It wasn't until the beginning of the 19th century that Thomas Jefferson could begin to materialize the vision of the Academical Village he had long dreamed of since the construction of his own home, Monticello.
His architectural design for the University was to be far different from that of existing educational institutions, which featured a large house and subsequent identical houses that were built only when the student population grew and funds were available.
The conception of the Academical Village
In a letter to the Trustees for the Lottery of East Tennessee College, Jefferson wrote that his University would allow "dry communication between all the schools. The whole of these arranged around an open square of grass and trees would make it, what it should be in fact, an academical village, instead of a large and common den of noise, of filth and of fetid air."
According to "The Lawn: A Guide to Jefferson's University," Jefferson took the ancient Greek concept of instruction, in which students gathered around the instructor, and expanded the arrangement by having the students live amongst the professors.
Jefferson "believed in the communication between faculty and students," Architecture Prof. Peter Waldman said. "There was a positive thing about extending a sense of citizenship and community across faculty and students."
Architecture of the Lawn
According to "The Lawn," the pavilions in which the professors lived and taught were separated by placing student rooms between them. Doing so also generated the visual effect of two parallel lines of buildings running on both sides of the Lawn that converge to the focal point of the Rotunda.
In this pi-shaped design, the Rotunda would, according to Waldman, be the central building, with wings called the dependencies, coming together as the head and arms abs resembling the human form. It was Jefferson's consultant, Benjamin Latrobe, who had suggested the Rotunda as the dome-shaped, central figure that would "anchor" the Lawn.
Additionally, though Jefferson was the main architect of his University, he asked advice of then-Dean of Engineering William Thornton and architects Claude Nicholas Ledoux and Pierre Charles L'Enfant.
The Lawn, as Jefferson originally imagined it, was to be a large square of 660 by 660 feet, but upon purchasing the land, he found that the ground was not as level as he had thought.
"It dropped dramatically to the east ... so he had to pull everything into the center," Waldman said. "[The] center is only 220 feet wide. But then he invented the space of the West Gardens and the West Range and the East Gardens and the East Range. You'd think it's symmetrical, but it's really not."
Locally grown
Part of Jefferson's design to build his Academical Village involved economizing, as well as the necessity of using local materials. Indeed, a brickyard was set up where Alderman Library now stands, although in the end, due to the inefficiency of making them, 300,000 bricks had to be purchased locally.
Many of the doors of the pavilions originally made of pine wood, were painted a rich mahogany color to give them a more exotic feel. Moreover, according to Waldman, as part of the economical approach to creating the University, Jefferson designed several of the buildings so the slender columns were stucco and not Italian-white marble. The columns instead had a sandy-colored exterior, which was due to their composition of sand from a local river, mixed with limestone and cement.
After the 1895 fire, which was due to faulty electrical wiring in the annex of the Rotunda, parts of the Rotunda, were rebuilt, although not in Jefferson's original style. It was not until a few years prior to the bicentennial anniversary of the United States, when Queen Elizabeth II visited, that the Rotunda was reconstructed to its original form, said JJ Litchford, second-year College student and University Guide.
Tomorrow, the Life section explores murder, rules and famous visitors to the Lawn.
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