Jefferson and Architecture

      Through reading Barnet's article, I got the impression that buildings should be analyzed according to their function/utility, structure, and beauty/design.  However, after reading the article about Thomas Jefferson's profession as an architect, I realize there is another way to read into the complexity of buildings.
     "As one of the pivotal idealists of the Revolution and as one of the creative figures in the formation of the new republic, Jefferson spoke for an aspiring America.  His architecture, therefore, takes on its full meaning only when viewed as both instrument and symbol of his social and political purpose. Jefferson became the first American leader to think in terms of cultural as well as political independence and to him this independence could nowhere be better expressed than in architecture.  He was the first American architect consciously to reject the English tradition and to seek instead an architecture appropriate to the new nation."  -- From William Pierson's "American Neoclassicism, The Idealistic Phase"
     Jefferson adds another way to analyze buildings:  What does the building say about the culture?  Personally I had never thought about the architecture in colonial America as a way to declare independence from Britain, but after reading I understand that this is the case.  Architecture was used as another means to culturally separate the states from Britain, and this helped highlight that Americans were different from their mother country not only politically, but also culturally and socially.