In April of 1962, President John Kennedy hosted a gathering at the White House. Around that same moment in history, America was slowly being drawn into an obscure civil war in a far distant corner of the globe, in a relatively unknown country called Vietnam. Eight months prior, East Germany had completed building a wall around the western, free portion of the land-locked city of Berlin to prevent its best people from bleeding into the West as the Cold War was being hotly waged through attrition and espionage.
But at the White House that spring, President Kennedy momentarily escaped the dark clouds of world politics by collecting a group of astonishing people in the State Dining Room. Now, if you have ever been to the White House, you would know that the State Dining Room is one of its largest rooms, and yet at the same time, it’s still not a very large room compared to your average conference center dining room. In fact, the entire White House is not a very large building in comparison to most other governmental buildings. Of course, its modest size as it exists today, is related primarily to its antiquity. By late eighteenth or early nineteenth century standards, it was rather substantial and its scale was meant to impress visitors.
But these mid-twentieth century visitors that President Kennedy had brought together didn’t need to be impressed. Kennedy was hosting a dinner honoring the Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere. Fifty of the greatest intellects that the world had ever seen were sharing a meal with the American President when he rose before that distinguished group and said something quite profound.
He said, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." Kennedy went on to say that "Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, and dance the minuet."
In my opinion, no greater complement has ever been leveled at an occupant of our modest presidential mansion. Thomas Jefferson was an extraordinary man. He was of course, a flawed man, a contradiction in many ways encased in his historic period. A slave owner who authored the world's most astounding document proclaiming our freedoms. An introvert who rose to the highest public office his country offered.
But of all his countless accomplishments, we architects like to claim him as our own. He was, after all, the only professed architect to occupy the White House. And Mr. Jefferson wasn't merely an architect, but a damn good one. Through his influence, European classicism became the architectural language of government buildings for over a century in the US. His designs for the grounds of the University of Virginia and the Virginia Capitol Building are still studied in architectural history courses, not because of the novelty of having been designed by a president, but because the designs are that successful, that sophisticated that they deserve to be studied to this day. And of course, - there’s Monticello …
Monticello represents not only Mr. Jefferson’s outstanding talent as a designer, but also as an inventor. The quirky and unique features that Jefferson built into his hilltop home are still marveled at today. His fertile and exploring Renaissance mind knew no boundaries of experimentation and curiosity. And yes, that intellect also designed the slave quarters that served his estate.
Had Mr. Jefferson been only an architect, we would still study his life and his achievements in the field. But, we are quite fortunate that Mr. Jefferson expanded that genius into politics and helped build not only beautiful architecture, but a sturdy and enlightened nation. Our very independence as a nation, our form of government, and the nature of the modern presidency, all can be traced to the influences of this remarkable man. Yes, by any moral standards, we cannot expunge his slaveholding history, which must be remembered as part of his legacy. But let us also celebrate this complex man’s higher achievements as well.