Brick by brick. Dream by dream.

Welcome to the Poplar Forest Architectural Restoration and Preservation Blog. Here, we’ll chronicle our ongoing journey to restore the Poplar Forest homestead to Jefferson’s original vision. The restoration of Poplar Forest really is an exciting project to track over time. Currently, after many years of work, visitors to Poplar Forest step into Jefferson’s architectural process in about the year 1820, when his slow, exacting creation was receiving its important interior trim. Jefferson had always lived in uncompleted architectural projects and Poplar Forest was certainly no exception. Once he started living there in 1809, it took another 17 years to complete it. One reason for this long, slow process is Jefferson wanting every inch of the house to be perfectly in accord to the mathematical rules and proportions from classical architecture.

That’s also the approach of our restoration team. In addition, they must also conserve work done early in the project. So preservation becomes an increasingly significant component of the work.

We hope you’ll join us as we update this blog regularly with the latest news from our architectural team.