University of Virginia the Lawn: Thomas Jefferson (Architecture in Detail)

About this book

Thomas Jefferson was a revolutionary statesman lawyer ambassador farmer and third President of the United States. He was also a highly influential amateur architect. He contributed powerfully to the introduction of a new concept of classicism to his country based on Roman precedents. The Lawn Jeffersons campus design for the University of Virginia represents an entirely new approach to university group planning. The epitome of Jeffersons rational yet romantic classicism the campus demonstrates both his enthusiasm for Palladio and admiration for Rome which enjoyed honorific status as the birthplace of republican virtue and the seat of a mighty empire. A project dear to his heart both academically and architecturally Jeffersons academical village (his own phrase) purposefully exhibited a selected variety of Roman orders. Groups of houses with porticoes are linked by colonnades in a formal plan culminating in the great Pantheon-like Rotunda at the end of the oblong composition. Along with his own house at Monticello the University campus is recognized as Jeffersons greatest architectural achievement.