Monticello Burial Ground for Enslaved Persons / Contemplative Site

The Burial Ground is centrally located near the Visitor Center where most begin their journey, yet it was easily overlooked. The simple, rustic space was surrounded unfortunately by landscaped parking lots. The Burial Ground also lacked the headstones and formal landscapes characteristic of more traditional cemeteries. Therefore, a key challenge was to restore the Burial Ground, giving it greater presence, ensuring it would no longer be bypassed by those rushing to the Visitor Center, instead becoming an essential part of their experience at Monticello. 

The Foundation acknowledged this unfortunate condition and began to remedy it with the restoration project. Key to this was the preservation and enhancement of the site’s serenity by repurposing, regrading, and reforesting an existing underused roadway. This new visual buffer created a deeper, denser, green space around the perimeter of the Burial Ground and allowed for a new pathway to encircle it, revealing new perspectives of the site while offering moments of peace and solace for both visitors and descendants.

While the Burial Ground is the final resting place for approximately 40 enslaved people, Monticello lacked a place where visitors could process the sometimes difficult information on the tours, and begin to grasp the full scale of slavery on the Mountaintop and those entangled in it. A central challenge therefore was to communicate this and to stimulate introspection and conversation.

The Site focuses on a 60-foot-long Cor-Ten steel wall, subtly curved and etched with the names of those known to have been enslaved by Jefferson, weathering to show the passage of time. Blank spaces allow for additional names to be added should research reveal new information. The earthy, rich color of Cor-Ten nods to the red clayey soils of the Mountaintop. And the staining properties inherent to the material—often difficult to erase fully—allude to slavery in the United States, an intractable stain that remains a part of the national identity.

In 2022 and 2023, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation created two new site installations at Monticello, the plantation home of Thomas Jefferson. Together, the Burial Ground for Enslaved People and the Contemplative Site recognize the centrality of the enslaved to the story of Monticello, to their descendants, and to Jefferson himself. With these two distinct yet interrelated spaces, the Foundation sought to stimulate dialogue, engagement, and introspection, offering an opportunity for staff and visitors to pause and reflect on the lives of the 607 enslaved women, men and children who made Monticello possible.

The design process began with and was informed throughout by extensive descendant engagement, a powerful moment coming when a descendant brought a centuries-old brick fragment marked by three distinct concave indentations. When asked to place fingers into these grooves, it revealed that they were much too small to be made by an adult hand and instead were by that of a child.This simple demonstration that enslaved children were tasked with creating many of the bricks used at Monticello underscored the importance of the project—to ensure that the lives of those who labored were not forgotten. Through a phased, research-driven process, the design team began by conducting detailed site analyses—mapping existing grade, vegetation and archaeology using lidar and archival plans—to locate the recreated Jefferson-era “1-in-10” road and ensure no burials would be disturbed. Parallel workshops with descendant families, landscape historians, and Monticello staff informed every decision, from the curvature of the 60-foot Cor-Ten wall to the spacing of each name. Prototypes of the weathering steel were tested on-site to calibrate patina performance against Virginia’s seasonal rainfall; once approved, the full-scale panels were precision water-jet cut off-site, allowing for blank apertures that accommodate future research discoveries.

Construction was carefully sequenced to maintain visitor access and preserve serenity. After selective demolition of an underused roadway and removal of eight adjacent parking stalls, crews regraded and reforested the Burial Ground’s perimeter, establishing a living buffer of native hardwoods and understory plantings. A meandering pathway—composed of compacted gravel and subtle edge restraint—was then installed to encircle both sites, guiding visitors in a contemplative loop. Customized fieldstone benches capped in bluestone, along with bespoke railings and a descendant-only gate, were set on poured-in-place concrete pads; each element was coordinated in BIM to ensure flawless alignment with the wall’s orientation toward the Burial Ground. Final landscaping and low-glare uplighting were completed just weeks before the June 17, 2023 dedication, when descendants gathered to witness the living memorial come to life on the Mountaintop.

Design Team

Peter D. Cook (design principal)
Scott Cryer (principal)
Amanda Abi Kallushi (architect)
Vance Cunningham

Collaborators

Nelson Byrd Woltz (landscape architect)
Shickel Corporation (water-jet cut corten steel)
Timmons Group (civil engineer)

Photo Credits

Thomas Jefferson Foundation; Nelson Byrd Woltz (David Lepage)(photography), Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello (videography)

Open Date

June 2022