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Chapter 1
Genesis of the Academical Village, 1814-1817
Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University
of Virginia, 1817-1828 |  |
The Land Deal
While Jefferson was awaiting Latrobe's answer to his letter, Alexander Garrett closed the
land deal with John M. Perry. Perry sold the college two tracts of Albemarle County land,
for $1,421.25, "the one containing forty three acres & three fourths about a mile above
Charlottesville on the public road to Staunton, the other about five eighths of a mile from the
former, containing one hundred & fifty three acres, comprehending the top and part of a
mountain."[52] As part of the land settlement, the college agreed to contract with Perry for
one of the pavilions scheduled to be built on his former property, "as Perry persisted
positively in refusing a deed but on condition of doing the wooden work of the building now
proposed."[53] Perry, for his part, promised to do "all the Carpenter's and House joiner's
work of the said pavilion as shall be prescribed to him," and agreed to
that the meterials shall be of sound and durable quality, the Carpenters work
shall be done solidly, neatly and well fitted, and the house joinery in the best
manner, and strictly according to such forms and orders of Architecture as the
said Proctor or his successors shall prescribe; that all the work necessary to be
put up or in as the brick layer proceeds, shall allways be ready by the time the
brick layer is ready for it, and all the residue to be done by him shall be
compleated and put up within five months after the brick layer shall have so far
and the walls as that they shall be capable of recieveing it; and the said John M
Perry doth further agree and covenant, that if any part of the Carpenters work or
house joinery shall not be done in the most perfect good manner or not strictly
according to the forms and orders of Architecture which shall be prescribed to
him as aforesaid, the said Proctor or his successors shall have a right to have the
same altered or taken down and rebuilt according to the forms prescribed, by
any person he shall employ at the expence of the said John, and the parties to
these presents further agree, that if any part of the work shall be objected to as
insufficient or incomformable to what is herein before stipulated that its
sufficiency or non conformity shall be finally decided on by three competent
persons one chosen by each party and the two persons chosen are hereby
empower'd to choose a third equally competent And the said John doth further
agree that if the work shall not be done at the respective times stipulated that
the said Proctor or his successors shall be free to have it done by such person as
he shall employ at the expence of the said John and be entitled to damages for
all wrongful delay to be paid by the said John—
Proctor Alexander Garret, on behalf of the Central College, agreed
have cost him, or which they shall be worth if furnished by himself, shall be
paid him, and for all Carpenter's work or house-joinery done, he shall be paid
the prices which were paid by James Madison late President of the United
States to James Dinsmore for similar work done at Montplier, which payments
shall be made to him as follows towit Five hundred dollars in hand, five
hundred dollars more when the roof shall be raised, and the balance when it
shall be compleated, In Witness whereof the parties hereto subscribe their
names the day & year first within written.[54]
Although Jefferson was satisfied that "on examining the sites for our college we found not
one comparable to Perry's,"[55] the difficulty with the carpenter "retarded the progress of the
Proctor in executeing the plans and designs of the Visitors."[56] Perry's insistence upon
doing the the wood work of the proposed pavilion meant that James Dinsmore could not be
awarded the first contract as Jefferson had wished, and when Jefferson informed his former
housejoiner of this, he noted that "as this leaves us perfectly free as to all the other buildings
we concluded with him [Perry]." Jefferson also told Dinsmore that he planned to meet
Irishman Hugh Chisholm in Lynchburg "a few days hence to engage a bricklayer, master of
the business there."[57] By the middle of July in a small brick kiln near a large spring on the
west side of the square (or lawn as it came to be known) bricks were being made for the new
pavilion.[58]
52. John M. and Frances T. Perry, Land Indenture to Alexander Garrett, 23 June 1817,
ViU:TJ. See also Alexander Garrett, Micajah and William Woods, Commission and
Certificate of Examination for Frances T. Perry, 7 July 1817, in ViU:TJ. Perry apparently
used part of the proceeds from the land sale to pay off a debt of $1,066.81 to John Winn (see
Perry to Alexander Garrett, 23 June 1817, in ViU:PP). Perry received the balance of the
money due him from Garrett on 16 September 1817, for which receipts are in ViU:PP.
53. TJ to James Dinsmore, 25 June 1817, ViU:TJ. Alexander Garrett wrote James Madison
on 24 June to inform him of Perry's obstinacy in requiring a building contract as part of the
settlement of the land sale: "After you left this, a difficulty occured in obtaining the title to
the lands purchased for the Central College, that difficulty was not removed untill yesterday,
when a title was obtained" (DLC:JM). When writing to Joseph Carrington Cabell on 8 July,
Garrett used the same phrase, adding that "this difficulty retarded the progress of the Proctor
in executeing the plans and designs of the Visitors" (ViU:JCC).
57. TJ to Dinsmore, 25 June 1817, ViU:TJ. Hugh Chisholm, who was born in the 1770s,
began working for Jefferson as a bricklayer at Monticello in 1796. He worked not only as a
brickmason but as a carpenter and plasterer at Montpelier, James Madison's Orange County
home, and at Poplar Forest, Jefferson's Bedford County home. See Lay, "Charlottesville's
Architectural Legacy, Magazine of Albemarle County History, 46:43, Cote, "The
Architectural Workmen of Thomas Jefferson in Virginia," 28, 63, and Lay, "Jefferson's
Master Builders," University of Virginia Alumni News, 80 (October 1991), 16-19. In 1812
Chisholm, for $28, laid the 7,000 bricks of the Tuscan-styled Palladian temple linking the
mansion house at Monticello with the vegetable garden, and later he laid the brick walls at
Poplar Forest, Jefferson's octagonal country home at Bedford (see Elizabeth Langhorne,
Monticello: A Family Story, 161, 202). Following his work as the principal brickmason for
Pavilion VII, for which he received $1,780, Chisholm worked as a plasterer on Pavilions I,
III, V, IX; he received $1,804.50 between 19 March 1819 and 18 November 1821 (ViU:PP,
Ledger 1).
|
Chapter 1
Genesis of the Academical Village, 1814-1817
Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University
of Virginia, 1817-1828 | |