The Architecture of Thomas Jefferson

AR H 754 Fall 1995 R. G. Wilson; Campbell 230; Class meets Tuesdays, 3:30-6:30 PM. The Architecture of Thomas Jefferson

"The private buildings are very rarely constructed of stone or brick, much the greater portion being of scantling and boards, plaster with lime. It is impossible to divise things more ugly, uncomfortable, and happily more perishable. There are two or three plans, on one of which according to its size, most of the houses in the State are built. . . . The only public buildings worthy of mention are the capitol, the palace, the college, and the hospital for lunatics, all of them in Williamsburg, . . . . The capitol is a light and airy structure, with a portico in front of two orders, . . . . on the whole, it is the most pleasing piece of architecture we have. The palace is not handsome without, but it is spacious and commondious within,. . . . The college and hospital are rude, mis-shapen piles, which, but that they have roofs, would be taken for brick kilns." T. Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, from, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson ed. Albert E. Bergh and Andrew A. Lipscombe (Washington, D. C., 1903-05), vol. 2, 211.

"architecture is among the most important arts and it is desirable to introduce taste into an art which show [s?] so much," painting and sculpture are "too expensive for the state of wealth among us. It would be useless, therefore, and preposterous, for us to make ourselves connoisseurs in those arts. They are worth seeing, but not studying." Notes on objects of attention for an American," The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd 13, (1956), p. 269

"Architecture is my delight, and putting up and pulling down one of my favorite amusements." Statement attributed to Jefferson in, Margaret Bayard Smith, A Winter in Washington (New York: 1824) 2:261

Description

Thomas Jefferson's architecture is very highly regarded (as we all know), and yet exactly what is the nature of Jefferson's accomplishment and how it should be viewed causes problems. No book on American architecture can avoid noting Jefferson, so important does his architecture seem. Equally his role in other areas, politics, science, farming, literature, has the same quality. Not uncommon is Lewis Mumford's observation that Thomas Jefferson was "one of the last true figures of the Renaissance." He ranks as among the most intensely investigates individuals in American history, perhaps only Lincoln has had more written about him. Thomas Jefferson's considerable achievements would stand without his ever having designed a building, but alternatively, his architectural accomplishments would be of interest even if he had done nothing else--but of course he did a lot of things and they are all part of the picture.

Some issues of course:

To place Jefferson's architectural accomplishments into perspective.

Was Jefferson an architect? How does he relate to our present conception of the profession of architect? To the conception of the architect then?

What exactly did Jefferson design?

What were his design process(es)?

What were his architectural sources?

Did he exert influence and how?

Did his work have political meanings or symbolism?

When did interest in Jefferson's architecture arise?

Review the historiography on Jefferson and his architecture--What have scholars seen as important?

What did Jefferson actually say about architecture?

How does Jefferson's architectural activity relate to his other activities?

Class work: Course is limited to graduate students--maximum size 14. Class attendance is required. Each student will be expected to accomplish the assigned class reading on time, contribute to class discussion, write several small discussion papers (2 pages maximum, double-spaced, i.e.: 500 words), make a class report on an assigned topic, and research and write a major paper dealing with an aspect of Jefferson's architecture. There will be several field trips.

Books Assigned:

Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson(paperback) (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988 [1987])

On Reserve Fiske Kimball Library:

Fiske Kimball, Thomas Jefferson, Architect (1916)

Charles Brownell, Calder Loth, William Rasmussen, Richard Guy Wilson,The Making of Virginia Architecture (1992)

Richard Guy Wilson, ed., Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village: The Creation of an American Masterpiece (1993)

Frederick D. Nichols, Thomas Jefferson's Architectural Drawings (1st ed. 1961)

George Green Shackelford, Thomas Jefferson's Travels in Europe 1784-1789 (1995)

William B. O'Neal, Thomas Jefferson's Fine Arts Library (1976)

S. Allen Chambers, Jr., Popular Forest and Thomas Jefferson (1993)

Jack McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder (1988)

William Howard Adams, The Eye of Jefferson (1976)

William Howard Adams, Jefferson's Monticello (1984)

Susan Stein, The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello (1993)

Richard C. Cote, The Architectural Workmen of Thomas Jefferson (Ph. D. dissertation, Boston Univ.,1986)

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia , ed. Peden

Class Reports:

Each student will select one of the following topics and make an oral report to the class of about 20 minutes. For each report make a one page class handout--that contains relevant bibliography, and also as appropriate selective data. For your report you probably want slides--if so, get to work immediately and have them made--you need at least 2 weeks turn around time.

1. Design of the College of William & Mary

2. Builder's Dictionary (London, 1734)

3. James Gibbs, A Book of Architecture (1728)

4. Giacomo Leoni, The Architecture of A. Palladio in Four Books (1715, 1721, 1752*)

5. Halle aux Bleds, and Philibert Delorme, Nouvelles Inventions pour bien Bastir et a Petits Fraiz . . . (1576)

6. Antoine Babuty Desgodetz, Les Edifices Antiques de Rome. .. (1682/1779)

7. Desert de Retz.

8. Lord Burlington and Chiswick

9. Robert Morris, Select Architecture

10. Chambers, Sir William, Designs of Chinese Building, Furniture... (1757)

11. Stowe Gardens

12. Virginia Colony Capitol of 1749-56; and Independence Hall, Philadelphia

13. Charles-Louis Clerisseau,

14. Charles Errard and Freart de Chambray, Parallele de l'Architecture

15. Jefferson and l'Enfant

Course Outline

1. Sept. 5--Introduction, assignment of class reports (discussion of what to report on) discussion of field trips, etc.; Reading for next week: Kimball, Thomas Jefferson, Architect and Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason, ; and visit the Monticello Visitors Center Route 29 S. Short Paper--Define Kimball's methodology;

2. Sept. 12-- Discuss Kimball and Cunningham--and development of Jefferson scholarship especially regarding architecture; Readings next week: Read Rasmussen, in The Making of Virginia Architecture , pp.1-33; Jefferson, Notes on Virginia .

3. Sept. 19-- Jefferson and Virginia architecture--and TJ and practice of Architecture-- discuss agrarianism; Class reports: 1. College of William & Mary 2. Builder's Dictionary (London, 1734) 3. Gibbs, Book of Arch. 4. Leoni, G., the Arch. A. Palladio Next week: Read, Shackelford, chps. 1-3

4. Sept. 26--Jefferson in Europe--France; Class Reports: 5. Halle aux Bleds, and Philibert Delorme, Novvelles Inventions pour bien Bastir et a Petits Fraiz . . . (1576) 6. Antoine Babuty Desgodetz, Les Edifices Antiques de Rome. .. (1682/1779) 7. Desert de Retz; Reading for next week: Shakelford, Chp. 4, also Jeff.s notes on English trip

5. Oct. 3 Jefferson and England; Reports: 8 . Lord Burlington and Chiswick 10. Chambers, Sir William, Designs of Chinese Building, Furniture... 11. Stowe Gardens; Readings for next week: Mark R. Wenger, "Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia State Capitol," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 101 (Jan. 1993), pp. 77-102.

Fall Break

6. Oct. 17- Virginia State Capitol; Reports: 12. Virginia (colony) Capitol of 1749-56, and Independence Hall 13. Charles-Louis Clerisseau; Readings for Next week: McLaughlin, chps. 3,9; Isaac, "The First Monticello" in Onuf. Jeffersonian Legacies ,Short paper: compare approaches of Isaac and McLaughlin

7. Oct. 24 Monticello--- possible field trip; Reports: 9. Robert Morris, Select Architecture ; Reading next week: Dickson, "Jefferson as Art Collector" in Adams, Jefferson and the Arts , pp. 101-132.

8. Oct. 31-Halloween--Monticello--; Reading next week: Pam Scott, Temple of Liberty , chp. 1-2.

9. Nov. 7--TJ and Washington, D.C. Report: 15. Jefferson and l'Enfant; Reading next week: Chambers, Popular Forest , chps 5-9.

Nov. 11- field trip to Popular Forest;

10. Nov. 14-- Popular Forest;

11. Nov. 21--Univ. of Virginia; Report: 14. Charles Errard and Freart de Chambray, Parallele de l'Architecture

12. Nov. 28--Student paper reports 1. 2. 3. 4.

13. Dec. 5- Student paper reports 1. 2. 3. 4.

14. Final Student paper reports 1. 2. 3. 4.

Term papers--All students are expected to produce a term paper that deals with an aspect of this course. One does not necessarily have to confine oneself to just Jefferson but can deal with contemporaries and other issues that revolve back to him. Just make sure you make a connection.

Papers should be between 15-16 pages in length, have proper format as far as footnotes, bibliography, illustrations. Please give me two copies, I will return one.

Please decide on a topic early--come and see me and discuss it and sign up for a date.

The following are offered as a preliminary list, by no means complete--if you have ideas please discuss them with me.

New views, interpretations of TJ designs.

Motifs in TJ architecture, octagons, bays, domes,

Other Jefferson designs: 1. Barboursville 2. Farmington 3. Christ Church, Charlottesville 4. Edgemont 5. Court houses see others listed in Nichols

TJ and the Temple tradition--what did it mean? sources

Impact of TJ on others--look at Mills, look at other states and local architects, i.e.; Kentucky, Alabama, etc.

American parallels--early campus designs --public buildings

Early Virginia architects/builders contemp. with TJ Mills, Latrobe, Richard Taliaferro,

TJ and prisons--ideas of reform

TJ and art, collecting, changes over time

TJ and furnishings, look at forms, styles, placement

Monticello--the greater layout.

Jefferson's use of pattern books, specific sources; a close reading of several books and what elements in then Jefferson found appealing.

Jefferson and town plans; relation to cities, what he saw as most appropriate.

Jefferson's use of terminology, sources, possible meanings: i.e. "pavilions" "hotels"

TJ and gardens

TJ and orders, meanings of various orders, how he used them.

TJ and drawings, investigation of a set, or of how used.

TJ and building process--try and discover how buildings actually built.--sources of materials.

TJ workmen: Neilson, Dinsmore, others.

Selected Bibliography (The amount of writing on TJ is overwhelming, this list is only partial--a beginning guide)

Bibliography:

William B. O'Neal, ed., "An Intelligent Interest in Architecture, A Bibliography of Publications about Thomas Jefferson as an Architect, together with an Iconography of the Nineteenth-Century Prints of the University of Virginia," The American Association of Architectural Bibliographers, Papers , 6 (1969), v-131. -dated but important.

William B. O'Neal, Thomas Jefferson's Fine Arts Library (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976);

E. Millicent Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson 5 vols. (Washington, D. C.: Library of Congress, GPO, 1952-55).

Collections of TJ's writings (there are many smaller volumes, the following are the major collections):

The Works of Thomas Jefferson , Paul L. Ford, ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1892 and 1904), 10 vols., and 12 vols.

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson , ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert E. Bergh (Washington, D. C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903-05), 20 vols.

The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Julian P. Boyd, et al., eds. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950+)

Thomas Jefferson's Garden Book 1766-1824,Edwin M. Betts, ed.(Philadelphia, 1944, later editions)

Biographies:

Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., In pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson (paperback) (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988 [1987])

Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time 6 vols. (Boston, 1948-81) The standard--and great--study

Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (New York, 1970)-- excellent

Other studies:

Gilbert Chinard, Thomas Jefferson: Apostle of Americanism (Boston: Little-Brown, 1939);

Edward Dumbauld, Thomas Jefferson, American Tourist (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946).

Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 1982)-- probably the most influential book on Virginia

Maria Kimball, Jefferson: The Scene of Europe 1784-79 (New York: Coward-McCann, 1950)

Barbara McEwan, Thomas Jefferson: Farmer (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 19910

Edwin T. Martin, Thomas Jefferson: Scientist (New York: Collier Books, 1952)

Charles A. Miller, Jefferson and Nature: An Interpretation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988)

Peter Onuf,ed. Jefferson Legacies (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), has important essays on Monticello by Rhys Isaac, Lucia C. Stanton, "`Those Who Labor for my Happiness': Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves," and Paul Finkleman, "Jefferson and Slavery: `Treason Against the Hopes of the World'".

Merrill D. Petterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960).--important study, traces how Americans have viewed TJ

George Green Shackelford, Thomas Jefferson's Travels in Europe, 1784-1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995);

Architecture and the other arts:

William Howard Adams, ed. The Eye of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, D. C.: National Gallery of Art, 1976)

William Howard Adams, ed., Jefferson and the Arts: An Extended View (Washington, D. C.: National Gallery of Art, 1976), contains important essays such as: Paul Norton "Thomas Jefferson and the Planning of the National Capital,"

William Howard Adams, Jefferson's Monticello (New York: ca. 1984)

William L. Beiswanger, "The Temple in the Garden: Thomas Jefferson's Vision of the Monticello Landscape," Eighteenth Century Life , n.s. 8 (January 1983), 170-88.

Eleanor D. Berman, Thomas Jefferson Among the Arts (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947).

Charles Brownell, Calder Loth, William Rasmussen, Richard Guy Wilson, The Making of Virginia Architecture (Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992)

Cary Carson, Morman F. Barka, William M. Kelso, Gary Wheeler Stone, and Dell Upton, "Impermanent Architecture in the Southern American Colonies," Winterthur Portfolio 16 (Summer/Autumn, 1981), 135-78.

S. Allen Chambers, Jr., Popular Forest and Thomas Jefferson (1993)

Richard C. Cote, The Architectural Workmen of Thomas Jefferson (Ph. D. dissertation, Boston Univ, 1986)

Walter L. Creese, The Crowning of the American Landscape: Eight Great Spaces and their Buildings (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985) 9-42.

Alan Gowans, Images of American Living: Four Centuries of Architecture and Furniture as Cultural Expression (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1964) 243-253-- important--and probably wrong treatment of TJ as a mason.

H. M. Kallen, "The Arts and Thomas Jefferson," Ethics , 53 (July 1943), 269-283.

Fiske Kimball, Thomas Jefferson, Architect (Boston: Privately Printed, 1916, reprint edition, with new introduction by Frederick Doventon Nichols, New York: Da Capo Press, 1968), 89.

Fiske Kimball "Jefferson's Design for Two Kentucky Houses," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 9 (Oct. 1950) 14-16.

Clay Lancaster, "Jefferson's Architectural Indebtedness to Robert Morris," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 10 (March 1951), pp. 3-10.

Clay Lancaster, "Palladianism in the Bluegrass," Gazette des Beaux-Arts VI per, vol. XXV, (1944) 347-370.

K. Edward Lay, "Jefferson's Master Builders," University of Virginia Alumni News 80 (October 1991), 16-19.

Karl Lehmann, Thomas Jefferson: American Humanist (New York: Macmillan, 1947, reprint edition, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985).

Bryan Little, "Cambridge and the Campus: An English Antecedent for the Lawn of the University of Virginia," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 79 (April 1971), 190-201.

Carl L. Lounsbury, ed., An Illustrated Glossary of Early Southern Architecture and Landscape (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

Jack McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Building (198?)

Hugh Morrison, Early American Architecture (New York: 1952), 378.

Frederick Doveton Nichols, Thomas Jefferson's Architectural Drawings (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation and the University Press of Virginia, 1961, and later editions.

Frederick Doveton Nichols and Ralph E. Griswold, Thomas Jefferson Landscape Architect (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978);

James F. O'Gorman, The Perspective of Anglo-American Architecture exh. cat. (Philadelphia: The Athenaeum, 1995),9;

William B. O'Neal, Pictorial History of the University of Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1968);

William B. O'Neal, Jefferson's Buildings at the University of Virginia: The Rotunda (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1960).

Saul K. Padover, Thomas Jefferson and the National Capital: 1783-1818 (Washington, D. C., GPO, 1946), valuable compilation of documents.

Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Visitors to Monticello (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1989) Travelers and visitors accounts

William B. Pierson, The Colonial and the Neo-Classical Styles , vol. 1 in, American Buildings and Their Architects (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970)

John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), one of few to treat TJ and planning.

Howard C. Rice, Jr. Thomas Jefferson's Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).

Pamela Scott, Temple of Liberty: Building the Capitol for a New Nation (New York: Oxford, 1995)

Frank H. Sommer, III, "Thomas Jefferson's First Plan for a Virginia Building," in Papers on American Art , ed. John C. Milley (Maple Shade, N. J: Edinburgh Press, for the Friends of Independence National Historical Park, 1976)

Susan R. Stein, The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello (Abrams, 1993)

Robert Tavernor, Palladio and Palladianism (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991)

Paul V. Turner, Campus: An American Planning Tradition (New York: The Architectural History Foundation, 1984), 79-83.

Mark R. Wenger, "Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia State Capitol," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography , 101 (Jan. 1993), pp. 77-102.

Douglas L. Wilson, "Dating Jefferson's Early Architectural Drawings," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography , 101 (Jan. 1993), 53-76.

Richard Guy Wilson, ed., Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village: The Creation of an American Masterpiece (Charlottesville: Bayly Museum and University Press of Charlottesville, 1993)

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