Creating an American Residence

Monticello is the primordial American home—seeking stability but also freedom, respectful of European tradition but insistent on comfort and effort-saving devices, both conventional and one of a kind. By artfully molding and shaping his public image, Thomas Jefferson used Monticello’s architecture as a way of infusing art into the young country—transforming the simple Virginian house into an artfully crafted and elaborately designed monument. Residences as monuments influenced the art of residential architecture and its’ purposes. Jefferson used his agrarian ideals, classical architecture and the drawings of Andrea Palladio to create a complex that is an “essay in [residential] architecture.” This so-called essay has created the true American residence. And since America is the melting pot of cultures, Monticello is a melting pot of architecture influences—Classical, French, English, Italian and Palladian. These architecture influences show Thomas Jefferson’s eclectic mind and never ending quest to create the perfect American residence.