JEFFERSON'S WING OF OFFICES EMERGES STEP BY STEP
Poplar Forest Newsletter, Spring 2005

The quest to envision the one "missing" piece of Thomas Jefferson's architectural scheme for his retreat has come a long way since researchers first hypothesized what clues might lie under the grass east of the octagon.

When the query began, there were fragments of a Jefferson-era wing still standing -- a long, stone "retaining" wall extending eastward from the house, and segments of brick walls incorporated in small, later structures 50 feet from the octagon.

A letter Jefferson had written in 1814 said: "I have this summer built a wing of offices 110 feet long, in the manner of those at Monticello, with a flat roof in the level of the floor of the house."  But what was it for, what exactly were its features like, and what had happened to it?

Research has answered many questions, and the meticulous restoration-and-reconstruction under way now is bringing the wing into clearer focus.

Jefferson had seen the concept of a row of service rooms attached to a dwelling house depicted in Andrea Palladio's Four Books of Architecture, published in 1570.  He first used the idea when designing Monticello in the 1770's, and then again for the President's House.  Typically, Jefferson turned the Palladian feature into his own, by adapting the roof structure as a flat terrace for walking.

Although Jefferson's adaptation had a flat top surface, he performed the water-draining function of a roof by designing beneath that flat surface a shallow system of "rooflets", consisting of a ridge-and-valley system connected by wood shingles.  The flat deck allowed rain water to fall between the deck boards onto the sloping shingles below, and from there into the pitched gutters that delivered the water out on both sides of the building through the decorative entablature via spouts.  The same system was used to achieve the flat roof over the central cube room at Poplar Forest.

Archaeological excavation in 1989 revealed that Jefferson's wing consisted of four rooms -- two of which were virtually missing above-grade, and two of which were incorporated into two separate structures by later owners.

With the wing's original brick floor now preserved beneath a reproduction, and with restoration/reconstruction of the walls complete, visitors since summer 2004 have had a rare opportunity to witness Jefferson's unique roof design in the making -- as craftsmen reconstruct the intricately engineered design over the wing's service rooms.  Restoration carpenters have finished crafting the massive oak ridge and gutter joists -- including hand-hewing a gutter-channel the full length of each gutter joist, culminating in the spout or scupper.

This year, with support the team can fabricate antique pine into the sloping shingles of what Jefferson called the "serrated" roof.  Future tasks will include handcrafting the flat deck and the classical entablature at the roof's edge.  The "viewing stand" on the north side of the wing puts every visitor in position, above the roof, to witness what it took to construct this unique design in Jefferson's time, as the restoration carpenters meticulously reconstruct it step-by-step.