Jefferson Memorial and the Pantheon Essay -- Architecture Compare Cont

Jefferson Memorial and the Pantheon The Jefferson Memorial is a testimonial to the past, present, and future of the United States. Its architecture, like most neo-Classical buildings, gives a sense of permanence. This permanence has a history far older than many would suspect. Centuries ago and thousands of miles away a building was erected that would later become the model for which many other buildings, including the Jefferson Memorial, are based upon. This building is the Roman Pantheon. Though the Jefferson Memorial borrows the basic form and elements from the Pantheon, the Memorial has distinctive differences from its predecessor. The Memorial is located in Washington, DC in an area of the city known as "The Mall" (Weeks, AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington DC, pg.61). It is dedicated to America's third president, Thomas Jefferson.. Jefferson was a man of many talents, in addition to being president Jefferson was once a statesman, architect, drafter of the Declaration of Independence, adviser on the Constitution, and founder of the University of Virginia (Pamela Scott and Antoinette Lee, Buildings of the District of Columbia, pg. 102). The Memorial was officially dedicated in April 1943, on Jefferson's 200th birthday, by FDR. The Jefferson Memorial is surrounded by other national monuments, some of which are the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The chief architect responsible for designing and building the Jefferson Memorial was John Russell Pope in 1939 to 1943. Pope was a neoclassicist who was inspired by the Roman Pantheon. The Memorial's basic form is a domed rotunda fronted by a Greek portico, or entrance porch, and surrounded by Ionic columns. At first glance ... ...lding can be, yet it has its own distinctive style and meaning. The Memorial is not a mirror image of its ancient ancestor, rather, it is a descendant of centuries of development and change. The Jefferson Memorial is no simple carbon copy of the original Pantheon, it is a building and a work of art in its own right and should be appreciated regardless of history. Works Cited: 1. Christopher Weeks, AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington DC. Washington DC: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994 2. Pamela Scott and Antoinette Lee, Buildings of the District of Columbia. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1993 3. Marilyn Stokstad, Art History vol. 1. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1995 4. Horst de la Croix, Garders Art Through the Ages, 8th edition. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace Janovich, Inc., 1986