Existing comment:
The Portico:
The Portico, designed by Madison, frames a vista dominated by his beloved Blue Ridge Mountains. When his father built the first section of Montpelier in the 1760s, he oriented it toward the west and a seemingly endless frontier. By the time Madison first enlarged the house, in the 1790s, a new nation had been born, and he had shaped its Constitution. When he added the two one-story wings, he was President of the United States, and American settlers were pushing westward into lands of the Louisiana Purchase that he had helped to acquire. In his retirement, Monroe continued to look toward the west, whose open spaces guaranteed that the United States could remain a nation of farmers -- his ideal for a republic. |