested in every department of the Fine Arts. While serving as Visitor of the College of William and Mary during his Governorship, he had been instrumental in adding a course of that character to the professorship of ethics; and in his scheme of education addressed to Peter Carr, in 1814, instruction was to be given in civil architecture, painting, sculpture, and the theory of music. He played on the violin with skill; had been a patron of Caracchi; and it was at his instance that Houdon was employed to model the full length statue of Washington and the bust of Lafayette. He was a sympathetic correspondent of Peale and Trumbull, and an active member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

But it was in architecture that he felt the most penetrating interest, and it was also in this art that he displayed an original talent almost comparable to the genius which he evinced in political science; indeed, it has been said of him by several critics of distinction that his influence in this more or less private province has been just

as notable as in the public province of either statesmanship or education. There was perhaps not an architect in the colonies when Monticello was planned, who possessed either his ability or his technical knowledge as a draftsman. His drawings, which began about 1769, have been pronounced to be unexampled in American history down to a much later period; and form, with those of the White House and the Capitol, the principal source of our knowledge of colonial architecture. In his autobiography, he makes an interesting reference to his "passion for architecture," a term exactly pertinent to his feeling for the art. Nowhere is this passion so gracefully yet so fervently expressed as in the playful letter to Comtesse de Tesse written from Nimes in 1787. "Here I am, Madam, gazing whole hours at the Maison Carrée like a lover at his mistress . . . . This is the second time I have been in love since I left Paris. The first was with a Diana at the Chateau de Sage Espanage in Beaujolais. This you will say was in rule to fall in love with a female beauty. But with a house 1 It is out of all precedent 1 No, Madam, it is not without a precedent in my own history. Whilst in Paris, I was violently smitten with the Hotel de Salm."

But it has been correctly said of Jefferson that he used his talent for architecture for other purposes besides the mere gratification of his sense of beauty. A sense of practical fitness too was reflected in all his designs, which ranged from the Capitol at Richmond and the temples and cloisters at the University of Virginia, to the jails of Cumberland and Nelson counties; and from the mansions of his friends at Bremo and Farmington to a chicken coop at Pantops, his outlying farm. What had nourished this taste in the beginning? He had visited Annapolis, Philadelphia and New York, in 1766, before the

cornerstone of Monticello had been laid, but there is no evidence that his observations, during his sojourn in those cities, directly shaped his original aptitude as designer, draftsman, and builder. Certainly there was little in the houses of his native colony that appealed to that spirit of innovation, as well in architecture as in politics and education, which animated him even in his youth. Westover, Gunston Hall, Carter's Creek, Brandon, Sabin Hall, Shirley, and the old Virginian manor-house of Stratford, the residence at Mt. Airy,-though some were inspired by classic models,-were not looked upon by him as worthy of praise, or even of incidental mention. In the Notes, he remarks on the homely construction of the dwelling houses in his native State. Few were built of brick; still fewer of stone; they were merely wooden cottages made of scantling and boards, with walls plastered with coarse lime. There were, in his opinion, but four structures deserving of notice, -the Palace, the College, the Capitol, and the Hospital at Williamsburg. Of these the College and the Hospital were held up as rude misshapen piles, "which might easily be mistaken for huge brick-kilns, were they not covered with roofs." The churches and courthouses had been designed with a blind eye to elegance; but this general want of architectural beauty was not surprising, he said, when it was recalled that there were no workmen in Virginia who possessed even a moderate degree of artistic judgment and mechanical skill. The existing styles of architecture were, in his judgment, "a malediction, not a blessing to the land," although it cost no more to build a beautiful structure than to build an ugly one of the same size.

Jefferson was the son of a planter, and had come into the world in a plain house, in a sparsely inhabited neighborhood, removed only by a few years from the secluded

days of the pioneer. There was nothing in that early environment to cultivate a taste for architecture. All his friends of his own age and social standing had been carefully drilled, like himself, in the ancient classics, but they, no more than himself, perhaps, had been led by that fact to acquire an insight into the art. There was no chair of fine arts at the College of William and Mary to increase any natural leaning which he may have had towards it; nor is there any proof that either Small, or Wythe, or Fauquier, who so deeply colored his character while a student there, encouraged him to pursue its study. Both in Williamsburg, and in the homes of such men as William Byrd of Westover, he found illustrated books relating to architecture, and it is possible that access to them for casual reading ripened what was at first merely an idle liking for the art. But the bare taste itself very probably sprang, not from any extrinsic influence, but from his own versatile, inquisitive, and cultured personality, which happened to find, in that particular, a congenial reflection in the plates of Palladio, a copy of which he looked upon even at the age of twenty-seven as the principal treasure of his library.

The first monument of his genius was the most beautiful; the house at Monticello was pronounced by a cultivated and travelled French nobleman to be the handsomest private residence in America. The environment at the time of its foundation offered such extraordinary obstacles to a builder that they would have discouraged any one who lacked the sanguine and resourceful temper of Jefferson. The nearest point from which he could obtain supplies of any sort was a small village; and even this afforded but a paucity of the rarer materials for construction; and no skilled mechanics at all. He created substitutes for the latter by training intelligent

negroes of his own to be cabinet-makers, carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, and bricklayers. Nails were manufactured in his own smithy by his youthful slaves; and his bricks were made of clay dug up out of beds on his own land. He applied his own tests to different woods to detect their relative fitness, strength, and durability, and chose only those varieties that stood these tests most successfully. The mortar used by him was obtained only after long and laborious experiments.

In those times, there were no professional architects at work in America. All building, even along the most ambitious lines, was in the hands of handicraftsmen who were guided by principles that had been brought in with the early emigration,-to be later on, perhaps, modified by novelties which had been introduced by the most recent comers. Not elegance, but utilitarian and economic purposes were alone kept in view. Jefferson, however, had beauty, utility, and economy all in his vision; and he was fully competent to serve as his own architect, whether design or practical specifications were demanded.

Monticello is the most remarkable of all his structures because it was the fruit of his taste and discernment before either had been broadened and chastened by a study, on the ground, of the splendid architectural monuments of Europe. It is true that the mansion was not finished until after his return from his foreign mission, but already in 1782, the Marquis de Chastellux, a visitor, was so impressed with its charm that he thought it deserving of a minute description in the general record of his travels. Mr. Jefferson, he said, was the first American who had consulted the fine arts to find out how to shelter himself best from the weather. The house was begun in 1769, and completed in 1801, and during that long interval, the original design was modified in one important

particular only; which, however, cannot be hunted down to any suggestion which came to him abroad. It was to Greek and Roman concepts that he turned when he first framed that design; and to those concepts he continued loyal to the end. He passed by the models then standing in Virginia and in New England, which he might have used, and took his cue from Palladio, who had drafted the best existing representations of the surviving monuments of ancient times. But in his drawings of private houses, that architect had been forced to rely on the descriptions of certain Roman predecessors. It is an interesting fact that the country homes of the Venetian merchants, his principal patrons, called for at least one detail which was common to the country homes of the Virginian planters: both sets of estates, being productive, required a grouping of service quarters alongside the owners' mansions. It was Palladio who solved this problem by clothing the .utilitarian outbuildings with a decorative garb of columns at the very time that he subordinated them to the main building.

This great master had influenced the grouping of many planters' residences in Virginia, previous to Monticello, through the style of architecture known by his name, which had been transmitted from England to colonial builders; but there was no such example of his work there, even in an extremely modified form, as was presented later in the design and structure of Jefferson's mansion. As a matter of fact, there was no exact representation of that mansion to be found in the plates of either Palladio, or his English disciple, Gibbs; it was, in reality, a reversion to the owner's early studies because it fulfilled the purpose he had in view better than any specific plan already in shape for immediate use in the drawings of his favorite architect, for whom he was

afterwards to show his preference in the buildings of the University of Virginia.[2] During his sojourn at home, after his temporary retirement in 1793, he derived a very kindly satisfaction from drafting plans for new residences for his wealthy friends in Virginia, or in suggesting alterations for the improvement of those already standing. His advice and services were eagerly and gratefully received, and in such houses as Bremo and Farmington, already referred to, the impression of his taste and skill remains to this day to delight the visitor. He was consulted by Benjamin Harrison, of Brandon, and by James Madison, of Montpelier, and on application, supplied designs for the projected courthouses for Buckingham and Botetourt counties, and for additions to the Episcopal church in Charlottesville.

It was always the public building that aroused the most enthusiasm in him as an architect. As early as 1776, he brought in a bill in the General Assembly which provided that, when the State Government should be removed to Richmond, six entire squares of ground should be reserved there as sites for the Capitol, a great Ball of Justice, the offices of the Executive Board, and the additional structures intended for other public purposes. This combination of squares, broad streets, and noble buildings was expected by him to serve as an imposing monument that would always hold up before the eyes of the Virginian people the most splendid examples of the architectural art. Such a scheme was altogether unexampled in American history up to that date; and not until recent years has it been carried out by any foreign or domestic community to the degree projected in the mind of Jefferson.

He was very solicitous, while in France, to give all the assistance then in his power to improve the taste of his countrymen as reflected in their public buildings; his plan for doing this was to send over the drawing of .some noble model whenever such an edifice was to be erected; and in order to inform himself of the wide range of models of that kind in European countries, he was not content to study those in Paris alone, but travelled through England, Holland, Italy, and Southern France on a tour of inspection. In the course of these journeys, he gathered up a large collection of books on architecture, which further increased the weight of his advice. Among the notable structures that are to be credited to him is the Capitol at Richmond, which, at his suggestion, was built along the lines of the Maison Carrée at Nimes, one of the most "beautiful morsels" of architecture, in his opinion, if not the "most precious," surviving from a remote antiquity. The Capitol is said to be the first direct imitation of a classical edifice to be found in the United States; and while it did not conform exactly to the model sent over by him, it has, nevertheless, always remained a permanent memorial to the purity of his taste.

There was now perceptible, in different parts of the young Republic, a tendency to erect public buildings of large dimensions. Naturally, this was most obvious in the plans for the national capitol at Washington. Jefferson was, at this time, Secretary of State, and the location of the new District of Columbia fell within the jurisdiction of that department. A trace of his early scheme for the squares and public buildings in Richmond is to be detected . in his suggestion as to the use to be made of the area of land set apart for the Capitol, the President's House, and the Town Hall. The plan

chosen by L'Enfant, to whom Washington submitted Jefferson's plan, was the Jefferson plan modified; and it was further altered by Washington also. Jefferson's advice was afterwards sought by the same great official as to the style of architecture to be adopted for the projected city, and his reply had an important influence on its character as finally determined upon. He thought of sending on a design which he had drawn for the President's House; but he must have decided it to be impracticable, either because it was too expensive, or pitched on too large a scale. The model which he had proposed for the Governor's House at Richmond failed of success in the competition. His indirect recommendation of the temple form for the Capitol at Washington was not received with favor, for this style also was decided to be too costly and too incommodious.

He was able to make his predilections more distinctly felt after he assumed the Presidency, since the Capitol, the White House, and the Department buildings were still unfinished. He chose as architect a man who was even more of an admirer of classic models than himself, for Mr. Latrobe favored a return, not simply to classicism in general, but to the original Greek form of it. Jefferson, through this appointment, not only stamped his own taste on the Capitol and the White House as far as possible in their incomplete state, but in the public edifices afterwards built in the other cities of the Union, he was able to carry out his architectural preference without obstruction or interference. His aim now, as formerly, was to make the architecture of the classic era the characteristic architecture of America; and in this ambition, which he pursued consistently, he, fortunately for his own success, had the support of a public opinion which he himself had done so much to confirm and expand.

This, the distinctive bent of his genius as designer and builder, found perhaps its most complete expression in the edifices of the University of Virginia; and their origin cannot be understood without a full knowledge of their author's previous achievements as an architect.