Poplar Forest: Thomas Jefferson’s Architectural Play-toy

Granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge writes to early biographer Henry S. Randall in 1856, in the latter’s The Life of Thomas Jefferson, of Poplar Forest: The house at Poplar Forest was very pretty and pleasant. It was of brick, one story in front, and, owing to the falling of the ground, two in the rear. It was an exact octagon, with...