University of Virginia Library

Vision Rejected

Jefferson Planned 'Hill' For UT In 1810

Reprinted from the University
of Tennessee Daily Beacon.

Opportunity only knocks once
and UT neglected to answer the
door back in 1810.

Bogged down financially, the
trustees of East Tennessee College,
UT's predecessor, requested ex-President
Thomas Jefferson's help
in selling lottery tickets for the
college and, for their asking, got
unsolicited but historically famous
advice on how to build a university
instead.

"APPARENTLY HIS ADVICE
went unheeded by (Trustee) Hugh
Lawson White and the others interested
in the establishment of
East Tennessee College," said Stanley
F. Horn, prominent Tennessee
historian.

Virginia's Gain

But UT's loss was the University
of Virginia's gain. Jefferson applied
the ideas first put forth in his letter
of reply to the trustees to his design
of the university, which one author
has called Jefferson's "crowning architectural
achievement." This is no
small praise indeed for the man
who designed his own home
Monticello - and who greatly influenced
early American architecture.

In the letter sent from Monticello
on May 10, 1810, Jefferson
applauded efforts to establish the
Tennessee institution, but begged
out of the lottery.

HE EXPRESSED THE OPINION
that the common plan followed
in the United States of constructing
one large building for a
college was erroneous. He proposed
instead an "academical village."

He felt that it would be "infinitely
better to erect a small and
separate lodge for each separate
professorship with only a hall below
for his class and two chambers
above for himself."

Open Square

THE WHOLE OF THESE, he
said, would be arranged around an
open square of grass and trees, thus
making the university an academic
village, "instead of a large and
common den of poise, of filth and
of fetid air."

Jefferson said that each professor
would be the "police officer"
of the Students adjacent to his
lodge. He also allowed for successive
expansions of the university in
his plan, providing there were increases
in students or funds.

Jefferson's original drawings and
the actual construction of the University
of Virginia closely follow
the ideas set forth in his letter
which is now in the hands of the
Tennessee Historical Society in
Nashville. All that's missing is the
rotunda centered in the complex
of buildings, and that was included
in later plans.

Barracks for students would join
the lodges and open into covered
ways providing sheltered access
between all the schools.

JEFFERSON'S REMARKABLE
diversity was shown to a great
degree in his founding of the university.
Besides designing the buildings
and supervising their construction
to the smallest detail, he also
gathered the faculty and planned
the curriculum.

But what came of UT's lottery?
Well, it flopped.

Jefferson asked out of it, protesting
that he "made it a rule never
to engage in a lottery or any other
adventure of mere chance." But he
broke that rule later in life by
seeking to dispose of some of his
own property by lottery.

"FOR SEVERAL YEARS after
the failure of the lottery," says Dr.
Stanley J. Folmsbee, UT's state
history specialist, "East Tennessee
College remained in a completely
moribund state. Not until 1820 was
it able to reopen." In 1879, the
institution became the University
of Tennessee.

Jefferson regarded the founding
of the University of Virginia as the
crowning achievement of his career.
Indeed, his chosen epitaph for his
tomb said: "Here was buried
Thomas Jefferson, author of the
Declaration of Independence, of
the statute of Virginia for religious
freedom, and the father of the
University of Virginia."

Sorry, UT. You may have lost a
parent somewhere along the line.

Accompanying the article were
two pictures. One, of Mr. Jefferson's
drawing of his plan for the
University, carried this caption:
"The engraving above details
Thomas Jefferson's 'academic [sic]
village' plan for the University of
Virginia. The ex-president first suggested
his concept for the construction
of a university in an 1810
letter to trustees of East Tennessee
College, UT's predecessor. They
were more interested in a lottery..."

The other, an aerial view of the
University, said: "...The 'academic
village' as it is today at the University
of Virginia. One author has
called Jefferson's design and
founding of Virginia his 'crowning
architectural achievement.' All the
buildings in the quadrangle were
included in Jefferson's Tennessee
letter, except the Rotunda in the
foreground." -ed.