Northern Virginia, given its historically rich location–original colony, situated between North and South (more or less–no one really knows what Maryland’s deal is), and DC-adjacent–has its fair share of historical oddities. But a house designed by Thomas Jefferson to catch and raise pigeons for food? It seems deserving of its own, personal article, in our humble opinion.
The curiosity resides at Rose Hill, a plantation estate, in Port Royal. It’s called a dovecote, a colonial-era structure meant to breed and house pigeons, as they provided meat, eggs, and fertilizer in the 1700s. Also called a pigeon house, it protects the birds as well as aids in the retrieval of their eggs.
Meant for his home of Monticello, Jefferson’s dovecote has been carefully carried out at Rose Hill “based on this unrealized design,” according to Will Reiley, the landscape architect who worked on the house for its current owners, John and Billings Cay. It’s one more historical object added to the historic Rose Hill, which was deemed part of the National Parks Service’s National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and eventually deeded to Preservation Virginia in 1976.
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Jefferson’s design, while standing out for its elegance, does not lack function. Access holes in the frieze — which are part of the horizontal entablature that lies above the columns — allow the pigeons to enter. From there, the birds enter small spaces that they like to call home.
Rieley says that dovecotes were common, often a staple, at plantations, as they were a delicacy considered to be owned by gentlemen — dovecotes are no ordinary thing, he says. He notes that while “birdhouse” may technically be correct in describing the structure, dovecotes are not really reminiscent of the birdhouses we typically think of today.
Cay originally hired Rieley and his firm to do work on the grounds and gardens, and their collaboration on the dovecote was, as Rieley calls it, “a happy coincidence of research.” When Cay had said he wanted to have birds fly over the historic property’s garden, Rieley already had something in mind — Jefferson’s dovecote.
“It became a piece of the larger plan of the garden,” Rieley says. The founding father’s design attracted Rieley due to its elegance and simplicity.
“It’s a modest structure; it’s only about 12 and a half feet square. It’s quite simple, but it is very classically correct in the Tuscan order, and it’s based on sort of a temple form that Jefferson found very appealing,” Rieley says.
The Tuscan order is a classic Roman style of architecture. Rieley explained that Andrea Palladio, a famous architect from the Renaissance era, used the temple structure primarily for farm buildings, invoking both a striking appearance and functional use — and Jefferson’s dovecote embodies that.
“It really combines those two things — being a habitation for pigeons in a temple form, but it combines the temple form with agricultural use,” he says. “So that that was an appealing part of it, and appropriate, both of those appropriate, for our garden setting.”
Feature image, Dinesh/stock.adobe.com
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