Dissatisfaction with Design
In the week following the last meeting of the Central College visitors, outgoing member and
House of Delegates representative David Watson came to the realization that he had played
a vital role in promoting a plan for building at the university that he did not like in any
respect. He wrote John Hartwell Cocke on 8 March to inform the general that he had met
Jefferson on the road "& did what was necessary in the business that carried you to Mr.
Madisons. While I was up, I visited the University, which, to my shame, I had not seen,
since the foundation stone was laid; & I now regret this the more, as the buildings are not
upon a plan to meet my notions of convenience & utility." Watson "breifly & imperfectly"
stated some of his objections to Jefferson's architectural plan, which, in his words, lacked
convenience and fitness as well as the requisite size for the purposes for which they were
intended. "Without this architectural order, & chastity, & beauty, which Mr. Jefferson talks
of, will be all thrown away. The pavilion which was first raised, is altogether unfit for the
residence of a professor who has a family," Watson asserted. "The cellar is barely sufficient
for a kitchen; & where will meal, meat, & all the necessary articles of ordinary subsistance,
which you can readily imagine, be kept? The second pavilion is larger, & of course less
objectionable; but even that will be deficient in convenience." But most of all, Watson objected
to the dormitories. Lacking convenience, too small, and too public for study, he
predicted that the
fine walk in front of them, under the projection of the terrace, will be a
thoroughfare; & when the doors will be necessarily open for air, in warm
weather, (for the windows alone will be by no means sufficient,) the student
will see & hear his idle fellow students walking & talking & sporting within
arms length of him, every moment in the day; for the floor of his room will be
upon a level, or nearly so, with the street before the door. They will not be safe
to lodge in when the windows are open; for a long armed man might stand in the
back ground & reach ones clothes from the bed side; or he chose to enter,
might easily step over the window sill. Where will a student put his table, his
trunk, his pitcher & wash bowl; & where is he to keep fuel for his fire? If he is
to buy & take care of fuel for himself, he must keep it under lock & key.
The boarding houses, "an important appendage," rankled Watson as well because they were
disconnected from the dormitories and lacked proper gardens. "I fear too that the flat roofs
will leak, for I scarcely ever knew a flat roof in Virginia that did not. The interior of the
pavilions are built too expensively. The floors, for instance, are too costly both as to
materials and the manner of laying them." Warning Cocke that there was no time to lose and
advising him to get assistance if necessary from "some one experienced in planing large
establishments," the frantic Watson finally exclaimed, "I am quite an ignoramus in
architecture; but I can feel what is convenient & inconvenient; and, by all our ardent prayers
& wishes, let us not sacrifice the important, long sought object, for the want of suitable
convenience in the plan of the buildings, & other arrangements." Watson, realizing too late
and too imperfectly the scope of Jefferson's architectural vision, at last concluded, "Mr. J. is
sacraficing every thing to Attic & Corinthian order & chastity; about which I know nothing,
& care almost as little; tho' I certainly should be pleased that the establishment should have
an eligant & dignified appearance."[177]
[177]
177. Watson to Cocke, 8 March 1819, ViU:JHC. Ten days later Watson wrote in his
memoranda book that about the "1st inst: I was at the site of the University of Virga. The
hands (negros) were then engaged in leveling the ground. Two pavillions (as Mr. Jefferson
calls them) are raised & covered in . . . The site is beautiful; but the buildings appear to me
to [be] too small. . . . The pavillions, two stories high, are not sufficiently roomy for the
convenient accommodation of a genteel family, & no plan yet of attaching gardens or back
grounds to them. The dormitories are to small for convenience" (Miscellaneous Memoranda,
18-29 March 1819, ViU:Watson Family Papers; see also appendix D).
