University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XV

THE JEFFERSONIAN GROUP OF BUILDINGS

On the 5th of May, 1817, Mr. Jefferson presented
to the Board of Visitors a plan for erecting a
distinct pavilion or building for each separate professorship
and for arranging them around a square.
With the certainty that characterized all his purposes
he suggested and the Board approved the
drawing of parallel lines, and the locating of the
pavilions on one or the other of them. In time one
of these lines became East Lawn and the other West
Lawn. The proctor was empowered, as soon as the
funds were in hand, to "agree with proper workmen"
for the building of the first pavilion, and for
the erection of dormitories to a number not exceeding
ten on each side of this building. The erections
were to be of "regular architecture."

Four or five days after this meeting Mr. Jefferson
wrote to a friend in whose architectural taste he
seems to have had confidence and asked his assistance:
"We are commencing here the establishment
of a college, and instead of building a magnificent
house which would exhaust all our funds, we propose
to lay off a square of about 700 or 800 feet, on
the outside of which we shall arrange separate pavilions,
one for each professor and his scholars.

Each pavilion will have a school-room below and
two rooms for the professors above; and between
pavilion and pavilion a range of dormitories for the
boys, one story high, giving to each student a room
10 feet wide by 14 feet deep, the pavilions about 36
wide in front and 24 in depth. The whole of the
pavilions and dormitories to be united by a colonnade
in front of the height of the lower story of the pavilions,
under which they may go dry from school
to school. The colonnade will be of square brick
pilasters (at first) with a Tuscan entablature. Now
what we wish is that these pavilions, as they will
show themselves above the dormitories, shall be
models of taste and good architecture, and of a variety
of appearance, no two alike, so as to serve as
specimens for the architectural lectures. Will you
set your imagination to work and sketch some designs
for us, no matter how loosely with the pen,
without the trouble of referring to scale or rule;
for we want nothing but the outline of the architecture,
as the internal must be arranged according
to local convenience. A few sketches such as need
not take you a moment will greatly oblige us. We
have to struggle against two important wants—
money and men for professors capable of fulfilling
our view. They may come in time, for all Europe
seems to be breaking up. In the meantime help
us to provide snug and handsome lodges for them."[1]

Some time before October of that year ground

The Academical Building

OPPOSITE P. 179

was broken for the first of all the buildings in what
afterward became the University. "We have now
got our building to the surface of the ground and
to-morrow [October 6, 1817] being the periodical
meeting of the Visitors, and also that of our county
and district courts, the ceremony of laying the first
stone will take place."[2]

This was Pavilion VII, which was at first used as
the library and in which the faculty was accustomed
to meet in the early days of the University. It was
often like a police station and police court combined,
and many a student was called before the grave professors
who sat in awful judgment upon the peccadilloes
of indiscreet collegians. The Board of Visitors
found it a suitable place wherein to sit through
their long and important sessions. For this particular
use it was specially fitted up and furnished in
pursuance of an order entered in 1833.

The board hastened matters as much as possible.
At its October meeting in 1817 it was much encouraged
by the prospect of a substantial income
from the subscriptions then being taken for the
Central College building fund, and two pavilions
and more dormitories were arranged for. More
than a year went by, and then engagements were
authorized for two or three more pavilions, and so
on until they were all in the hands of carpenters,
bricklayers, plasterers, etc.

Among some old papers containing scores of
memoranda in Mr. Jefferson's writing the following
rough draft of a report to the Board of Visitors by
the proctor, A. S. Brockenbrough, under date of

October 5, 1822, contains these interesting statements:

"I have the satisfaction to state that the ten pavilions
intended for the professors are now almost
entirely finished, the wood work of them is completed,
the plastering and painting of seven of them
is done, and the other three will be plastered in a
few weeks. The wood work of all six of the hotels
is finished, three of them on East street are plastered
and painted; the other three on West street are
lathed and will be plastered this fall. Of the 109
dormitories 97 are plastered, the balance are partly
lathed and plastered so that there is no question but
they will be finished this fall. The serpentine garden
walls between the western range of pavilions
and hotels will be finished in two weeks, and if the
weather permits the garden walls on the opposite
side will be run up.

"Considerable progress has been made this summer
in digging and leveling the gardens and streets.
By the end of the year we shall be nearly through
that kind of work. I therefore presume it will not
be necessary to employ as many laborers the next
year for the business of the institution."

It is well known that the hotels were built on
lines parallel to those on which the professors' pavilions
were located, that these new rows became
East Range and West Range, and were united by
arcades.

Brockenbrough's memoranda are interesting as
indicating in detail the progress of the buildings in
the fall of 1822. For grounds, buildings, etc.,
about $226,161 had been spent according to a report
of December 23, 1822, and of this $27,000 was
over and above receipts, but the institution was so

far advanced that it would force itself through;[3]
and the new legislature seemed well disposed. The
date of the serpentine walls is determined also, but
no word of their source is vouchsafed.

With the ten pavilions and the six hotels finished
"the academic village," as proposed, was an accomplished
fact, except for the central building which
was to contain the library and rooms for public examinations,
etc. Mr. Jefferson's was the guiding
hand. He insisted on "regular architecture" and
work well executed, whatever the cost. Sometimes
his colleagues interposed with suggestions, which he
heard with benignant patience, and disregarded
with fortunate wisdom, in so far as exteriors were
concerned. They could do pretty much what they
pleased with the interiors. The legislators complained
of the ornamental character of his structures
because less ornate ones would be cheaper, but the
fear of adverse votes on appropriations for the institution
had no effect on Mr. Jefferson. He said
nothing at the time but pressed on, his purpose
steady. Afterward he did say something. "Had
we built a barn for a college and log huts for accommodations,
should we ever have had the assurance
to propose to an European professor of the
first order of science?"

As much as he was attached to popular education
and as firmly as he believed the establishment of his
University necessary to the safety of the State and
the happiness of the people, he would have abandoned
it all if he had been required to disregard the
arts in its forming. He was its architect. What
other man in the United States at that time was
competent to supply what his taste demanded?

"Mr. Jefferson," wrote the Marquis de Chastellux
in describing Monticello, "is the first American who
has consulted the fine arts to know how he should
shelter himself from the weather."

Nor was his architectural hobby a result of his sojourn
in France. A decade before he crossed the
ocean he had planned the house at Monticello and
it was well on the way to completion—an attractive
example of the Italian style, and superior to all other
houses in America at that time in point of taste and
convenience.[4] But he profited in Europe by his opportunities
to see the best examples of architectural
art. "Here I am, madam," he wrote at Nimes,
where Roman remains were many, to the Comtesse
de Tesse, "gazing whole hours at the Maison Quarree,
like a lover at his mistress. The stocking weavers
and silk spinners around it consider me as a hypochondriac
Englishman about to write with a pistol
the last chapter of his history. This is the second
time I have been in love since I left Paris. The first
was with a Diana at the Chateau de Laye-Epinaye,
in Beaujolais, a delicious morsel of sculpture by M.
A. Soldtz. This, you will say, was in rule, to fall
in love with a female beauty—but, with a house!
It is out of all precedent! No, madam, it is not
without precedent in my own history. While in
Paris I was violently smitten with the Hotel de
Salm, and used to go to the Tuilleries almost daily
to look at it."

Convinced, as he wrote Mr. Madison long before
the University was under construction, that his
countrymen ought to avail themselves of every occasion
when public buildings were to be erected of presenting
models for study and imitation, he put his

theories into effect in planning the pavilions. Andrea
Palladio, whose imitative genius put in reach
of lovers of architectural art some of the finest examples
of antiquity, proved a source of bountiful
supply. During his student life he made many
drawings of the buildings of ancient Rome, and
some of these survive in I quattro libri dell' Architettura,
which reached England through the edition
of Inigo Jones, but came to Mr. Jefferson through
Leone's edition published in London in 1721. Harmony,
accuracy of detail, and faithfulness to ancient
examples were leading features of Palladio's work,
and those characteristics made powerful appeal to
Mr. Jefferson. The Lombard paid little attention
to the consideration of utility and convenience; and
some at least of the dwellers in the temples and
theatres on the Lawn of the University have thought
Mr. Jefferson equally indifferent to those qualities.
"It cannot be denied that the great architect cared
too much for the beauty of the exterior and rather
too little for the comfort within. Considerations of
judicious economy might excuse the single stack of
chimneys in the centre of the professors' houses,
around which the rooms had to arrange themselves
as well as they could, and his quaint hope that the
future dons would, like the fellows of English Universities,
remain unmarried forever, might explain
the large lecture halls which received the visitor as
he entered the front door, without vestibule or
porch. But that even closets were forbidden,
seemed to be a peculiar hardship, and when Mr.
Jefferson once opened the door of the only one in the
University, and utterly unprepared for such a solecism,
walked into it instead of out of the pavilion,
the anecdote was received with universal and not
undeserved hilarity."

The plates in Palladio's great work were to him
satisfying examples of classic architecture. They
showed him the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, which
still stands between the Ponte Rotto and the temple
of Vesta; the theatre of Marcellus which survives
in a fragment of two stories and is crowded by the
Palezzo Orsini, and the baths of Diocletian, whose
remains are pretty sure to catch the eye of one who
enters Rome by the Piazza di Termini. The exterior
of the baths of Diocletian, the temple of Fortuna
Virilis and the theatre of Marcellus fixed his
purpose. The schools of his University—for each
pavilion was to have a school—these homes of his
professors—should present to the world all the
charm of their Doric, Ionic or Corinthian beauty;
not perhaps just as they appeared in Palladio, but, if
changed, with their classic purity surviving in
unabated loveliness. The old gentleman and Cornelia
Randolph, his granddaughter, with infinite
care, adapted bath and temple and theatre to the
purposes of art and utility, and so skilfully and accurately
in every detail that, with Mr. Jefferson's
specifications written on the back of each drawing,
no further plans were necessary for the builders.

It was these structures that the proctor reported
as nearly completed in October, 1822. With their
connecting dormitories and Tuscan arcades they
presented, even in the rough state of their surroundings,
a dignity and beauty which favorably impressed
all beholders. George Ticknor of Harvard,
who had had more than one Wanderjahr in Europe,
assured his friend Prescott, the historian, that
the University of Virginia was "a mass of buildings

more beautiful than anything architectural in New
England and more appropriate to an university than
can be found, perhaps, in the world."

Perhaps the first almost perfect objects of art
brought to this country from Italy were the capitals
of Carrara marble for the pavilion porticoes.
These importations subjected the old rector to much
ill-natured criticism. The fact that he had employed
Italian artists in the vain hope that capitals
could be carved from native material did not soften
the aspersions. He then brought marble from
Carrara from which some of the needed capitals
were carved by the brothers Michael and Giacoma
Raggi. This proved more expensive than to have
the capitals carved in Italy, and the Raggi brothers
returned to Leghorn.[5]

Under date of April 16, 1821, Jefferson wrote to
Thomas Appleton, United States consul at Leghorn:
"We shall have occasion the next year for
ten Corinthian capitals for columns of 32 I. diminished
diam. and 8 do. half capitals of the same diam.
for pilasters of 30 minutes projection from the wall,
to be copied from those of the Rotunda, or Pantheon,
of Rome, as represented in Palladio. Be so
good as to inform me what will be their exact cost."

This is the first indication that Mr. Jefferson had
decided upon the Pantheon as the model for his
chief University structure, although there are reasons
for believing that he had chosen as early as the
first delineation of the plan of the academic village
(1817). One of his drawings shows the parallel

lines along which the pavilions and connecting dormitories
were to be placed. These parallels are
united by a curve at the northern end of the Lawn
which is enclosed in these lines, and on the inside of
the arc is a complete circle marking the place at
which the Rotunda now stands. Elsewhere the location
of building is indicated by figures of
straight sides. The adaptation and drawings for
the Rotunda were, probably, already in existence,
and yet it is known that his drawings and specification
for the pavilions were in some cases made as
needed, and it may be that the details of the plans,
although well thought out, were not committed to
paper until the workmen were ready.

To this day the tourist visiting the Eternal City
turns out of the Corso or the Piazza Navona to see
the Pantheon, the noblest surviving example in
Rome of antique art; and three hundred years ago
the student from Vincenza lingered often and long,
and with all an artist's enthusiasm, over its many
beauties. It was approached by a portico of 110
feet wide and 44 deep, sustained by sixteen columns
of fine oriental granite 36 feet high with Corinthian
capitals. The chief structure is a cylinder surmounted
by a dome cast of concrete. Hawthorne
delighted to watch the varying lights of a Roman
afternoon displayed on the clouds drifting over the
large circular opening in the dome, the sole source
of light, which admitted the rain as impartially as
the sunshine. The interior, once ornamented with
rich oriental marbles, has a diameter of 143 feet.
Mr. Jefferson's adaptation is 77 feet, "being half
that of the Pantheon and consequently one fourth in
area, and one eighth its volume." The State of
Virginia could not afford the rich materials at the

command of Agrippa—massive bronze plate for the
covering, or monoliths for the columns, or oriental
marbles to face the interior walls; and yet, "in the
opinion of competent judges who have critically examined
the ancient and the modern structures, Mr.
Jefferson's building was in several respects superior
to the original. The latter was approached by five
steps, Mr. Jefferson's fourteen, giving an elevation
to the handsome portico which contributed greatly
to its imposing beauty. The Roman portico is 108
feet by 42, with sixteen columns 39 feet high, and
divided into three colonnades. Mr. Jefferson's portico
is 50 feet by 28 feet 6 inches, with ten columns
28 feet 6 inches high, and its floor space is undivided,
giving it a much lighter and more airy, as
well as relatively loftier, aspect. Lastly, Mr. Jefferson
raised the floor of the portico and thus increased
the height of the cylindrical drum until it
was equal to its diameter. The massive and ponderous
original must always have seemed from
without somewhat dumpy. Within, the glorious
vault, typifying the dome of heaven, the home of
all the gods, naturally made such an impression impossible.
Mr. Jefferson was obliged, by the proposed
uses of the building, to divide it into three
stories, the upper one representing the single apartment
of the Pantheon. That circular room has
been said by many travelers to be the most beautiful
and well proportioned one they ever saw. It was
undeniably a handsome and unique apartment, and
well justified the pride of its author and the admiration
it has had from the long line of students."[6]

It is to be regretted that Mr. Jefferson did not
live to see the Rotunda finished. Its noble portico

had not been begun, no vestige of the structure
which afterward united it with the east and west
sides of the Lawn had appeared, and it stood a simple
unadorned brick cylinder surmounted by a hemisphere
or dome. But the way had been prepared
for the completion of the structure, the plans were
in hand, every problem that could trouble the
builder had been foreseen and solved, even to the
number of bricks necessary for each column. The
capitals had been ordered through Consul Appleton
and arrangements made to pay for them on delivery.
When Mr. Jefferson died on the 4th of July, 1826,
he left no work unfinished, and what an immense
amount of it, all good, had he done in his long and
useful life!

The Pantheon has had its vicissitudes, and its
copy in Virginia has not escaped disfigurements.
Some authority imposed a belfry upon it at one time.
A queer circular structure arose from the central
light of the dome like a huge wen on a bald cranium,
and if the testimony of lithographs is accepted a
weather vane once surmounted it! But perhaps
none of these excrescences were so offensive and
certainly not a source of so much danger to the
Rotunda as the annex, a large oblong five-story
erection, 100 feet long and 54 broad, which occupied
the space within the stone ramparts on the north
side. This building stood 30 feet from the Rotunda
and was joined to it, at the level of the floor of the
portico, by a pillared porch, and its northern end
was finished with a Corinthian portico of some dignity.
It was constructed to relieve the crowded
condition of the lecture-rooms in the Rotunda and
to afford a hall for the public assemblages. The
commencement exercises—from the first of them in

July, 1829—were held in the library, and the attendance
was often so large as to excite fear that the
floor would give way. The annex was begun in
1851—in spite of the protest of Colonel Thomas J.
Randolph, who said it would be the cause of the destruction
of the Rotunda, as it was!—and was ready
for the commencement festivities of 1853. Its public
hall—nearly 100 feet long and 50 wide—with
ample galleries was not wanting in a severe dignity,
which was enhanced by Balze's fine copy of Raphael's
school of Athens from the walls of the Sala
de Segnatura in the Vatican.

No defense, except the doubtful one of utility,
could be made of the annex, as viewed from the outside,
and especially as seen in its disfiguring proximity
to the Rotunda, but many of "the old boys"
of thirty years ago remember the splendid spectacle
afforded on commencement evenings when the Rotunda
and the Public Hall were a blaze of light, and
it seemed impossible that any avenue could be so
noble and dazzling as the one from the portico
through the Rotunda and the connecting porch into
the great hall, where the whole view ended in the
rostrum and Raphael's assembled philosophers.
Even the architectural accessories of the great painting—the
portico, columns, and high-arched portals
—seemed details of the Public Hall itself. The
hall's acoustics were not good, perhaps, but a thousand
young men and women filling the floor and
galleries—undisturbed by poor acoustics!—a dozen
ushers rushing about with gay batons until they
trouped their colors over the aisle in honor of the
faculty, board, orators and distinguished guests, in
stately progress to the rostrum—made a picture full

of color and movement, and altogether good to look
upon.

Daniel H. London of Richmond, while in Rome
in 1850, saw Raphael's painting and was impressed
with its splendor. On his return he suggested to
Thomas H. Ellis, then of Richmond, that a copy
ought to be at the University. Colonel Ellis requested
John S. Caskie, Socrates Maupin, afterwards
professor at the University, Benjamin B.
Minor, and John R. Thompson, all graduates of the
institution, to act with him as a committee. They
consented, and the committee published a circular
appealing to alumni only for contributions. The
following spring Mr. London, then departing for
Europe, was requested to order a copy of the painting
to be made by Signor Mazzolini of Rome, and
to secure him from loss three members of the committee—Colonel
Ellis, Judge Caskie, and Mr.
Thompson—each accepted an order for $500.
Mazzolini was not available at the time and after
some delay preliminary arrangements were made
with Monsieur Paul Balze, who had spent twelve
years copying paintings by Raphael for the French
Government, and who had already made two copies
of the School of Athens. This choice of artists was
approved by University of Virginia men then in
Paris, among them John L. Peyton, John R. Page,
John G. Brodnax, A. Robert McKee, and Edward
G. Higginbotham. In the meantime, William F.
Wickham of Hanover saw Mazzolini in Rome and
received from him a proposition for making the
copy. This was referred to the Society of Alumni
and declined by it at its meeting in June, 1852. At
the same time a committee was appointed to confer
with the alumni and urge them to unite in carrying

out the design of procuring a copy of the picture for
the University. The members of this committee
were Thomas H. Ellis, John R. Thompson, Benjamin
B. Minor, John S. Caskie, and Nathaniel H.
Massie, and they made earnest efforts to accomplish
their mission, but with little success at first. William
A. Pratt of Richmond, in the spring of 1854,
entered into an agreement with the committee by
which he undertook to procure a copy of the painting,
and some months later became the financial
agent of the committee. In two years he had more
than half enough money for his purpose; in June,
1856, he went to Paris, and on the 7th of July was
in possession of the canvas. By the agreement with
Mr. Pratt the copy was to be approved by competent
judges in the French capital, and the committee requested
the services of Horace Vernet, the most
eminent French artist then living. He reported
that no one had reproduced the masterpieces of
Raphael so well as Balze, and that "this last copy
was an encouraging pledge for the art in the event
the original was lost."

The picture was exhibited at the Royal Polytechnic
Institute in London. The leading Academicians
of the day, among them Sir Charles Eastlake,
president of the Academy, and the pre-Raphaelite
leader William M. Rossetti, testified to its fidelity,
and the London press joined in a chorus of praise.
Mr. Pratt delivered illustrated lectures at all views,
and at least one of them, "Athenian Philosophy Illustrated
in the Persons of Her Sages," was in
verse, displaying, according to the London Herald,
"poetical beauties of no ordinary class."

The picture was first exhibited in this country at

Romney, Hampshire County, Virginia, where Mr.
Pratt's family had spent the term of his absence in
Europe; later in Winchester, Wheeling, Warrenton,
Lexington, Capon Springs, at the Old Market
in Richmond, and in Library Hall, Petersburg, and
reached the University in February, 1857. The
Board of Visitors appropriated $700 to prepare
suitably for its hanging in the Public Hall of the
Annex. It was opened to the public on Jefferson's
birthday of that year, and the address was by Major
Preston of the Virginia Military Institute. Mr.
Pratt was present, and in response to repeated calls
described the painting. The University Magazine
found his remarks "teeming with the spirit of
classic poetry." No doubt his description was the
lecture in verse which won the praise of the London
Herald.[7]

For more than thirty-eight years this painting
adorned the public hall, and, after the Rotunda, was
the object most sought out by tourists. Every session
for many years Professor Noah K. Davis of
the school of moral philosophy delivered an instructive
and intensely interesting lecture on Raphael, his
work on this fresco, and on the most prominent of
its fifty-eight life-size figures. It is to be regretted
that other masterpieces have not followed Raphael's.

The Jeffersonian group of buildings plainly indicated
the order for all subsequent structures, but
absolute disregard of congruity and harmony characterized
every building erected for nearly seventy
years after the founder's death. The climax was
reached in half a century, in the Lewis Brooks Museum,

a structure of four stories, within a stone's
throw of the Rotunda, on the northeast side. Professor
Henry A. Ward of Rochester, New York, in
1876 announced to a member of the faculty of the
University that an admirer of Mr. Jefferson wished
to establish at the University an extensive museum
of natural history, provided other friends would
contribute $12,000 to furnish the necessary cases,
etc. The Miller Board contributed $10,000 and Professor
William Barton Rogers and others the remainder.
Mr. Brooks's gift amounted to $50,000,
and by his request $25,000 of it was devoted to the
material for the cabinet of natural history and
$25,000 to the erection of a suitable building. Mr.
Brooks afterwards increased his contribution by
nearly $20,000. The building was completed in
July, 1887.

The structure is of brick in the Rennaisance order,
and rather too elaborately ornamented with
granite trimmings and the carved heads of various
animals. In the granite are graven the names of
Cuvier, De Candolle, Audubon, Huxley, Pliny, and
others. The architect arrived at the University
with his drawings made, and all efforts to convince
him of their unsuitableness to the surroundings
were ineffective. Although an offensive intruder,
viewed architecturally, the building is the
repositorium of valuable natural history collections,
which constitute an indispensable aid to scientific
investigation and instruction. The geological collectons
are on the floor of the lower or chief hall
and the mineralogical specimens in the galleries
around this room. The main floor of the upper hall
is taken up with the zoological exhibit and the botanical
specimens are in an adjoining room. The

lectures in the school of natural history are delivered
in this building.

After the annex to the Rotunda perhaps the first
buildings added to the Jeffersonian groups were the
dormitories now known as Monroe Hill. This
eminence took its name from a building which
President Monroe once occupied and which was
afterward the residence of the first proctor, Arthur
S. Brockenbrough. Later it was considerably enlarged,
and it is now a professor's house. Monroe's
office was in a small building west of his residence.

The building known as the parsonage at the
southern end of Dawson's Row was erected in
1854-5 as a residence for the chaplain. As early as
1851 the Visitors were requested to permit the
building of a home for the chaplain on lands belonging
to the University. The following year Colonel
Thomas Jefferson Randolph, from a special
committee to whom the board had referred the matter,
made a lengthy report which authorized the
professors to open a subscription for donations to
be received by the Visitors in trust for the University
for the erection of such houses as might be necessary
for the religious worship of the professors
and students on such sites on the grounds of the
University as the executive committee might approve.
It was explicitly declared that all such
buildings should belong to the University and be at
all times under the control of the Visitors. The
money was soon contributed. A year later
(1855-6) the building at the entrance of the University
was erected out of the funds contributed for the
purpose by Gen. John H. Cocke and others interested
in the movement for teetotalism. The Sons
of Temperance for many years, and the Friends of

Temperance afterward, held their meetings on the
second floor. For this reason the building was
called Temperance Hall. It is now more generally
known as the post-office.

In 1859 there was a further extension of the dormitories
by the erection of six two-story buildings
on an arc running southward from Monroe Hill
and eastward to the parsonage. Martin Dawson
had devised a tract of land to the University and the
proceeds of the sale of the landed possession paid
for the buildings, thereafter known as Dawson's
Row. The Infirmary was erected about this time,
and between it and Dawson's Row arose a frame
gymnasium and near by a wooden structure for
Russian baths. Monsieur d'Alfonce, a Russian
officer, was in charge of the gymnasium and responsible
for the convenient innovation of a bath-house
available to the students at large. The wooden
structures were destroyed during the war.

In 1868 the Visitors authorized the building and
equipment of a chemical laboratory on a small eminence
west of the north end of West Range, and a
residence for the professor was erected on Monroe
Hill. Between the laboratory and West Range is
"Med Hall," where many of the medical lectures
are given. The present structure dates from 1886,
when the original building, one of the oldest erections
at the University, was destroyed by fire.

The dormitories on Carr's Hill—it was first
known as Brockenbrough's Hill—were constructed
before the civil war. The ground was acquired
from the late Mrs. Schele De Vere. The original
building, occupied as a residence, was destroyed by
fire some time before the University purchased the
land. The name Carr's Hill was derived from a

former owner. The mess hall is of recent origin.
The small one-story detached house at the southwest
point of the dormitory L was built by Judge
Field of Culpeper for his son William G. Field, who
was a student when the war began. Young Field
was a member of the student company "The Southern
Guard," and was killed at Malvern Hill.

Perhaps the first astronomical building in America
was erected on the site of the Leander McCormick
Observatory, on the summit of Mount Jefferson,
a mile southwest of the University. In 1881,
Mr. McCormick, for whom the present observatory
was named, gave $50,000 to establish such a station,
and William H. Vanderbilt added $25,000.
The observatory is a rotunda forty-five feet in diameter,
and contains a Clark refractor of twenty-six
inches aperture. Adjoining are the computing
rooms, in which are housed a working library,
clock, chronograph, etc.

With the small building erected by Mr. Jefferson
for an astronomical observatory which fell into decay—and
the building,[8] also small, erected to provide
a home for the janitor, the eccentric Dr. Smith,
added, the list of buildings belonging to the old
order is probably complete. It is scarcely saying
too much to aver that not one of them harmonized
fully, and not many of them even remotely, with the
styles of architecture that give the original buildings
the quality of beauty united to dignity. There was,
evidently, nobody to take up Mr. Jefferson's propaganda
for the recognition of art in building. The
structures belonging to the later period, which began

with the restoration following the great fire,
have been raised on plans provided by architects
whose souls were susceptible and yielded to the
transmitted charm of the masters.