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Chapter 10
The Building Campaign of 1825
Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University
of Virginia, 1817-1828 |  |
Jefferson Still Active
As another building season was drawing to a close, Jefferson was aware that he probably
would not live to see the buildings at the university entirely finished. In his October reply to
a query about the French Revolution he described his declining health: "Eighty two years
old, my memory gone, my mind close following it 5. months confined to the house by a
painful complaint, which, permitting me neither to walk nor to sit, obliges me to be
constantly reclined, and to write in that posture, when I write at all . . . I never declined
business while I was equal to it. but I am now, and for ever past it. I am dead as to that [the
French Revolution] and my friends and the world must so consider me. . . . the little of the
powers of life which remains to me, I consecrate to our University. if divided between two
objects it would be worth nothing to either."[733] Although he never lost interest in the
university, Jefferson's contributions to its establishment waned in proportion to his
increasing debilitation during the last months of his life.
That Jefferson still troubled himself with smaller objects like the construction of wood yards
and smokehouses for the professors is evidence of his persisting concern for the institution,
however. "Wood yards, inclosed in paling," Jefferson said, could be placed in areas
convenient for the professors and their families, like in a "nook of ground adjacent to Dr.
Dunghilson's inclosure, on the outside, where the wood yard would not be in the way of any
thing. there are similar ones I believe at Mr. Tuckers, and Dr. Emmet's I see no objection to
the wood yards being placed there. the gentlemen in interior situations will be obliged to
have them in their inclosures, or in a corner on the outside."[734] Jefferson also informed the
proctor that "a smoke house is indispensable to a Virginia family," and instructed him to
erect several of the buildings:
Professors I omitted to mention three essential precautions in building
meat-houses.
1. they should be tightly paved with brick to prevent rats from burrowing under
them. 2. a shelf should be run all round the inside of the house above the top of
the door 12 I. wide at least; 18 I. would be better, smooth planed below, and no
supports below. a rat from below can never pass that shelf to get to the meat in
the roof. 3. not a crevice should be left for a ray of light to enter the house. a fly
cannot stay in a room compleatly dark. every housekeeper knows the losses in
meat houses from rats & flies.[735]
The smokehouses, if they were built at this time, had not been paid for by the end of 1826
when Brockenbrough made a statement for the Board of Visitors estimating the cost for six
of the buildings to be about $100 each.[736]
734. TJ to Brockenbrough, 12 November 1825, ViU:PP. Robley Dunglison, professor of
anatomy and medicine, lived in Pavilion X; George Tucker, professor of ethics, in Pavilion
IX; and John Patton Emmet, professor of natural history, in Pavilion I (see Sherwood and
Lasala, "Education and Architecture: The Evolution of the University of Virginia's
Academical Village," in Wilson, Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village, 44).
|
Chapter 10
The Building Campaign of 1825
Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University
of Virginia, 1817-1828 | |