POPLAR FOREST

'Poplar Forest', was Thomas Jefferson's plantation and plantation house near Lynchburg, Virginia, which he treated as a private retreat and upon which he lavished attention from 1806 until his death 20 years later. "It is the most valuable of my possessions," Jefferson once wrote a correspondent.

Contents

History

Jefferson's "Poplar Forest"

"Poplar Forest" after Jefferson

References

See also

External links

History

Jefferson's "Poplar Forest"

While well known as the architect of such buildings as Monticello, the University of Virginia, and the Virginia State Capitol, Jefferson built the more remote and lesser-known Poplar Forest as a place to escape the hordes of visitors at Monticello and seek the "solitude of a hermit."
Jefferson inherited the estate of 4,800 acres (19 km²) in 1773 from his father-in-law, John Wayles. He supervised the laying of the foundations for a new octagonal house in 1806, while still President of the United States. The Octagon house, built in accordance with Palladian principles, includes a central cube room, 20 feet on a side, porticos to the north and south, and a service wing to the east.

"Poplar Forest" after Jefferson

The house underwent many alterations over the years, and its area was incrementally reduced to just 50 acres in part surrounded by suburban subdivisions. Since 1986, the house has been undergoing several phases of restoration to return it to the state it was in when Jefferson lived there. Five hundred acres of the original plantation has been bought back, to provide a landscape easement for the house. Archaeology has been under way to establish parameters for restoring the landscape setting of the house. The service wing, demolished in 1840, is being rebuilt.
Poplar Forest was featured in Bob Vila's A&E Network production, ''Guide to Historic Homes of America,''^[1] during its complete restoration.

References

1. "Guide to Historic Homes of America." Bob Vila

See also

★ Jeffersonian architecture

External links

★ "Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest", website of the Corporation for Jefferson's Poplar Forest

★ Thomas Jefferson's architecture