Thomas Jefferson’s papers at the Library of Congress are full of examples of his interests in architecture, machinery, and weather. Arising from these interests was his long-term fascination with home heating, and for many years he experimented with the design of fireplaces at his Virginia home, Monticello, and elsewhere.
The Library of Congress recently acquired a letter about “Rumford fireplaces” that Jefferson wrote on May 2, 1799, while serving as John Adams’s vice-president. The letter is addressed to Wilson Cary Nicholas (1761-1820), a political protégé, relative by marriage, and friend. The letter begins: “Mr. P. Carr [Peter Carr, Jefferson’s nephew] informed me two days ago that you wished for the dimensions of the Rumford fireplaces.” Jefferson describes how he adapted his Rumford fireplaces to work with wood, rather than coal, and he includes two drawings. The first is for “where one has a new chimney to make and can arrange every thing to their will.” The other shows how to adapt an existing fireplace.
The Rumford fireplace was a design created by the American-born inventor Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814). After siding with the British during the American Revolution, Rumford lived out the rest of his life in England, Germany, and France. During his years in England and Bavaria, Rumford experimented with heating technology. His “Essay on Chimney Fire-Places, &c.” was published in Geneva in 1796. The honors he received for his work included a knighthood from King George III of Great Britain. In Bavaria, where he held several public offices, he was made a count. Without running down his “many talents,” the Dictionary of National Biography notes that his “capacity to recommend himself to the mighty was prominent.” He died in Paris.
Jefferson seems to have mistrusted Rumford, whom he classed among the “pseudo-philosophers,” and they never met or corresponded. The only exception was one routine letter that Rumford, as a founder of the Royal Institution, wrote to Jefferson as president of the American Philosophical Society. Despite Jefferson’s mistrust of Rumford, the man, he persisted in his interest in Rumford’s work, as letters and drawings in his papers show.
One of these is a drawing in Jefferson’s hand titled “Plan of Rumford Chimney, 1797,” that he added to the end of an “Essay on Charcoal and Gunpowder” by an unknown author. Two more Jefferson drawings evidence Jefferson’s broader interest in heating and show a heating plant or furnace “by which every apartment in a house is warmed by a single fire.” In other words, central heating long before it was commonly available in American buildings.
In 1804 and 1805, while he was president of the United States, Jefferson took up the question of fireplaces and heating again, this time with architect Benjamin Latrobe. On November 3, 1804, Jefferson asked Latrobe “to select for me in Philadelphia 3. of the handsomest stoves, of the kind called Open stoves, or Rittenhouse stoves, which are in fact nothing more than the Franklin stove, leaving out the double back and flues formed in that for supplying warm air. the Rittenhouse stove is the one commonly used in Philadelphia, and was the model & origin of the Rumford fireplace, which is a Rittenhouse stove in brick instead of iron.”
A few months later Jefferson wrote Latrobe to acknowledge receiving the stoves. Latrobe was then working on the U.S. Capitol building as the Surveyor of Public Buildings in Washington, so Jefferson begins his letter with details about funding and fitting the north and south wings of the Capitol, and a complaint about leaks at the President’s House. Then he wrote: “the stoves you have been so kind as to have packed for me will answer perfectly. they are to replace some Rumford stoves cast on my own plan, but which smoke so that I am obliged to give them up. I should be afraid to try others.”
Despite this experience, Jefferson did not give up on Rumford’s stoves and fireplaces. In 1817, when he was seventy-four years old and long out of office, he designed a house for James Barbour, a U.S. senator and former governor of Virginia. He included “Rumford fireplaces adapted to wood” in his plan.
Thomas Jefferson’s interest in heating systems is a dimension of his broader interest in all the systems, whether human-made or natural, that make the world go around. His 1799 letter about the Rumford fireplace adds to that story.
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“And elsewhere…” See, for example the drawings of an odometer, a pasta press, a corn-shelling machine, a nail making machine, and a water pump, that he drew himself or received from others; his correspondence with Charles Willson Peale about the polygraph, or copying machine; and his weather record. For Jefferson as architect, see: I. T. Frary, Thomas Jefferson, Architect and Builder (Richmond, Va.: Garrett and Massie, 1931); Thomas Jefferson, Architect: Original Designs in the Coolidge Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, with an Essay and Notes, edited by Fiske Kimball (New York: Da Capo Press, 1968); and Frederick Doveton Nichols, Thomas Jefferson’s Architectural Drawings, Compiled and with a Commentary and a Check List (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1961).
“He died in Paris…” For Rumford’s life see editor’s note accompanying the letter from Count Rumford to Thomas Jefferson, June 1, 1800, Founders Online; “Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford,” Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, Monticello; and David Knight, “Thompson, Sir Benjamin, Count Rumford in the Nobility of the Holy Roman Empire,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
“As president of the American Philosophical Society…” For a transcript of this letter, see Founders Online.
“Brick instead of iron…” For a transcript of this letter, see Founders Online.
“Afraid to try others…” For a transcript of this letter, see Founders Online.