Category — Lawn

The Making of Rotunda
 

by Judith Shatin

One day, in late spring 2005, I was sitting in my office, upstairs in Old Cabell Hall, looking at the flow of life on the Lawn. I had often been delighted by the feeling of life on the Lawn, and by the beautiful weather patterns above it. But this time, I suddenly saw the scene as part a movie that combined the majesty of the place with the hum of daily life. I imagined capturing images over the course of a year, and creating music from sounds harvested in and around the Rotunda, as well as from people talking about what the Rotunda meant to them. And I also imagined the film as a way of sharing this world-heritage site with people who would not have the opportunity to experience it in person.

I contacted noted filmmaker Robert Arnold, whom I had met when we were both fellows at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. I thought he would be the ideal collaborator because his films deal with time in such fascinating ways. He was intrigued by the idea, and we discussed capturing images from a fixed point over the course of a year. I then started investigating funding and equipment sources. Happily, the Office of Development offered to sponsor the project. Meanwhile, I identified a company, Erdman Video Systems, that makes a camera/computer system typically used for surveillance at construction sites. I loved the idea of subverting this equipment for artistic purposes!

After receiving permission to install the camera from U.Va.’s Architecutral Review Board, I arranged for the purchase of the system that would take still pictures at user-determined times, and upload the resulting images both to a computer in my office and to Arnold’s computer in Boston, where he was then Associate Professor of Film at Boston University. Tom Rappold of Building and Grounds, oversaw the installation of the system, and James A. Jokl of ITC arranged for the computer connection from the camera to the computer. Next, David Topper, Technical Director of the Virginia Center for Computer Music, helped me get the program up and running. Rusty Erdman and Chris Weaver, both of Erdman Systems, were also wonderfully helpful as we moved ahead.

The camera went up in February, 2006, approximately eight months after I first broached the idea to Robert Arnold and it stayed up for a full year. During that time I collected sounds, both in and around the Rotunda, and conducted unscripted interviews about the Rotunda. Leslie M. Comstock, the Rotunda Administrator, was very helpful, allowing me to record the resonance of the Dome Room. Dave Topper and then composition graduate student Peter Swendsen assisted with that project. Over the course of the next year I recorded multiple unscripted interviews, and found this part of the process especially inspiring. Participants ranged from students to architectural historians, Jefferson experts, a U.Va. alumnus from Charlottesville, a variety of U.Va. Professors and U.Va. President John T. Casteen III.

I created the soundworld of the music from the recordings I made. I found some of the interviews so inspiring that I included excerpts, while turning others into music by means of computer processing. I also used a number of the sounds I collected outside, including rain and lawn mowers! The techniques I had learned since founding the Virginia Center of Computer Music in 1988-89 proved invaluable for the purpose. The results range from rich low tones of the opening, to the sounds of the lawn mowers racing up the Lawn, to strong rhythmic sections.

Arnold set the camera to include views at two distances: a relative close-up, and a longer shot, encompassing the Lawn and the Rotunda. We decided to build the film around the idea of one day on the Lawn unfolding over the course of a year. The day moves from dawn to dusk as the year moves from start to finish. We spent many happy, intense hours choosing from the sequences made from 300,000+ images, which Arnold then shaped into a seamless flow. The process of creating the piece was a complex one, and and the result has gone far beyond what I imagined that day in my office.

Early Visions
Spring 2009 Academical Village Hands-on Projects

 

Each spring, the Museum’s Early Visions program offers a six-week course, which pairs University student docents in mentoring relationships with Boys & Girls Club members. This year docents have planned creative activities that help the students explore aspects of the upcoming special exhibition, Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village: The Creation of an Architectural Masterpiece. Examples of these hands-on projects by the children appear below:

The Detectives
Richard Guy Wilson

	John Neilson, American, d. 1827 Drawing of Pavilion I, October 1820 - March 1821 India ink, watercolor, pencil on hand-ruled paper, N-344
	Above Window detail from Pavilion II

Interview by Karol Lawson

When did you begin researching Jefferson’s plans for the University? What are the sources you study in your research?

I came to the University in 1976, and while I was vaguely interested in Jefferson and his architecture at that time I was more focused on later things. However, you stay around long enough and “they get you” and I found myself increasingly drawn to Jefferson’s creation. It is quite simply one of, if not the greatest, American design ever done. Certainly for its time it is the top, but also it has survived while at the same time changing. I was first interested in the survival story, how it changed—the work of McKim, Mead and White
for instance—but then you get pulled back to the origins. We are very lucky to have such a landmark right here in our front yard and also most of the documents and papers are here. The story of their survival is a tale in itself.

What is the most surprising fact you’ve uncovered about Jefferson’s construction of the University?

I think the most interesting and surprising element about Jefferson’s design is that yes, he asked for some help but, ultimately it was his own design and it shows his full maturity as an architect. He follows the rules of classical design and then he breaks them.

What is the most exciting document that you’ve come across in your study of the Academical Village?

There has been lots of excitement over different things, but I think the most important was the realization that the original plans were done back in 1814 and then how he changed and modified them as circumstances changed…money…site…different purpose (upgraded from an academy to a college to a university)…and then also the relationship of the different pavilions and his sources. It is a complex of buildings loaded with meanings, some explicit, others hidden.

	Colonnade view

What part of the University, what detail or view, do you think best embodies Jefferson’s vision of his Academical Village? What spot at the University should every visitor see
in person?

Well on one level you have to see all of it… and experience each part, but two of my most favorite views are walking up a colonnade with the sun coming through the columns, casting shadows and looking out across the Lawn with the trees to the other side, and the second is just walking onto the lawn from underneath or the side of the Rotunda and seeing it all spread out. I could go on.

The Legacy
An Introduction

by Karol Lawson

Recognized from its conception as a revolutionary plan for an institution of higher learning, the University has inspired countless campus architects to emulate its sequestered central space surrounded by residential and teaching functions and surmounted by a symbolic central building.

The site’s influence derives from the originality of its design, both the overall concept and the multitude of structural and decorative details, as well as from its sheer aesthetic impact. The University of Virginia manifested an innovative—distinctly American—new form in the history of campus planning. Radical, too, was Jefferson’s placement of a large library at the focal point of his site rather than the traditional chapel.

	Palace Green, Williamsburg, Virginia

Famously wide-ranging in his sources of inspiration, Jefferson drew upon a number of architectural forms as his concept of the ideal school architecture evolved over several decades. Influenced by European buildings such as hospitals and prisons, he may also have looked to the model of ancient Greek academies, the chateau and gardens of the French monarch’s Marly-le-Roi, and public spaces such as the Palace Green in Williamsburg. Jefferson might also have been influenced in his general concept by progressive plans for American schools such as the unified living and teaching quarters described in Samuel Knox’s 1799 proposal for a National University; the mall-centered plan initially seen circa 1801-1805 at South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina, Columbia); Charles Bulfinch’s 1812 proposal for Harvard based on the famous crescent at Bath; and Joseph-Jacques Ramée’s arcaded 1813 plan for Union College in Schenectady, New York.

	J. Serz, Engraver Published by C. Bohn Engraving of the Rotunda and Lawn from the south, 1856 RG-30/1/8.801

Instead of the traditional memorization and recitation of a few standard texts, Jefferson sought to create a community that would promote a dialogue between students and professors. The Rotunda’s physical and symbolic dominance of the Lawn speaks to Jefferson’s recognition of the central significance of a well-supplied library at the heart of a school. Concerned, too, with the discipline of often unruly young men, Jefferson hoped that the proximity of faculty families would have a salutary effect. The health of students was a worry as well and Jefferson knew a school had to address issues such as sanitation, ventilation, and fire. Finally, he realized that planning and constructing a school comprising smaller individual parts rather than a single large building might prove more practical given the frontier nature of much of the nation and the modest resources available for education.

The central innovation of Jefferson’s plan was his conception of the school as, quite literally, a wholesome rural village. Writing to L.W. Tazewell, a member of the Virginia legislature and an early proponent of establishing a state university, on 5 January 1805 just near the close of his first term as president of the United States, Jefferson noted:

"a small plain 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 [sic] fact an [sic] University should not be a house but a village."

In a letter from Monticello, dated 6 May 1810, to trustees planning a college in Tennessee, Jefferson explored his idea in more detail:

"it is infinitely better to erect a small and separate lodge for each separate professorship…joining these lodges by barracks for a certain portion of the students, opening into a covered way to give a dry communication between all the schools the whole of these arranged around an open square of grass and trees, would make it, what it should be in fact, an academical village….It would afford that quiet retirement so friendly to study, and lessen the dangers of fire, infection & tumult….much observation & reflection on these institutions has [sic] long convinced me that the large and crowded buildings in which youths are pent up, are equally unfriendly to health, to study, to manners, morals & order: [I believe] the plan I suggest to be more promotive of these & peculiarly adapted to the slender beginnings & progressive growth of our institutions…."

Though Jefferson’s imitators may not always have fully appreciated the ideological underpinnings of his university or the comprehensive elegance of his architectural design, his general plan integrating study, instruction, and residential areas within an articulated landscape has had a far-reaching impact. The earliest copy of Jefferson’s distinctive university plan was perhaps the original campus of the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, designed by William Nichols in 1828. (It is no longer extant, having been burned to the ground by Union troops in 1865.) More recent replicas exist as well—for example a high-tech research office park at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, described by the school as “an academical village with a 21st century twist”—and echoes can be seen as far away as Tsinghua University in Beijing, which boasts a 1917-1920 auditorium strikingly similar to the Rotunda.

Sources consulted

• Bruce, Philip Alexander. History of the University of Virginia 1818-1919, vol. 1. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920.
• Cocola, Jim. "The Ideological Spaces of the Academical Village: A Reading of the Central Grounds at the University of Virginia," electronically published essay, 2004. http://faculty.virginia.edu/villagespaces/essay
• Edwards, Brian. University Architecture. London and New York: Spon Press, 2000.
• Turner, Paul Venable. Campus: An American Planning Tradition. New York and Cambridge: The Architectural History Foundation and MIT Press, 1984.
• Wilson, Richard Guy, with Patricia Sherwood, Joseph Michael Lasala, and James Murray Howard. Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village: The Creation of an Architectural Masterpiece. Charlottesville: Bayly Art Museum, University of Virginia, and the University Press of Virginia, 1993.
• Woods, Mary N. "Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia: Planning the Academic Village," The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 44, no. 3 (October 1985), pp. 266-83.

The Detectives
Brian Cofrancesco

	Detail of John Neilson, American, d. 1827 Drawing of Pavilion VIII, October 1820 - March 1821 India ink, watercolor, pencil on hand-ruled paper, N-337, K Pl. 1, L-08-04
	Above Detail of Pavilion
	Column on Pavilion IV

Interview by Karol Lawson

In your work for Professor Wilson have you done research with Jefferson’s own plans and original documents?

I was very lucky this past fall in that I was able to take Professor Wilson’s Thomas Jefferson: Architect course while also doing work on the Academical Village exhibition, and during this course had the rare opportunity of viewing and handling Jefferson’s original drawings of the University in the Special Collections Library. As someone who has the utmost admiration for Jefferson as an architect and for his incomparable masterpiece that is the Academical Village, the experience of seeing the original relics of Jefferson’s hand was surreal and something that greatly moved me as a historian.

What is the most surprising fact you’ve learned about Jefferson’s Academical Village?

The most surprising fact I have learned about the Academical Village is that the columns are not made of concrete or stone, but of brick. Using local materials, Jefferson had the columns crafted of rounded bricks (made from clay retrieved from the area near present-day Memorial Gym) and faced with a sand and water mixture.

What is it like to be an assistant for Professor Wilson?

Working as an assistant for Professor Wilson has been an incredible experience. The opportunity to do research for the “guru” of the Academical Village himself and help prepare for this exhibition which showcases his years of research is inspiring and is a great honor. I learn more and more every day about the wealth of knowledge Professor Wilson has and how much he has accomplished as a world-renowned historian. He is very personable with all of his students and has been especially encouraging to me as a growing architectural historian. This has motivated me a great deal in my time as an assistant.

	Historic photograph of the lawn, c. 1890

How do you support his research? What are your tasks?

As Professor Wilson’s assistant for the exhibition, I do a great deal of work in the Special Collections Library locating documents, photographs, and other sources which aid in his research. I also do research outside of Special Collections for images and items to be used in his book and in the exhibition. Other tasks include cross referencing and compiling his research and preparing lists of exhibition items.

As a student you are at the University every day and as an architectural history student you know it better than most. What view of the University always catches your attention no matter how many times you see it?

My favorite view of the University is from the South—from the Cabell Hall end of the Lawn—Jefferson’s original entrance to the Academical Village. The view is absolutely spectacular, and the vantage point provides the visitor with a panorama of all ten Pavilions leading up to the crowning Rotunda, rising majestically over the central Lawn which harbors lively interaction day and night.

	Outdoor “covered” walkway; a double row of trees parallel each row of Pavilions

Even more stunning however is the experience of walking up the Lawn towards the Rotunda. I encourage all students and visitors to the University to take a walk up the Lawn, strolling not down the center or through the colonnades, but through the double row of trees which parallel each row of Pavilions. This outdoor “covered” walkway truly gives a new perspective of the Lawn and brings you closer to the excitement across the Lawn while allowing you to enjoy a peaceful stroll.

Vanderbilt University
Peabody College of Education and Human Development

Nashville, Tennessee

The campus of what was originally an independent school, the George Peabody College for Teachers, was designed circa 1911-1914 by the prominent New York firm of William Orr Ludlow and Charles Samuel Peabody. Guided largely by the vision of the college’s new president, Bruce Ryburn Payne (1874-1937), the plan they developed, with buildings flanking a leafy open space, deliberately echoed Jefferson’s Lawn. While the architecture of the buildings themselves, a mixture of Beaux Arts classicism and an indistinct style described at the time as “Southern colonial,” does not evoke the University of Virginia, the tree-lined quadrangle does. Payne, who had taught at the University of Virginia from 1905 to 1911, was adamant that Virginia be the model. His vision was supported by the presence of W. A. Lambeth on the architectural advisory board for Peabody College. Lambeth, who in 1913 would co-author Thomas Jefferson as an Architect and Landscape Designer, was described in a Peabody College report on the campus plans as “thoroughly conversant with the architectural motives dominating [the University of Virginia], so tastefully planned by Thomas Jefferson and the first college in this country to be inaugurated with a consistently harmonious scheme of architecture.”

Virginia’s tree filled Lawn surrounded by academic buildings would be emulated by numerous other American campuses in the first half of the 20th century, from the University of Delaware’s Memorial Hall, to “The Oval” at Ohio State University, to the East Campus (originally the Women’s College) at Duke.

Sources consulted

• Conklin, Paul K. Peabody College: From a Former Academy to the Frontiers of Teaching and Learning. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002.
• Crabb, Alfred Leland. The Historical Background of Peabody College. Nashville: George Peabody College for Teachers, 1941.
• George Peabody College for Teachers: Its Evolution and Present Status. Nashville: Peabody College, 1912.

Salk Institute for Biological Studies
 

La Jolla, California

Designed 1959-1965 by Louis I. Kahn, the Salk Institute recalls more than imitates Jefferson’s Academical Village. The austere central courtyard, with a channel of water running constantly to the Pacific, lies at the heart of a modern laboratory complex. In its open-ended form it harkens back to Jefferson’s original plan for the Lawn, which was open at its southern end (the current location of Cabell Hall). In a 1966 letter to Salk, Kahn noted, "The sensitivity of the building and this space to the many moods of the sky and the atmosphere will make the Plaza a place always changing, never static, full of the never ending anticipation of the rising and the setting of the sun." Kahn had been encouraged to leave the space empty by Mexican architect Luis Barragán, who advised him “if you make a plaza, you will have another façade to the sky.” In a 1966 lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, Kahn noted that when they first met, Salk “mentioned that he wanted to invite Picasso to the laboratory….It wasn’t all a matter of scientific usage. And when you deal with the psyche, you aren’t dealing with science at all. You’re dealing with something which science will never know anything about.”

Sources consulted

• Byard, Paul Spencer. The Architecture of Additions: Design and Regulation. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998.
• Kahn, Louis I. “Berkeley Lecture 1966: Informal Thoughts on Architecture and Personal Expression.” Perspecta vol. 28 (1997), pp. 1-33.
• Leslie, Thomas. Louis I. Kahn: Building Art, Building Science. New York: George Brazillier, Inc., 2005.

The Legacy
Architectural Influences of Thomas Jefferson’s
Academical Village

Recognized from its conception as a revolutionary plan for an institution of higher learning, the University has been emulated by countless architects both for educational institutions as well as for other architectural projects.

Share your examples of these influences here.

		Tsinghua University Beijing, China
		Trinkle Hall, University of Mary Washington, Fredricksburg VA

Yale University
Sterling Divinity Quadrangle

New Haven, Connecticut

While the University of Virginia’s brick walls are often popularly associated with the grace of the Old South, one of its most interesting replicas can be found in the heart of New England. The home of Yale University’s Divinity School was designed by the firm of William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich and completed in 1932. Though clearly descended from Jefferson’s self-contained academical village, in its bulkier, plainer appearance Yale’s Divinity School evokes a distinctly Puritan austerity while the placement of a chapel at the head of the open space seems to refute Jefferson’s deliberately secular Rotunda. Writing in 1996 in the New York Times, Paul Goldberger noted that Delano and Aldrich "turned Jefferson’s ‘academical village,’ his community of scholars arrayed beside a temple of learning, into a kind of ‘clerical village,’ a community of clerics arrayed beside their chapel….the Sterling Quadrangle has both the picturesqueness of a New England village and the tough, blunt certainty of Jefferson’s campus." Originally true to Jefferson’s ideal of integrating living space into the core a school, renovations undertaken in 2000-2003 have converted student residencies at the Divinity School to instruction and administrative use.

Sources consulted

• Goldberger, Paul, “Saving a Beloved Chapel by Cutting Out Its Soul,” New York Times, 22 December 1996.
• Pennoyer, Peter, Anne Walker, and Robert A. M. Stern. The Architecture of Delano and Aldrich. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003.
• “Yale University Sterling Divinity Quadrangle,” Architectural Record on-line at http://archrecord.construction.com/projects/bts/archives/adaptivereuse/04_yale/overview