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American Icons: Monticello

Studio 360
Studio 360

This is the home of America’s aspirations and its deepest contradictions.

Monticello is home renovation run amok. Thomas Jefferson was as passionate about building his house as he was about founding the United States; he designed Monticello to the fraction of an inch and never stopped changing it. Yet Monticello was also a plantation worked by slaves, some of them Jefferson’s own children. Today his white and black descendants still battle over who can be buried at Monticello. It was trashed by college students, saved by a Jewish family, and celebrated by FDR. With Stephen Colbert,filmmaker James Ivory, and artistMaira Kalman.

Monticello Update:
Since this story was reported, the staff at Monticello have been working on how to best convey life on Mulberry Row and the complex lost plantation to their visitors.And this month the first part of their work – an outdoor exhibition – is being made available to the public. Re-creations of lost buildings and roads are planned next.

Monticello was produced by Amanda Aronczyk. The Jefferson family graveyard story was produced by Ann Heppermann. The actor David Strathairn was the voice of Thomas Jefferson. David Krasnow edited the show.

Music was provided by David Prior, with John Matthias for Small Design Firm, and can also be heard at Monticello’s interactive exhibition, Boisterous Sea of Liberty.

Video: Studio 360 Visits Monticello
Kurt Andersen tours Monticello with Peter Hatch, Director of Gardens and Grounds, and learns just how fitting the name “little mountain” is.

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