As the University prepares for a night of fireworks at the Rotunda for the kickoff of the largest capital campaign in University history, some benefits of which will be dedicated to the South Lawn Project, one is reminded of another event at the Rotunda involving fire, crowds and much activity -- albeit of a different, and more devastating, nature.
As it is infamously known, Thomas Jefferson's focal point of the Academical Village was seriously damaged in a fire Oct. 27, 1895, changing not only the architectural orientation of the University, but its administrative nature and student life forever.
Noticing The Fire
The fire started in the Annex, a large building attached to the north side of the Rotunda where many classrooms and laboratories were located, around 10:15 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 27. Former University Guide Historian Daniel Young, a fourth-year College student, said one possible cause of the fire is that the wiring of the electrical car that ran on University Avenue caught fire in the basement of the Annex, though no one is certain.
Smoke coming out of the Annex was spotted by a student, Mason Foshee, returning from breakfast. Young said Foshee's attempts to alert the University were hindered because of the day of the week.
"The story goes that Foshee sees the smoke coming out of the Annex while he was walking from Rugby Road to University Avenue and runs straight to the Chapel to ring the bell so that he could let people know about the fire," Young said. "But then, it was a Sunday morning and the Chapel bell didn't really suggest anything out of the ordinary."
Despite Foshee's initial struggles, the University and Charlottesville communities were soon aware of the fire encapsulating the Annex and threatening the Rotunda.
"When you think of the Rotunda fire, I think it is important to imagine the time period," Young said. "There were all these 19th-century men and women, dressed in their Sunday best, running around trying to extinguish a fire."
Saving the Rotunda
In an effort to stop the fire from spreading to the Rotunda, Chemistry Prof. William "Reddy" Echols decided to blow up the portico connecting the Annex to the Rotunda with dynamite, but did not succeed. Soon after, the Rotunda was consumed with flames.
According to a letter written by student John T. Thronton to his mother, the initial attempts to extinguish the fire in the Annex were largely unsuccessful.
"Everyone was running to the Rotunda, and soon a large crowd was assembled," Thronton wrote. "No water could be gotten as high as the flames, only a miserable little stream of water about six feet. In response to telegrams, Lynchburg and Richmond sent their engines by special trains, but the Lynchburg engine was delayed in the road and did not arrive within an hour of the expected time."
This vigor to save all that was inside the Rotunda involved quite unconventional methods.
"Because they were unable to extinguish the fire, some students decided to take matters into their own hands and starting throwing everything that wasn't bolted onto the wall out of the window," Young said. "They literally started to throw books out of the window while women down below tried catching them with their large hoop skirts."
According to Young, almost 12,000 out of the original 17,000 volumes of books and all major artifacts, including all the paintings and the famous Galt statue of Jefferson, were saved from the fire. The latter, however, required a bit more effort than the thousands of volumes.
"The Galt statue of Jefferson is made out of solid Italian marble and weighs a couple tons," Young said. "So the students used ropes and pulleys to get him on a table, but of course the table broke because it couldn't stand the statue's weight. A piece of the cloak was chipped, which you can still see today."
The statue's incredible journey did not stop there. It was placed on blankets and mattresses by students and slid down the stairs, but, because of its weight, it took off and crashed down the stairs, where its head got stuck in the fireplace.
Fighting Fire with Fire
It was not until Echols's second attempt to stop the fire through the use of dynamite that the statue was saved from the fireplace.
"I am not sure how he got a hold of a second batch of dynamite in the 19th century, but Echols decided to use more dynamite to throw into fire," Young said. "He quite literally went up to the roof and threw a bunch of dynamite in there. I think he was attempting to get big enough of an explosion to burn up all the oxygen so that the fire would stop as well. Well, he was not successful in stopping the fire, but the explosion was massive [enough] that it shook Jefferson's statue out of the fireplace."
The panic continued as they tried to keep the fire away from the pavilion and dorm rooms on the Lawn and Range with wet blankets. Luckily, the wind turned its direction northward, stopping the fire and thwarting the danger of the destruction of the entire Academical Village. While the Annex was completely destroyed, the Rotunda stood in ruins. The dome was caved in, the interior was burnt down and the only remaining part was its exterior shell.
The Aftermath
The faculty met the day of the fire and decided to resume classes, despite the shock of the fire. They also decided to start the rebuilding immediately.
"Not surprisingly, the University decided to start the classes next day," Young said. "So when I wake up in January and see three feet of snow outside, I don't think to myself that classes will [not] be continued, because I know that they had classes even after the Rotunda burnt down."
Although the University did not change its policy regarding classroom schedules, it in fact entered a whole new era, according to History Prof. Phyllis Leffler.
"The thesis that the fire ushered the University into the modern age has a lot of truth to it, I think," Leffler said. "The University had no president when the fire broke out because Jefferson had wanted it that way. ... The fire made the faculty and the rector realize that there needed to be someone to handle external relations and questions about infrastructure."
Leffler also said she had some hesitations about the theory, noting that there had been appeals for a president before the fire.
"Moreover, there was no president until 1905, 10 years after the fire," Leffler said.
Leffler said another important consequence of the fire was the recognition of the University nationally.
"As I understand it, other universities donated extra books," Leffler said. "Money was poured from all over the nation for the reconstruction of the Rotunda."
Prof. Richard Guy Wilson, chair of the Architectural History department, pointed out that the fire brought Jefferson's role as an architect to light.
"Jefferson was not that well-recognized as an architect until the fire," Wilson said. "In the 19th century, there wasn't that much interest in his architectural designs and it wasn't known that he had designed the Rotunda. The burning brought Jefferson's architecture much more forefront in the national news and Jefferson's architecture began to be recognized as something important as a result of the burning of the Rotunda."
Several facts of this article were gathered from:
"Thomas Jefferson's Rotunda: Restored A Pictorial Review 1973-76" with Commentary by Joseph Lee Vaughan and Omer Allan Gianniny, Jr. University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville, 1981.
http://www.virginia.edu/uvatours/rotunda/
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