University of Virginia Library

XII. Plan for the Buildings

But a far more important transaction of the Board at
this meeting was the adoption of Jefferson's plan for the
buildings. This plan, it seems, had been carefully

thought out by him many years before.[18] We learn from
a letter which he wrote the architect, Latrobe, in 1817,
that he had formed his general idea of an academic village
about fifteen years before, in response to a request
from Littleton Waller Tazewell, at that time a member
of the General Assembly, which was then disposed to consider
the founding of a university for the State. It was
this plan which he had submitted to the trustees of East
Tennessee College in 1810, when they had asked of him
an appropriate design for that institution; he had then
described it as follows: "a small and separate lodge for
each professorship, with only a hall below for his class,
and two chambers above for himself; these lodges to be
joined by barracks for a certain portion of the students,
opening into a covered way to give a dry communication
between all the parts, the whole of these arranged
around an open square of grass and trees."

The same plan,—except that one side was left open,
—was submitted to the trustees of Albemarle Academy
and accepted by them. The exact description of it as
adopted by the Board of Visitors of Central College was
in these words: "a distinct pavilion or building for each
separate professorship; these to be arranged around a
square; each pavilion to contain a school-room and two

apartments for the accommodation of the professor's
family, and other reasonable conveniences." It will be
perceived that there was, in this curt statement, no reference
at all to a Rotunda on the north line of the square;
indeed, the original scheme called for no difference whatever
between that line and the other lines in the general
character of its buildings.

In drafting this first plan of his academical village,—
which was to contain pavilions on each closed side of the
square, with dormitories between,—there were two practical
advantages that Jefferson kept clearly and constantly
before him. The foremost was that this arrangement
would sensibly diminish the possibility of serious loss by
fire. Had the dormitories and the professors' apartments
been crowded into one large building, there would
have been a perpetual hazard of the structure being burnt
up as a whole; this fate did overtake the central building
of the University of Missouri in 1893; and, in 1895,
it also befell the Rotunda and its annex at the University
of Virginia itself. In the time of Jefferson, there was
less facility for smothering an incipient conflagration,
and the danger of one was then far more justly alarming
because of its certain fatal consequences, should it occur.
But the second and most influential reason in Jefferson's
mind for the academic village was the ability which this
plan created to prolong the east and west lines of the
square indefinitely. He was forced to consider the economic
aspects of the situation primarily from the point
of view of the cost of supplementary buildings. The
scheme of a square open at its southern end was nicely
adapted to the financial condition of the College; one
pavilion or two pavilions, ten dormitories or twenty,
could, from year to year, or decade to decade, be added
on to the east and west side, or to both sides, as the increase

in the number of students, in the course of time,
should justify it. Suppose that, instead of this flexible
arrangement, one large dormitory building had been
erected. Did that allow in itself room for extension?
Either an unsightly wing would have to be attached, or
a second two-story barrack would have to be constructed,
a combination that would hardly have conformed to those
canons of taste which were sacred in Jefferson's eyes.[19]

With his acute sense of architectural beauty and his
taste for building, his mind must have been elated by
the prospects of gratifying both, which opened up to him
when the Visitors of Central College, on May 5, 1817,
recorded their approval of his noble plan and appointed
Cocke and himself a committee with full authority,
jointly or severally, to carry it out in detail. Not since
the completion of Monticello had he possessed such an
opportunity to show his extraordinary aptitude for architecture,
without being trammeled by the intervention of
others. In his designs for the Capitol at Richmond, and
for public edifices in Washington and private residences
in Virginia, there was always some one with the power to
modify or push aside his recommendations. In this new
field, he was quite as unhampered as he was in constructing
his own home, for Cocke, his colleague on the building
committee, while he did not, from a practical point
of view, approve the plan in many particulars, never undertook
to interfere or obstruct;[20] and this seems to have

been the attitude also of the Board of Visitors as a whole.
All recognized with Madison that the whole scheme of
the University belonged to Jefferson, and that his wishes
in regard to it should govern their action without question
or dispute.

Jefferson wrote to Cabell, his most sympathetic correspondent,
that, in his judgment, a remarkable "material
basis" for the University was necessary "for its intellectual
superstructure." It will be recollected that he
had once asserted that it was not more costly to build a
beautiful house than to build an ugly one, and he tacitly
refused to contract his general plan on the score of economy
except to take brick or stone as a substitute for
marble, which alone was really in harmony with his
splendid design. There was a time, even in the history
of Central College, when he was harassed with the
thought of his inability to secure the funds which he
needed for his projected pavilions and dormitories, but
this prospect never caused him to draw back to a commoner
level. Indeed, his disposition, after the projection

of the first pavilion, the plainest of all, was to grow
more ambitious in the character of his principal structures
as a means of further enhancing the beauty of the
whole group. That group, when finished, was, as we
shall see, to be marked by great variety, not only in small
details, but in general outlines; and it was in planning
this variety that his architectural talents had found the
widest scope for exercise and gratification. He did not
disguise to himself the fact that this variety, by its striking
combinations, would arouse the opposition of the
ignorant and tasteless from its very novelty. "That the
style and scale of the buildings," he remarked in one of
his reports to the General Assembly, "should meet the
approbation of every individual judgment was impossible
from the various structure of various minds. ...
We owed the State to do, not what was to perish with
ourselves, but what would remain and be preserved
through other ages."

The question now offers itself: how far were the details
of Jefferson's general plan altered by him at the
suggestion of others after the Visitors had authorized
the erection of the first pavilion? Up to that date, the
scheme in its entirety appears to have been precisely the
same as he had formed it in the beginning. So far as
we now know, not even a hint had as yet been obtained
from any one with any pretension to architectural training.
The nearest models to his proposed group in existence
were the cloistered retreats in Europe that had
come down from the Middle Ages. These were distinguished
for similar quadrangles and colonnades, with
dormitories or cells opening into covered ways, which ran
the whole length of the quadrangles. The real inspiration,
however, as we shall see, sprang from another and
more ancient source.

But that Jefferson received suggestions after May 5,
1817, when the first pavilion was determined upon, which
were reflected in the final construction of some of the
buildings, is now very clearly proven. Four days subsequent
to the meeting of the Visitors, he wrote to William
Thornton, the distinguished architect, whom he had
known in Washington: "What we wish," he said, "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 lecturer.
Will you set your imagination to work, and sketch some
designs for us, no matter how loosely with the pen, with
out 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 may not take you a minute, will
greatly oblige us."

It is palpable that Jefferson was seeking, not formal designs
that would materially alter the fundamental character
of his whole scheme, but simply hints or sketches
that would further enhance its beauty by variety. Two
sketches seem to have been sent to him by Thornton, accompanied
by suggestions, some of which were accepted
and others ignored. Thornton counseled that the front
of the first pavilion should be supported by arches next
to the ground, with Doric columns above the arches;
and this advice was adopted; but not so the advice given
at the same time, that the lecture-room should be placed
at the top of the house, and the height of the house increased,
—changes which were recommended to be followed
in all the pavilions. Thornton further thought
that the roofs of the dormitories should be made to slope
outward from a parapet, and that the arcades in front

should be supported, not with piers, but with columns,
such as are now to be seen there. An equally important
suggestion was that a single Corinthian pavilion should
be built on the north line of the square, which would thus
become the most conspicuous structure on the three closed
sides of that square. Apparently, under Jefferson's original
plan, more than one pavilion, with adjacent dormitories,
had been designed to fill up the whole of this
north line.

Jefferson was not satisfied with Thornton's aid alone,
but also wrote to Latrobe, his associate in public building
during his Presidency, and perhaps the most competent
professional architect in the United States at this time.
He gives him the same general description of his plan
which he had given Thornton, but with several additional
details; thus he mentions the width and depth of each
pavilion; and furthermore, points out that there is to
be a colonnade running the entire length of all the strucures
as high as the lower story of the principal ones. As
in his letter to Thornton, so in this letter to Latrobe, he
asks only for outlines, however loose or rough, of fronts;
the interior arrangements, he repeats, will be governed
by convenience alone. A few sketches only, he concludes,
were desired. Latrobe was so much flattered and gratified
by Jefferson's request for assistance, that, unlike
Thornton, who replied rather promptly, he delayed his
answer until June 17 in order to study the plan which had
been submitted to him. So bulky were the drawings that
he made in the course of this study that he did not
venture to enclose them by mail. Jefferson was visiting
his estate in Bedford county when Latrobe's letter reached
Monticello; and it was not until July 16 that he acknowledged
its arrival. "I did not mean to give you this
trouble," he wrote, "but since you have been so kind as to

take it, I shall turn it to good account. I am anxious
to receive your first draft as soon as possible because we
must immediately lay the first stone, as the first pavilion
must be finished this fall."

The magnificenct conception of placing a structure of
the most imposing character in the middle of the north
line had its origin, it would seem, with Latrobe. "The
centre building," he wrote on July 24, "ought to exhibit
in mass and detail as perfect a specimen of good architectural
taste as can be devised."[21] Thornton, it will
be recalled, had simply suggested that a single Corinthian
pavilion should be erected there instead of the less
imposing pavilions, with adjacent dormitories, which had
been projected by Jefferson; who seems, however, to
have been at once favorably impressed with Latrobe's
nobler proposal: "We will leave the north side open,"
he replied on August 3, "so that, if the State should
establish there the university they contemplate, they may
fill it up with something of the grand kind." It was characteristic
of his architectural taste that the "something"
which he finally adopted was on the model of the Pantheon.

The original plan had provided only two rooms for
the accommodation of each professor. It has been supposed
that Jefferson, having in mind the early principle
of the College of William and Mary, favored the employment
of unmarried instructors alone, and, therefore, was
only inclined to furnish bachelor quarters for each member
of the teaching staff. The quick eye of Latrobe
caught this defect in the plan at once, but Jefferson, in
his reply, explained it away by pointing out that the backside

of each pavilion was left without windows, in expectation
of an addition of two or three apartments,
should they be required for a man of family.

The roll of Latrobe's drawings arrived on October 6.
Two more pavilions having been authorized by the
Board, Jefferson, on the 14th, wrote to him, "We shall
certainly select their fronts from these (drawings). ...
Some of your fronts would require too great a width for
us because, the aspects of our fronts being east and
west, we are obliged to give the largest dimensions to our
flanks, which look north and south." The influence of
Latrobe is distinctly reflected in pavilions III and V,
and it possibly comes out also in several of the pavilions
erected after the incorporation of the University; but this
cannot be positively stated owing to the loss of the drawings.
It is most strongly suspected in pavilion X, which
closely follows III; and also in pavilion VIII. While
both Thornton and himself left the stamp of their genius
on some of the important details of the general design,
—Latrobe especially, by his recommendation of pavilions
at the angles and of a great dominating building at the
central axis, perceptibly modified and improved it,—the
credit of the general architectural conception of Central
College belongs to Jefferson. His fundamental inspiration
lay, not in the suggestions of contemporaries, valuable
as they were, but in the monumental works of Greece
and Rome as delineated in the plates of Palladio. This
fact will disclose itself more clearly when we come to describe
the progress of the whole design after Central
College had been converted into the University of Virginia.