Mulberry Row
Named
for the mulberry trees planted along it, Mulberry Row was the
center of plantation activity at Monticello from the 1770s to
Jefferson's death in 1826. Jefferson's original plan for the site
was a 400-foot-long row of shops and yards joined structurally
so as to look like a single building. There, iron and woodworking
facilities and areas for raising poultry and slaughtering livestock
would serve as a link between the plantation at large and the
domestic operations, like kitchen, dairy, and smokehouse, that
Jefferson planned for the dependency wings attached to the main
house.
Thirty years, passed, however, before Jefferson was able to execute his wing plans for Monticello, so that Mulberry Row became the site of an assortment of mainly temporary structures serving both the 5,000-acre plantation and the house. In 1796, when Jefferson had temporarily retired from public office, there were seventeen structures along the 1,000-foot-long Row. These included dwellings for black and white workers, wood and ironworking shops, a smokehouse and dairy, a wash house, storehouses, and a stable.
| Click on the list or on the map below to learn more about the industries and slave quarters on Mulberry Row. |
Pictured: Mulberry Row, 1812. Artist's rendering of the top of Monticello Mountain in 1812. From THE WORLD BOOK YEAR BOOK. ©1985 World Book, Inc., 525 W. Monroe, Chicago, IL 60661. By permission of the publisher.