Alex Thomas, age 13, of Nashville, Tenn., for his question:
WHEN WAS THE HERMITAGE BUILT?
Twelve miles east of Nashville stands The Hermitage, the beautiful antebellum Southern plantation that was the home of President Andrew Jackson. The elegant home started as a cluster of log cabins in 1804, was rebuilt as a brick structure in 1819 and enlarged in 1831, and then rebuilt completely in 1834 after a fire.
Jackson and his wife Rachel put out 1,000 apple and peach trees on his new 1,200 acre plantation in 1804, the same year he built his first log cabin. It may have been named for his wife's family plantation in Virginia or possibly in honor of the British economist Jeremy Bentham, a favorite of Jackson's, whose estate in England was also called the Hermitage.
Erection of the new Hermitage in 1819 started with four main rooms on the ground floor. Each room had its own fireplace and chimney. There were large central hallways that opened in warm weather from front to back to form a breezeway.
Bricks for the new building came from material found on the property. Clay was found near the house. A field hand on a mule trod a combination of clay and lime into the right mixture. Then the bricks were hand shaped and put into a kiln on the spot. The foundation of native limestone was also available on the plantation as were poplar and cedar trees for flooring and framing.
Jackson swept into the White House in 1828 and from Washington, D.C., he planned the enlargement and embellishment of The Hermitage. The project was completed in 1831 but soon after a fire broke out in one of the chimneys and burned most of the house.
In 1834 Jackson started to rebuild, making the rooms higher and more spacious. The 1819 brick walls were painted white to hide the smoke stains, much as the Executive Mansion in Washington had been painted white for the same reason in 1816.
The Hermitage today is hardly unchanged from what it was in President Jackson's time.
The front parlor of The Hermitage was redecorated by Jackson himself in 1836 after he had left the White House. He ordered mirrors, tables, chairs and settees bought at seven Philadelphia furniture stores, shipped by steamer to New Orleans and then upriver to Nashville.
Jackson was not fussy about style. He purchased what was then in fashion; heavy and ornate versions of the 18th century modes.
The guitar shaped entrance drive was laid out by Jackson with the help of a painter friend named Ralph Earl. Jackson himself supervised planting the cedar trees which still stand.
After Jackson's death in 1845, his adopted son quickly ran through his inheritance and The Hermitage's 1,200 acres were soon reduced to 500. When even these and the mansion were up for sale, Tennessee's governor Andrew Johnson, a future president himself, had the state legislature pass a bill buying it.
After the Civil War, the Ohio born Amy Jackson, wife of Col. Andrew Jackson III (the son of President Jackon's adopted son), urged the founding of the Ladies' Hermitage Associates. This group, formed on May 15, 1889, has been the custodian of The Hermitage ever since, reassembling the dispersed original possessions and repairing the damage of wind and weather.
Today the Hermitage is once again largely as it was on the day President Jackson died.