Typical elite strategies for achieving fame and prestige in the
Old Southwest of the early 19th century revolved around acquisition of
land, slaves, and political office. A handful of eccentric and innovative
country estates, however, bear witness to an alternative way to bid for
social prominence (actually over and above acquisition of mere means of
production). These buildings are not simply products of whimsical extravagance,
but illustrate ambitions (or pretensions) of patrons who opt to utilize
design and lavish hospitality as a way to impress and endear their contemporaries
rather than political power, aristocratic lineage, military office, or
other conventional and self-evident status bestowing qualities.
Among the instances of country estates designed for acquisition of social renown that make good case studies are David Meade's Chaumiere des Prairies near Lexington, Kentucky, and James Jackson's Forks of Cypress near Florence, Alabama. Both men, in their mature middle age, would move to a frontier region of the country leaving already well developed social bonds and residences in more settled areas. What they built on their newly acquired lands would bring many visitors to their households, thereby promoting their own social status, acquiring good matches for their unwed children, and in the end make them figures of local legend.
Meade's house, a sprawling villa built using diverse vernacular techniques, was a sequence of designed spaces meant to accommodate the rituals of hospitality, was served by the foil of the additional attraction of a forty acre landscape garden to draw visitors from the then burgeoning frontier polis of Lexington. Jackson's house, a traditional Georgian core surrounded by the only true domestic peristyle in Alabama and one of the first such architectural motifs in America, was designed for display and was abedded in its goal by Jackson's first rate equine stock and racetracks. With conspicuous pleasure grounds both men drew the notable and prosperous to their hospitable houses and thereby established themselves as social "powers-that-be" outside of the more traditional avenues of status.
David Meade moved in 1796 from his plantation across the James River from the Byrd's Westover to Jessamine County, Kentucky, where he immediately set about the construction of a self-designed rationally planned villa from log and frame components. The complement of rooms in the villa, which he would name Chaumiere des Prairies (thatched cottage in the meadows), were carefully arranged to accommodate visitors with lavish hospitality in a carefully diagramed set of social spaces, supporting servant and storage spaces, and private bedchambers. After the completion of the house (to which components would be added as late as the mid 1820s), Meade began work on a forty acre landscape garden, no doubt the largest in the state at that time. James Jackson was born in Ireland and subsequently lived in Germany, Philadelphia, and Nashville before settling down upon a bluff overlooking the forks of the Cypress Creek in Lauderdale County, Alabama. In the late 1820s Jackson, probably in collaboration with architect William Nichols, began the construction of what would be the only true peristyle house in Alabama and one of the first such houses in America. The house core itself was a fairly characteristic Georgian double pile with a few elaborations. The addition of the peristyle (incidentally in a manner quite different from the few lower Mississippi Valley houses that preceded it) at a time when monumental classical orders were altogether new to architecture in the region had the effect of making the house a sort of Alabama Acropolis. The new monumentality of the house certainly interested local elites, and visitors were certainly also welcome here--Jackson like Meade was well known for hospitality. Jackson additionally improved his grounds with barns, a racecourse, and a great deal of fine and expensive equines.
Jackson and Meade both built notable houses, different from the conventional elite forms of display on the southern frontier. These houses were notable in their role as "machines for entertaining in" and would have made a great impression on visitors with their ground-breaking designs. Both men also, however, used the grounds of their estates as a vehicle to draw visitors out to the properties and to elevate their images as elites in the New Republic. Meade's landscape garden would hold its own as a local attraction well into the 1820s, when many houses had been built in the area which surpassed his somewhat motley assemblage of hospitable rooms. Jackson's temple on a hill certainly became a landmark image, but for those with earthier tastes (of which their were no doubt many in frontier Alabama), his horse racing facilities and fine animals (one of which, Glencoe, was worth more than ten adult slaves) were certainly worth the trip to the estate.
Hospitality and spectacle would become the roots of both men's prestige. Both men were thwarted and/or disinterested in political and military office. With little temporal power, these men brought to bare their economic powers in combination with their creative energies to obtain a social level above simply "a man of wealth". This served to assure their fame into the next century, at least in a regional sense, as well as to generate social connections which would be favorable for their children. The instances of James Jackson and David Meade illustrate a pattern which allows a view of the "follies" of the early 19th century in the Southeast that moves beyond decadence as the explanation for their presence. These estates and others dotting the region were a means of negotiating through an unsettled frontier society, assuring a lordly status for their owners in a turbulent but burgeoning region.