Because it’s Presidents Day, we’ve reached back into the Architects + Artisans archives for a reprieve of a post on the work of one of Virginia’s native sons – and our third president. A revolutionary, a writer, and an amateur architect, Thomas Jefferson spent a lifetime shaping this nation’s destiny. He was flawed, to be sure, but his words and his buildings still resonate soundly. Here we have a post from 2010 on Poplar Forest, his rural Palladian retreat:
Unfinished during his lifetime and not yet fully restored, the rural villa Thomas Jefferson called Poplar Forest still may be his most perfect architectural work – a symbol of the balance he sought between man and nature.
He worked on it for only 14 years (compared to Monticello’s 40), and its condition today, thoughtfully and painstakingly restored by a team of preservationists, resembles almost precisely the raw structure he knew early in its construction.
“When he lived here during its first five years, the walls were bare brick just like they are now,” says Travis McDonald, director of architectural restoration at Poplar Forest. “But the bare brick is very powerful. There’s something there that connects – an intimacy from seeing every little piece. You can really feel Jefferson at Poplar Forest.”
The octagonal-shaped house remains about one-quarter unfinished. “We went back and forth about how much to do, and finally arrived at leaving two rooms undone,” he says.
It’s a Palladian villa that ignores 18th-century British re-interpretations of the Italian master’s work, while paying tribute to the eight-sided Roman Tower of the Winds in Athens. “There’s a big dose of French modernism too,” he says. “I try to get people to think of it as radical modernism for the early 19th century.”
Jefferson connected his second home to the landscape and working farm on 5,000 acres outside Lynchburg, Va. Poplar Forest was a two-day journey from the relative urbanity of Charlottesville and a respite from the never-ending flow of visitors at Monticello. “The idea of the villa retreat goes back beyond Palladio to the Romans,” he says.
Three principal artisans were responsible for its construction. Hugh Chisolm laid the brick, John Perry was the framing carpenter, and John Hemings, a slave and brother to Sally Hemings, was the home’s master joiner. Hemings was paid a salary, headed a crew of carpenters, and communicated by written letter when Jefferson was at Monticello. “Jefferson relied on him to do the best work at the house,” he says. “They wrote back and forth in this kind of shorthand that’s very rare.”
Inside, the architect’s choice of entablature reveals his personal tastes for this very private home. A frieze at the top of the walls of the dining room features two alternating symbols: the face of Apollo, Roman god of the sun and the arts, and an ox skull, which is found also at Monticello. It can be traced back to the Roman temple of Fortuna Virilis (Manly Fortune) – known to the Romans as the Temple of Portunus, the god who watched over barges of cattle shipped into the city.
Poplar Forest receives about 30,000 visitors a year, many of them afficionados from abroad. “I consider them true pilgrims,” McDonald says. “They don’t come accidentally or easily. They make a big effort, and I hope it all pays off for them when they get here.”
The restoration of the main structure is ongoing and will unfold over the years. There’s more to do after that. “We may finish the interior, but there are still the outbuildings and the landscape,” he says.
It is a must-see for any classicist.
For more on Poplar Forest, go here.
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