Monticello

View of Virginia, southwest from Monticello

Visited Monticello today, the home of American founding father Thomas Jefferson, near Charlottesville, Albemarle County, Virginia. I like best, about Monticello, the feeling of its being a big sandbox in which to experiment. Here Jefferson played with: food, agriculture, architecture, technology, business, lifestyle, family, and community.

I particularly enjoyed the small scale of the house. Most rooms are about a hundred square feet in size, the main floor containing eleven rooms. Reportedly, Jefferson lived in this home with up to thirty family members and received so many guests here that 28 folding chairs were arranged daily in the entrance hall.

Compare the economy of scale of this American founding father's country home, with that of those of his royal European counterparts, say, of the Palace of Versailles. Or heck, compare Monticello with today's American McMansion. The latter is about four thousand square feet, intended for one family, which today averages 2.59 people.

The house at Monticello

I don't much care, aesthetically speaking, for the exterior of the house at Monticello. I'm not much on the Palladian designs of Neoclassical architecture, and I particularly dislike them in the red brick of which they are so often built in the northeastern United States, especially in the vicinity of Washington, D. C.

However, interiors at Monticello are nice. I love all the windows, triple hung right down to the floors, letting beautiful vistas in from all directions. The tea room, an elongated octagon, is nicest, and there is one perfect octagon room, a bedroom, on the first floor as well. (See my related Honeycomb Home post.)