building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

would be turning backward to the Kentucky farm, with its old shadowy
beeches, to the master's house, with its wide, cool halls, and, nearby,
the little cabin overgrown with the multiflora and bignonia. There he
seemed to see familiar faces of comrades who had grown up with him
from infancy; he saw his busy wife, bustling in her preparations for his
evening meals; he heard the merry laugh of his boys at their play, and
the chirrup of the baby at his knee; and then, with a start, all faded, and
he saw again the canebrakes and cypresses and gliding plantations, and
heard again the creaking and groaning of the machinery, all telling him
too plainly that all that phase of life had gone by forever. 52
These images will remain in Tom’s mind while he goes to meet his terrible destiny.
The author leaves her readers with the idea of a world destined to die, which is
dragging the agricultural landscapes and steamboats into the whirlpool of historic
events.
However, agricultural America, which had been inspired by Thomas Jefferson,
developed different approaches in other areas of the country. It was Jefferson
himself, attentive landscape lover as we have already seen in the Monticello
project, who decided to implement other projects, such as the Poplar Forest
plantation and house near Lynchburg, Virginia and the University of Virginia in
Charlottesville, which symbolized a very strong man‐nature‐architecture
relationship.
In the project for Poplar Forest 53 [Figure 27], an estate of about 4,800 acres, we can
assess the differences in approach with the plantations of the Deep South. The
project lasted approximately ten years, from 1806, the year the work started to
build the octagonal villa with bricks and which ended three years later. The
architectural style used is neo‐Palladian and nature completes the house project
according to a criterion which considers planning in terms of the territory [Figure
28]. The house becomes the landmark which bestows a geometrical order to the
property, featuring three landscaped areas: the agricultural fields and a 61‐acre
curtilage containing a wide circle with the house at its centre[Figure 29]. This
52 STOWE BEECHER, Harriet, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, London, John Casseli, 1852, pp. 121‐122 (Italian
translation by Beatrice Boffito, La capanna dello Zio Tom, Milano, BUR ragazzi, 2011, pp. 179‐181)
53 See CHAMBERS, S. Allen Jr., Poplar Forest and Thomas Jefferson, Little Compton, Fort Church
Publishers inc, 1993
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