The 250th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth—April 13—is coinciding with a major effort to restore Poplar Forest, as well as with the conclusion of a two-year archaeological and architectural examination of the house. The first construction phase of the restoration effort will span four to five years and require some $5.5 million.
Thomas Jefferson solved that problem at Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia, by escaping to Poplar Forest, a second-home retreat he built 90 miles away, on a high knoll in rural Bedford County near Lynchburg. The 4,891 acres were called Poplar Forest long before it came to Jefferson through his wife, Martha, at the death of her father, John Wayles. A few huge poplar trees still stand in the yard. Experts date a poplar stump to the 1740s.
Octagonal shapes fascinated Jefferson. He designed his refuge, America's first octagonal residence, as a country villa in the classical Palladian style he introduced from Europe. In 1806, during his second presidential term, he came from Washington to help masons lay out the foundation. Inside and out, 12-inch-thick walls were of bricks made on the plantation. Specially designed curved bricks formed the solid, round portico columns. Three years later Jefferson could use Poplar Forest as a getaway, although he made changes for the next 17 years. "Putting up and pulling down'' was one of his favorite amusements, he said.
In contrast to the pie-shaped rooms of many mid-1800s octagonal houses that followed Poplar Forest, Jefferson arranged a 20 x 20-foot cube at the center surrounded by four equal rectangular rooms. Sunlight flooded the central dining room through an 18 x 3-foot skylight. (Roof alterations later made it the darkest room in the house.)
At the back, the one-floor house became two floors. Fifty slaves scooped out a 200-foot-long, 90-foot-wide terrace. Jefferson paid extra for this work beyond their regular duties. The mounds of removed dirt, landscaped with willows and aspens, obscured brick octagonal privies from house view. Today's visitor can look inside a privy to see original intricate curved roof trusses as detailed, creative and unusual as everything else Jefferson conceived.
Jefferson had designed a country villa on an integrated, formal, geometric landscape as a second home for himself and occasional guests. Altered by fires and several owners, the house gradually underwent a metamorphosis from an 18th-century pleasure villa to a 19th-century practical family farmhouse.
For almost 200 years Jefferson's Poplar Forest hideaway remained little known outside the area. In 1983, a group of historically mindful local individuals decided the then-unoccupied, endangered dwelling must be preserved. After all, it was the retreat of America's third president, an extraordinary man who wrote the Declaration of Independence based on his vision of an ideal democracy. Those who founded non-profit "Corporation for Jefferson's Poplar Forest" have a vision, too: They see Poplar Forest as much a national treasure as Monticello and Mount Vernon.
Initially, the corporation bought the house and enough acreage to protect it from nearby development. Additional land acquisitions have brought the total to 414 acres at the heart of Jefferson's plantation. In 1991, several generous gifts helped pay off the property debts. Says corporation president Douglas Cruickshanks, Jr., "It is time to look forward at what remains to be done, and to take action to assure that Poplar Forest is restored to its Jefferson-era appearance and preserved for future generations ... We owe it to Thomas Jefferson; we owe it to ourselves."
It is not often that visitors see restoration-in-progress on a historic property.
Visitors look through the glass wall of a remodeled barn into a working archaeology lab to see displayed artifacts. Skilled hands have unearthed, cleaned and numbered more than 70,000 items. They range from buttons to an 1853 three-cent coin, from a padlock to a small stove grate. More than 13,000 people from all 50 states and 20 foreign countries came in 1992. Once there, they are hooked. Many return, like sidewalk superintendents, to check on the progress.
An architectural historian took on the monumental task of going about the country to look at 40,000 preserved documents written by Jefferson searching for references to Poplar Forest. So far, about 1,500 are germane. Each artifact, each written allusion, in some measure adds to knowledge about the private Thomas Jefferson and his plantation lifestyle.
It will take about $5.5 million to stabilize, restore and furnish the house, then ensure future maintenance. And that's just the first phase. Nationwide fundraising is ongoing. Gifts have come from individuals, businesses, corporations, foundations and trusts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Commonwealth of Virginia. Continued donor support is critical for carrying forward the painstaking labor of restoration. No hard date is set for completion of this phase, though expectations are that the project will take four or five years. Work progresses as money comes in.
“The earth belongs always to the living generation,” he once said.
Through his studies and travels abroad, Jefferson had collected numerous ideas of style, form and function, which he incorporated into Poplar Forest's design. While he felt obligated to follow the more strict orders of architecture on public buildings he designed, Jefferson was free to indulge his "fancies" on this, his most personal creation.
The estate was sold two years after Jefferson's death, and by 1984, when a group of concerned Lynchburg citizens purchased the property and saved it from a bleak future, the house had undergone so many alterations that Jefferson himself would not have recognized it.
An 1845 fire, and the remodeling that followed, had transformed the unique Palladian masterpiece into a practical Virginia farmhouse. Gone was the most arresting feature in Jefferson's octagonal dwelling—a 20-foot cubical central room that was illuminated by an enormous skylight. The skylight had been removed and the ceiling lowered eight feet, in order to add an attic level. Window openings throughout the house were lowered, altered or eliminated; doorways and fireplaces were bricked up; and walls were moved.
These, plus numerous other renovations, dramatically affected the dwelling's exterior. The shape and pitch of the roof was altered, dormers were added, and the balustrade eliminated. Changes were also made to the porticos, columns and doorways. The house that stood in 1984 retained little of Jefferson's genius.
The nonprofit Corporation for Jefferson's Poplar Forest took on the monumental task of restoring this National Landmark to its original design.
A major milestone was reached in the summer of 1998 with the completion of the exterior restoration, an achievement that took five years. Using Jefferson's notes and sketches, plus the evidence gathered through physical examination; historians, architects and craftsmen have painstakingly restored the dwelling, removing all post-Jefferson components and reconstructing with authentic period-construction methods and materials.
The next five-year phase, which will restore the interior and reconstruct a service wing, is now under way. Work should also begin on the reconstruction of Jefferson's landscaping, based on his original design and evidence being uncovered by archeologists.
This is truly an inspiring work in progress. How fortunate it is that we can witness the astounding metamorphosis as it occurs.
When our third president started taking furloughs to Poplar Forest in 1809, bare walls and brick noggin (second quality bricks) between structural timbers greeted him. His letters indicate sporadic construction activity. No one knew why until 1993, when masons started following his work orders.
"If we hadn't tried to build the same way, we would have missed the opportunity to learn more by not having all the answers," says Travis McDonald. He's the director of architectural restoration at the octagonal hideaway 75 miles southwest of Monticello.
"It gives people a chance to see Jefferson's construction process," he explains. "It's a time travel thing. You see it. You smell it. The stages are important to know. Jefferson lived with the brick walls for five years."
Why did he fill the space between studs on the interior walls with noggin?
"Fire protection," answers McDonald. "Some may do it for insulation and soundproofing."
Richard Byrne, an architectural conservator consultant in Staunton Virginia, says the solid walls are cooler in summer. They also deter small wild creatures trying to sneak into the house.
"It was a common way of building in Europe, all over the world," says Byrne. "They used it a lot in blacksmith shops, other places with fire hazards."
He explains that bricks made the old way—stacked and fired in a brick kiln—didn't all finish the same. Those in the center got harder and were suitable for the face of buildings. Bricks on the outer sides of the stack, samuels, were too soft to use structurally. They often became noggin between timbers.
When restorers couldn't locate the original source of sand Mr. Jefferson used, they analyzed samples and matched them as closely as possible. They discovered that modern lime made from limestone fired in big kilns with modern fuels gets so hot it loses beneficial characteristics of lime in the old plaster.
"Old lime is self-healing," says McDonald. "If a crack develops, water can leach the lime and fill the crack. Some say it never stops curing. It reacts to the environment and is chemically different. Twentieth century plaster is gypsum, not lime, and very different."
They imported the help of a Scottish master plasterer to teach restorers the basics of lime plastering.
"They never stopped doing it there," explains McDonald. "It takes real knowledge to know when to put on each layer. It can't be too wet or too dry. You only learn those things by doing it."
"Weather has tremendous power," says Matthew Lohmeyer. He scrutinizes the damp brown coat on a wall in Poplar Forest's parlor and flings water on it with a stiff brush. His background is in architecture and engineering, but restoration is his passion.
"What works one day doesn't necessarily work the next," he says. A rainy or dry spell changes the curing process. Mr. Jefferson's instructions explicitly specify that workmen stop six weeks before the first frost.
While Lohmeyer talks, fine cracks surface in the brown coat. He smooths them with a wooden float and explains, "It can separate from the coat underneath, the scratch coat. The finish coat, made with fine white silica sand, is next."
Lime mortar might take two months to cure, but can be so hard you can't stick a nail in it after two weeks. Like the original builders, skilled craftsmen restoring Poplar Forest make some of the decisions.
Jefferson's notes contain terms no longer in use today—things like "richer look" and "neat manner." These were standards of the day and as clear as "exterior grade AC plywood" is today.
"There's is a certain quality to every building," Lohmeyer says. "Here we are trying to do it as they did, not better."
--Thomas Jefferson
After his death, "Mr. Jefferson" left the house to his grandson, Francis Eppes, who put an ad in the local newspaper, sold it to neighbor William Cobbs and moved to Florida. Was he ungrateful? Did he catch a glimpse of granddaddy's debt collectors circling? Did he want a change of pace or adventure?
"Think about Florida in 1828," suggests Travis McDonald, director of architectural restoration at Poplar Forest. "Florida was the wild South!"
Subsequent owners made dramatic changes. Who would dare redesign the personal retreat engineered and built by the world's most famous amateur architect?
Again, fate and economics tangle with personal preferences. In 1845 a great fire burned almost every part of the house that could burn. The basic shell, thanks to the brick walls inside and out, stood. Cobbs, who managed to save most of the furniture in the house, rebuilt to suit his fancy.
Mr. Jefferson's Roman Revival balustrade burned along with the roof. Cobbs replaced it with a Greek Revival style, trendy in the 1840s. He did not rebuild the portico pediments, but added dormers. He severed a large skylight from the central 20-foot cubical dining room by stacking a second floor between them. He blocked doorways and fireplaces, removed some windows, lowered others and replaced the solid double-door entrance with a single door and glass sides.
Mr. Jefferson's uncommon villa became a more common farmhouse.
Cobbs' daughter Emily married William Hutter and they inherited it. They also founded the family that occupied Poplar Forest until 1946. That's when it became a dairy under the ownership of Lynchburg, Virginia, attorney James Watts, Jr., who returned some windows and a few other original features to the structure.
Finally in 1980, someone hoping to spark its restoration, James Johnson, bought it. Four years later he sold it to a group of local citizens that founded the non-profit Cooperation for Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest.
It's not uncommon for the new owner of an old farmhouse to cut a hole in a wall and jump back when wood shavings pour out. Shavings and soft brick noggin, waste materials from the construction process, frequently served as insulation. (By the way, rock wool comes from basalt rock and limestone, not sheep.)
A person expecting to drill through rough-cut 2x4' vertical studs may encounter 6x6' timbers mortised and pinned on a four-foot grid and discover two of them stacked between the first and second floors. Try to put an electrical wire though that!
Thomas Jefferson's octagonal design of Poplar Forest was unusual for its day. The wood framing filled with brick noggin was not.
Two similar structures sit a short distance apart on narrow winding Va. 678 between McDowell and Williamsville. They're about 65 miles northwest of Poplar Forest by air, further by land.
The classic ell-shaped brick structures have identical brick soffits and six over nine windowpanes. They look so similar that a casual observer may assume the same builder did them at the same time. Records indicate otherwise.
A. C. Powers, owner of the more modest one, points out that the date etched into the brickwork is 1811. That's the same time Jefferson constructed Poplar Forest. His grandparents told him the clay for the bricks came from the field in front of the house.
The other home, the Mcclung house, only dates to 1844, according to Frances McClung Buchanan. She was born in 1921 and her grandfather William McClung built it.
Today's owners didn't know the walls were frame and packed with brick noggin until a local contractor who worked on both houses discovered it. The contractor, Jack Beverage, took the noggin out of the walls in the McClung house and put in modern insulation. He suggests hiring an architect before making major changes in old homes, and mentions how expensive it is to tear out and put things back: "Often you can build a new one for what it takes to remodel."
Rubble houses covered with stucco hide common rocks in the framing. The construction style dates to medieval times, but persisted in the Blue Ridge area until the early 20th century. Builders used clay or mud to hold grapefruit-sized rocks inside timber-frame walls. Even if a person knows rocks fill the walls, they can still find surprises.
John Simmons encountered one while pecking at dusty mud and lime chunks between the rocks of a rubble house in Blue Grass, Virginia. He suddenly saw daylight and discovered there was no timber-frame. Only thin boards incapable of supporting the house held the rocks in place. The plaster inside hung directly on the rocks, not lath. Stabilizing the stucco outside and plaster inside became a major priority. Without them, there was nothing to hold the rocks in place.
"Every building has a life expectancy," says Simmons. "People restore to nurture history and for the love of old things."