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Chapter 9
The Building Campaign of 1824
Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University
of Virginia, 1817-1828 |  |
Lafayette Entertained
The board's work required the visitors to reconvene for another session on the following
day. After resolving to authorize the proctor to lease the hotels after mid-November, the
board began drafting its annual report to the Literary Fund.[657] The report, which mostly
centered around finances, curricula, and professors, stated that in the course of the present
season the Rotunda "has received its roof, and will be put into a condition for preservation
and use, altho its interior cannot be compleated."[658] The incomplete state of the Rotunda's
interior did not prohibit Jefferson and other area residents from planning to entertain the
Marquis de Lafayette at a public dinner later that month, however,[659] and Jefferson later
claimed that upon reflection the building, "in the unfinished state in which it then was, was
as open and uninclosed, and as insusceptible of injury, as the field in which it stood."[660]
One visitor to the university at this time, however, nineteen-year-old Henry Marshall, who
was walking from Philadelphia to his home in South Carolina and who later served in the
first Confederate Congress, apparently thought otherwise. Marshall was so taken with what
he saw that he described the Rotunda as "decidedly the most elegantly proportioned building
I ever saw. It is the only public building I have seen in this country that is high enough. the
professors houses are elegant specimens of architecture. On the whole I think they are the
most tastiful & elegant buildings in the U.S. I had no idea of their extend & splendor."[661]
Construction at the university clearly was nearing completion even as workers continued
painting and installing window panes throughout the month of November.[662] True, on the
first day of winter the "whole scaffolding" surrounding the Rotunda still could be seen left
standing by the workmen as they awaited William J. Coffee's shipment of small frieze
ornaments.[663] (Coffee shipped the ornaments to the university in late December.)[664] The
agreeably mild fall weather allowed workers "to accomplish the repairs and improvements
on, and about the Buildings; such as plastering leveling the yards and Gardens conducting or
draining of the water &c; which labour cannot be done so well after winter."[665] Chiles
Brand's labor account with the university shows that during December 1824 he earned $4.50
for "White washing 9 rooms at night @ 50¢" in addition to the $21.25 he was paid for 17
days of labor work that month.[666] Wagoner William Crenshaw in mid-January 1825
delivered to the university 19 boxes of window glass costing $338.56 for the Rotunda that
was sent from the Boston Glass Manufactory's new Richmond agent, Thomas May.[667] The
winter set in, however, before A. Zigler "the pump man" could finish installing the water
pipes, delaying the completion of his work until the following March.[668]
658. Board of Visitors Minutes, 5 October 1824, PPAmP:UVA Minutes; see also Cabell,
Early History of the University of Virginia, (appendix M, no. 6) 480-83.
659. See Lafayette to TJ, 1 October, in Chinard, Letters of Lafayette and Jefferson, 421-23,
TJ to Thomas Appleton, 8 October, in DLC:TJ, and TJ to Lafayette, 9 October 1824, in
DLC:TJ. Lafayette and his son George Washington Lafayette arrived in New York in
August 1824 and then journeyed to New England and back to New York before heading
south for Philadelphia and Washington. "We are all alive here with LaFayette's visit,"
Jefferson wrote to former Monticello farm manager Edmund Bacon on 9 October 1824. "He
will be at Monticello as soon as relieved from York, and our nbors will give him a dinner in
the University, where probably the principals of the surrounding counties will wait on him"
(CSmH:TJ). After crossing the Potomac River the only old French general's first stop in
Virginia was at Mount Vernon to visit the grave of George Washington. From Mount Vernon
Lafayette and his entourage went by water to Yorktown where he was greeted by Chief
Justice John Marshall, Virginia Governor James Pleasants, and an enthusiastic crowd of
Revolutionary War veterans. Lafayette next traveled to Williamsburg, Norfolk, and
Richmond before setting out by stage to see his old friend at Monticello. During his
nine-day stay with Jefferson in Albemarle, Lafayette was honored for three hours at a
400-person dinner in the Rotunda's unfinished dome room, where he reportedly gave a toast
to "Charlottesville and the University--an admirable establishment." Lafayette concluded his
Virginia tour by riding from Monticello to Montpelier, James Madison's Orange County
home, and then to Fredericksburg and back to Washington. See the Richmond Enquirer, 16,
26 November 1824, and Malone, Jefferson and His Time: The Sage of Monticello, 402-8.
661. Marshall later became a planter in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana. For his full description of
his visit to the university on Saturday 30 October 1824, see the extract from his diary in
"Charlottesville and the University: An 1824 View," Magazine of Albemarle County History,
29:29-31.
663. TJ to Coffee, 9 December 1824, DLC:TJ; see also appendix K and Guinness and
Sadler, Mr. Jefferson, Architect, 126.
664. Coffee to TJ, 20 December 1824, DLC:TJ; see also Coffee to TJ, 1, 16 January, in
DLC:TJ, Brockenbrough & Harvie to Brockenbrough, 19 January, and Coffee to
Brockenbrough, 31 January 1825, in ViU:PP, and O'Neal, Jefferson's Buildings of the
University of Virginia: The Rotunda, 33, 33-34. In his letter of 20 December, Coffee also
informed Jefferson of his plan to manufacture clay and composition flat tiles as an
inexpensive roofing alternative to slate and pantiles.
666. Chiles Brand, Labor Account, 6 January 1825, ViU:PP. Also during December 1824,
incidentally, Daniel Webster accompanied George Ticknor and his wife on a trip from
Washington to Monticello, where they visited with Jefferson for several days, discussing,
among other things, the course of studies planned for the students at the university.
667. See Thomas May to Brockenbrough, 8, 11 January, 14 February, and 10 March, and
William Crenshaw's Loose Receipt, 10 January 1825, all in ViU:PP.
668. See Brockenbrough's Balance Sheet, 31 March, and Zigler's Loose Receipt, 4 March
1825, in ViU:PP. By the following fall Zigler, whose receipt was "for Eleven dollars for
Pumplogs for 4 pumps," was working for Dabney Smith Carr, Jr., and Joseph Carrington
Cabell (see Alexander Garrett to Cabell, 24 September 1825, in ViU:JCC). Additional
waterworks were added in 1826 and 1827.
|
Chapter 9
The Building Campaign of 1824
Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University
of Virginia, 1817-1828 | |