For more than 60 years, visitors to Monticello have been peering into a room that was supposedly Thomas Jefferson’s kitchen.

But it’s all wrong.

With the help of two grants, however, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation is remodeling the kitchen so that it more closely resembles what was actually in use while Jefferson was in residence.

The project is the most prominent of a larger goal over the next five to seven years to improve the exhibitions in 13 “dependencies” — the spaces where slaves worked unnoticed under the long terraces that extend from both sides of the estate.

“It really is the below-stairs story that wasn’t told,” says Susan Stein, Monticello’s curator. “The restoration of these spaces allows us to tell not only the story of the work that was taken but also the workers.”

The first space completed was the cook’s room, the sleep and working area for the head kitchen slave — and the first African-American-inhabited space to be interpreted and displayed to the public.

Also ready is the beer cellar. Tourists have always been told about Jefferson’s extensive knowledge of wine, but the Monticello tours have never discussed the fact that the plantation brewed its own beer. Stein said the Thomas Jefferson Foundation was planning brewing demonstrations in the future.

The largest project is the kitchen. It was last remodeled for display in 1941. But a more recent examination of the area revealed that the hearth and oven were incorrectly reconstructed.

Although a 1960s restoration ripped out the original brick floor and put down a jarringly modern version, historians studied imprints in old photographs of the original floor to determine that Jefferson’s kitchen had a “stew stove” running along one side of the room.

Earlier restorations of Moncicello were inaccurate, including the existing floor, which was laid with factory-made brick in the 1960s. The Monticello staff is installing a more historically accurate -- and uneven -- floor of handmade brick similar to those fired at Monticello in Jefferson's time.

They also found from Jefferson’s inventory receipts that he ordered enough irons for eight burners on the stove. “It’s Jefferson’s Viking,” Stein jokes.

The stove, with the burners and a large kettle nearest the hearth, will be made of brick and is designed to have separate charcoal fires under each burner and beneath the kettle. A flue at the end vents the smoke outside.

By sometime next year, the “new” kitchen will display the stove and the newly constructed hearth and oven, so it will much more closely resemble the kitchen of old.