Through lectures and discussions, participants will explore the extraordinary buildings designed by Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States. Particular attention will be paid to the Virginia State Capitol, Monticello, Poplar Forest, and the University of Virginia. Jefferson’s architecture will be examined within the contexts of architectural history, the history of Jefferson’s times (colonial, revolutionary, and the new nation of the U.S.), Jefferson’s life, Romanticism, and slavery.

Want to learn more? Join us for the OLLI trip, History Alive: Mount Vernon, Monticello, and University of Virginia Academical Village.

Instructor: Dr. Craig Zabel retired in December 2024, after 39 years of teaching art and architectural history at Penn State. He was head of the Department of Art History for 21 years and received the Penn State Teaching Fellow Award. His courses included “American Architecture,” “The Skyscraper,” and “Frank Lloyd Wright.” He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and taught in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia from 1982 to 1984.