Spherical Sundial
During his retirement, Jefferson placed a sundial on the North Terrace. In an 1817 letter to Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jefferson remarked:
“my dial captivates every body foreign as well as home-bred, as a handsome object & accurate measurer of time.”
A reproduction stands on the North Terrace today, yet the whereabouts of Jefferson’s original sundial is unknown.
North Pavilion
Thomas Mann Randolph, husband of Jefferson’s eldest daughter Martha, used this building's upper floor as an office. His political career included service as a U.S. Congressman, Virginia State Senator and Delegate, and Governor of Virginia.
While Thomas Mann Randolph shared many interests with Jefferson, he felt out of place at Monticello. In an 1802 letter to Jefferson, Randolph described feeling like “a silly bird…in the company of swans.” After years of strained relationships with his family, Thomas Mann Randolph reconciled with his wife and children shortly before his death in the North Pavilion in 1828. He is buried in the Monticello Graveyard.
University of Virginia
Standing on the terrace, face the North Pavilion and turn to the right. A clearing through the trees gives way to a view of the Rotunda, which sits at the heart of the University of Virginia. Jefferson designed and founded the university in his retirement at Monticello, describing the project as “the hobby of my old age” and “my last act of usefulness.”
A large number of enslaved African-Americans, as well as a small number of free blacks (including people Jefferson freed in his will) and white craftsmen, provided the labor when construction began in 1817. The first class of all white-male students was admitted in 1825. Jefferson believed that education provided the surest path to human progress, and wrote that he dedicated the university to “the illimitable freedom of the human mind.”
