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Architectural Drawing - Monticello West Elevation Final Version - Robert Mills
11x17 INCHES: Unmatted, never framed or displayed. Image area is in very good frameable vintage condition.
No.14 Monticello: West Elevation, Final Version (drawn by Robert Mills: sec 154)
Monticello was the primary plantation of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, who began designing Monticello after inheriting land from his father at age 26. Located just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, in the Piedmont region, the plantation was originally 5,000 acres (20 km2). Due to its architectural and historic significance, the property has been designated a National Historic Landmark. In 1987, Monticello and the nearby University of Virginia, also designed by Jefferson, were together designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The current nickel, a United States coin, features a depiction of Monticello on its reverse side.
Jefferson designed the main house using neoclassical design principles described by Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio and reworking the design through much of his presidency to include design elements popular in late 18th-century Europe and integrating numerous ideas of his own. Situated on the summit of an 850-foot (260 m)-high peak in the Southwest Mountains south of the Rivanna Gap, the name Monticello derives from Italian meaning "little mountain". Along a prominent lane adjacent to the house, Mulberry Row, the plantation came to include numerous outbuildings for specialized functions, e.g., a nailery; quarters for enslaved Africans who worked in the home; gardens for flowers, produce, and Jefferson's experiments in plant breeding—along with tobacco fields and mixed crops. Cabins for enslaved Africans who worked in the fields were farther from the mansion, out of Jefferson's sight both literally and figuratively.
At Jefferson's direction, he was buried on the grounds, in an area now designated as the Monticello Cemetery. The cemetery is owned by the Monticello Association, a society of his descendants through Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. After Jefferson's death, his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph sold the property. In 1834, it was bought by Uriah P. Levy, a commodore in the U.S. Navy, who admired Jefferson and spent his own money to preserve the property. His nephew Jefferson Monroe Levy took over the property in 1879; he also invested considerable money to restore and preserve it. In 1923, Monroe Levy sold it to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF), which operates it as a house museum and educational institution.
Robert Mills (1781–1855), architect, was a native of Charleston, South Carolina. He studied successively under James Hoban, the designer of the President’s House in Washington, D.C.; under TJ, with whom Mills practiced his craft by making elevated drawings of Monticello in 1803; and under Benjamin Henry Latrobe, for whom Mills was a draftsman and clerk, 1803–08. In the latter year he established his own office in Philadelphia, which he maintained until 1817. Mills designed or oversaw numerous public buildings and engineering works in the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia. His efforts included churches, commemorative structures, hospitals, prisons, and schools, as well as the renovation of the United States Capitol and creation of monuments to George Washington in both Baltimore and the District of Columbia, with the latter completed decades after Mills’s death. In 1851 Mills designed an annex to TJ’s Rotunda at the University of Virginia. Despite his efforts to harmonize it with the existing structure, the annex was unpopular and not rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1895 (ANB; DAB; R. Windsor Liscombe, Altogether American: Robert Mills, Architect and Engineer, 1781–1855 [1994]; John Morrill Bryan, ed. Robert Mills, Architect [1989];Lay, Architecture, 15, 284–5).
The Society of Artists of the United States unanimously conferred honorary membership on TJ on 11 Dec. 1811 and elected him president on 2 Jan. 1812 (Thomas Sully to TJ, 22 Dec. 1811, 6 Jan. 1812). In the Recommendatory Letter TJ addressed to Mills on 23 June 1808 (DLC), he praised the quality of his architectural training and drawings and authorized him to present the letter to prospective employers in Philadelphia. In 1806 TJ introduced Mills to Gen John Smith of V as a liberally educated and worthy young man (TJ to Smith, 9 Oct. 1806 [MoSHi: TJC-BC]).
