In the virtually restored version of the ca. 1797 Montpelier the Restoration Team left the columns with exposed, unfinished brickwork.  After analyzing the written accounts of visitors to Montpelier, it became clear that President Madison left the columns unfinished when he left for Washington in 1801 to become President Jefferson’s Secretary of State.  In a diary entry Anna Thornton, the wife of prominent architect Dr. William Thornton, provided evidence for the unfinished columns when she states “The house originally built by his father but added to by himself is upwards of 80 feet in Length with a handsome (but unfinished) portico of the Tuscan order.”  Additionally, Sir John Foster also writes in 1807 that the columns were of “brick which requires and is intended to be plastered.”