As a boy growing up on his family’s sprawling tobacco plantation, Thomas Jefferson was drawn to a particular hilltop where he played with his best friend and immersed himself in books and picturesque vistas. After inheriting several thousand acres of the property in Virginia’s Albemarle County, the future president transformed his childhood sanctuary into a grand estate that he christened Monticello—meaning “little mountain” in Italian. “I am as happy no where else and in no other society,” Jefferson wrote of his cherished retreat, “and all my wishes end, where I hope my days will end, at Monticello.”
Beyond a hilltop haven, Monticello also functioned as a living laboratory for Jefferson’s experiments in agriculture, horticulture, agronomy and science. The homestead was both a window into the curious mind of one of America’s foremost Enlightenment thinkers and a reflection of the polymath’s wide-ranging interests. For decades after Jefferson tasked those he enslaved with starting construction of the 5,000-acre working plantation in 1768, Monticello remained—much like its owner—an ever-evolving work in progress.
Jefferson Builds—and Rebuilds—His Iconic Home
“Architecture is my delight, and putting up and pulling down one of my favorite amusements,” Jefferson reportedly said. By that standard, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence gained decades of enjoyment from his constant re-imagining of the estate’s mansion, which took over 40 years to complete.
Lacking formal training, Jefferson absorbed his architectural knowledge from books. Inspired by 16th-century Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, Jefferson’s original design for Monticello, which he called his “essay in architecture,” did not resemble the iconic residence engraved on the back of the nickel. The relatively modest home featured eight rooms and a pair of double-storied columned porticoes.
After observing European architecture during his five years serving as a U.S. commissioner and minister to France, Jefferson returned from Paris in 1789 with a more ambitious vision for his home. “He fell in love with the grand neoclassical architecture he was exposed to in France and thought it worth replicating,” says Gardiner Hallock, senior vice president for preservation and operations at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
Starting in 1796, Jefferson oversaw the partial destruction of the main house and the construction of a dramatically expanded mansion around it. Influenced by the recently constructed Hôtel de Salm in Paris, a residence with which he admitted being “violently smitten,” Jefferson doubled the size of his home and added a central hallway, mezzanine bedroom floor and signature dome—the first of its kind on a private house in the United States. The use of innovations such as triple-sash windows and skylights gave the structure the appearance of being a single level. Largely completed in 1809, the 33-room “second Monticello” featured a pair of L-shaped terraces that concealed living spaces and operations such as a dairy, smokehouse and washhouse.
Jefferson would use his architectural experience at Monticello to later design the Virginia State Capitol and the main buildings and grounds of the University of Virginia.
Monticello Abounds with Jefferson’s Inventions
Jefferson applied his knowledge of science and technology to create mechanical contraptions throughout his home. Dumbwaiters concealed behind the dining room fireplace delivered bottles from the wine cellar. Hidden mechanisms under a threshold opened doors into the parlor.
Utilizing his mathematical acumen to problem-solve at Monticello, Jefferson developed a moldboard for a plow that turned the plantation’s soil more efficiently. To collect water from his mansion’s low-pitched roof, he engineered an innovative zig-zag pattern of ridges and valleys made from sheet iron.
Improving on ideas he encountered through his readings and travels, Jefferson designed innovations such as a wheel cipher that encoded messages by scrambling letters, a swivel chair with a writing arm and a folding ladder used to wind the entry hall clock and retrieve books. Sprinkled throughout Monticello were gadgets that testified to Jefferson’s restless mind, such as a revolving bookstand, a two-pen copying machine and an air pump that he used to perform scientific observations and experiments.
Jefferson Cultivates Foreign Fruits, Vegetables
An avid horticulturist, Jefferson used the vegetable garden, orchards and vineyards outside his residence to test whether crops that thrived in warm climates abroad could be suitable for Virginia’s temperate winters and hot, humid summers. The Founding Father, who professed to eating more vegetables than animal protein, considered his trials of imported species to be patriotic acts on par with his political achievements. “The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture,” Jefferson wrote.
Monticello’s 1,000-foot-long terraced vegetable garden sprouted with a global cornucopia of produce native to South and Central America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East along with Native American crops collected by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. “Jefferson’s Monticello garden was an Ellis Island of introduced economic plants,” wrote Peter J. Hatch, who served as Monticello’s director of gardens and grounds for 35 years, in “A Rich Spot of Earth”: Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden at Monticello.
The immigrant crops included French artichokes, Mexican peppers and Italian squash. Jefferson was among the earliest North American planters of crops such as tomatoes, peanuts, eggplant and lima beans that are now American staples. Below the vegetable garden, Jefferson’s eight-acre “Fruitery” featured vineyards, berry patches, cider apple trees and species rare at the time in America—French apricots and Spanish almonds.
Using his knowledge of agronomy, Jefferson was among the first American planters to employ crop rotations and fertilizers to replenish soil depleted by repeated plantings of tobacco and corn. For nearly 60 years, he kept minute records about his vegetables, fruit, plants and trees in his “Garden Book” and shared his knowledge and seeds with other planters.
Like many gardeners, Jefferson also experienced his share of failures. A connoisseur of European wines, he attempted to grow European cultivars of grapes. Disease and pests, however, plagued his two vineyards, which were unlikely to have produced grapes of sufficient quality to produce wine. And in a quest to lessen America’s dependence on foreign sugar, Jefferson planted a sugar maple grove, but attempts to tap them failed.
Jefferson’s Vision Depended on Slavery
None of the Founding Father’s experiments—let alone the existence of Monticello itself—would have been possible without the approximately 400 enslaved individuals Jefferson held in bondage at the plantation during his lifetime. “Slavery underpinned everything in Jefferson’s life,” Hallock says.
Slavery also propped up Jefferson’s light manufacturing endeavors such as a small textile workshop that produced clothes for those enslaved at Monticello and a largely unsuccessful tinsmithing enterprise. More lucrative was a nailery in which enslaved boys manufactured as many as 10,000 nails a day.
Ultimately, American democracy was the experiment that most consumed Jefferson over the course of his lifetime, and Hallock says Jefferson’s desire to enhance various aspects of life in the fledgling United States propelled his use of Monticello as a laboratory. “Much of what he does was at least partially motivated to introduce improvements to the country,” Hallock says. “Especially with regards to architecture, agriculture and science, Jefferson felt he could add something to the country he helped found to ensure its success.”
His wide-ranging interests and skills have long drawn admiration. "Someone once said that Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse and dance the minuet,” quipped President John F. Kennedy in 1962 to a room of Nobel Prize laureates. "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
