Past progress: Monticello gets upgrades

By Brian McNeill, Media General News Service
Published: July 5, 2008

This is the third in a three-part series on the area’s presidential estates.
CHARLOTTESVILLE — A $55 million effort to transform the site of Thomas Jefferson’s historic home, Monticello, is on the verge of completion.
As part of the project, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation — which owns and operates Monticello — is constructing a 42,000-square-foot visitor center complex that will include a ticket pavilion, theater, three classrooms, a hands-on discovery room for children, exhibition galleries, a museum shop, a café and more.
The environmentally friendly facility, under construction at the site of Monticello’s shuttle station and ticket office, will open in November. A grand opening ceremony is slated for April.
Officially called the Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center and Smith History Center, the new complex will consolidate several of the foundation’s existing facilities. The longtime mountaintop gift shop will be relocated to the new campus in October. The site’s visitor center on Route 20 has been shuttered and its principle exhibition on “Thomas Jefferson at Monticello” — in place since 1986 — is being disassembled and moved to the new center.
While it is an ambitious undertaking, the visitor center and education facility project is only one piece of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s sweeping plans to transform Monticello.
“It’s a new day at Monticello,” said Alice W. Handy, chairwoman of the foundation’s Board of Trustees.
Following completion of its current construction project, the foundation intends to demolish the gift shop and office building that were built adjacent to Monticello on the mountaintop in the 1950s. With these buildings gone, the foundation would be able to expand the scope of the property’s mountainside gardens.
Employees, including the foundation’s president, who currently work in the mountaintop office building would move to a planned “administrative campus” at the next-door Kenwood property, which Monticello leases from the University of Virginia.
“Our biggest objective is to get the 20th century off the mountaintop and bring the 18th century back,” said Daniel P. Jordan, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
The mission of the foundation is to preserve the home and ideas of Jefferson, the nation’s third president, author of the Declaration of Independence and founder of U.Va.
By restoring Monticello to its condition in Jefferson’s days, the foundation believes it is furthering its duty of preservation and education.
Monticello, Jordan likes to say, is “unique in the world.” It is the only American home named by the United Nations as a World Heritage site, a listing of 851 cultural and natural sites that have “outstanding universal value.” Along with Jefferson’s home, the list includes the U.Va. Rotunda and Lawn area, as well as the pyramids of ancient Egypt and the Great Wall of China.
When future tourists visit Monticello, they will see exhibits at the expanded visitor center that will teach them about Jefferson, his home and the plantation community. Then they will head up to the mountaintop, where they will see and experience Monticello much like Jefferson once did.
“You’ll get to know the man first and then you’ll get to see his property,” Handy said. “It’ll be a true education of Jefferson - Jefferson the scientist, Jefferson the architect, Jefferson the government official and Jefferson the learned man.”
Historians are applauding the foundation’s desire to restore Monticello to its 18th-century heyday.
“Many years ago, they stopped the traffic going up there. That was a godsend,” said K. Edward Lay, a U.Va. professor and author of “The Architecture of Jefferson Country.” “Anything that they can do to purify the experience there is a good idea. It’s more historically accurate.”
The foundation’s plans will do more than rearrange the layout of Monticello’s facilities, Jordan said.
“It’s important to the advancement of our stewardship,” Jordan said. “It’s preserving the place, but it’s also about preserving the ideas.”
Jefferson’s notions of religious freedom, independence and inalienable rights are more important now than ever, Jordan said.
“His ideas transcend time and place,” he said.
To deepen the public’s understanding of Jefferson’s ideals, the foundation is aiming to renovate several farm buildings on the adjacent mountain, Montalto, as part of an expansion of its Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. The center, based at Kenwood, draws scholars from around the world to conduct research on Jefferson and his era.
Montalto was recently rezoned and added to Monticello’s historic district. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is working on plans to construct the new facility, which would feature residences for visiting scholars and space for seminars and conferences.
Monticello officials are reluctant to say when they hope to see their plans fully realized for the mountaintop and Montalto.
“Our schedule is driven by fundraising,” Jordan said.
Roughly $49.2 million has been raised during the foundation’s current $55 million capital campaign, which began in 2005.
Jordan, who has led Monticello since 1985, will step down in November. Taking his place will be Leslie Greene Bowman, director of the Winterthur Museum & Country Estate in Delaware. Once she takes the reins, Bowman will decide how quickly to start up fundraising again for the site’s future plans, Jordan said.
When Monticello’s plans come to fruition, they will likely translate into a boon for tourism in the area, as well as the local economy, said Allison Baer, interim director of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau.
“What they’re creating on that mountaintop is going to create a unique and exceptionally high-quality visitor experience,” Baer said.
Monticello’s attendance rates are on the rise. By the end of June, more than 208,900 people had visited Monticello - an increase of around 2,500 over the same period in 2007.
Last year, Monticello’s visitation rates declined a bit, dropping from 450,358 visitors in 2006 to 441,739 in 2007.
Baer said she expects Monticello’s plans will draw more visitors, as it is aiming to boost the site’s educational offerings and overall visitor experience.
For example, she said, Monticello’s new gift shop will be larger than the existing shop and will offer many more items. A new movie about Jefferson is in production and will be shown at the new visitors center. And Monticello will be separating group tours from individual visitors, she said, making it a more appealing experience for those hoping to avoid getting caught up in a pack of middle school students.
“Empty-nesters might not want to tag along with a school group touring Monticello,” Baer said. “This will fix that.”
Monticello is also trying to make itself more appealing to hikers. It is improving the rustic trails that diverge from the Saunders-Monticello Trail that links the Kemper Park area with the mountaintop estate.
All the changes at Monticello represent a decade of planning and work, said Mike Merriam, director of construction management for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Now that they are being realized, he said, Jefferson’s historic estate is entering the next level.
“It’s the beginning of a new era for Monticello,” Merriam said. “We’re going to provide a great visitor experience. We’ll have more educational offerings, as we’re going from one classroom to three. It’s going to be a change of focus. It’s something that we’ll all look back on with pride.”
Brian McNeill is a staff writer for the Daily Progress in Charlottesville.