The University of Virginia can be viewed as a summation of Thomas Jefferson's manifold architectural endeavors along with his political concerns regarding the independence of the human mind. Jefferson believed that freedom could only be preserved by an enlightened populace; in 1805, while initially planning a university, he wrote: "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." Note: 2
Jefferson and his creations -- both intellectual and architectural -- have assumed such resonance in the American mind that any consideration of the design and the architecture of the University inevitably involves him both as an individual and as a legend. The University of Virginia consummated his educational concerns. Jefferson's request to place on his grave marker only three of his many accomplishments -- "Author of the Declaration of American Independence/of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom/and father of the University of Virginia" -- reveals his pride in the University: it culminated his lifelong quest for political and intellectual freedom. And yet, one should remember that Jefferson's educational intent -- similar to most institutions of the period --included only a select portion of the population and excluded women and African-Americans. Only the most talented and privileged of young men would proceed to the University. His was not the wider freedom of opportunity for all that we have come to expect in the twentieth century.
The University of Virginia as both an institution and a significant example of architecture has endured, but it has also changed markedly since 1825. As with many great masterpieces, the Lawn is open to various interpretations, eliciting over the years reactions ranging from admiration to dismissal; some hail it uncritically while others question the design and whether it serves its purpose. These perceptions come from many perspectives: visi- tors, architects who have tried to make additions to the original composition, and historians and critics who have attempted to discover its meanings. The Lawn has been subjected to intense -- and continuing -- scrutiny; the number of publications that discuss it can overwhelm even the most compulsive bibliophile. The intent of this essay, therefore, is to examine some, not all, of the perceptions and interpretations of Jefferson's Academical Village, as well as some of the alterations and additions to it, and to suggest possible meanings that this multivalent design embodies.
Some of Ticknor's evaluation reflects the impact of Jefferson, who was anything but retiring in estimating his creation. Claiming status with the architectural gods, Jefferson, the inveterate correspondent, boasted to Maria Cosway, his aging lady friend in France: "it would be thought a handsome and classical thing in Italy" ; and to his friend William Short: "It will be a splendid establishment, would be thought so in Europe, and for the chastity of its architecture and classical taste leaves everything in America far behind it." Note: 4 In many letters Jefferson proclaimed the virtues of the educational institution and the architecture he had created; to Judge Augustus B. Woodward, he expressed hope that the University would influence the "virtue, freedom, fame and happiness" of the prospective students; and he claimed: "The form and distributions of its structures are original and unique, the architecture chaste and classical...." Note: 5 Jefferson died in 1826 believing he had created a leading educational institution and an architectural landmark; now posterity would assess it.
The next architectural evaluation raised problems. The Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Karl Bernhard, published an account of his travels through North America in 1825-26. He found the buildings at the University to be "all new, and yet some of them threaten to fall in," and he criticized the ten pavilions as being irregular and in a "different manner," which prevents the ensemble from having a "beautiful and majestic appearance." He admired the "crooked lines" of the garden walls: "singular by handsome." Note: 6 The next written assessment was no more favorable even though the source is surprising given that his father, the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, provided crucial suggestions to Jefferson for the design. John H.B. Latrobe visited Charlottesville n August 1832 and reported: "Mr. Jefferson was certainly not a man of taste and [the University of Virginia] which was built under his direction proves it." Latrobe disparaged the proportions of the architectural order thought Jefferson's choices of models were outdated; he also felt the ensemble had "a shabby genteel look, and is already showing marks left by time on its frail materials." Note: 7 A more positive view came two years later Harriet Martineau, the English writer, visited the area as part of her tour West. She discovered to her surprise that the students and faculty were "particularly winning," cordial, and filled with "mutual good understanding which is seldom found in the small society of a college, village-like in its seclusion." The buildings were "singular," and "advantageously crown an eminence," and she admired the "piazza surrounding an oblong square." She also noted that a Gothic chapel was about to be erected at the foot of the Lawn. Note: 8
Paralleling these early written descriptions, the University began enter the visual imagination through a series of prints. Note: 9 The earliest were the Maverick engravings--named for the New York engraver Peter Maverick which represented the ground plan of the University (fig. 41). Note: 10 As Rector Jefferson had commissioned a number of representations in 1821 and had John Neilson draw up a plan, which served as the basis for Maverick engravings. Several different states of this schematic ground plan appeared over the years, as did numerous variations of a perspective view drawn in 1824 by William Goodacre and published in 1831 by John Hinton in London. The Hinton view depicted the Lawn without the terraces and inserted a colonnade connecting the Rotunda to the wings (fig. 46). Construction was still underway, and apparently Goodacre followed a connecting scheme shown on the Maverick plan that was not built. Similarly, another view of 1824 more accurately showed the terracing and included an arcade across the north end (fig. 47). How many of these different views were published and how widely they were circulated is unclear. In the 1850s came several more views, among them the most famous, an aerial perspective published by Casimir Bohn of Washington, D.C., after the drawing and engraving by Edward Sachse (fig. 48). Drawn from the top of Lewis Mountain, located to the west of the Grounds, it presented a perspective experienced by few visitors. Sachse showed the Lawn planted with trees and the Rotunda with a long wing to the north. Even more impressive (and containing a vast amount of artistic license) was the enlargement of the Rotunda, which looms up more than doubled in size and dwarfs the pavilions, colonnades, ranges, and hotels. The Rotunda dominates the landscape and becomes a topographic feature competing with the nearby mountains. Widely published and reissued over the yearsşeven today it is readily availableşthe Bohn print became one of the iconic views of the University.
The long wing, or tail, of the Rotunda was added in 1851-53 by Robert Mills, who had worked with Jefferson in the early 1800s (fig. 49). Known as the Annex, or New Hall, it contained classrooms and a large public hall capable of seating 1,200. New requirements such as large meeting halls not foreseen by Jefferson were changing the University's fabric. Using red brick with white trim, Mills attempted to harmonize with Jefferson's design: he replicated the Rotunda's portico on the north end of his annex, though he substituted cast iron for the capitals of the Corinthian order rather than using marble, as in the original. In spite of its awkward and ungainly appearance, the Annex was apparently admired by the University community; however, it indicated a problem that continued to bedevil architects: how to make additions to Mr. Jefferson's design. Note: 11
A few other views of the University, along with commentary, were published in the 1850s, such as those of Porte Crayon, an artist, who took a tour through the Commonwealth for Harper's: "The whole [of the University] has a very pleasing and pretty effect, but the buildings are too low and the architecture wants finish." Note: 12 From the late 1850s to the 1880s, the nadir of recognition for the Lawn was reached. This lack of interest is to some degree understandable; travel was difficult, and Charlottesville was relatively inaccessible and not on the main routes. In addition, the center of American publishing was located in the North, the South was frequently viewed as intellectually vacuous, and the University was considered a bastion of the Old South and slavery. And then there was the Civil War. The dark shadow of the war fell across Jefferson's reputation "like a great and furious Nemesis," as Merrill Peterson explains in his study of the Jefferson image. Note: 13 Finally there was the religious issue.
The religious question may be difficult to understand today, but for many individuals in the nineteenth century Jefferson was an "infidel propagandist." His deism and concern with religious freedom caused one agitated Episcopal cleric to claim that Jefferson had erected "an alliance between the civil authority and infidelity," and that the University taught "a refined and civilized heathenism." Note: 14 In actuality, Jefferson explicitly allowed for religious services in the Rotunda, and he proposed that various sects establish divinity schools in proximity to the University. While he created no professorship of divinity, he provided for a chair in Moral Philosophy that would expose students to the great teachings, including those of Jesus. But the University of Virginia stood outside the overwhelming mold of most American institutions of higher learning in the nineteenth century in that it was not religiously based, no chapel dominated the campus, and the University's professors were not men of the cloth. This last issue had been particularly important to Jefferson, and he had sought his faculty among European men of learning, none of whom was a cleric. A Presbyterian minister and a former University student described the Lawn's inhabitants--including professors--as "a most godless set." Note: 15
The University became a battleground as outsiders, professors, and students sought to bring Christianity onto the Grounds. In 1829 Episcopal Bishop William Meade of Virginia predicted the University's "destruction" when he preached that the "Almighty is angry" at the Rotunda. Note: 16 The result was the appointment in the same year of the University's first chaplain, who would be paid by voluntary contributions of students and faculty, a system that continued until 1897. The first attempt to add a University chapel came in 1835 when plans were "procured from an architect of high reputation...[for] a church or chapel in the Gothic style" to be placed on the Lawn "immediately in front of the Rotunda." Note: 17 The identity of the architect has vanished along with the plans, however General John Hartwell Cocke gave his blessings to the scheme, calling it "beautiful and appropriate." Note: 18 That Cocke, a member of the original Board of Visitors, a close associate of Jefferson, and the patron of a Jefferson-styled villa at Bremo, agreed to a Gothic-styled chapel on the Lawn indicates the change in religious sentiment in the ten years since Jefferson's death. The chapel campaign struggled on for several years, but funds were never secured. However, the issue persisted, and around 1837 one of the gymnasia spaces under the Rotunda terraces was converted into a chapel. William McGuffey, an ordained Presbyterian minister, was appointed to the Professorship of Moral Philosophy in 1845 to mitigate the anti-Christian charges, and in 1858 the Young Men's Christian Association, the first at an American college, opened at the University. Note: 19
This controversy reveals another subtlety of the Lawn: its openness, or to some a seeming emptiness and lack of termination. Many individuals, including architects and faculty, appear to have felt threatened by it, and they proposed huts for statues of Jefferson, buildings, triumphal arches, and chapels, all intended either to fill up or close off that yawning space. Note: 20
The chapel issue returned to center stage in the late l850s when William Abbot Pratt, an engineer, landscapist, and architect, became the University's Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds. Pratt designed a Gothic chapel for the south end of the Lawn, again facing the Rotunda (fig. 50). A writer in the student newspaper classified Pratt's scheme as "heterogenous architectural hash," an example of "mongrel Gothic," and asked for a severely Classic" design. Note: 21 However, fund-raising floundered when the Civil War intervened.
The University finally built a chapel in 1885-90. Agitation for it continued, many clergy feeling that death was preferable for a young man to entering that heathen university. In the early 1880s the Reverend Otis Glazebook, an Episcopalian, galvanized the University community through a fund-raising drive. Much of the funding came through the Ladies Chapel Aid Society. Though the familiar location facing the Rotunda on the Lawn was considered, other sites were discussed, and finally the Board of Visitors selected an area to the northwest of the Rotunda balancing Brooks Hall (the natural-history building, built in 1875-76) on the northeast. Designed by Charles E. Cassell of Baltimore in what he identified as the "early pointed" style, the Chapel was nominally Gothic in the High Victorian mode with its contorted proportions and rough-textured stonework (fig. 51 ) Note: 22 The ideological implications were obvious, as the University's Professor of Modern Languages, Maximilian Schele deVere, pointed out in his address at the dedication: "Behind us rise in cold though classic beauty the outlines of a pagan temple.... Before us ... the pointed window, the flying buttress, the pointed steeple, . . . aspiring to heaven." Note: 23 Now at last students had a place to pray. . .though the question of their relative heathenism would continue, along with attacks on Jefferson as an infidel. Note: 24 With the Chapel's completion, one source of compromise to Jefferson's original design disappeared. However, the Chapel did not really compete with Jefferson's scheme; it existed in its own sphere of influence. Its location, in relation to the earlier Brooks Hall indicated that a reorientation of the University was taking place: the two buildings were oriented to University Avenue, or the main east-west road, and not to Jefferson's original entry, which had been at the south end of the Lawn. This new perception of entry to the Grounds would become more apparent in the next several years.
Herbert Baxter Adams, a historian at Johns Hopkins University, published the first reappraisal of Jefferson and the University in 1888. The primary purpose of Adams's study was educational, and he saw Jefferson as a pio- neering proponent of modern higher education. Adams recognized that Jefferson had promoted a system of electives rather than a required course of study, that he had understood the multiplicity of areas of specific knowledge and the importance of technical and scientific study instead of a purely classical curriculum, and finally that he had separated the University from religion. Jefferson became for Adams the creator of the modern centralized university, and through the influence of Adams's book, Jefferson's academic policies would play a major role in the establishment and growth of universities in other states beginning in the 1890s. Note: 27
Adams published several drawings ascribed to Jefferson (they had been redrawn) and gave him full credit for the design of the University: "the very ground-plan and structure of its buildings, every material estimate and every architectural detail, are the work of Thomas Jefferson." Note: 28 Adams's emphasis on Jefferson as the designer indicates that skepticism had existed about Jefferson's architectural contributions. Also of importance as a guide to future studies was Adams's inquiry into the origins of Jefferson's design; he cited the Leoni edition of Palladio as the only source. According to Adams, Jefferson's "varying types of classical architecture were copied from well known Roman buildings, pictured by Palladio," and he spent as much time on the Rotunda, a one-third sized reduction of the "Roman Pantheon, . . . as did Michael Angelo . . . upon the dome of St. Peter's." Adams compared features of the plan, especially the colonnades and the single student rooms, to "some ancient monastery . . . like monkish cells." And he concluded his architectural considerations with this observation: "How charmingly old Rome, mediaeval Europe, and modern America blend together before the very eyes of young Virginia!" Note: 29
A few years later, John Kevan Peebles, a University alumnus (class of 1890) and an architect in Norfolk, wrote an article on Jefferson's architecture as part of the commentary for his recent building at the University, Fayerweather Gymnasium, 1893, designed with his partner James R. Carpenter (fig. 52). In his article, which was reprinted in the national architectural press, Peebles decried the lack of notice about Jefferson's architectural contributions and described the desecration of the University's plan by the addition of many recent buildings, especially Brooks Hall and the Chapel. For his design of Fayerweather Hall, Peebles claimed: "While no copy of any Classic structure, . . . [it] follows the lines laid down by Jefferson. Note: 30
The University's architecture moved into the public eye with the burning of the Rotunda on October 27, 1895, and the subsequent rebuilding and additions to the Grounds by McKim, Mead & White. The New York partnership of Charles Follen McKim, William R. Mead, and Stanford White was dearly the leading American architectural office of the turn-of-the-century. They espoused a revivified classicism that resulted in an American Renaissance and they fully sympathized with Jefferson's architectural goals. McKim had designed a seal for the University in 1890 and then visited the Grounds in 1895. A few days after the fire, Mead counseled the head of the University's medical school against selecting unsympathetic architects: "we should consider it an honor to be associated with the work." Note: 31 Hence, when problems were discovered in designs for rebuilding the Rotunda drafted by a hastily selected architect, McKim, Mead & White were natural candidates for the job. Note: 32 From the University's point of view the fire was seen as an opportunity to expand and improve outdated facilities. A report by the faculty to the Rector and Board of Visitors asked not just for restoration, but "to increase its usefulness by providing facilities more ample and splendid than we have heretofore enjoyed." Note: 33
White played the leading role, traveling frequently to Charlottesville, sometimes accompanied by McKim. Their admiration for Jefferson's design becomes apparent in letters and documents: "The old University buildings surrounding the Campus are the most monumental, if not the most beautiful piece of Colonial architecture in America." Note: 34 White's trepidation about the project is apparent from a conversation with a friend: "'I've seen his plans' and then with great deference: 'They're wonderful and I'm scared to death. I only hope I can do it right'." Note: 35 For the Rotunda, White claimed it would "be restored in exact facsimile," the only exterior change being the replacement of the unsightly Annex (where the fire had begun) with a portico "similar to the one on the front . . . as this was evidently Jefferson 's intention." Note: 36 This new northern shallow portico with a "great flight of steps" actually marked a complete reversal of Jefferson's original plan; now the entrance to the Grounds would be from the north (fig. 53). White inserted sorely needed class and office space under the terraces that he extended around the Rotunda, and he constructed the new dome of fireproof Guastavino tile and lengthened its radius, thus slightly raising its profile. White's belief that he could divine Jefferson's intentions led him to revise the interior plan, for as he explained: "only one deviation from the original plan has been made, but this is one which Jefferson would unquestionably have adopted himself had he been able to do so when the Rotunda was built, and one which he would have himself insisted upon still more, could he have directed the restoration." For utilitarian reasons, White argued, Jefferson had divided the interior into two floors, but he had really desired a single two-story space for the Library; hence White was respecting what Jefferson could not accomplish (fig. 54). Although White took responsibility for these changes, the Faculty, in a report dated four days after the fire, had specifically requested a new north entrance and the single volume of space for the Library. McKim, Mead & White's Rotunda alterations provided two new visual experiences, both highly dramatic: entry most normally came alongside the Rotunda, through a colonnade that suddenly brought the observer into an awe-inspiring panorama of white columns and greenery; and the view from the terraces surrounding the Rotunda was sublime in its majesty, picturesque in its variety.
McKim, Mead & White's other major area of attention was the closing in of the south end of the Lawn. The Faculty had requested a "new Academical Building" with "a public hall, designed in the horseshoe or theatrical form." Note: 37 They did not specify a location. White submitted two proposals for the placement of new buildings; one at the side of the Lawn "would be the most practical," while the other at the south end "would seem to be the most natural and architectural finish of the group," though "we should regret blocking the beautiful vista at the end of the present campus." Note: 38 He explained his plans to the Faculty's Building Committee and then the Board of Visitors. The Rector, W.C.N. Randolph (Jefferson's great-grandson) directed White to close the Lawn and build at the south end. The reason lay in the fact that Jefferson's southern entry had never worked very well; the slope of the hill was often impossible to traverse in inclement weather. In addition, the area immediately to the south of the University's land and in full view was filled with unsightly houses that the new buildings would block. Jefferson's original idea that his plan would "admit extension" through a repetition of dormitories, colonnades, and pavilions was impossible. Note: 39 Not only did the topography prevent expansion, but the University did not even own the property; in addition, the setting for higher education had changed from small classrooms to large lecture rooms and laboratory spaces. In any event, a more natural entry lay on the north side of the Grounds.
White separated his buildings from Jefferson's by locating them behind a court measuring three-hundred feet wide and two-hundred feet deep, and graded to a level twenty feet below the bottom step of the Rotunda (fig. 55). He argued that from the Rotunda these new structures -- Cabell, Rouse, and Cocke halls -- would "appear as only one story in height, whereas on account of the steep grade they actually count for practical use as two." White rationalized his decision: "The charm of the present Close and the domination of the Rotunda are therefore preserved." Note: 40 The Ragged Mountains rising in the distance beyond Cabell Hall could still be seen from the Rotunda. White attempted to continue the Jefferson pavilion model by placing pedimented porticos on the new academical buildings. Horizontally massed with lower wings, the familiar red brick and white trim established continuity with the pavilions. Because of the University's economic problems, concrete replaced marble. In the Cabell Hall auditorium, White paid homage to Jefferson by reversing the space; the amphitheater is not placed in the hillside, but rather, the audience enters past the stage and then turns to sit facing the Rotunda (fig. 56). On the wall facing the Rotunda he placed a copy of Raphael's School of Athens (a copy had hung in Mills's Annex and had been destroyed in the fire). Cabell Hall's volume is one half of the Rotunda's sphere. White may have blocked the full vista, but he maintained the open central space and the axis running from the Rotunda, recognizing this as the central element of the University plan. Note: 41
McKim, Mead & White's association with the University continued until 1912. They designed the Power House, 1896-98, Carr's Hill (the president's house), 1906-09, and Garrett Hall, or the Refectory and Commons, 1907-08. Equally important, the firm prepared a plan for future expansion of the University that envisioned a Beaux-Arts grouping of buildings at the south end on a cross axis (fig. 57). To some degree a few structures such as Randall Hall, 1899, and Minor Hall, 1911, followed this scheme, but most later buildings turned their backs on the Lawn and with minor exceptions need not concern us.
McKim, Mead & White's work was accompanied by increased attention from the architectural community to Jefferson's design, and also controversy concerning his role. Montgomery Schuyler, perhaps the most the New York architectural critics and a member of the editorial staff of New York Times, assessed Jefferson's influence on American architecture. Note: 42 Schuyler wrote one of the earliest histories of Colonial architecture in which began the practice of including Jefferson with the early period in spite of the fact that most of his work is post-Colonial. According to Schuyler, Jefferson did not design the Virginia Capitol; rather, "M. Clarissault [ sic , Schuyler is following Jefferson]" did, but "unquestionably" Jefferson designed the University. He argued that "Considering the resources available for carrying it into execution" and its remote location, "Jefferson's scheme was incomparably the most ambitious and monumental architectural project yet been conceived in this century." Schuyler criticized elements such as the second-floor porches on the temple-fronted pavilions and his use of wood, and he concluded by noting that Jefferson's taint of "Unitarianism" brought the University into "popular disfavor" for years. Note: 43 In later articles Schuyler returned to the University, heaping even more praise on it and admiring the McKim, Mead & White additions, which he claimed would have met with Jefferson's "approbation": "The style and scale of Jefferson's work are preserved; the material is bettered." The standard explanation of economy for the serpentine brick walls -- or as Schuyler explained it, the "translation of the "'Virginia rail fence' into terms of brickwork" -- he found questionable. They were too picturesque, too much of a folly, and not appropriate for the formal grandeur of the complex. But he also added, for him, a new note: Jefferson had been assisted by Robert Mills. Note: 44 Schuyler's identification of Mills as having been involved with the University caused confusion that lasted for years.
This concern over who designed what reflected new research on early American architecture, which had received little prior attention, and it also signaled uneasiness that an "amateur," or non-professional, architect could have designed such a complex. The most persuasive evidence came from Glenn Brown, an otherwise knowledgeable architect responsible for considerable research on early Virginia and Washington, D.C., architecture. Initially Brown claimed that letters in the possession of Robert Mills's family indicated "at least a cooperation with Jefferson," but then, in the course of research on the United States Capitol, he discovered Jefferson's correspondence with William Thornton. In a 1913 article, Brown claimed that Thornton had designed the University, not Jefferson. Note: 45
Although skepticism about Jefferson's role continued for years, for most people the question of primary responsibility and Jefferson's architectural competence came to an end with two books published in 1913 and 1916. Note: 46 The first, by William A. Lambeth, the University's Director of Athletics, and Warren H. Manning, a landscape architect from Boston, was the lesser volume, more of a general defense of Jefferson as an architect. Manning, who had taken charge of the University plan in 1913, provided a superficial overview and included his schemes for expansion with mini-Lawns to the east and west (fig. 58). Lambeth considered the various documents, including the Thornton correspondence, and concluded: "The plan of the University did not full panoplied, leap forth from the brain of Jefferson, but was an evolution out of the meditations of an intellect...." Note: 47
Far more important was the 1916 folio-sized volume by Fiske Kimball, Thomas Jefferson, Architect . Note: 48 Kimball had been trained as an architect under the Beaux-Arts system at Harvard and hence had an appreciation for ordered and classically based designs. Kimball would head the University's first department of architecture -- 1919 to 1923 -- and in that role he designed several structures for the Grounds. He later became Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Always an active scholar, Kimball published voluminously on Jefferson, early American architecture, and other topics. Note: 49 In his heavily illus- trated volume on Jefferson, he considered all the known drawings, both at the Massachusetts Historical Society and at the University, and firmly established Jefferson's importance as a designer, although with a qualification: "Though not a professional, he was nevertheless an architect in the true modern sense." The University design was not above criticism, and Kimball noted problems with Jefferson's initial three-equal-sided scheme, his massing and lack of plasticity, and some of the "meretricious ornament," but he lauded his "scientific impulse" and his use of Palladio as representative of an ordered and codified universe. Note: 50
Kimball's contributions to our appreciation of Jefferson as an architect remain unsurpassed in spite of a voluminous outpouring of books and articles. He delineated a line of scholarly interest that has guided future evaluations of the University and its meaning. Kimball saw Jefferson as an amateur who drew upon various sources: books on architecture from his enormous library, experiences from his travels, and correspondence with Mills, Latrobe, and Thornton. Note: 51 Identifying these sources became one of the major activities of later historians and interpreters.
On a broader level, a battle has been fought over whether Jefferson was more influenced by English or French architecture, and how much of a role his beloved Palladio played. Was Jefferson too much an Englishman, really an Anglo-Palladian in disguise? Or did the revolutionary French architecture he must have observed while in Paris influence him? Kimball spurred the battle by claiming that Jefferson had prefigured the entire international Neo-Classic revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Note: 52 Jefferson's library was filled with both English and French architecture books. The editions of Palladio that he depended on for the Lawn were primarily English, the Leoni editions; hence he was really working within the British architectural circuit. But alternatively, he also depended on a French book by Freart de Chambray and Errard for other pavilions on the Lawn. Although the argument can appear banal -- and at times has descended into trivial hairsplitting--it can have important consequences, since it involves the question of Jefferson's ideological intentions.
One example can be seen in the facade of Pavilion IX, which has become the most famous and reproduced of all the Lawn facades (fig. 59). This facade is unusual because it lacks a giant order and contains an exedra screened by two Ionic columns in antis drawn from Freart de Chambray. Actually, Jefferson had originally specified the Tuscan order for the niche and entablature but then changed to the Ionic of Fortuna Virilis. On his drawing for the pavilion Jefferson inscribed in two places: "Latrobe." This has been interpreted by some scholars to indicate that Latrobe designed it, and indeed Latrobe did use a similar niche in some of his buildings.
Note: 53 Other scholars have traced the niche back to a Parisian house designed by the French "revolutionary," or "visionary," architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux that was illustrated in a book Jefferson owned (fig. 60).
Note: 54 
But a recessed niche was not exclusively a French revolutionary form; many Anglo-Palladians had used it, had also seen it employed in a temple at Stowe. Also, the origins of the exedra stretch back at least to the Roman baths. Note: 55 The conclusion that might be drawn from such an array of sources is that Latrobe probably suggested the recessed motif and that Jefferson, recognizing it as another desirable "specimen" of architecture, adopted it.
Even more of a conflict has erupted over the sources for the ground plan of the University. Kimball initially suggested a broad range of possible influences such as cloisters, forums, and palaestras of the ancients as shown in Palladio via Leoni. Note: 56 None of these was identified as the specific source; rather, he saw them as part of a generalized background. However, a few years later in an article disproving one possibility - - a French Grand Prix design of 1805 that Jefferson never saw -- Kimball introduces the possibility of the chateau and gardens at Marly-le-Roi, which Jefferson had visited in 1786 while in Paris (fig. 61). Note: 57 Composed of a central building at the head of a rectangular garden bordered by six pavilions on each side and connected by trellises, Marly has been one of the most frequently invoked sources for later historians -- in spite of the fact that it was a French royal residence and there-fore would hardly have appealed to the staunchly republican Jefferson. Note: 58 To this source have been added: the ground plan of the Hotel de Salm (now the home of the Legion of Honor) in Paris about which Jefferson wrote movingly; and then, because of Jefferson's concern with health, various French and English plans for hospitals and prisons, as well as college plans in England and the United States. Note: 59 Still other historians have turned back to Jefferson's American origins, noting prototypes such as the village green, Williamsburg, and the domesticated middle landscape of colonial times. Note: 60 All of this speculation on sources reveals the richness of Jefferson's creation, its originality, and how it speaks on different levels.
Fiske Kimball had brought Jefferson and his University design into the American architectural mainstream and had helped initiate a process of canonization. Historians and architects no longer ignored his contributions as an architect, and they increasingly recognized his scheme for the University as a masterpiece. Although to many critics he never quite achieved the innovative stature of Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan, still, Jefferson belonged in the pantheon of greats: the first great American architect. To historian Vincent Scully, Jefferson's embracing of land, view, and prospect pointed toward the genius of Wright. Note: 61 Even Wright, who seldom had anything good to say about other architects, living or dead, and who dismissed Michelangelo as a "disaster," said shortly before his death: "If Thomas Jefferson were with us, he would be sitting where I am now, at the had of the table." Note: 62 Some historians though, did take issue: Lewis Mumford felt that Jefferson "went wrong... and lost sight of his own fundamental principles" with the Rotunda, which he claimed was totally out of keeping with the village plan and should have been integrated with the pavilions instead of showing a deference to "high architectural authority." But "in every other respect," Mumford wrote, "the design is a masterpiece," an "embodiment of three great architectural essentials" : a conception of the program for the modern university, unity in the whole, and vitality in details rather than mechanical copying. Note: 63
Back at the Academical Village, reverence for Jefferson's design remained strong, but as the functional center of the University it became increasingly marginalized. Jefferson's Anatomical Theatre came down in 1939 (fig. 62); it had sat in front of the new Alderman Library building. White's library in the Rotunda had become outmoded and the books were removed. Funds from the Public Works Administration helped revise the Rotunda again in 1938-39; the concrete balustrades and steps of White's "restoration" were replaced with marble. Note: 64 The Lawn continued as the heart of the University, but the Rotunda no longer served much of a purpose except for offices. New construction took place away from the Lawn. In the post-World War II years two University professors of architecture and history, William B. O'Neal and Frederick Doveton Nichols, inherited the mantle of Kimball, and together and individually they brought to light new materials and perspectives on the Lawn. Note: 65 In 1948 the Garden Club of Virginia began funding the restoration of the serpentine walls and pavilion gardens, and then moved on to the area north of the Rotunda, creating a new grand entrance. In the early 1950s Nichols took over direction of the garden work and also began some tentative restoration of the pavilions.
Accompanying the University's canonization was an increasingly harsh scrutiny of additions to the Grounds, especially the alterations of McKim, Mead & White. Their work, at completion and for many years afterwards, had received praise both within the University and from others such as Kimball. Note: 66 But beginning in the 1950s the climate of opinion changed both in Charlottesville and nationally. Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the "dean" of American architectural history, argued that the additions at the end of the Lawn displayed a "lack of understanding," and that in spite of being "'traditional' architects -- men who professed the greatest admiration for . . . Jefferson . . . [they] proceeded to destroy its essence ..." by blocking the great view to the south, thus compromising Jefferson's original scheme. Note: 67
The result was not the demolishing of the offending buildings -- Cabell Hall's auditorium, seating 1,500, was the largest on the central Grounds -- but another "restoration" of the Ro- tunda. In 1955 Nichols began a campaign for returning the Rotunda to Jefferson's design. He convinced the President and the Board of Visitors, and with funds from the Cary D. Langhorn Trust and the Department of Housing and Urban Development the Stanford White interior was removed and a replica of Jefferson's interior was installed in 1973-76. Lack of documentation of the original interior in the form of working drawings and detailed photographs of trim and molding, finishes, and furnishings meant imaginative reinterpretations of many features. Note: 68 White's exterior -- the terraces, new portico, and other features -- remained, but on the interior one could now grasp the original configuration of the spaces intended by Jefferson for the Rotunda (fig. 63).
Over the years the Lawn had become a hallowed and sacred precinct. Students still lived in the dormitory rooms, but Jefferson's concept that the ground floors of the pavilions would be classrooms had never been successful, and they had been converted into faculty residences, a club, and offices. An earnest restoration program began in the 1980s under the direction of an architect for the historical buildings, James Murray Howard. Pavilion VIII, which had served as the President's office for years, was restored on the ground floors for teaching; and so once again classes -- in a minimal way -- returned to the Lawn.
The increased reverence for the Lawn by the broader architectural community, although certainly genuine, sprang from an intense anti-modernist- strain that began in the 1960s and that called for a return to traditional architectural forms. A new concern with the city and its deterioration, and also with suburban sprawl, led many architects and historians to invoke the Lawn as a paradigm for the city, despite the irrelevancy of the comparison. Note: 69 The culmination of the Lawn's canonization came during the Bicentennial when the American Institute of Architects ranked the University as the most admired achievement of American architecture. Note: 70 And this has been followed with- even more accolades.
With canonization came changes in the interpretation of the Lawn, which was adopted by architects not only for new universities, colleges, and study centers, but also for businesses. Even more striking, the association of the University's architecture with paganism disappeared, and it became a model for religious structures. The Reverend Jerry Falwell announced in 1987 that his proposed new church in Lynchburg would be modeled on Jefferson's Rotunda, "only larger." Note: 71 MEANINGS The history of the Lawn in the 168 years since its completion indicates the changing perceptions of the past and the manifold meanings that can be imbedded in great works of architecture. The various speculations and interpretations concerning the Lawn testify to its importance. But certain points provide meanings for today and thus deserve more emphasis.
Thomas Jefferson was intensely interested in theories and ideals, but he avoided cosmic philosophizing and never attempted to reduce history to one specific system. He was an eclectic who drew constantly from many sources in political theory, education, and architecture. Note: 72 He sought unities and found some that today we might not accept, but he recognized that knowledge constantly evolved. Note: 73 Jefferson did not espouse rigid doctrines and static systems; instead, he retained an openness to new ideas, a belief in progress and in the future. Note: 74 Although he praised the ideal, he always maintained a view of the practical. Jefferson enjoyed the arts and the art of living well, but a utilitarian streak underlay everything: pure frivolity and silly speculation never entered his philosophical thinking. He dismissed Plato as filled with "whimsies" and "nonsense," and although he recommended several ancient moralists, among them "Jesus of Nazareth" as the most sublime and benevolent, there is a presentness to Jefferson's thought, a search for what would work today and tomorrow. Note: 75 Jefferson read history, frequently commenting upon it, and believed it offered lessons, but it was ridiculous to tie actions to ancestors and past behaviors: knowledge had improved. Note: 76 "Science is progressive," he observed, "what was useful two centuries ago is now become useless." Note: 77 Jefferson respected the past, whether political or architectural, for what it could teach but not for how it could be duplicated. He admired Palladio, especially the Leoni edition, but he was as averse to using this as his only architectural source as he was reluctant to use any single literary source for his politics. Note: 78
Dumas Malone sums up his magisterial biography with the observation that Jefferson was "rooted in his native soil." Note: 79 Indeed, formative to Jefferson's ideas for the University were his own youthful experiences, especially at the College of William and Mary. During the years of his attendance, 1760-62, the College was housed in a large building more than sixty years old that is sometimes attributed to Sir Christopher Wren. Note: 80 In this single structure all of the students lived, ate, and attended classes. Note: 81 In front of it stood two houses: the President's and the Bafferton, where a handful of Americans Indians stayed (fig. 64). During Jefferson's tenure, constant uproar characterized the College, which was controlled by the Anglican church. Six of the seven faculty members (as well as the President) were clergymen, and all were embroiled in battles with the local political authorities over their pay, which came from taxes. As upstanding examples to the community, the clergymen failed: supposedly celibate, they fathered illegitimate children, several were drunkards, and one even led the college boys in a raid against the town. The William and Mary students as a whole were out of control, dissipated, and frequently involved in brawls.
Later biographers have speculated that some of Jefferson's animosity towards state-sponsored religion and its involvement in education might have begun during his youth in Albemarle County, but William and Mary certainly determined it. Note: 82 Although Jefferson fondly remembered his one non-clerical professor, William Small, and his later studies with George Wythe, he never expressed any admiration for the College. During his term as Governor he severed the College's ties to the Church. Its architecture he despised as "indifferent accommodation," "rude, mis-shapen." Note: 83 Many academic and architectural features of the University of Virginia, as well its siting, were Jefferson's reaction to his collegiate experience in Williamsburg.
At the University of Virginia, however, Jefferson found his hopes initially thwarted. As an institution the University got off to a rocky start when it opened in 1825. Several of the original professors who were courted and imported from Europe disliked their accommodations in the pavilions and loathed the poorly prepared students; they soon left. The students were not just ignorant, some were drunken louts who created near riots on the Lawn, destroying property and inflicting injury. This reminded Jefferson of Williamsburg, and when as Rector he faced the students in the Rotunda, "his feelings overcame him, and he sat down," unable to speak. Note: 84 Unfortunately after Jefferson's death in 1826 the problem of student behavior continued to plague the University (as it did most American universities); the killing of a professor by a student in 1840 helped bring about creation of the famous honor code in 1842. Note: 85
Education was the reason for the University: it was designed as the capstone of the Commonwealth of Virginia but also as an example for other states. Jefferson intended it to be "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." Note: 86 His educational scheme had problematic aspects: the number of disciplines represented was arbitrary, growing from six to ten with the passage of the State enabling act. Note: 87 Jefferson tried to dictate in some areas, for example allowing only certain "approved" texts for the study of government. Note: 88 In many specifics the University has changed over the years; for instance, bachelor's degrees are offered instead of merely diplomas, as Jefferson had envisioned. He certainly would be surprised at the proliferation of degrees, the number of disciplines, and the different methods of instruction. Jefferson, who had sought unities, saw the splintering of knowledge through the growth of science and specialized expertise. Symbolically he had revealed this split with the different pavilions, but then reconciled the differences by the device of a village that culminated in the Rotunda.
Jefferson liked control. He sought to order his life and his environment wherever he lived: Philadelphia, Paris, Charlottesville. Note: 89 He admired nature yet tried to control that portion nearest to him. He had an eversion to cities, not just because of economic policy and fear of the mob, but also because architecturally they were impossible to order, and they contributed to health problems. When asked about the design of cities, Jefferson questioned whether "we ought not to contend with the laws of nature, ... all our cities shall be thin-built," and he recommended that they should be laid out on a checkerboard plan leaving alternative squares open for trees. Note: 90 Although later in life Jefferson's position on cities changed, at heart he remained an agrarian, more in sympathy with the tiller of the soil upon whom he had lavished praise in much of his writing. Note: 91 Young men should not be placed in "populous cities, because they acquire there habits and partialities which do not contribute to the happiness of their after life." Note: 92 Hence, he placed the University beyond Charlottesville, not even trust that small town.
Jefferson's prototype lay in the village, a form he grew up with, created, and saw all about him. The term "village" was how he initially explained his concept of the University. Note: 93 In the Virginia mode of living, the plantation was frequently referred to as a "village." Note: 94 In addition, Karl Lehmann has cited the Roman villas as an inspiration for Jefferson's Monticello and ultimately for the University. Note: 95 Although specific visual and functional connections between them can be disputed, the ideological framework is compelling: the mixture of farm and books, of healthy rusticity and intellectual urbanity, of trees and plantings in a controlled architectural setting. Pliny, Horace, and Cicero portrayed compelling descriptions of intellectual life in the country, and Jefferson's notion of an Academical Village comes out of this background; it was a architectural type much more comprehensible and capable of being ordered. The village became a metaphor for an organization of architectural elements and also knowledge.
Jefferson was also well aware that the common method of designing large groups of buildings was to create a hierarchical ordering consisting of a central structure and symmetrically disposed dependencies. Scholars have identified the various foreign sources -- gardens and hospitals -- that served as possible origins for the University's plan, as it was a type of ordering he had already used extensively, for instances at Monticello. Note: 96 Of course his original university village scheme (figs. 3, 4) bore little resemblance to European prototypes.
Jefferson, as did many architects, made a design and then discussed it with colleagues - - such as Thornton and Latrobe -- and incorporated their suggestions. The critical issue for the University law with practicality: the site could not accommodate his scheme, which called for 700-800 feet between two wings, so he changed the circumstances. Therefore, that it resembles Marly-le-Roi is the result of site, not design. Jefferson saw his University plan as an integral arrangement in which architecture provided communication around an essential central space.
Of Jefferson as a classicist much has been said: the "greatest" and the "first" according to Scully. Note: 97 Jefferson recognized a connection between the classical language and his ideals for political virtue in America, and he sought to give dignity to the civic landscape. But he was never an "aesthetic classicist" he knew the dark side, that virtue and vice could commingle. Although Jefferson followed some of the rules of the ancients, he changed and modified them as necessary. He never attempted to make reconstructions of ancient buildings, as did many of his contemporaries, and as he had read about in his library. Note: 98 Jefferson adapted elements of celebrated ancient structures such as their fronts, but then placed modern functions inside. Observes have long noted the asymmetry of the Lawn. Composed about an axis, the two sides vary, and the pavilions are not identical. Similarly, Jefferson accommodated the site's slope by making the gardens larger on the east than the west. There is overall order and a repetition of elements: the Tuscan colonnade on the Lawn, the arcades on the ranges. But there are differences in the facades of the pavilions: "no two alike so as to serve as specimens for the architectural lecturer." Note: 99 Jefferson did not try to associate the different pavilions with the disciplines they might house; their design was a separate process that went through many revisions. Down the Lawn copies of the ancient orders from Freart de Chambray and Errard are opposed by modem copies from Palladio, but they are not lined up all to one side; instead they are intermixed. Note: 100 And then against the cubical forms of the pavilions sits the "spherical" of the Rotunda. Note: 101
Jefferson understood the symbols he chose; the best models of antiquity contained meanings. He based the Rotunda, as the Capitol in Richmond on Roman models that had been assigned by authorities as belonging to the Republic, not the Empire, which he would have found repugnant. Note: 102 Jefferson admired many classical buildings and gardens in Europe, including those of royalty, but his use of them as models always included a change of purpose. Palladio expressed the laws of nature in mathematical terms that appealed to Jefferson. But in execution he realized that not everything could be so reduced; he adapted as necessary, stretched proportions as with the dormitory colonnade, combined and changed in his typically pragmatic fashion. Jefferson belonged to his time: classicism was the language of architecture but it was elastic and was as capable of change and growth as knowledge.
The new Greek architecture that the younger architects were espousing did not interest Jefferson. An old man when he designed the University, he had an insular quality in his later years and consequently returned to what he knew, the older translations of Palladio and not new editions. To him Roman architecture expressed an authority of time and knowledge that was sufficient to his purpose.
Jefferson capped the Grounds with the Rotunda. Latrobe had suggested it, and Jefferson acknowledged his contribution on the drawings. Since Latrobe's other drawings are lost, the exact development of the design and the relative responsibilities may never be known. But between Latrobe's surviving sketch and Jefferson's drawings many changes can be observed, as Jefferson made it his own. He openly acknowledged its source in the Pantheon. The name came from the Leoni edition of Palladio which referred to "the Pantheon, now call'd the Rotonda," and during construction it was frequently referred to as the "Pantheon." Note: 103 Jefferson considered the Pantheon the most perfect specimen of "spherical" architecture, but he modified it in many ways: windows are inserted, and the portico is only six columns across, as Latrobe had suggested, not eight as in Rome. Note: 104 He reduced the two pediments of the Roman example into one, and the portico is joined to the cylindrical form by the embrace of a thick entablature. Jefferson (and Latrobe?) treated the portico as an integral compositional element and not as an afterthought (or addition) as in Rome. Instead of a belfry, cupola, steeple, which commonly appeared on American collegiate buildings and where the clock and/or bell would be placed, Jefferson conceived of something different. For the pediment he ordered a clock from Simon Willard of Boston, and he designed a forked extension so that a bell could be hung above it, a very unorthodox idea. Clocks and bells have a long history as civic symbols, and as organizers of the day they emphasize the order Jefferson struggled to attain. The Rotunda is raised up on a flight of steps, it does not sink, as portrayed in Leoni and as in Rome. A sublime effect is created by the great Corinthian order of the Rotunda and by its height and size, especially when seen in comparison to the pavilions (fig. 65).
The interior of the Rotunda has little to do with the Roman source. Sensuous and plastic curving walls encompass two levels of classrooms, and an awkward stair climbs up one side to the library beneath the dome. The interior -- especially today, when it is painted white -- is light-filled, clear, and spacious, and in the Dome Room it opens to the sky above. Jefferson knew that the Pantheon was originally a pagan temple of worship, the form of which, according to Leoni, "bears the figure of the World, or is round." Note: 105 Through applied art and decoration, the dome frequently came to represent heaven or the cosmos. And the dome had been appropriated for several of the greatest structures of Christianity. Jefferson, wary of cosmology, transformed the dome into a library, into a temple of enlightenment for education. Significantly, he intended the concave ceiling to function as a planetarium; it would be painted blue and spangled with gilt stars that would be changeable; and Jefferson, always the tinkering inventor, designed a complicated movable seat for the operator. Note: 106 The dome of heaven became an instrument of modern science, and revelation was to be replaced with empiricism in a true spirit of enlightenment.
The importance of the spherical and circular lay not just in ancient prototypes such as the Pantheon, but also in their status (along with the cube and square) as the perfect forms: nothing could be added or taken away. The symbolic nature of the circle was further enhanced by the Vitruvian belief that the human form could be inscribed in a circle. Jefferson owned a French edition of Vitruvius that illustrated this concept (fig. 66). Note: 107 In his scheme, the human is at the center, and the library is the mind of the University -- the repository of wisdom, knowledge of the past, and ideas for the future.
Still, one must return to the overall scheme and to the space itself that stretches out from the Rotunda to the south, or alternatively, that begins at the bottom of the Lawn and concludes with the Library, and also to the pavilions, dormitories, colonnades, hotels, and ranges, which are part of the overall logic. Jefferson saw the educational system as an assemblage of functions, differentiated but coordinated. Similarly, the white columns of different sizes give a harmonious appearance to the ensemble, although the intervals between the pavilions are irregular. The distance across the Lawn is constant at the top as at the bottom -- two hundred feet -- but the intervals between the pavilions widen toward the south.
Note: 108 The reason for this irregularity lies not with Jefferson having designed in perspective -- he did not - - but with the constraints of the site and the need to provide more pavilions for the professors. The result, though, combined with the forty-two-inch drop of each terrace, creates a foreshortened appearance, so that the distance to the Rotunda appears greater from the south. Alternatively, from the Rotunda the south end and the last pavilions appear closer. However, there are other accesses to the Lawn as well -- up the alleys between the gardens, and here the rigidity of the classical forms of the central portion is offset by the serpentine curves of the brick walls. The gardens provide another mode, quiet and contained, the repose of the ancient Horace. 
Thus Jefferson created a constantly changing repertory of experiences, of visual and physical stimulus (figs. 67, 68). Contained in the variety of spaces are communication, habitation, study, and learning, both public and private. The spaces are controlled but open, and the orientation is multi-focal: the Rotunda dominates one end, but the central space is not just oriented to the south and the mountains beyond but also to the sky. Jefferson's original plan showed trees in an open square, and happily some trees were planted in the 1830s. Sometimes criticized for blocking views of the pavilions, they are essential; they continue the dialogue Jefferson set up: the manmade and the natural, brought into accord.
The architecture does have a certain tentativeness that some have criticized as insubstantial. Kimball believed that the University showed Jefferson's earlier "colonial manner" from which he never broke. Note: 109 Indeed Jefferson did not look at the latest fashion; his sources were dated. Brick was considered too lowly a material for important monuments or institutions, but he had only brick at his disposal, and that was all the workmen knew how to handle other than wood. But in this common building material a democratic quality emerges; it is capable of assuming noble proportions and intentions, it is honest, and it can be made into columns and other forms. This clearly is a space of the new world, a new American approach, and not a duplicate of the old world or the past.
Thomas Jefferson designed the University of Virginia as a summation of his architectural, scholarly, educational, and political thought. It resembles him as an individual: sometimes contradictory, open to new ideas, looking to the past, and believing in the future. The University is also the product of many years and much thought, not just by Jefferson and his fellow members of the Board of Visitors, but also by Thornton and Latrobe, by John Neilson and James Dinsmore, and by the work of many builders, white and black.
Jefferson saw the design and erection of the complex as crucial to his educational goals: he would not allow it to open half-completed. He believed the architecture to be part of the educational component of the University. For the future leaders of the democratic republic he hoped to attract, the buildings and spaces would be essential; from the architecture would flow an education in taste, values, and ideals. Today the Lawn is the heart of the University, but it is no longer the center of activity. The Rotunda sits not as an integral part of the educational system but as a symbol, a shrine, a museum. Jefferson's idea of an Academical Village has entered the language as a metaphor, not just for architectural parts, but also for separate disciplines, and more recently for the "electronic village" of the computer, fax, modem, and other technologies used by the University community. The question of whether the University has performed the high task Jefferson set for it, and whether the architecture has performed well or is outmoded, will receive any number of answers. Functionally, the Lawn is probably outmoded; but as an ideal and inspiration it still speaks loudly. That is has endured is testimony to its power. The Lawn is an architectural embodiment of, and a challenge to, Jefferson's quest for individual achievement and unlimited freedom.