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Chapter 5
The Building Campaign of 1820
Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University
of Virginia, 1817-1828 |  |
Jefferson Enthusiastic
On the day before Jefferson wrote to the president and directors of the Literary Fund to
request authorization to draw the remaining third of its $60,000 loan from the fund he wrote
a long personal letter to his son-in-law, John Wayles Eppes of Mill Brook, who had retired
from Congress a year earlier because of declining health.[409] In addition to describing the
general scheme and progress of the university to Eppes, Jefferson invited his ailing
son-in-law to bring his family for a visit to Monticello and the institution's site.
a visit to Monticello where we could not be made happier than by seeing you. it
is little over a day's journey whether by New Canton or Buckingham C. H. the
former being the best road. and our University is now so far advanced as to be
worth seeing. it exhibits already the appearance of a beautiful Academical
village, of the finest models of building and of classical architecture, in the US.
it begins to be much visited by strangers and admired by all, for the beauty,
originality and convenience of the plan. by autumn 3 ranges of buildings will be
erected 600. f. long, with colonnades and arcades of the same length in front for
communication below, and terraces of the same extent for communication
above: and, by the fall of the next year, a 4th. range will be done, which
compleats the whole (the Library excepted) and will for an establishment of 10.
Pavilions for professors, 6. hotels or boarding houses, and 100. Dormitories.
these will have cost in the whole about 130,000 D. there will remain then
nothing to be added at present but a building for the Library of about 40,000. D.
cost. all this is surely worth a journey of 50. miles, and requires no effort but to
think you can do it, and it is done."[410]
When writing to the sovereigns of Montpelier and Braintree two weeks later, Jefferson
echoed his enthusiasm for the progress taking place at the village that is so obvious in his
letter to Eppes, and unlike his constant complaints of a year previous. "Our buildings at the
University go on so rapidly and will exhibit such a state and prospect by the meeting of the
legislature," he hopefully suggested to Madison, "that no one seems to think it possible they
should fail to enable us to open the institution the ensuing year."[411] And to his former
political rival he wrote, "our university, 4. miles distant, gives me frequent exercise, and the
oftener as I direct it's architecture. it's plan is unique, and it is becoming an object of
curiosity for the traveller."[412]
409. See Literary Fund, Resolution Authorizing Loan, 30 July, TJ to William Munford, 13
August, and TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph, 16 September and 8 October 1820, in ViU:TJ.
410. TJ to John Wayles Eppes, 30 June 1820, ViU:TJ. John Wayles Eppes (Jack; 1773-1823)
married his childhood playmate and half first cousin Mary Jefferson (Maria, Polly;
1178-1804) at Monticello in October 1797. Eppes was elected to the United States House of
Representatives in 1802 and served to 1811 when he was defeated by John Randolph of
Roanoke. Re-elected in 1812, Eppes was defeated once again by Randolph in 1814. Eppes
served in the United States Senate from 1816 to his resignation in 1819, and he died at Mill
Brook in Buckingham County in September 1823. See Betts and Bear, The Family Letters of
Thomas Jefferson, 9-11, 145-47, 241, 321, 432, 445, 447, 449.
|
Chapter 5
The Building Campaign of 1820
Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University
of Virginia, 1817-1828 | |