Jefferson's architectural education also began in Williamsburg, where he purchased a treatise on classical architecture from a cabinetmaker near the college gate while he was still a student, thus beginning a love affair with architecture that he pursued and delighted in for the rest of his life. 
Note: 4 This avocation attracted the attention of Lord Dunmore, Governor of the British Crown Colony of Virginia, and in 1771 or 1772 he asked Jefferson to design an addition to the main building of the College (fig. 1). Jefferson's plan was rooted in European tradition; in fact, completing the College's quadrangular arrangement had been the original intention when construction began in 1695. Though it had been rebuilt after a fire and a chapel had been added by 1732, the quadrangle had never been completed due to the lack of funding. Jefferson no doubt turned to one of the eighteenth-century Leoni editions of Andrea Palladio's Four Books of Architecture and chose one of the many palazzo forms illustrated there (fig. 2).
Note: 5 His scheme for a quadrangle with an interior arcade arranged around an open courtyard reappears in many of his later designs and would become a prime ingredient of his plan for the University of Virginia. The foundations of his addition to William and Mary were begun, but building activity was suspended in 1774 because of the troubles surrounding the impending Revolution.
Note: 6
Jefferson himself best expressed the origin of the idea of public education in Virginia when he reminisced about the revised code of laws that Wythe, Edmund Pendleton, and he had prepared for Virginia in 1776-79: "Nobody can doubt my zeal for the general instruction of the people. Who first started that idea? I may surely say myself. turn to the bill in the revised code which I drew more than 40. years ago; and before which the idea of a plan for the education of the people generally had never been suggested in this state." Note: 7
Jefferson described his "Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge" as his "Quixotism," and as the most important of the 126 bills submitted to the Commonwealth in 1779. Note: 8 The bill was structured around three tiers of education: elementary schools (primary level), district colleges (secondary level), and a university. It also included provisions for choosing school sites and building facilities for the primary and secondary levels. For the collegiate and university levels, it provided a selection process for educating the best and brightest students "without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance." Note: 9
The primary level called for instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic to "all the free children, male and female" for a period of three years at the public cost, and longer at their own expense, if so desired. It provided for a group of electors to choose a convenient site to build a "school house" for the "hundreds" (measured districts within each county), to keep it in good repair, and when needed to build another in the same place or somewhere else convenient to the hundred. Note: 10 The idea of convenience implies two things: centrality and impermanence. The building type for primary schools was always a log school house, and a central location was a prime ingredient in all of Jefferson's plans for educational institutions. Note: 11 Virginia's widely dispersed agrarian population and primitive transportation required convenient and accessible facilities if these educational proposals were to reach everyone as Jefferson envisioned.
The collegiate level would include among its subjects Greek, Latin, and higher mathematics. In describing the facilities for these schools, Jefferson became more specific, writing that "the said overseers shall forthwith proceed to have a house of brick or stone for the said grammar school, with necessary offices, built on the said lands, which grammar school-house shall contain a room for the school, a hall to dine in, four rooms for a master and usher, and ten or twelve lodging rooms for the scholars." Note: 12 Again,the location would be central, but Jefferson specified one large building for all facilities, as was characteristic of educational institutions at that time.
The highest level of studies would be at the College of William and Mary. The most advanced educational institution in Virginia, it contained six professorships, including one for teaching Greek and Latin (a grammar school, academically the secondary level), one for teaching the Native Americans (a missionary school), two for divinity, and two for philosophy or the more advanced branches of science. Jefferson wrote a second bill that would eliminate the ecclesiastical nature of the College and expand the number of professorships to eight. He wished to render this institution "more useful"and make it an incubator where "the future guardians of the rights and liberties of their country may be endowed with science and virtue, to watch and preserve the sacred deposit." Other proposals would, if adopted by the Virginia Legislature, make William and Mary a true university.' Note: 13 His "Quixotic" scheme advocated cutting across all social and economic barriers to produce an educated elite of the best and brightest minds in the Commonwealth at the public expense. Lifting a bright young man above the station of his father and rendering him a protector of the new democracy was revolutionary, and Jefferson's ideas were far ahead of his contemporaries.
All of Jefferson's education bills initially fell on fallow ground, but in 1779 during his tenure as governor he took part in reforms at William and Mary that eliminated the grammar school and the two divinity schools. Note: 14 They were replaced by "a professorship of law (Mr. Wythe), another of medicine, anatomy, chemistry and surgery (McLurg) and a third of modern languages, (Bellini)." Note: 15 These changes, only a fraction of the reforms envisioned in Jefferson's original scheme, nevertheless shifted the College toward the seminary of science he had intended.
While serving as Minister to France from 1784 to 1789, Jefferson had an opportunity to observe various European educational systems, and advised a friend against sending America's youth there for higher education, stating that the disadvantages "would require a volume." He felt that in Europe young Americans would learn unsavory vices and a fondness for aristocracy, and would obtain knowledge useless for maintaining government at home. In defense of an American education, he wrote: "cast your eye over America: who are the men of most learning, of most eloquence, most beloved by their country and most trusted and promoted by them? They are those who have been educated among them, and whose manners, morals and habits are perfectly homogeneous with those of the country." Note: 16
In another letter from Paris, Jefferson compared the opportunity in America with that in Europe for educating the masses to maintain freedom:
If all the sovereigns of Europe were to set themselves to work to emancipate the minds of their subjects from their present ignorance and prejudices .. . a thousand years would not place them on that high ground on which our common people are now setting out.... I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness. If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are good conservators of the public happiness, send them here.... Preach, my dear Sir, d crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Note: 17
Jefferson's countrymen were not yet ready to listen, however, and only a shadow of his ambitious educational scheme passed in 1796, and that for primary schools only. The "Act to Establish Public Schools" proved totally ineffective due to the funding provisions. Note: 18 By January 1800, Jefferson had also abandoned the hope that William and Mary would become the institution of his dreams. He wrote to Joseph Priestley: "We wish to establish in the upper country, and more centrally for the State, an University on a plan so broad and liberal and modern, as to be worth patronizing with the public support. The first step is to obtain a good plan: that is, a judicious selection of the sciences...." He went on to say that they planned to get the best possible professors from Europe who would in turn train their successors. Note: 19 A few months later Jefferson wrote to Pierre Samuel DuPont de Nemours asking for curriculum recommendations, and in 1803 to M. Pictet concerning his plans to propose a university to the Virginia Legislature when the time was appropriate. Note: 20
The opportune time seemed to present itself late in 1804, when L.W. Tazewell solicited ideas from Jefferson to incorporate into a university proposal he and several other Delegates expected to submit to the next session of the Legislature. In Jefferson's reply, his concept for a grand seminary of learning for the useful sciences remained the same, but he had begun to think differently about the facilities to house the institution. He wrote with reference to the 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 a/ways 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]. Note: 21
By 1810 Jefferson had further developed this idea, and to the Trustees of a proposed college in Tennessee he explained that each professor's "small and separate lodge" should contain "only a hall below for his class, and two chambers above for himself; . . . 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." He also suggested that the professors "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." Note: 22 All that remained was the opportunity to transfer this mental blueprint to paper.
In 1809-10 the Legislature moved one step closer to an educational system in Virginia by setting up a Literary Fund for "the encouragement of learning." Funding would come from the sale of escheated or forfeited property such as glebe lands confiscated from the Episcopal Church, fines, and various other sources. In the following session, Legislators voted to appropriate the money for the education of the poor. Note: 23
Jefferson continued to promote his educational ideas in correspondence and conversation with the myriad visitors who trekked to Monticello. In January 1814 he wrote to Dr. Thomas Cooper that he had "long had under contemplation and [had] been collecting materials for the plan of an university in Virginia...This would probably absorb the functions of Wm. and Mary college/and transfer them to a healthier and more central position, perhaps to the neighborhood of this place [Monticello]." Note: 24 Jefferson must have known that the opportunity to embark on his quest for a university in Virginia was finally at hand, for less than ten weeks later he was nominated to become a Trustee of the newly resurrected Albemarle Academy at the first meeting of its Board. This secondary school, which had been chartered by the state in 1803, had never been put into operation. Note: 25 Peter Carr, Jefferson's nephew, was elected President of the Trustees at the next meeting, and Jefferson's son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, was later elected to the committee charged with the task of petitioning the Legislature for funds arising from the sale of glebe lands to support the school. Note: 26
Jefferson's opportunity to translate his written concepts for a university into an architectural plan came in August 1814, when the committee assigned to secure a location for Albemarle Academy presented his plan at their meeting and recommended "its adoption by the Board as one best suited to the purpose, provided the work can be completed according to the terms of the estimate" (figs. 3 and 4). Note: 27 Jefferson had drawn a plan almost identical to one he had described nearly ten years earlier to Tazewell. It contained nine identical pavilions flanked by ten dormitories on each side situated around three sides of a square and connected by covered walkways. In each of these small pavilions Jefferson provided a hall on the ground floor for instruction and two rooms upstairs for living quarters for the professors; it was very similar to the scheme described in 1810. He showed the dormitories fronted by a series of square brick piers crowned by a chinoiserie railing strongly resembling the treatment of the wings at Monticello (fig. 3). Designing for economy and expansion as needed, Jefferson had provided a simple and direct plan.
Apparently Jefferson did not intend for this plan to be just for the local Albemarle Academy, because in a letter written several weeks later to Carr, he explained: "On the subject of the academy or college proposed to be established in our neighborhood, I promised the trustees that I would prepare for them a plan, adapted, in the first instance, to our slender funds, but susceptible of being enlarged, either by their own growth, or by accession from other quarters." Noting his concept of a three-tier educational system, Jefferson explained that the Academy would begin with the general, or collegiate, level, and when possible would expand to the professional, or university, level. He listed nine professorships for the professional level, matching the number of pavilions on his ground plan, and architecture was among them. Note: 28
To further effect his intentions, Jefferson wrote a proposal for the Trustees to submit to the Legislature that would change the institution's name from Albemarle Academy to Central College. One of Jefferson's associates later recalled the problem of choosing the name of the proposed college:
Mr. [Alexander] Garrett was one of the Trustees and together with his coadjudicators consulted Mr. Jefferson with regard to the course of instruction, organization &c. He [Jefferson] advised them to enlarge their plan and to establish a College They agreed to it and proposed to call the institution 'Jefferson College ' Mr. Jefferson objected and said emphatically and repeatedly 'call it Central College. ' His views prevailed and the Central College was founded. Note: 29
The Trustees never made an attempt to operate Albemarle Academy under its original charter, and the bill for Central College was not submitted to the Legislature in 1815 as planned, due to the illness and death of Peter Carr. In January 1816, just before the bill Colonel Charles Yancey, a Delegate from Albemarle County: "I recommend to your patronage our Central College. I took to it as a germ from which a great tree may spread itself." Note: 30 The bill passed in February, providing for a board of six visitors empowered to raise money, in part, by subscription. One of the Albemarle Academy Trustees wrote to Governor Wilson Cary Nicholas recommending James Monroe, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Hartwell Cocke, Joseph Carrington Cabell, and David Watson as Visitors (trustees): "That the first two named gentlemen will serve is presumed as they were inserted in the list at the instance of Mr. Jefferson." Note: 31 Governor Nicholas appointed this distinguished Board of Visitors that fall, but their first official meeting did not occur until May 5, 1817.
The State Legislature also appropriated additional money for the Literary Fund that was owed to Virginia by the federal government. Governor Nicholas, one of the conservators of the fun, solicited Jefferson's advice on implementing an educational system that would best utilize the extra money. This gave Jefferson another opportunity to advance his personal agenda, and predictably he again proposed the three-tier system of public education. His letter makes clear that what he had designed for Albemarle Academy had been a "University Plan." In describing the pavilions, however, Jefferson mentioned for the first time a didactic function: "exhibiting models in architecture of the purest forms of antiquity, furnishing to the student examples of the precepts he will be taught in that art." Note: 32
To understand Jefferson's desire to build models of ancient architecture, one need only know that just as he had collected materials to help the best possible educational system for Virginia, he had also spent the past three decades attempting to reform Virginia's architecture. He believed the best way to improve it was by education and by example. Since there were few chaste architectural models in Virginia to inspire him during his years, he turned to architectural books to cultivate his design tastes. The books he first acquired, such as James Gibbs's Book of Architecture and Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture, and various editions of Palladio's Four Books of Architecture, espoused the beauty and harmony of ancient architecture and the methods one must follow in order to recreate their pleasing proportions. To Jefferson, the best manifestations of these timeless rules of taste were the great edifices of classical antiquity that had been recorded and codified in those books. Jefferson learned to recognize and appreciate the beauty in architecture that derived from simplicity, regularity, and proportion rather than from arbitrarily applied ornament, and he sought to instill this sensibility in his fellow countrymen by provided architectural models.
With the general architectural arrangement of the buildings already designed (the plan of 1814), the first task was to select a site. On April 8, 1817, the journey from concept to reality began when Jefferson and two other Visitors selected a site along Three Notched Road, a major route between Richmond and the west. The land belonged to John Perry but had once belonged to one of the Visitors, President James Monroe. It was "a poor old turned out field" about one mile west of the town of Charlottesville and approximately three miles west of Jefferson's Monticello. Note: 33 Bordered on the north by Three Notched Road and on the south by Wheeler's Road (the present-day University Avenue and Jefferson Park Avenue, respectively), it consisted of a narrow ridge declining gently in elevation from Three Notched Road southward for several hundred feet and then declining rather more sharply as it neared Wheeler's Road (fig. 5). Such irregular topography conflicted with Jefferson's idealized plan for a large, open, and flat site.
A few days later, although the entire Board of Visitors had not yet examined and approved the site, Jefferson sent a letter to James Dinsmore, one of his former master builders at Monticello. He requested that Dinsmore and John Neilson, who had also worked at Monticello, become builders for the college, and he summed up the situation:
We are about to establish a College near Charlottesville on the lands formerly Col.(SUPERSCRIPT O GOES HERE!) Monroe's, a mile above the town. we do not propose to erect a single grand building, but to form a square of perhaps 200 yards, and to arrange around that Pavilions of about 24 by 36. f. [feet] one for every professorship & his school. they are to be of various forms, models of chaste architecture, as examples for the school of architecture to be formed on. we shall build one only in the latter end of this year. and go on with the others year after year, as our funds increase. indeed we believe that our establishment will draw to it the great state university which is to be located at the next meeting of the legislature. Note: 34
Among the subjects discussed at the first full-scale Board of Visitors meeting on May 5, 1817, was the location and construction of the first pavilion. Jefferson presented his University Plan, and the Visitors voted to build a pavilion based on this scheme. instructing the Proctor,
so soon as the funds are at his command, to agree with proper workmen for the building of one, of stone or brick below ground, and of brick above, of substantial work, of regular architecture, well executed and to be completed, if possible, during the ensuing summer and winter; that the lot for the said pavilions be delineated on the ground of the breadth of___ feet, with two parallel sides of indefinite length. Note: 35
The blank left for the width of the Lawn indicates that Jefferson had still not determined what the site restrictions were going to be in relation to his original concept.
Shortly after the May 1817 Board meeting, Jefferson initiated correspondence first with Dr. William Thornton, then Benjamin Henry Latrobe, concerning the design of the college. He sketched the ground plan for Thornton and requested that Thornton make some suggestions for the pavilions. Thornton had won the competition for the United States Capitol and had designed other buildings in Washington.
By 1817 Jefferson was an accomplished designer and builder with an impressive body of work behind him, including his own Monticello estate, the Virginia State Capitol, designs (though not built) for the United States Capitol and President's House, his Poplar Forest plantation, and numerous courthouses and private homes. Jefferson, who had once been described as "an excellent architect out of books," normally sought design inspiration from the many architectural treatises that lined the shelves of his library. Note: 36 However, in 1815 he had sold his books, including those on architecture, to the Library of Congress to replace those burned by British troops during the War of 1812. When it was decided at the May 5, 1817, Board of Visitors meeting to build the first pavilion that year, Jefferson's instinctive habit of turning to his books for ideas was thwarted by the empty walls of his library. He was thus forced seek design assistance from an outside source, Thornton. As late as November 1817, Jefferson still had not replaced his copy of Palladio and had to ask James Madison to loan him his personal copy. Note: 37
At the time of the May 1817 Board of Visitors meeting, Jefferson may have received a replacement copy of another book sold in 1815 that would be instrumental to his classical pavilion designs: Roland Fréart de Chambray and Charles Errard's Parallele de l'Architecture Antique avec la Moderne (Paris 1766), which as the title suggests contained comparative drawings of classical orders from both ancient buildings and modern architectural writers, among them Palladio. Note: 38 Jefferson had made use of this book when specifying the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian entablatures on the interior Monticello, as pencil notations on his surviving original copy at the Library of Congress demonstrate. This concise and comprehensive book, however, illustrated only partial elevations of the orders and did not show examples of their use. Thus, even if Jefferson had at his disposal these detailed illustrations of several choice examples of the classical orders, he lacked a design source that would have given him ideas for arranging them in different forms on the facades of the pavilions.
In his letter to Thornton on May 9 (fig. 6), Jefferson ignored the obvious topographic restrictions of the site: 
we propose to lay off a square of about 7. or 800 [feet] the outside of which we shall arrange separate Pavilions, one for each professor and his scholars. each pavilion will have a schoolroom below and 2 rooms for the Professor above and between pavilion and pavilion a range of dormitories for the boys, one story high....this sketch will give you an idea of it the whole of the pavilions and dormitories to be united by a colonnade in front of the height of the lower story of the pavilions, under which they may go dry from school to school. The colonnade will be of square brick pilasters (at first) with a Tuscan entablature. now what we wish is that these pavilions as they will shew [sic] themselves above the dormitories, [should] be models of taste and good architecture, & of a variety of appearance, no two alike, so as to serve as specimens for the architectural lectures. will you set your imagination to work & sketch some designs for us, no matter how loosely with the pen, without the trouble of referring to scale or rule; for we want nothing but the outline of the architecture, as the internal must be arranged according to local convenience.Note: 39
Jefferson received Thornton's reply on June 11, 1817, with a profusion of suggestions for the ground plan and buildings, as well as Thornton's own version of a four-tier system of public education. On a separate enclosure were two elevations for pavilions and their adjacent dormitories. Both of Thornton's pavilion facades employed the same motif of freestanding columns above an arcaded ground story (fig. 7). Note: 40 He explained: "I have drawn a Pavilion for the Centre, with Corinthian Columns, & a Pediment." This more elaborate pavilion, Thornton suggested, would be the focus of the composition, the hierarchical center. He also recommended that pavilions be located at the corners of the square and that to initiate the Ionic order Jefferson need only "to convert the sketches already given." Thornton's single design concept for the pavilions did not satisfy Jefferson's request for models with "a variety of appearance, no two alike," prompting him to write an almost identical request to architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe on June 12, the day after receiving Thornton's response. Note: 41
Latrobe wrote on June 17 that he had "derived important professional improvement from the entirely novel plan of an Academy suggested by you," and again on June 28 that he had "found so much pleasure in studying the plan of your College, that the drawings have grown into a larger bulk than can be conveniently sent by the Mail." Note: 42 Latrobe's second letter did not reach Jefferson until July 15, and on the 16th he wrote to Latrobe requesting that he send the plans as soon as possible because they were making bricks for the first pavilion, which had to be completed by fall. In this same letter Jefferson revealed for the first time that the sloping site would be terraced with a pavilion and twenty dormitories on each side of each terrace. Regarding the problem of finding competent workmen, Jefferson asked Latrobe if he could obtain a mason capable of executing a Doric base and capital, indicating that a Doric pavilion would be built first. Note: 43
On July 18, just two days after he wrote to Latrobe, Jefferson surveyed the site of the Academical Village and laid off the three terraces that were to become the Lawn. Faced with the necessity of a much narrower arrangement of pavilions and dormitories, he modified his 1814 conceptual ground plan by eliminating the buildings along one side of the square and moving the remaining two parallel rows closer together. Topographically, the space between the parallel rows of buildings now became virtually flat from east to west and, following the natural slope of the ridge, declined some eighteen feet from north to south. Jefferson divided this 200-foot-wide strip of land into three flat terraces, each 255 feet long, which would accommodate twenty dormitories, each ten feet wide, and a thirty-four-foot-wide pavilion, the same dimensions shown on his 1814 University Plan. He sketched a diagram of the Lawn in his specification book for the college (fig. 8), and identified point "g" (the center of the west side of the middle terrace) as the location for the first pavilion. Jefferson used letters to indicate other pavilions, describing point "a" in the center of the northern terrace as the future site for "some principle building," indicating that he already realized that a more substantial structure would be appropriate. Also, he did not locate any pavilions at the corners the Lawn, as suggested by Thornton; instead his scheme called for dormitories extending north of the two northern pavilions. Note: 44 And he indicated the "principle building" standing alone, without any connection to the dormitories and pavilions.
On July 19, 1817, the day after making the survey, Jefferson wrote General Cocke, informing him that "our squares are laid off, the brickyard begun, and the levilling [sic] will be begun in the course of the week." He informed Cocke that subscriptions were coming in faster than anticipated and that they needed a Board of Visitors meeting right away to take care of pressing matters. Note: 45 During a meeting in July at Madison's home, Montpelier, the Visitors, obviously strongly influenced by Thornton's drawings, approved design for the first pavilion (fig. 9) Note: 46
Finally, on August 2, 1817, Jefferson received the first indication from Latrobe of what his eagerly anticipated pavilion designs might look like. In rough sketches, Latrobe suggested pavilions with giant-order porticoes--large columns running through both stories of the pavilion rather than the two large columns running through two single-story orders of Thornton--and a large domed building in the center that would serve as a focal point (fig. 10). The ground plan and elevation were both based on Jefferson's original large, open-square concept. However, in responding to Jefferson's subsequent site description, Latrobe suggested that the plan could be adapted to a sloping site by detaching the east and west rows from the upper row. Note: 47
Jefferson responded to Latrobe's letter the next day, August 3, 1817, indicating that he had executed his design for the dormitories, and that they would construct a colonnade similar to the wings of the White House in Washington. He also explained to Latrobe that all of the pavilions at this point would be based on Thornton's two-story motif: "the whole basement story with the dormitories will be Tuscan with arches at the pavilions and columns in front of the dormitories[.] the pavilion now begun is to be a regular Doric above with a portico .. . supported by the arches below and a pediment of the whole breadth of the front. The columns 16 I. [inch] diam . the dormitories will be covered flat as the offices of the President's house at Washington...." (figs. 11, 12). Note: 48
Jefferson included a sketch showing the new arrangement of buildings necessitated by the topography. Having rethought the location of the "principle building," he moved it from the center of the northern terrace to the periphery. He wrote that 
"we leave open the [northern] end . . . that if the state should establish there the University they contemplate, they may fill it up with something of the grand kind" (fig. 13). This point on the ground plan became the position of the Latrobe-inspired Rotunda, and in fact Jefferson did not wait for the official adoption of Central College as the state university before he began making plans to place Latrobe's domed central-building design at the head of the Lawn. Note: 49
The cornerstone of the first pavilion (subsequently named Pavilion VII) was laid with due ceremony on October 6, 1817. Jefferson had combined Thornton's suggestions with his own and based its order on the Doric of Palladia. The long-awaited sheet of Latrobe drawings finally arrived on October 8. Jefferson acknowledged the beautiful drawings in a letter four days later, informing Latrobe that they would select two of his fronts for their Ionic and Corinthian pavilions, which would be built the next season. After receiving Latrobe's varied pavilion designs, Jefferson had abandoned the Thornton scheme for the remaining pavilions on the Lawn. Note: 50
The brick walls were well underway on Pavilion VII when Jefferson's chief legislative advocate and fellow Visitor, Joseph C. Cabell, asked him to draft another education bill, which Jefferson forwarded on October 24, 1817. Similar to his 1778 proposal, the draft bill advocated elementary schools, district colleges, and a university, and included a separate provision for converting the subscriptions and buildings of Central College if the Legislature were to choose it as the site of the university. The section calling for nine district colleges contained a written description of the building facilities, which he proposed have dormitories either in or adjacent to the school building. Because he was attempting to conform to the financial means of the Literary Fund, he drew a plan and calculated the cost to show that these projects would meet the budget. Jefferson had based this "College Plan" on the University Plan of 1814, but he omitted connecting covered passageways and included faculty residences and teaching rooms of one story in height without porticos (fig. 14). Note: 51
In spite of his "Utopian dream" of public education for all Virginians, Jefferson told George Ticknor shortly after submitting this bill that his hopes were "kept in check by the ordinary character of our state legislatures, the members of which do not generally possess information enough to perceive the important truths, that knowledge is power, that knowledge is safety, and that knowledge is happiness." Note: 52 His skepticism was well-founded, as the struggle had already been going on for thirty-nine years.
In the meantime. Jefferson had turned to the question of how to proceed with the limited funding at hand. He submitted to the Board of Visitors a cost estimate for four pavilions (including Pavilion VII, then under construction), eighty dormitories, and two boarding houses. This was the first time he mentioned boarding houses for "dieting" the students. Note: 53 Professorships were grouped into four categories, one each for languages, physiology, mathematics, and philosophy. Very clearly, Jefferson and the Board intended to install a university curriculum for Central College but on a limited scale. Note: 54
On February 19, 1818, the next step in Jefferson's dream was realized when the State Senate finally voted to establish a university and provided for a Commission to meet the following August at Rockfish Gap, Virginia, to recommend the site. Note: 55 Named a commissioner, Jefferson campaigned to assure that Central College would become the University of Virginia. By May 1818 he had begun to prepare a report for consideration by the Commission, and on May 19, in his last known letter to Latrobe, he reported that they expected the Legislature would choose the site of Central College as the university, and that "this will call, in the first instance for about 16 pavilions, with an appendix of 20 dormitories each....we propose 10 professors....and for each two professorships we must erect an hotel [dining hall] of the same good architecture." He informed Latrobe that he would use several of his suggestions for pavilion facades and that his domed structure would be the Center of the ground." Note: 56
The Visitors of the Central College had decided in October to build dormitories adjacent to the pavilion already begun and to build two more pavilions in 1818, along with their dormitories, but they had also decided to level the terraces before starting any more construction (fig. 15). Note: 57 This grading process had been underway quite some time when Dinsmore arrived at Monticello on May 26, 1818, to discuss with Jefferson arrangements for construction of the second pavilion (Pavilion III on the West Lawn). Note: 58 Jefferson had chosen one of the giant-order designs from Latrobe's sheet of drawings, specifically his "Palladian Corinthian, being the left hand figure of the upper row ... in which we permit no alteration but the substitution of a flat, for the pyramidal roof, which seen over the pediment, has not, we think, a pleasing effect" (fig. 16). Note: 59
On the interior of Pavilion III, Jefferson used the same entablature in the professor's upstairs parlor as in the entrance hall at Monticello. Note: 60 Similarly a semi-circular arched doorway in the pavilion hallway echoed the library at Monticello (fig. 17). Dinsmore, the builder of Pavilion III, had executed the joinery at Monticello, so he was thoroughly familiar with Jefferson's favorite design motifs. The interior designs of subsequent pavilions bore the personal marks of their different craftsmen.
Site limitations posed a problem with the location of Pavilion III, since the level ground for the middle terrace north of Pavilion VII extended only ninety-three feet. This reduced the middle terrace to only about 220 feet in overall length, not the 255 feet Jefferson had laid out the year before. He drew a new ground plan based on Dinsmore's measurements and placed Pavilion III at the center of what would now be a slightly larger northern terrace; and he drew only nine dormitories on each side of Pavilion VII to fill up the middle terrace. Jefferson drew the Lawn at the prescribed 200-foot width and indicated with a circle the "principal building" centered on the north end of the Lawn. The seventy-seven-foot diameter of this structure reveals that he had formulated, at least in part, his plans for the future Rotunda, which had been inspired by Latrobe's drawing. Intending to finish both pavilions and their dormitories by the fall, workmen broke ground on Pavilion III and the nine dormitories south of Pavilion VII in June 1818. Note: 61 Jefferson continued his campaign for a university in Charlottesville and invited fellow commissioners L.W. Tazewell, Judge Roane, and James Madison to visit Monticello two days before the Rockfish Gap meeting in August 1818 in order to coordinate strategy. Note: 62 Having expressed confidence to Tazewell that two-thirds of the commissioners would be in favor of Charlottesville, his proposals were approved at the August meeting. The Rockfish Gap Commission report went to the Assembly in the late fall of 1818, and on January 25, 1819, a charter establishing the University of Virginia was passed, naming Charlottesville and the buildings begun at Central College as the site. Note: 63
Jefferson immediately set about opening a classical academy in Charlottesville; under the tutelage of a Mr. Stack from Philadelphia, students would be prepared to enter the University. Note: 64 Because he hoped to open the University on a limited scale by the following year, his schedule demanded a vigorous building program, as well. Advertisements for workmen were placed in Richmond and as far away as Philadelphia. On March 3, 1819, Arthur S. Brockenbrough, who had been hired as Proctor to direct the building campaign, arrived, relieving from Jefferson's shoulders "a burthen [sic] too much for them." Note: 65
That life had become a "burthen" is not surprising. Before the
Visitors' meeting on March 29, 1819, Jefferson prepared all of the
specifications and plans for that year's buildings, and he more than
doubled the size of the project (figs.18, 19).
In the revised ground plan, rather than extend the Lawn southward, as earlier schemes had suggested, he placed additional dormitories and the hotels behind the pavilions and dormitories (now somewhat larger and greatly reduced in number) that bordered the West Lawn, thus creating more parallel rows of buildings detached from the central core. Although he omitted the fifth pavilion (IX) from this scheme, Jefferson numbered its site as "V" and had already executed its design (fig.20) Note: 66
In the March 1819 ground plan, the design of the Rotunda came more into focus (fig. 21). Jefferson showed a coupled-column configuration, and the other drawings were probably in hand. He had originally intended to use twenty Corinthian columns for the Rotunda's Dome Room, and the erasures he made when changing to forty coupled columns remain on the plan. Note: 67
This alteration also called for a change in the height of the galleries to accommodate the shorter height of the columns; erasure marks around the galleries on the section drawing indicate their previous heights (fig. 22). The columns shown in this section are Corinthian, and because the height of the columns correspond to Palladio's proportions for the Corinthian order and not the Composite, as executed, the coupled Corinthian columns were apparently an intermediate design choice.
On the back of his drawing Jefferson acknowledged that he had based the design for the Rotunda on the Pantheon in Rome. He wrote that its diameter is
"77. feet, being 1/2 that of the Pantheon, consequently 1/4 it's [sic] area, & 1/8 it's volume."
However, the Rotunda was not a one-half-scale reproduction of the Pantheon as illustrated in Leoni's Palladio (figs. 23, 24). Even the most cursory comparison of the two facades reveals numerous differences, the most obvious being that the Pantheon has an octastyle portico while the portico fronting Jefferson's Rotunda is only six columns wide. Clearly there is a missing link between the Rotunda and the Pantheon.
Jefferson's design derives not only from a Latrobe concept, but also from a now-missing Latrobe drawing. Jefferson had identified Latrobe twice by name on the Rotunda drawings: in the upper right-hand corner of the elevation he inscribed "Latrobe No. [illegible]," referring to Latrobe's numbered drawing, but it was subsequently crossed out; secondly, the specifications on the back of the Rotunda floor plan (fig. 21) now read, "Rotunda, reduced to the proportions of the Pantheon and accommodated to the purposes of a Library for the University," but close inspection reveals the erasure of "Latrobe's Rotunda, reduced to the proportions of the Pantheon...." Jefferson himself might have erased it, feeling that his reworking of the design sufficiently made it his own, but clearly Latrobe's influence on the Rotunda's design was substantial. While the arrangement of the floor plans was worked out by Jefferson, and while he chose the architectural ornament from plates in the Leoni edition of Palladio, the overall exterior form of the building and its portico derives from Latrobe's missing design for the University's "principle building." Note: 68
With Jefferson's revised arrangement of buildings, each pavilion had only a small enclosed yard adjacent to the rear of the building; it was probably intended to hold horses and to store the professor's carriage. Additionally, all of the professors and hotel-keepers were to have access to individual garden plots located behind the outer row of hotels and dormitories. After the March 29, 1819, Board of Visitors meeting, at least one member, Joseph C. Cabell, expressed dissatisfaction with the latest arrangement of buildings and gardens, and he suggested that the gardens be relocated between the pavilions and hotels. At first Jefferson believed the proposed change was not possible because it would block access by horse and carriage to the rear of the pavilions. Still, he found Cabell's suggestion worth further study, and he returned to the drafting table to sketch out how it might be achieved. Note: 69
By April 15, 1819, Jefferson had cut the first version of the back range of hotels and dormitories from his latest ground-plan drawing and had inserted a new version in which the back range was facing away from the Lawn and was separated from it by large enclosed gardens (fig. 25). To solve the problem of access, he added a new feature to the ground plan: perpendicular alleys, or "cross streets of communication," running between the individual gardens and connecting the ranges of pavilions and hotels.
Note: 70 He reported to another member of the Board of Visitors, General James Breckenridge: "I think it a real improvement, and the greater, as by throwing the Hotels and additional dormitories on a back street, it forms in fact the commencement of a regular town, capable of being enlarged to any extent which future circumstances may call for." Note: 71 A third version emerged by July 8, 1819, when Jefferson drew the famous serpentine walls for the gardens and inserted privies for the students. In this nearly final version, he moved the hotels even further from the pavilions and included a dividing wall to provide garden space for each of the hotels (fig. 26). On an 1824 survey diagram, Jefferson named the roads in front of the hotels and ranges "East Street" and "West Street."
Jefferson did not work in a vacuum; he tested his ideas and sought advice from colleagues such as Thornton and Latrobe, as well as the Board of Visitors. Still, he usually had the final word when it came to architectural matters. Challenging Jefferson on any aspect of the project meant tiptoeing lightly. Joseph Cabell wrote to fellow Board member Cocke that when suggesting modifications, "We should move in concert or we shall perplex and disgust the old Sachem." Note: 72 Suggestions that strayed very far from Jefferson's original conception did not fare well. Cocke, who shared with Jefferson the responsibility as a Committee of Superintendence, petitioned him to redesign the hotels and dormitories of the ranges.
Jefferson's method of flat-roof construction concerned Cocke, and he suggested that, instead of copying the individual single-story, flat-roof dormitory rooms that faced the Lawn, they build multiple-story buildings with pitched roofs for a hotel-dormitory combination on the back range (fig. 27).
Note: 73 Cocke's proposals were on a much grander scale than could be reconciled with Jefferson's more modest Academical Village concept, which revolved around individual dormitory rooms opening onto a covered walkway. Jefferson had sought to avoid all of the disadvantages associated with large buildings such as noise and the ease with which fire and infection could spread. He argued that
the separation of the students in different and unconnected rooms, by two's and two's, seems a fundamental of the plan. it was adopted by the first visitors of the Central college . . . it was approved and reported by the Commissioners of Rockfish gap to the legislature.... not thinking therefore that the committee [of superintendence] was competent to this change, I concurred in suspending the building of any Hotel until the visitors should have an opportunity of considering the subject and instead of building one or two Hotels, as they directed. we concluded to begin the Eastern range of pavilions, all agreeing that the ranges on each side of the lawn should be finished as begun.
On June 5, 1819, Jefferson wrote to the Proctor, Arthur S. Brockenbrough, to inform him that
as it is but lately concluded to commence the Eastern range of pavilions, & Dormitories I have not prepared the plans, nor shall I be at leisure to turn to that business till the week after the ensuing one. but those pavilions will vary so little from the dimensions last given, & those of 11 111. of the Western range that if the foundations are dug to that, the trimming them to what shall be the exact size of each will be tx [Fig. 28.]Note: 75
Although Jefferson designed the buildings and wrote exacting specifications for dimensions and the exterior orders to be used, he apparently did not create working drawings for the builders to follow. An 1819 advertisement for workmen that appeared in the Richmond Enquirer indicates that all workmen were required to furnish their own working "draughts" and that they had to be approved prior to beginning construction. 
Note: 76 Upon approval, the plans remained in the possession of the builder and were probably worn out through use. This points to the fact that the workmen made important contributions to the different buildings, for they designed many of the interior details of entablatures, chimney-pieces, and other features.
Richard Ware, from Philadelphia, built Pavilions II and IV on the East Lawn. His impact can be seen in the pulvinated (convex) Ionic frieze and matching mantel in the upstairs parlor of Pavilion IV, which is the only known instance of its use in a design by Jefferson. The presence of this feature reveals that Ware used a pattern book different from Jefferson's Leoni Palladio, because Leoni had substituted a flat frieze for the convex version indicated by Palladio.
By October 1819, the hillside above Charlottesville teemed with workmen as seven pavilions and thirty-six dormitories were in various stages of completion. Slaves hired from local planters were still leveling the Grounds and digging out foundations. Over the years in excess of 200 individuals were involved in the construction. Workmen were lodged in the completed dormitories, including the basements, and elsewhere in boarding houses. Italian stonecutters, the Raggi brothers, were imported to carve the classical column capitals out of native stone, but that proved a disaster because the native stone could not be worked. Instead Carrara marble capitals were ordered from Italy.
With construction on both sides of the Lawn now underway, the next step was to begin work on the hotels and dormitories of the ranges. At their meeting of April 3, 1820, the Board of Visitors agreed to finish the last three pavilions, the East Range of the hotels, then the West Range. For the East Range, Jefferson decided to reuse the single-story plan he had drawn for his first West Range study (fig. 34). 
However, the new arrangement of gardens and hotels created problems because not enough room existed to place the large fifty-foot-wide hotel shown on his West Range plans at the north end of the East Range and still have room for dormitories adjacent to it. Jefferson was made aware of this and another problem in a letter from Al Brockenbrough:
"I wish to see you also before we begin the foundations of the Hotels, as I find if we cut in the bank the depth of Hotel A we shall have a bank 7 feet high and then the cellar to dig out[.] in order to save some I propose advancing the building a few feet in the street & then throwing the street more to the East."
Note: 78 Jefferson responded with a new plan for a thirty-four-foot square hotel (now Hotel B) for the northern end of the East Range (fig. 35), thus allowing for the insertion of two dormitory rooms between the hotel and the alley, and he shifted the other two hotels (now D and F) to the second and third positions on the East Range. He also drew a new scheme for the two-story hotel (now F), changing its order from Ionic to Tuscan, and its arcade from five bays to three (fig. 36). All of the hotels after this were designed and built using the Tuscan order, and all six hotels contain at least one thirty-four-foot exterior wall, which had been the module for the University Plan of 1814.
Jefferson did not respond immediately to the request to move the street, because Brockenbrough wrote again on June 22 asking "the favor of you to permit us to advance the Eastern range of Hotels and dormitories about 17 feet--in order to save much labor in digging and removing earth." Jefferson eventually agreed, and the ground plan drawn by John Neilson in 1821 clearly shows the gardens on the east to be deeper than those on the west (fig. 37). It was one of many concessions Jefferson had to make in his constant attempts to deal with an irregular site and maintain a sense of balance in the overall design. He obviously felt that he was making the right decisions, though, for he wrote in mid-1820 to John Wayles Eppes: "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 U.S. it begins to be much visited by strangers and admired by all, for the beauty, originality, and convenience of the plan." Note: 79
Plans were ready by the following March for the West Range, but none of them match any existing Jefferson drawing.
Note: 80 Several of Neilson's meticulously executed drawings in India ink and watercolor for pavilions and hotels were obviously final studies of Jefferson drawings and more nearly reflect the buildings as executed, but no drawings for Hotels A and C in Jefferson's handhave been found. Also, Hotels A and C of the West Range are the only two buildings without some sort of documentation in Jefferson's specification book (fig. 38). 
Note: 81 For Hotel C, Jefferson drew a plan, but he abandoned it before completion. He also drew one for the third in this line, and although it has the same exterior elevation it does not match Neilson's floor plan. Neilson's drawing for Hotel B is as built, with the entablature of the dormitories lower than that of the hotel (fig. 39) Note: 82 Neilson's exact involvement in the design is unclear, but certainly he was following Jefferson's directions.
Neilson's ground plan of the entire University (fig. 37) was apparently the first Lawn study since Jefferson's 1814 plan. On each side of the Rotunda Neilson showed terraces ("terras"), or wings, with descending steps that gave access to eight rooms located underneath. For the April 1821 Board of Visitors meeting, the Proctor, Arthur Brockenbrough, made an estimate of $42,000 to build the Rotunda, including the terraces and stone steps. Note: 83 A second ground plan dating to about November 1821, with the University's name written across the bottom, shows sixteen rooms in the Rotunda's terrace (fig. 40) Note: 84 The pavilions and hotels were numbered as they are today, and with the exception of the steps on the north side of the Rotunda resemble the engraving done in 1822 by Peter Maverick from still another copy of the ground plan that has not been located (fig. 41). The back steps were in fact executed. Their existence was obscured by the Robert Mills addition of the 1850s.
William J. Coffee, a sculptor, artist, and maker of composition ornament, arrived at Monticello in December 1821. When he left around May 25, 1822, he carried with him the ground plan that was the basis for the Maverick engraving, as well as a detailed list of the ornament Jefferson had chosen for the interior and exterior entablatures of the Pavilions. Work proceeded throughout 1822, so that by December construction was nearly complete, except for the Rotunda. Note: 85
Budget constraints had been a problem from the beginning. The 1818 Legislature provided an annuity of only $15,000 per year from the Literary Fund; when that amount was added to the $44,345 in private subscriptions pledged for Central College, the total did not allow for simultaneous construction, employment of professors, and purchase of equipment. Always short of money, the Board of Visitors took loans against annuities. The idea that they might open the University in 1820 was shelved so construction could be completed.
Note: 86 Jefferson, especially, was fearful of proceeding with the operation of the University. Concerned that the Rotunda would never be completed as he envisioned, he expressed his fear to Joseph C. Cabell in December 1822:
The great object of our aim from the beginning, has been to make the establishment the most eminent in the United States, in order to draw to it the youth of every State, but especially of the south and west. We have proposed, therefore, to call to it characters of the first order of science from Europe, as well as our own country;In February of 1823 the loan came through to build the Rotunda.and, not only by the salaries and the comforts of their situation, but by the distinguished scale of its structure and preparation, and the promise of future eminence which these would hold up, to induce them to commit their reputation to its future fortunes. Had we built a barn for a college, and log huts for accommodations, should we ever have had the assurance to propose to an European professor of that character to come to it? . . . to stop where we are is to abandon our high hopes, and become suitors to Yale and Harvard for their secondary characters. Note: 87
That same month, Neilson, who had contracted with Dinsmore to build the Rotunda, wrote to Cocke to tell him that he had drawn "an elevation of the Pantheon with the flank view of Pavillions [sic] No. 9 and 10 for Mrs. Cocke.... I have nearly finished all the drawings I intended and then I may take Holiday" (fig. 42). Note: 88 Referring to his earlier versions of the ground plan, Neilson had drawn the terrace wings of the Rotunda as a continuous pedestal to each side, and not connected to the colonnades of the East and West Lawns. The other drawings Neilson mentioned were probably working drawings.
In the spring of 1824, Jefferson, too ill to leave his bed and draw an elevation, directed Brockenbrough to extend an arcade along the front of the Rotunda terrace to the pavilions on either side, thus completing his original scheme for going dry from place to place. Note: 89 Underneath would be a gymnasium where the young men could exercise in bad weather Neilson executed the drawing (fig. 43). The 1825 version of the Maverick engraving incorporated this change (fig. 41).
Also in the spring of 1824, the Legislature gave the Visitors the financial means to put the University into operation as soon as practicable. With the Academical Village all but complete, Jefferson could now turn his attention to the long-awaited pleasure of filling it with students and the best professors in their respective sciences that he could find in all of Europe and America. At their meeting in April 1824, the Visitors appointed Francis Walker Gilmer as their agent to travel to Europe for the purpose of hiring professors and to purchase textbooks and apparatus necessary for the different professorships. They planned to open the following February. Note: 90 Work continued on the Rotunda, and in November of 1824 the Library room was complete enough that the Marquis de Lafayette was entertained there at a dinner for four hundred. Note: 91
Finally, on March 7, 1825, the University opened its doors to approximately forty students and five professors. Dr. George Blatterman, a German who arrived from London in December, took the professorship of Modern Languages and was housed in Pavilion IV. Thomas Hewitt Key from Trinity College, Cambridge, became Professor of Mathematics and was assigned to Pavilion VIII. Dr. Robley Dunglison, a Scotsman living in London, was engaged for Anatomy and Medicine and got Pavilion X. Charles Bonnycastle, an Englishman, took the chair of Natural Philosophy and Pavilion VI. George Long, another fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, came as Professor of Ancient Languages, moving into Pavilion V. Two Americans were also selected: John P. Emmet of New York came on April 8 as Professor of the School of Natural History and lived in Pavilion I; and George Tucker, a Congressman from Virginia, came in March as the Professor of Ethics and took possession of Pavilion IX. Note: 92
Students meeting in a classroom in the instructor's house may have been acceptable to some of the professors, but Dr. Dunglison found his combined living-working accommodation in Pavilion X to be an inadequate and justifiably, inappropriate setting in which to conduct his classes on anatomy and the dissection of human cadavers. Jefferson, who by now was almost 82 years old, designed a separate facility, and the Board of Visitors agreed in March 1825 that upon receipt of the necessary funds "an anatomical theatre be built, as nearly as may be on the plan now exhibited to the board" (fig. 44). Note: 93
Jefferson's drawing for the Anatomical Theatre shows a geometric design consisting of a square circumscribing an octagonal amphitheater arrangement of rising seats. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of the Anatomical Theatre was its placement opposite Hotel A on West Street which would begin a new, fifth row of buildings. Jefferson even indicated a projecting arcade across its front. Sometime after the site for the Anatomical Theatre had been selected, an unknown draughtsman designed a fifth row of buildings with projecting arcades extending south from the Anatomical Theatre, but this scheme was never carried out (fig. 45).
1826 marked the ninth year of construction. Just days before Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, one student wrote, "The carpenters are progressing with the Rotunda and Anatomical theatre, and sometimes their racket disturbs my studying though I go on tolerable well (that is in my opinion).... The number of students that have matriculated is 180, 12 of them have been expelled and suspended." Note: 94
Thomas Jefferson had forged the cornerstone of a nation in 1776. His ensuing quest to maintain the inalienable rights espoused in the Declaration of Independence was realized with the establishment of the University of Virginia as a grand seminary of learning to train future generations. The goal was to provide an educational program and facility second to none in the United States. His efforts did not begin to bear fruit until the resurrection of Albemarle Academy in 1814, and the progression from concept to reality involved struggles with the State Legislature, with site irregularities, and with budget limitations. The resulting architectural masterpiece bestowed a legacy that still survives, the embodiment of the concepts of one man's quest for eternal freedom of the mind and soul, and his models of taste and good architecture are more than ever "furnishing to the student examples of the precepts he will be taught in that art." Jefferson to Governor Wilson Cary Nicholas April 2, 1816, in Honeywell, Appendix G.
