Architecture, Ambition and Americans

1964

Storage NA705 AJ822 1964

New York: Free Press of Glencoe

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), third president of the United States and talented amateur architect, designed and built many buildings in neoclassical style. Jefferson had an extensive knowledge of and reverence for the classical world and was greatly influenced by the work of Italian architect, Andrea Palladio (1508-80) whose work was, in turn, influenced by the ancient Romans. Dominated by domes, colonnaded porticoes and pediments, Jeffersonian architecture is visible in Jefferson’s own home, Monticello and the Rotunda building at the University of Virginia, both in Charlottesville, Virginia. This neoclassical type of architecture was thought to reflect and reinforce the link between the ideologies and values of the republic of America and that of ancient Rome.