 | Board of Visitors minutes June 2, 1972 |  |
RESOLUTION OF THANKS TO THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND
URBAN DEVELOPMENT
The following resolution was adopted:
- WHEREAS, the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia has repeatedly over the past seventeen years given encouragement and support to research into the architectural history of the University's central original building, the Rotunda, looking toward the completion of the restoration work begun in 1939 under the late Stanislaw Makielski and the late Fiske Kimball; and
- WHEREAS, since 1966 the Buildings and Grounds Committee of the Board, the President of the University, and a Faculty Building Committee, acting under the authority of the Board, have completed, with professional assistance from the architectural firm of Ballou and Justice, the preliminary plans for the interior restoration of the Rotunda, providing for replacement of the rooms removed in 1896-98, so that the interior structure and proportions will be as they were designed and built by Thomas Jefferson, and as they existed from his death until the fire of 1895; and
- WHEREAS at the meeting of April 7, 1972, the Board approved the architectural plans prepared by Messrs. Ballou and Justice, conditioned only upon the necessary procurement of funds for execution of the work, and at the same meeting authorized the President to make application to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development for a grant of one half of the total estimated cost of $2,176,500 needed to complete the restoration, so that with matching funds from non-Federal sources, the Rotunda, Thomas Jefferson's last and greatest architectural masterpiece, could be restored to its original design and functions by the nation's anniversary year, 1976, the primary objective recommended for that year by the University's Bicentennial Committee; and
- WHEREAS, on April 28, 1972, at Monticello, the Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Community Development signed and delivered to the President of the University a contract granting the sum of $1,088,250 which, matched by a similar sum from private sources available to the University, will make possible the long-planned restoration;
- NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, in the conviction that this generous grant, the largest ever made by the Department for historic restoration, is also a wise and far-seeing action that will reflect the highest credit hereafter on all concerned in it, extends its gratitude on behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the University of Virginia to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
| Board of Visitors minutes June 2, 1972 | |