ups and Downs

Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia: Planning the Academic Village Author(s): Mary N. Woods Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Oct., 1985), pp. 266- 283 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/990076 . Accessed: 02/02/2015 20:47

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Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia: Planning the Academic Village

MARY N. WOODS Cornell University

Thomasefferson's arrangement of buildings around an open lawn at the University of Virginia represents an innovative approach to colle-

giate planning. Yet it is not this plan but the individual structures that have dominated architectural discussions of the university. While pro- totypes for the latter have been meticulously researched, the origins of the university plan have remained relatively unexplored. Focusing on the University of Virginia as an institutional building type, this study relates its plan to hospital and school designs available to Jefferson through either his library or professional contacts. It reveals his appre- ciation of the university as a self-contained community-the academic

village-and his sensitivity to the efect of the architectural arrangement on education, discipline, health, and morale.

THE UNIVERSITY of Virginia's architectural significance rests to a great degree on Thomas Jefferson's use of a comprehensive plan to organize the university's constituent elements. The plan features a domed building and ten pavilions interspersed with

one-story dormitories arranged around a terraced lawn in a con-

figuration like the Greek letter pi; colonnades in front of these

buildings link them together. Two outer ranges, composed of six pavilions, parallel the inner rows, and gardens with serpen- tine walls separate the buildings on the lawn from these struc- tures (Fig. i). The pavilions on the lawn served as classrooms and apartments for the faculty while the outer parallel ranges contained student dining halls and additional dormitories.

Crowning the complex, the Rotunda originally housed the uni-

versity library, observatory, laboratories, and additional lecture halls. When the university admitted its first students in the

spring of I825, the campus was unprecedented in terms of the sheer number of its buildings and their carefully considered

relationship to one another.' Developed in conjunction with the curriculum, the architectural program was not an after-

thought but the tangible expression of Jefferson's educational concerns.

Jefferson recognized the unique architectural character of his

design. He remarked on its originality in his correspondence, as did Benjamin Henry Latrobe, this country's first profession- ally trained architect, who complimented Jefferson on the uni-

versity's "entirely novel plan."2 The University of Virginia dif- fers rather markedly from the two architectural models available to Jefferson, the first American colleges and the early colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. The former lack the complexity and

variety of its elements and the coherence of its plan while the latter cannot equal its spacious character.

This study was begun as a seminar report for George Collins's graduate colloquium at Columbia University and was then expanded into a re- search paper for William Foulks. In addition to their help, I also ben- efited from the advice of Christian F. Otto, Joseph Connors, Rosemarie Bletter, Hellmut Hager, and Eugenio Battisti. Finally, I am especially indebted to Adolf K. Placzek for his careful reading and discerning criticism of the manuscript.

i. University officials obviously recognized that the Virginia campus was unique and could be used to promote enrollment. Peter Maverick's engraving of the plan was sold to students and other interested people for fifty cents. See E. Betts, "Groundplans and Prints of the University of Virginia, I822-1826," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 90 (x946), 87. The term campus was first used

to refer to Princeton University in the 1790s, where Nassau Hall was set back behind a greensward; see P. V. Turner, Campus: An American Tradition, Cam- bridge, Mass., and New York, 1984, 23.

2. See: Jefferson to John Adams, 15 August 1820, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., as reproduced in Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. L. Cappon, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959,11,565, and Latrobe tojefferson, 7 June 1817, Benjamin H. Latrobe Papers, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Md. Others who have commented on the plan's originality include: M. Schuyler, "Architecture of American Colleges," Architectural Record, 30 (July 1910), 71; W. A. Lambeth and W. H. Manning, ThomasJefferson as an Architect and Landscape Designer, Boston and New York, 1913, 31-32; F. Kimball, Thomas Jefferson Architect (19x6), New York, 1968, 8o; W. H. Pierson, Jr., American Buildings and Their Architects: the Colonial and Neo-Classical Styles, Garden City, N.Y., 1976, 319-325; and B. Pickens, "Mr. Jefferson as Revolutionary Architect,"JSAH, 34 (1975), 278-279. Jefferson's plan still exerts an influence on architects, as seen in Edward Larrabee Barnes's arrangement of the State University of New York at Purchase, 1969- 1979. Barnes designed the buildings at either end of a lawn, while Philip Johnson, Paul Rudolph, Gunnar Birkerts, and The Architects Collab- orative created the flanking structures; see K. Herdeg, The Decorated Diagram: Harvard Architecture and the Failure of the Bauhaus Legacy, Cam- bridge, Mass., 1983, 72-74.

266 JSAH XLIV:266-283. OCTOBER 1985

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WOODS: JEFFERSON AND THE ACADEMIC VILLAGE 267

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Fig. i. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. Plan, study for i822 Peter Maverick engraving (Virginia State Library).

In his first statement on the design of a Virginia university- a letter of 5 January x8o05 to L. W. Tazewell-Jefferson casti-

gated the architecture of the typical American college as nothing more than a large house that was "always ugly, inconvenient,

exposed to accident in case of fire, and bad in cases of infection."'3 The first colleges established in the English-speaking colonies- Harvard (1636), William and Mary (1693), Yale (1701), and the

College of New Jersey (1746, later to become Princeton)- originally consisted of a single multipurpose building. Like the smaller colleges founded at Oxford and Cambridge in the 1700oos, these colonial institutions simply could not afford to build the

monastery-like compounds of the first English colleges.4 Fur-

thermore, the architectural talent available in the North Amer- ican colonies consisted either of gentlemen-architects or builders who were generally more familiar with residential than with institutional design. It is no wonder then that these early colleges resembled nothing so much as large houses. When a college outgrew its original quarters, it constructed other similar build-

ings and gradually a compound developed. Yet there was limited success in creating an ordered and coherent relationship among these buildings; they were constructed only as funds became available and were rarely placed according to any master plan.'

3. Letter in the Thomas Jefferson Papers, Manuscripts Department, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

4. A. Bush-Brown, "College Architecture," Architectural Record, I22 (1957), 156.

5. There were exceptions. By I786 Harvard College consisted of a pi-shaped arrangement of three separate buildings, and the so-called Wren Building at the College of William and Mary and the House of Burgesses were the respective termini for the Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg; see Pierson, American Buildings, 318-319-

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268 JSAH, XLIV:3, OCTOBER 1985

These American colleges differed from their European coun-

terparts in their spacious park-like settings and accommodations for students on campus. Located in urban centers, the Conti- nental universities neither housed nor fed their students.6 It was, instead, the English universities that provided models for resi- dential colleges in the colonies.

Founded in the 12th and i3th centuries, respectively, Oxford and Cambridge drew on the monastery as a prototype for their architectural design: chapel, library, dining hall, and residences were all grouped around a quadrangle. Originally, living ac- commodations within the college were restricted to the faculty, the students finding their lodgings elsewhere. Only after the Reformation did it become common practice for students to reside within the college.7 These cloistered colleges lacked the

spacious character of the first American colleges and the Uni-

versity of Virginia. Furthermore, their association with English privilege and the church made Oxford and Cambridge unac-

ceptable architectural prototypes for Jefferson's university. As he wrote in the I805 letter to Tazewell, a university education was essential in a society where "the people are the only safe

depositories of their own liberty."8 Just as necessary was the exclusion of sectarianism from such an institution, as evidenced

by his omission of any chapel from his university plan. Throughout his architectural career, Jefferson brought to bear

on his designs a highly refined sense of architectural symbolism. By advocating the adoption of the Maison Carrie at Nimes as the prototype for the new Virginia capitol, he sought to legit- imize the new republic's institutions by invoking the architec- tural forms of ancient Rome. Writing to James Madison in 1785, he described the Maison Carr&e as

one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful and precious morsels of architecture left to us by antiquity ... it is very simple, but is noble beyond expression, and would have done honor to any country.... You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, and procure them its praise.9

In a similar fashion Jefferson attempted to link the university structures to the monuments of antiquity. Since he had described

I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura as the Bible only a year before

designing the first pavilion in 1817, it is not surprising that the ancient Roman monuments extolled by Palladio should have

inspired the university buildings.1o As William B. O'Neal has

shown, Jefferson ordered that the capitals for Pavilions II, III, and V be based on plates from Giacomo Leoni's 1721 edition of

Palladio, and its illustration of the Pantheon be used in working out the Rotunda's plan and details." The individual pavilions drew their orders from those of such Roman monuments as the

Temple of Fortuna Virilis, the Baths of Caracalla, and the Thea- ter of Marcellus.12 In selecting these Roman motifs, Jefferson's purpose was as much didactic as aesthetic. As outlined in an

I825 letter, he envisioned the university buildings as teaching tools:

The introduction of chaste models of the orders of architecture, taken from the choicest samples of each order was considered as a necessary foundation of instruction for the students in this art [architecture].... We therefore determined that each of the pavilions erected for the accommodation of the schools and their professors should present a distinct and different example of the art and, these buildings being arranged around three sides of a square, the lecturer in a circuit attended by his school, could explain to them successively these examples of the several orders, their varieties, peculiarities, and accessory circum- stances.13

Although Jefferson's designs for the individual pavilions have been meticulously studied, the plan's origins and development have received comparatively little attention.14 The few models

6. Oxford and Cambridge initially adhered to the Continental model in their curricula and in the practice of students boarding off campus; see Turner, Campus, 9-12.

7. T. Atkinson, Cambridge: Described and Illustrated, London, I897, 243-244.

8. Jefferson Papers, University of Virginia Library. 9. Letter to James Madison, 20 September 1785, Thomas Jefferson

Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

1o. Jefferson's remark about Palladio's treatise is recorded in a letter of 23 February i816 of Colonel Isaac Coles to General John Cocke as reproduced in The Eye ofJefferson, ed. W. Adams, Washington, D.C., 1976, 283.

ii. Jefferson specified that the Italian stone carvers use plates xciv- cii in the Leoni edition of Palladio for the aforementioned pavilions. He also noted this edition's illustration of the Pantheon on his drawing of a plan for the Rotunda's dome room and referred to it as the model to be followed in carving its capitals; see O'Neal, Jefferson's Fine Arts Library, Charlottesville, Va., 1976, 283.

12. O'Neal relates the orders of six pavilions (two directly and four indirectly) to plates in Roland Freart de Chambray's Parallile de l'Ar- chitecture Antique avec la Moderne (1766), which Jefferson acquired after 1789: Pavilion I with the Doric of Diocletian's Baths, Pavilion VIII with the Corinthian of Diocletian's Baths, Pavilion IV with the Doric of Albano near Rome, Pavilion VI with the Ionic of the Theater of Marcellus, Pavilion VII with the Doric of Palladio (as illustrated in Chambray), and Pavilion X with the Doric of the Theater of Marcellus; ibid., 118-ii9, 132.

13. Jefferson's motivation in this instance was not purely idealistic but monetary. Import duties of $2,715-47 had been levied on the marble bases and capitals for the Rotunda. This quotation is taken from a letter he wrote to Virginia's legislators in Washington asking for relief from these tariffs because these architectural elements were "specimens of modelling or sculpture for use of any seminary of learning or for en- couragment of the fine arts" and therefore exempt under the law. See his 25 November 1825 Letter to Senator L. W. Tazewell and Repre- sentative William Cabell Rives, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.

14. Fiske Kimball and Albert Bush-Brown proposed Marly-le-Roi as a prototype for Jefferson's plan. See the former's "Genesis of the Plan for the University of Virginia," Architecture, 48 (December 1923), 399, and the latter's "College Architecture," 156. Christopher Tunnard sug- gested the H6tel de Salm and the Hotel des Invalides in his "Jean- Jacques Rambe," Union Worthies 19 (1964), 13. Paul Turner has recently

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WOODS: JEFFERSON AND THE ACADEMIC VILLAGE 269 I~ U"".V" 11 . 41-1 1 . - . r ? r rW-

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Fig. 2. Thomas Jefferson, plan of pavilion and dormitory unit, x804-1805? (Jefferson Collection, The Massachusetts Historical Society).

that scholars have adduced fail to address Jefferson's insistence that the plan embody and promote certain pedagogic concerns. From his first pronouncements on the university, Jefferson saw as the genesis of his plan not a single building, but faculty houses

joined to student dormitories which he referred to as the "ac-

ademical village." In the 18o5 letter to Tazewell, his first written

statement on a proposal pending before the Virginia legislature to establish a state-supported university, he outlined his ideas for the design of such an institution:

the greatest danger will be their [the university board] overbuilding themselves by attempting a large house in the beginning, sufficient to contain the whole institution.... a plain small house for the school &

lodging of each professor is best. These connected by covered ways out of which the rooms of the students should open would be best. These

may then be built only as they shall be wanting. In fact an University should not be an house but a village. This will much lessen their first

expences [sic]."s [author's italics]

A plan, now in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical

Society and tentatively dated 1804-1805 by Fiske Kimball, may be one of Jefferson's first drawings of the academic village's basic unit: a pavilion-like block with dormitories to either side

(Fig. 2).'6 The image of the university as a planned and self-contained

community continued to develop and evolve in Jefferson's mind. As a letter to the trustees of a lottery for East Tennessee College indicates, he had arranged the village dwellings for faculty and students around a lawn by ix8o:

I consider the common plan, followed in this country, but not in others, of making one large and expensive building as unfortunately erroneous. It is infinitely better to erect a small and separate lodge for each pro- fessorship, with only a hall below for his class, and two chambers above for himself; joining these lodges by barracks for a certain portion of the students opening into a covered way to give a dry communication between all the schools the whole of these arranged around an open square ofgrass and trees would make it, what it should be in fact, an academical village, instead of a large and common den of noise, of filth, and of fetid air.17 [author's italics]

This arrangement of professors' pavilions and student dor- mitories placed around a lawn was to form the nucleus of Jef-

dismissed European influences on Jefferson and instead stressed the typ- ical American village green such as the Palace Green in Williamsburg; see his Campus, 80. Jean-Jacques Ram&e's design for Union College, Schenectady, New York is visually persuasive with its pi-shaped com- plex of buildings centered around an open lawn with a domed structure as its centerpiece. Yet Ram&e did not come to the United States until 1812 and his plans for Union College were not presented until 1813- Jefferson, as we shall see, evolved the plan and individual elements of his university during the period from i805 until 18io. For a discussion and illustration of Union College, see Turner, Campus, 63-7x.

15. Jefferson Papers, University of Virginia Library.

16. Kimball, Jefferson, 205. 17. 6 May i8io Letter, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, as re-

produced in The Complete Jefferson, ed. S. Padover, New York, 1943, 1o63-io64.

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270 JSAH, XLIV:3, OCTOBER 1985

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ferson's proposal for the Virginia state university; he presented this plan to the university board on 5 May x817 along with his earliest known drawing of the campus (Fig. 3).18 Two alterations to this parti for the academic village occurred in I817 and x820.

First, Jefferson realized in July of x817 that the university re-

quired a distinctive building to anchor the lawn.19 Benjamin Latrobe, whose advice Jefferson had solicited for the design of

the pavilion fronts, also recognized the need for such an archi-

tectural focal point and suggested a domed structure. Latrobe

included an illustration of his idea in plan and elevation in a

I8. This drawing is in the collection of the University of Virginia Library. A similar plan was included in a letter dated 9 May 1x87 that

Jefferson wrote to Dr. William Thornton asking for his suggestions on the pavilions' design. This letter is also in the Jefferson Papers at the

University of Virginia Library.

19. According to Paul Turner, Jefferson observed in his notes of i8 July 1817 that the center point of the campus's northern end was "des- tined for some principal building." This was brought to Turner's at- tention by John C. Van Home, associate editor, The Papers of Benjamin H. Latrobe; see Turner, 83, 314 n. 72. See also D. Malone, Jefferson and His Time, 6 vols., Boston, 1981, 6, 259-

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WOODS: JEFFERSON AND THE ACADEMIC VILLAGE 271

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Fig. 4. Benjamin H. Latrobe, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 24 July 817 (Jefferson Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress).

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272 JSAH, XLIV:3, OCTOBER 1985

letter dated 24 July x8x7 (Fig. 4).20 The second modification to his original plan was the design of two outer ranges of student

dining halls and lodgings lying parallel to the inner rows of

pavilions in 1820.21

Just as Jefferson consciously tied the Richmond capitol to ancient Rome, he may have tried to link the University of

Virginia to the Greek academies through his reference to the academic village. This association of the ancient academy with a village occurred in the entry on colleges in Quatremere de

Quincy's first volume on architecture in the Encyclopidie Mith-

odique (1789). The relevant passage excerpts part of a Monsieur Paw's researches on the Greek schools of philosophy:

When the highly celebrated philosophers, such as Polemon, had so

many disciples that they could not be accommodated within the enclo- sure of a garden, they constructed for their use, some huts around their master's dwelling, which are called calybia in Greek, that is to say some

very primitive huts made of wood and covered with thatch where the Greek students resided with a singular satisfaction.... Meanwhile this manner of living preserved the youth from the city's corruption and diminished considerably the costs of public education.... An accumu- lation of such habitations presented from afar the appearance of a village where one learned ethics like a trade.22 [author's italics]

Jefferson described himself as one of the Encyclopidie's first subscribers and even toyed with the idea of becoming the Amer-

ican agent for the publication.23 Beginning in 1786, bills from his French book dealers indicate that he had begun purchasing a number of the Encyclopidie volumes, and it is conceivable that he acquired the volume on architecture when it appeared in

1789, the final year of his posting as American minister to France.24 After returning to the United States, Jefferson continued to subscribe to the Encyclopidie. On 24 June 1805, he wrote to Reibelt, his Baltimore book dealer, that he was an original subscriber to the publication and had received "as far as the 67th livraison inclusive and compleat."25 The sections on architecture were numbered 6i through 63; some six months after his de-

scription of the university as a village this letter confirms that the volume containing Paw's account of the ancient academies was in his possession.

The Encyclopidie description of the Greek philosophers and their students residing in a village-like compound would surely have exerted a strong pull on Jefferson's imagination. Paw's account also stressed the close association of master and pupil and a system of learning based on discourse and dialogue. Jef- ferson too believed that a professor should relate to his students as a father to his sons and envisioned a course of study based, not on the usual program of memorization and recitation, but on lectures and discussion.26

Paw's allusion to the city's corruption and the necessity of

shielding students from it also accorded with Jefferson's views.

Writing to George Washington in 1795 about a scheme to

transplant the University of Geneva faculty to America, Jeffer- son proposed a location adjacent to the new federal city but removed from what he saw as its potential moral contamina- tion.27 "I am not a friend of placing young men in populous cities," he later wrote in 1807, "because they acquire there habits and partialities which do not contribute to the happiness of their afterlife."28

20. With reference to the letters on his sketch, Latrobe wrote:

AA, will be the least expensive pavilions because the lower story will be covered by the Dormitories one story high (which I suppose will also be study rooms) and having the same dimensions, and general Mass but exhibiting different styles of Architections CC d*d* DD dod*. Center building which ought to exhibit in Mass and details as perfect a specimen of good Architectural Taste as can be devised. I should propose below, a couple or 4 rooms for Janitors or Tutors, above, a roomQ for Chemical or other lectures, above a circular lecture room under the dome; the pavilions to be, as proposed, hab- itations of Professors and lecture rooms. -But, if professors are mar- ried will they not require more than 2 rooms each, and a kitchen. I have exhibited such an arrangement. - The above is the arrangement, I believe, sketched in your first letter, and might be executed on ground, falling each way East and West from the Center, and descending as much as may be N. & South, because the E & West sides of the Quandrangle might be detached from the upper range.

Latrobe Letter in Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. 21. Lambeth,Jefferson, 41-42. 22. Encyclopidie Mithodique: Architecture, 3 vols., Paris, 1789, I, 715:

Lorsque les philosophes forts c6lbres, tels que Polemon, avoient tant de disciples qu'on ne pouvoit les reunir dans l'enceinte d'un jardin, ils construisoient pour leur usage, autour de la demeure du maitre, des cases qu'on nommoit en grec calybia, c'est-a-dire des huttes tris chetives, faites de bois et couvertes de chaumes oCi les 6tudiants de la

Grace se logoient avec une satisfaction singulire. . .. Cependant cette maniere d'exister preservoit l'enfance de la corruption de la ville et diminuoit considerablement les frais de l'education publique.... Un amas des semblables habitations offroit de loin l'aspect d'un hameau ou l'on enseignoit la morale comme un metier.

23. E. M. Sowerby, ed., The Catalogue of the Library of ThomasJefferson, 5 vols., Washington, D.C., 1952-1953, v, 149-i50, and Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 26 January 1786, Jefferson Papers, Library of Con-

gress, as reproduced in The Papers ofJefferson, ed. J. Boyd, ix, Princeton, N.J., i954, 224.

24. Sowerby, ed., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, v, 147. 25. Letter in the Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, as quoted in

Sowerby, ed., Catalogue of the Library, v, 149-150. 26. Jefferson's other innovations in the university curriculum were

a system of elective courses and the inclusion of modern languages and the natural sciences in the academic program; see P. K. Bruce, History of the University of Virginia r8r9-r199, 5 vols., New York, 1922, II, 128-

129, and R. Honeywell, The Educational Work of ThomasJefferson, Cam-

bridge, Mass., 1931, zo6, 133. 27. 23 February 1795 Letter, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress,

as reproduced in Writings of Thomas efferson, ed. A. Bergh, Washington, D.C., 1907, xIx, 113.

28. Jefferson to Caspar Wistar, 21June 18o7, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, as reproduced in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. P. Ford, N.Y., z899, Ix, 78.

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WOODS: JEFFERSON AND THE ACADEMIC VILLAGE 273

The Encyclopidie Mithodique's account of ancient Greek aca- demies also sounded another theme Jefferson was to emphasize in his subsequent descriptions of his university plan: the eco- nomic advantages of the academic village. He shrewdly realized that the parsimonious state legislators would be more willing to fund a university consisting of modest units rather than a

single monumental building.29 In addition to the concept of the academic village, Jefferson's

letters of 1805 and i8io repeatedly address the concerns of fire, infection, noise, and filth that confronted the designer of an institutional complex. Although the university pavilions with classrooms below and the professors' lodgings above possessed certain functional shortcomings (the faculty complained that their living quarters were too cramped and their student neigh- bors too noisy), Jefferson sincerely believed that they would be less vulnerable to fire and the spread of disease than would a

single, multipurpose building.30 Even before he became involved with the university design, Jefferson had dealt with the problems raised by a wide variety of institutional building types: an ad- dition to the so-called Wren Building at the College of William and Mary between 1771 and 1772; a Virginia state prison from

1785 through 1786 and again in 1797; the Virginia state capitol in 1785; and ajail in Washington, D.C. between 1802 and 1803.31 While he served chiefly as a consultant and advisor for the prison and jail projects, he played an active role in the college and

capitol commissions. The proposed addition to the Wren Building is of particular

interest. Jefferson drew up a plan for the addition at the request of Lord Dunmore, then royal governor of Virginia (Fig. 5). The foundations for the addition were actually laid, but further work was suspended because of political unrest.32 Construction of the

original building was begun in I695 and substantially completed by 1700. Evidence suggests that as originally planned the build-

ing was to be an enclosed quadrangle, but limited funds per-

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Fig. 5. Thomas Jefferson, plan for the extension of the Wren Building, College of William and Mary, c. 1771 (Jefferson Collection, The Hun- tington Library).

mitted construction of only a portion of this rectangular com-

plex, the principal facade to the east and a northern wing.33 This building burned in 1705 and was subsequently rebuilt, while a chapel, added in 1732, created a southern wing. Jeffer- son's task in i771 was to erect the long-postponed western por- tion of the quadrangle, which would contain additional dor- mitories and classrooms. As indicated in his plan, Jefferson proposed to continue the existing arcade on the eastern facade around the three other sides of the fully developed quadrangle.

Although Jefferson was later to condemn William and Mary's

architecture--"rude, mis-shaped piles, which, but that they have

roofs, would be taken for brick kilns"-his experience designing the Wren Building's ill-fated addition did foreshadow certain features of his plan for the University of Virginia: the com-

mingling of classrooms and dormitories and a covered passage- way connecting all parts of the complex.34 Finally, his associ-

29. His arguments were disproved, however, when construction be- gan on the University of Virginia buildings. He consistently underes- timated costs. In a 28 November I820 letter to Joseph Cabell, he esti- mated that the total cost for all university buildings (ten pavilions, six hotels, and 1o4 dormitories) would be S117,400. When the university opened on 7 March 1825, expenditures totaled $221,514.13; see N. Cabell, ed., Early History of the University of Virginia as Contained in the Letters of Joseph C. Cabell, Richmond, Va., 1856, 188-189, and Bruce, I, 287.

30. After the university opened, many professors moved their classes from the pavilions to the Rotunda or other locations; see Turner, Cam- pus, 87.

31. See: A. L. Kocher and H. Dearstyne, "Discovery of the Foun- dations for Jefferson's Addition to the Wren Building,"JSAH, io (Oc- tober 1951), 28; H. C. Rice, Jr., "A French Source for Jefferson's Plan for a Prison at Richmond," JSAH, 12 (December 1953), 28-30; N. Pevsner, History of Building Types, Princeton, N.J., 1976, 164. It is in- teresting to note that Jefferson advocated solitary confinement at the Richmond prison, an innovative approach at the time; see Autobiography of Thomas eferson, ed. P. Ford, New York, 1914, I.

32. Kocher and Dearstyne, "Wren Building," 28.

33. Ibid., 28-29. 34. See his Notes on Virginia (1784) reprinted 1904 in The Writings of

ThomasJeferson, ed. A. Lipscomb, ii, Washington, D.C., 212.

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274 JSAH, XLIV:3, OCTOBER 1985

AL-, -.to t 1

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Fig. 6. Sir Christopher Wren, The Royal Hospital at Chelsea, c. 1700. View from the southeast. Engraving by S. Nicholls.

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Fig. 7. Rowehead (?), Royal Hospital at Stonehouse near Plymouth. Perspective, 1756-1764 (from John Howard, The State of Prisons in En- gland and Wales, 1784).

ation with the Wren Building may have led to an interest in a related building type, the hospital.

Hugh Jones, a professor of natural philosophy and mathe- matics at William and Mary from 1717 until 1721, is the source for the attribution of that college's principal building to Sir

Christopher Wren. In a 1724 publication Jones wrote:

The building is beautiful and commodious, being first modelled by Sir Christopher Wren to the nature of the country by the gentlemen there; and since it was burnt down, it has been rebuilt and nicely contrived, altered and adorned ... and is not altogether unlike Chelsea Hospital.35

Although there is no record of Jones's book in the catalog of

Jefferson's library, he could have become acquainted with it while a student at William and Mary between 176o and 1762

., •;~

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Fig. 8. Rowehead (?), Royal Hospital at Stonehouse near Plymouth. Plan, 1756-1764 (from Howard, The State of Prisons in England and Wales).

or consulted its account of the Wren Building while designing the addition some ten years later. Jones's comparison of the Wren Building with Chelsea Hospital may have inspired Jef- ferson to examine the hospital as an apposite building type when

designing a university because of similar problems of sanitation and ventilation.

Founded in 1682, Chelsea Hospital was established for the care of Charles II's superannuated soldiers. Designed by Wren, it consisted of a three-sided brick building arranged around a lawn. Containing the hall and chapel, the structure at the head of the lawn had a colonnade across its fagade while the two side

wings contained the hospital wards (Fig. 6).36 Interestingly, the

hospital was generally referred to as a college. This conflation of the two building types was due to the fact that the hospital occupied the site of Chelsea College, an institution established for the study of theology in 1609 by James I.37

35. The Present State of Virginia (1724), Chapel Hill, N.C., 1956, 67. Coincidentally, Wren disliked the enclosed quadrangles of English uni- versities. He is reported to have said that if colleges must have a quadrangle "let them have ... a lame one, somewhat like a three-legged table"; see M. Briggs, Wren the Incomparable, London, 1953, 36, and Turner, Campus, 33, 3xo n.

52•

36. K. Downes, The Architecture of Wren, New York, 1982, 84. The

buildings at right angles to either side of the pi-shaped complex were later additions constructed during the reign of James II.

37. C.G.T. Dean, The Royal Hospital at Chelsea, London, 1950, 29.

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WOODS: JEFFERSON AND THE ACADEMIC VILLAGE 275

-r I as r 4r r - --- I ~ Y n Eli lop bee

Fig. 9. Lord Burlington, Sevenoak School and Almshouses, Kent. Plan and elevation (from William Kent, The Designs of InigoJones, 1727).

Another English hospital whose plan and individual elements recall those of Jefferson's university is the Royal Hospital at

Plymouth. Constructed between 1756 and 1764, its design made an unprecedented use of a separate pavilion for each ward. The wards were linked by a colonnade and placed around three sides of an open lawn (Figs. 7, 8).3" The hospital at Plymouth was discussed and illustrated in John Howard's State of Prisons in

England and Wales (1784), a publication Jefferson acquired for his library.39 Howard, an English sheriff, wrote a series of pub- lications on prisons, hospitals, and lazarettos; his meticulous and

graphic descriptions of the appalling conditions he found in these institutions shocked the public and led to a general outcry for reform.40 In discussing the Plymouth building, Howard

quoted extensively from a report by the hospital's chief phy- sician, who extolled the separate pavilions for their salubrity in terms reminiscent of those Jefferson used for the academic vil-

lage in his letters of i805 and i8io:

It consists of eleven large buildings and four lesser, the whole forming a square, but detached from each other, for the purpose of admitting a freer circulation of air, and also of classing the several disorders, in such a manner as may prevent the spread of contagion. The buildings are of rough marble, raised in the neighborhood with purbeck rusticated quoins,

and in front is a handsome colonnade supported by more stone pillars with a flat roof covered with lead, which serves as an airing ground for convalescents in bad weather.41

The hospital as illustrated by Howard is closer in form and

layout to the University of Virginia than was the building as actually constructed. Howard eliminated in the perspective view-but not in the plan-the two pavilions that stood at right angles to the terminating wards of the parallel ranges, thus

intruding into the lawn. Before concluding this discussion of the similarities of English

hospitals to the design for the University of Virginia, reference should be made to another institutional building, the Sevenoak School and Almshouses. Designed by Lord Burlington, the lead- ing patron of the Neo-Palladian movement, this project ap-

38. Pevsner identifies the architect as Rowehead; see his Building Types, 151. Strictly speaking, the hospital is located in Stonehouse near Plymouth, but it is referred to in the literature as the hospital at Plym- outh. The pavilion plan for hospitals did not become common until later in the i9th century; see Pevsner, 154.

39. Sowerby, ed., Catalogue of the Library, Im, 271. 40. Pevsner, Building Types, 159-60o.

41. The State of Prisons in England and Wales, 3rd ed., Warrington, England, 1784, 389-390. This book went through several printings and was also translated into French and went through two editions, one in 1788 and the other in 1791. Marcus Binney has also noted the resem- blance between the University of Virginia and the Royal Hospital at Stonehouse; see his "University of Virginia," Country Life, January I2, 1978, 77. My own discovery of the English hospital was first presented in a graduate research paper dated ii October 1977 at Columbia Uni- versity. This contribution was also cited in D. Malone,Jefferson and His Time, Boston, 1981, vI, 258 n. 23. Furthermore, Binney does not tie the design to the Howard book but instead to Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand's Recueil et Parallile des Edifices de Tout Genre, Anciens et Modernes, Paris, I8oo. As the instrument of diffusion, the latter is not as convincing as the Howard treatise. There is no record of Jefferson's owning the Dur- and volume; it only appeared on the want list for the university library that he compiled; see O'Neal,Jefferson's Library, io8. Furthermore, Dur- and illustrates only a plan for the hospital whereas the Howard book contains both a plan and a perspective.

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276 JSAH, XLIV:3, OCTOBER 1985

peared in William Kent's The Designs oflnigoJones (r727), which

Jefferson acquired as early as 1778.42 Burlington planned a cen- tral block housing the school flanked by wings containing the cubicles for lodging the students; the entire complex opened out onto an arcaded passageway (Fig. 9). Jefferson, of course, devised a strikingly similar solution for the outer parallel ranges of dining halls (called hotels) and dormitories.

Jefferson served as American minister to France from 1784 until I789. As previously mentioned, it was during this period that the Virginia state legislature solicited his advice on a pro- posal to construct a new prison. It is possible that Jefferson then

acquired Howard's book on prisons with its account of the

Plymouth hospital. Yet he may also have become familiar with

this building and the current state of hospital planning as a result of investigations by the Royal Academy of Science into this

issue from 1785 until 1789.43 The Academy established a com-

mission composed of such distinguished members as Antoine

Laurent Lavoisier, a pioneer in the field of chemistry, the nat-

uralist Louis-Jean Marie Daubenton, and the surgeon Jacques- Rene Tenon to determine whether the H6tel-Dieu, which had

been almost completely destroyed by fires in 1756 and 1772, should be renovated or whether a new hospital or hospitals should be constructed to serve the city of Paris. Although the

commission issued reports from 1786 until 1788, these docu-

ments were not published until 1788 and 1789, respectively." In their first report, the commissioners proposed the construc-

tion of four hospitals, all to be designed as a series of parallel wards arranged along two sides of an open court. Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, they noted, had proposed just such an arrangement in

a manuscript submitted to the Academy in 1777 but never pub- lished. Le Roy, a scientist and academician, was an acquaintance of Jefferson's, as was commissioner Daubenton.45 The commis-

sioners' subsequent report of 1787 noted the absence of members

Tenon and Coulomb, who were away inspecting hospitals in

England and Holland. The results of these travels abroad ap- peared in a third report which enthusiastically described the use of separate pavilions at the Royal Hospital near Plymouth:

Plymouth, composed of isolated pavilions, and arranged around a very large court, has a disposition almost similar to that one which we have already preferred. The Plymouth Hospital is recognized as being very healthy.'6

At this same March 1788 meeting the commissioners rec- ommended that a system of isolated pavilions be adopted for the four hospitals they advised the king to build. As published in their third report, the commissioners' proposal was developed by architect Bernard Poyet into an arrangement of 14 pavilions (seven for men and an equal number for women) divided into two rows paralleling an arcaded courtyard. Poyet placed a build-

ing containing an anatomy theater, chapel, and morgue at the head of this court opposite a series of waiting rooms and ad- ministrative offices.47

Tenon, the commission member who had visited England, issued a separate publication on his own investigations and rec- ommendations for hospital design in 1788.48 The preface to his treatise contains the observation that the H6tel-Dieu, with its

1,8oo to 2,000 patients, had become a city unto itself, a remark reminiscent of Jefferson's likening the university to a village. Like his fellow commissioners, Tenon praised the hospital at

Plymouth, but he cautioned that this institution intended for a

limited number of naval pensioners was not completely appli- cable to the requirements of the large, urban hospital destined

to replace the H6tel-Dieu. 49Finally, he made a most intriguing association when he coupled Le Roy's hospital plan of 1777 with

Marly-le-Roi, the royal retreat that Jules Hardouin Mansart

designed for Louis XIV in 1679. Such a connection is tantalizing because historians have cited Marly as a possible influence on the University of Virginia.50 Marly-le-Roi, which Jefferson vis-

ited on 7 September 1786, consisted of 13 pavilions arranged around a parterre; the royal pavilion stood at the head of the terrace while the smaller pavilions for courtiers stretched out

in two parallel rows beyond it (Fig io). Tenon's association of

Marly with contemporary hospital design may have inspired Jefferson to see it less as a royal pleasure ground, hardly an

apposite model for a public university, and more as part of a

continuing development in institutional building.

42. Kimball, Jeferson, 95. 43. Professor Robert Bruegmann of the University of Illinois first

observed that Jefferson's residence in Paris overlapped with discussions on the H6tel-Dieu, the city's chief hospital; see Turner, Campus, 83, 314 n. 57.

44. "Examen d'un projet de translation de l'H6tel-Dieu de Paris et d'une nouvelle construction d'h6pitaux pour les malades," Histoire de l'Acadimie royale des Sciences pour l'annie 1785, 98 (1788), i-iio, and "Second rapport des Commissaires charges par l'Academie des projets relatifs a l'6stablissement des quatre h6pitaux," Histoire de l'Acadimie royale des Sciences pour l'annie 1786, 99 (1788), 1-42.

45. H. C. Rice, Jr., Thomas eferson's Paris, Princeton, N.J., 1976, 31. Bailly, another member of the commission, was a friend of Benjamin Franklin's so it is conceivable that Jefferson knew him as well as Le Roy and Daubenton; see Pevsner, Building Types, 15x. Constructed be- tween the late x2th century and about 1260, the H6tel-Dieu stood to the west of Notre Dame. It originally consisted of four long two-naved wards, three in a row and the fourth at right angles. In the x7th century, it was expanded to extend across the southern arm of the Seine and on to the far bank. Its overcrowding was notorious and by the late i8th century six to eight patients shared the same bed; see Pevsner, 14x-142, 146.

46. "Troisieme rapport des Commissaires charges par l'Academie des projets relatifs a l'6stablissement des quatre h6pitaux," Histoire de I'A- cadimie royale des Sciences faits 12 Mars 1788, 99 (1789), 16:

Plimouth, composes de pavillons isoles, et ranges autour d'une cour tres-vaste, a une disposition presque semblable a celle que nous avons debj preferee. L'h6pital de Plimouth est reconnu pour tres salubre.

47. Ibid., 27. Poyet's plan was published here also, see 41-42. 48. Mimoires sur les hdpitaux de Paris, Paris, 1788. 49. Ibid., 306. 50. Ibid., vii.

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WOODS: JEFFERSON AND THE ACADEMIC VILLAGE 277

~~Aa

Fig. io. Jules Hardouin Mansart, Marly-le-Roi. Perspective, 1679.

The association of Jefferson's design for the University of

Virginia with hospital planning is not as incongruous as it might initially seem. Hospitals and universities both accommodate large resident populations; both institutions also raise issues of dis-

cipline, sanitation, flammability, and circulation. Jeremy Ben- tham, a leading figure in the English utilitarian movement, even advocated that a single building type be used for institutions where it was necessary to keep individuals under constant ob- servation and supervision. In The Panopticon (1791), Bentham

argued that a circular plan was the ideal architectural arrange- ment for schools, prisons, hospitals, asylums, manufactories, and

poorhouses.51 Jefferson, who owned a copy of The Panopticon, was not impressed by its advocacy of a circular plan for all

building types, yet its commingling of a number of institutions

may have persuaded him to consult such related programs before

beginning work on the university.52 As we shall see, Benjamin Latrobe, whose work Jefferson admired, used the same basic

plan for the three institutional complexes he designed: a national

military academy (i8oo), a national marine hospital (x812), and a national university (xi86).

Jefferson may have looked to hospital design because it too had to solve the question of maintaining order among its various residents. Such considerations were essential at American col-

leges, which were frequently settings for physical violence and civil disturbance. Male students (ranging in age from 13 to 33 years) were boisterous and rambunctious at best; their spirits

and energies often exploded into fist fights, food riots, vandal-

ism, arson, gunplay, and-on occasion-murder. At Princeton, for example, there were six student insurrections between 18oo and x830. In i8oo a riot broke out when two popular Virginia students were expelled for scraping their feet during chapel. Another expulsion of three students for minor offenses in 1807 led to what was referred to as the Great Rebellion. Brickbats were hurled, a tutor badly beaten, and when a hundred students

barricaded themselves in Nassau Hall, the president closed the

college down for five weeks.53 Food served in college dining halls was often a flashpoint for student anger. According to

Andrew Peabody, a student at Harvard in the early i9th century, meals were

so mean in quality and so poorly cooked and so meanly served so as ... to encourage a mutinous spirit, rude manners, and ungentlemanly habits; so that the dining halls were seats of boisterous misrule, and nurseries of rebellion.54

"Crimes worthy of the penitentiary," Peabody also commented, "were of frequent occurrence at Harvard."55

Jefferson often brooded on the problems of maintaining dis-

cipline in a university community. In his i8io letter to the East Tennessee College trustees, he stressed that his academic village was conducive to order, while "large and crowded buildings in

which youths are pent up, are equally unfriendly to health, to

study, to manners, morals, and order. Every professor [in the

5I. The Panopticon or the Inspection-House, Dublin, i791, title page.

52. Although listed in the 1815 catalog ofJefferson's library, its exact date of acquisition is not known; see Sowerby, ed., Catalogue of the Library, mII,

28-29.

53. N. Burt, "Student Life at Nassau Hall," in Nassau Hall z756- z956, ed. H. L. Sauvage, Princeton, N.J., 1956, 126-128.

54. Peabody, Reminiscences of Harvard, Boston, x888, 29. 55. Ibid., 32.

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278 JSAH, XLIV:3, OCTOBER 1985

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Fig. ii. Benjamin H. Latrobe, project for national military academy, plan, i8oo (Architecture, Design, and Engineering Collections, Prints and Photography Division, Library of Congress).

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Fig. x2. Benjamin H. Latrobe, project for national marine hospital, plan, x812 (Architecture, Design, and

Engineering Collections, Prints and Photography Division, Library of Congress).

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WOODS: JEFFERSON AND THE ACADEMIC VILLAGE 279

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280 JSAH, XLIV:3, OCTOBER 1985 h-,' /~

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Fig. 14. Benjamin H. Latrobe, project for national military academy, north elevation, i8oo (Architecture, Design, and Engineering Collec- tions, Prints and Photography Division, Library of Congress).

academic village,]" he continued, "would be the police officer of the students adjacent to his lodge."s56

His fears of student disorder were borne out during the Uni-

versity of Virginia's first year. A few weeks after the term began in 1825, his letters allude to "incipient irregularities" and a

general lack of discipline among the students.57 Scattered inci- dents occurred in June and August of 1825, and a full-fledged riot (with two-thirds of the student body participating) broke out on the evening of 30 September. Drunken students broke windows and assaulted two professors. In the aftermath, the

injured teachers resigned, three students (including Jefferson's great-great-nephew) were expelled, and one rioter was re- manded to the civil authorities.58 Jefferson was so distraught that when he attempted to address the students after the riot his emotions overwhelmed him and he was speechless.

Benjamin Latrobe was an architect who obviously perceived the relationship of hospital to school design. His three insti- tutional projects of the i8oos-the aforementioned military academy, marine hospital, and national university-are all based on the same parti: a pi-shaped arrangement of buildings around an open lawn. Although none of the three projects was ever realized, Latrobe prepared elaborate drawings for the military academy and marine hospital and a site plan for the university (Figs. 11, 12, 13).

Since the military academy and national university were ed- ucational institutions, they can be compared more directly with the University of Virginia than can the marine hospital. Like

Kil lit A It it I'l I A It It 11 a A it

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Fig. 15. Benjamin H. Latrobe, project for national military academy, south elevation, i8oo (Architecture, Design, and Engineering Collec- tions, Prints and Photography Division, Library of Congress).

Jefferson, Latrobe arranged for the faculty members to reside next to their student charges in parallel ranges. Since it was Latrobe who suggested that a domed structure be placed at the head of the University of Virginia's lawn, it is not surprising that he crowned his own institutional complexes with similar

buildings. Located under the military academy's dome was the

library, just as it was at the Rotunda of the University of Vir-

ginia. The military academy's lecture rooms were in an apsidal projection at its rotunda's rear, while in Jefferson's they occupied the lower floors. The national university's domed building was to contain an observatory, just as the University of Virginia's Rotunda once did. Covered passageways linked all parts of the

complex in both the military academy and Jefferson's univer-

sity.59 There are, however, some significant differences between the

Latrobe projects and Jefferson's university. The military acad-

emy lacks the Charlottesville campus's sense of openness. It turns in on itself; the lawn is closed off by an entrance gate (Figs. II, 14). Befitting its function, it is a fortified structure.

Apart from the domed library there are no other projecting buildings in the military academy complex. The stark, three-

story facade presents a grimly institutional face (Fig. i5). The barracks-like character of the ranges, which Latrobe later re- ferred to as "the principal evil of college design," contrasts

markedly with the domestic scale and stylistic variety of Jef- ferson's pavilions.60 Apart from a plan he drew, nothing is known of Latrobe's intentions for the national university. It is clear

56. Letter of 6 May 18io. 57. 13 April I825 Letter to John Spear Smith, Jefferson Papers, Uni-

versity of Virginia Library. 58. Malone,Jefferson, VI, 465-468, and Bruce, University of Virginia,

II, 298.

59. Latrobe's plan for the national university project, the only draw- ing he did for the complex, does not indicate a covered passageway connecting all buildings.

60. 17 June 1817 Letter to Jefferson, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.

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WOODS: JEFFERSON AND THE ACADEMIC VILLAGE 281

from this drawing that he planned projecting structures, perhaps more akin to Jefferson's pavilions, to house the professors (see Fig. 13).

Although the Latrobe projects differ in their individual ele- ments from the University of Virginia, their overall organiza- tion is still quite close to the latter's plan. Since Jefferson's first reference to his academic village did not occur until I805, it is

possible that Latrobe's plan for the national military academy could have influenced him. He was Vice President in John Adams's administration when the Department of War com- missioned Latrobe to prepare drawings for the academy. The architect completed the assignment in January i8oo, and Pres- ident Adams then presented the proposal to Congress. No action was taken, and discussion dragged on through Jefferson's term as President. Latrobe lobbied strenuously for the project's ac-

ceptance, but in the end he was not even able to collect his fee for the original set of drawings.61

Since Jefferson served first as Vice President and then as Pres- ident during the years that the military academy proposal was under discussion, it is difficult to believe that he was unaware of Latrobe's plans, especially since the architect served as his

Surveyor of Public Buildings from I803 until I809. It was Jef- ferson who established a corps of army engineers at West Point to constitute a national military academy in 1802. His i8o8 presidential message to Congress recommended the military academy's removal from West Point and relocation in Wash-

ington, D.C., presumably in the complex Latrobe had de-

signed.62 When Latrobe submitted his plans for the marine hospital

(1812) and the national university (i8x6),Jefferson had long since retired from public life to Monticello. The Latrobe-Jefferson correspondence contains only one passing reference to these

projects, the architect's ill-founded hope, expressed in a letter of July I812, that work on the marine hospital would begin soon.63 There is no mention of the possible relevance of these designs to the university plan Jefferson was devising. Latrobe, if anything, wrote that he found the academic village to be wholly unique:

I have derived important professional improvement from the entirely novel plan of an academy suggested by you. ... I have long considered

the common plan of a college as most radically defective. In your design the principal evils of the usual barrack arrangement appear to be avoided."64

Warming to the architect's praise, Jefferson responded with an account of his plan's genesis:

The general idea of an academical village rather than of one large building was formed by me about 15 years ago, on being consulted by one L. W. Tazewell then a member of our legislature, which was supposed to be then disposed to go into that measure. When called upon 2. or 3. years ago by the trustees of Albermarle Academy, I rec- ommended the same plan and drew the ichnography and elevations for them, but this was all before any actual site was acquired, consequently imaginary and formed on the idea of a plain ad libitum.65

The tenor of Latrobe's letters to Jefferson in the summer of

1817, when the latter asked his advice about designs for the

pavilions, is sycophantic. He repeatedly emphasized his pleasure in studying the university plan and his pride and gratitude that

Jefferson had sought his counsel.66 An excerpt from a letter of

24 July 1817 is typical:

I have now only to request of You one favor, namely, that you will believe that, the pleasure I derive from the study and occupations which that project gives me, is much greater than any possible trouble which you ought to suppose it occasioned, nor does it at all interfere with any business.... In truth, I pride myself much more on the power which my profession gives to me to be useful to the public and to my friends, than I should on any wealth which I might acquire by practising it.67

Latrobe quickly undercuts these admirable sentiments by recit-

ing in great detail his current financial difficulties. He thereby chides Jefferson, however subtly, for the latter's request for free

professional advice:

Your very kind invitation to visit you, so often given and so impossible to accept, has my best thanks! But with a large family to support, dependent upon a salary of 2.500 maximum, and having a heavy debt of Mr. Fulton's to discharge, which it will require years to recover from his heirs, I am obliged to shut myself up from the society of my neighbors even, and dare not indulge any hope of pleasure abroad.68

It appears that Latrobe was angling for an appointment as

university architect. He was then very unhappy in his post as

61. He was owed six hundred dollars for the drawings. See his letters of 28 May 80oi and 1o February 1809 to James Eakins and Colonel Jonathan Williams, respectively, Latrobe Papers, Maryland Historical Society.

62. For Jefferson's involvement with West Point, see E. C. Boynton, History of West Point, New York, 1863, 186, 208. His proposal for the academy's removal to Washington, D.C. is in his "Special Message to Congress, March I8, i8o8," in Writings of ThomasJefferson, ed. A. Bergh, III, 471-472.

63. Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.

64. 17 June 1817, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. 65. 3 August 1817 Letter to Latrobe, Jefferson Papers, Library of

Congress. 66. See the following letters from Latrobe to Jefferson in the latter's

papers at the Library of Congress: 17 June 1817, 24 July 1817, and 7 August 1817.

67. 24 July 1817 Letter to Jefferson, Jefferson Papers, Library of Con- gress.

68. Ibid. The salary he refers to is from his post as Surveyor of Public Buildings. Latrobe had entered into an agreement with Robert Fulton in 1813 to design steamboats in Pittsburgh. The project foundered, and Fulton refused to honor Latrobe's drafts for funds to build the ships. After Fulton's death in 1815, Latrobe tried to recover the money he had invested in the project from the inventor's estate; see T. Hamlin, Ben- jamin H. Latrobe, New York, 1955, 395, 410, 429-432.

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282 JSAH, XLIV:3, OCTOBER 1985

Surveyor of Public Buildings, which he would resign in No- vember 1817.69 In subsequent letters to Jefferson, he indicated his willingness to provide complete working drawings and de- tails for the university pavilions he sketched out in the summer of 1817. Jefferson, however, was not about to let control of the

university's architectural development slip from his hands.7o

Besides, he probably did not relish the thought of a reprise of the arguments he had had with Latrobe over the Capitol's design and construction.71 Therefore Latrobe's curious silence on the

similarity of his own institutional projects to Jefferson's plan

perhaps can be understood as a desperate architect's attempt to flatter a potential client. On the other hand, he may have gen- uinely found Jefferson's plan novel because of its use of indi- vidual pavilions, each with a distinctive facade, connected by one-story dormitory ranges.

William Alexander Lambeth regarded the University of Vir-

ginia as the result of an "evolution out of the meditation of an intellect made fertile by a long life crowded with accurate ob- servations and exceptional experience."72 Recognizing the drawbacks of designing a college as a large house, Jefferson turned to the ancient Greek academies as the basis for his uni-

versity's plan. Although the idea of the academic village rep- resented a classical revival of sorts, Jefferson's awareness of con-

temporary examples of English and French hospital design and of Latrobe's projects of the i8oos puts him in the forefront of institutional planning. With the University of Virginia, Jeffer- son was no longer the gentleman-architect who amused himself

by designing a country house, but a modern-day architect and

planner who anticipated the environmental, social, and symbolic ramifications of a complex institutional building type.

69. See his letter to Jefferson, 20 November 1817, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.

70. See his letters of 6 October x817 and 28 October 1817 to Jefferson,

Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. 71. Jefferson and Latrobe had clashed over the latter's design of a

cupola for the chamber of the House of Representatives in the Capitol. Jefferson objected to its use on the grounds that no classical building had such a covering and insisted that skylights be installed. Latrobe warned him that skylights would leak and strenuously fought this sug- gestion. He lost, skylights were installed, and they leaked; see P. Norton, Latrobe,Jefferson, and the Capitol, Ph.D. diss., 1952, Princeton University, University Microfilms, 1975, 174-175, and his "Latrobe's Ceiling for the Hall of Representatives,"JSAH, io (May 1951), 5-10o. 72. Lambeth,Jefferson, 31.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I

Letter from Thomas efferson to

L. W. Tazewell

Washington Jan. 5. 05

Dear Sir Your favor of December 21 never came to my hands till last night.

it's [sic] importance induces me to hasten the answer. no one can be more rejoiced with the information that the legislature of Virginia are likely at length to institute an university on a liberal plan. convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, & that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree. This

requires two grades of education. first some institution where science in all its branches is taught and in the highest degree to which the human mind has carried it. This would prepare a few subjects in every state to whom nature has given minds of the first order. secondly such a degree of learning given to every member of the society as will enable him to read to judge and to vote understandingly on what is passing. This would be the object of the township schools. I understand from your letter that the first of these only is under present contemplation. Let us recieve [sic] with contentment what the legislature is now ready to give. The other branch will be incorporated into the system at some more favorable moment.

The first step in this business will be for the legislature to pass an act of establishment equivalent to a charter. this should deal in generals only it's provisions should go i. to the object of the institution. 2. it's location 3. it's endowment. 4. it's Direction. on each of these heads I will hazard a first thought or two. i. it's object should be defined only generally for teaching the useful branches of science leaving the par-

ticulars to the direction of the day. science is progressive, what was useful two centuries ago is now become useless. e.g., one half the

professorships of Wm & Mary what is now deemed useful will in some of it's parts become useless in another century. The visitors will be best qualified to keep their institution up in even pace with the science of the times. every one knows that Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne etc. are now a century or two behind the sciences of the age. 2. the location. the legislature is the proper judge of a general position within certain limits; as for instance the county in which it shall be. to fix on the spot identically they would not be so competent as persons particularly ap- pointed to examine the grounds. This small degree of liberty in the location would place the landholders in the power of the purchasers: to fix the spot would place the purchaser in the power of the landholder. 3. it's endowment. bank stock or public stock of any kind should be immediately converted to real estate. in the form of stock it is a dead fund, it's depreciation being equal to it's interest. every one must see that the money put into our fund when first established (in 1791) with all it's interest from that day would not buy more now than the principal would then have done. Mr. Pitt states to Parliament that the expenses of living in England have in the last 20 years, increased 50 percent: that is that money has depreciated that much. even the precious metals

depreciate slowly, so that in perpetual institutions, as colleges, that ought to be guarded against. but in countries admitting paper, the abusive emissions of [illegible] produces two, three, or four courses of depre- ciation & annihilation in a century. lands will keep advancing nominally so as to keep even really. canal shares are as good as lands; perhaps better: but the whole funds should not be placed in any one form. They should be vested in the visitors, without any power given them to lessen their

capital or even to change what is real. 4. the Direction. this would of course be in the hands of Visitors. The legislature would name the first

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WOODS: JEFFERSON AND THE ACADEMIC VILLAGE 283

set, & lay down the laws of their succession. on death or resignation the legislature or the chancellor might name three persons, of whom the visitors should chuse [sic] one. the visitors should be few. if many, those half qualified would by their numbers bring every thing down to the level of their own capacity, by outvoting the few of real science. I doubt if they should exceed five. for this is an office for which good sense alone does not qualify a man. to analyse science into it's different branches, to distribute these into professorships, to represent the course

practised by each professor, he must know what these sciences are and

possess their outlines at least. can any state in the union furnish more than 5 men so qualified as to the whole field of the sciences. The Visitors should receive no pay. such qualifications are properly rewarded by honor, not by money.

The charter being granted & the Visitors named, these become then the agents as to every thing else. Their first objects will be i. the special location. 2. the institution of the professorships. 3. the employment of their capital. 4. necessary buildings. a word on each. i. special location needs no explanation. 2. Professorships. they would have to select all the branches of science deemed useful at their day, & in this country: to groupe [sic] as many of these together as could be taught by one

professor and thus reduce the number of professors to the minimum consistent with the essential object. having for some years entertained the hope that our country would someday establish an institution on a liberal scale, I have been taking measures to have in readiness such materials as would require time to collect. I have from Dr. Priestly a

designation of the branches of sciences grouped into professorships which he furnished at my request. he was an excellent judge of what

may be called the old studies. of those useful and those useless. I have the same thing from Mr. Dupont, a good judge of the new branches. his letter to me is quite a treatise. I have the plan of the institutions of

Edinburgh, & those of the National Institute of France, and I expect from Mr. Pictet, one of the most celebrated professors of Geneva, their

plan in answer to a letter written some time ago. From these the Visitors could select the branches useful for this country & how to groupe them. a hasty view of the subject on a former occasion led me to believe Io professorships would be necessary, but not all immediately. half a dozen of the most urgent would make a good beginning. the salaries to the first professors should be very liberal, that we might draw the first names of Europe to our institution in order to give it a celebrity in the outset, which will draw to it the youth of all the states and make Virginia their cherished & beloved Alma Mater. I have good reasons to believe that we can command the services of some of the first men of Europe. 3- the employment of their capital. on this subject others are so much better judges than myself that I shall say nothing. 4. buildings. the

greatest danger will be their overbuilding themselves by attempting a

large house in the beginning, sufficient to contain the whole institution.

large houses are always ugly, inconvenient, exposed to the accident of fire, and bad in cases of infection. a plain small house for the school &

lodging of each professor is best. These connected by covered ways out of which the rooms of the students should open would be best. These

may then be built only as they shall be wanting. in fact an University should not be an house but a village, this will much lessen their first

expences [sic]. not having written any of three lines of this without

interruption it has been impossible to keep my ideas rallied to the subject. I must let these hasty outlines go therefore as they are. some are pre- mature, some probably immature; but make what use you please of them except letting them get into print. Should this establishment take place on a plan worthy of approbation, I will have a valuable legacy to leave it, to wit, my library which certainly has not cost less than 15,ooo dollars, but it's value is more in the selection, a part of which, that which respects America, is the result of my own personal searches in Paris for 6 or 7 years, & of persons employed by me in England, Holland, Germany and Spain to make similar searches. such a collection on that subject can never again be made. with my sincere wishes for the success of this measure accept my salutation & assurances of great esteem & respect.

Th Jefferson

APPENDIX II Letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Trustees

for the Lottery of East Tennessee College

Monticello, May 6. i8io

Gentlemen: I received some time ago your letter of Feb. 28. covering a printed

scheme of a lottery for the benefit of the East Tennessee College, & proposing to send tickets to me to be disposed of. it would be impossible for them to come to a more inefficient hand. I rarely go from home & consequently see but a few neighbors & friends who occasionally call on me and having myself made it a rule never to engage in a lottery or any other adventure of mere chance, I can, with the less candor or effect, urge it on others, however laudable & desirable its object may be. no one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in it's [sic] effect towards supporting free & good government. I am sincerely rejoiced therefore to find that so excellent a fund has been provided for this noble purpose in Tennessee. 50o,ooo Dollars placed in a safe bank will give I,ooo D. a year & even without other aid must soon accomplish buildings suf- ficient for the object in its early stage. I consider the common plan, followed, in this country, but not in others, of making one large & expensive building as unfortunately erroneous. it is infinitely better to erect a small and separate lodge for each separate professorship, with only a hall below for his class, and two chambers above for himself; joining these lodges by barracks for a certain portion of the students opening into a covered way to give a dry communication between all the schools the whole of these arranged around an open square of grass and trees would make it, what it should be in fact, an academical village, instead of a large & common den of noise, of filth, & of fetid air. It would afford that quiet retirement so friendly to study, and lessen the dangers of fire, infection & tumult. every professor would be the police officer of the students adjacent to his own lodge, which should include those of his own class of preference, and might be at the head of their table if, as I suppose, it can be reconciled with the necessary economy to dine them in smaller & separate parties rather than in a large & common mess. These separate buildings too might be erected succes- sively & occasionally, as the number of professorships & the students should be increased, or the funds become competent. I pray you to pardon me, if I have stepped aside into the province of counsel but much observation & reflection on these institutions has long convinced me that the large and crowded buildings in which youths are pent up, are equally unfriendly to health, to study, to manners, morals & order: believing the plan I suggest to be more promotive of these & peculiarly adapted to the slender beginnings & progressive growth of our insti- tutions, I hoped you would pardon the presumption in consideration of the motive, which was suggested by the difficulty expressed in your letter of procuring funds for erecting a building. but on whatever plan you proceed, I wish it every possible success, to yourselves the reward of esteem, respect & gratitude due to those who devote their time and efforts to render the youth of every successive age fit governors for the next. to these, accept in advance the assurances of mine.

Th Jefferson Mss Hugh L. White

Thos McCorry Jas Campbell Robt. Craighead John M. Gamble

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