Introduction

The Coliseum
Edgar Allan Poe

Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary
Of lofty contemplation left to Time
By buried centuries of pomp and power!
At length—at length—after so many days
Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst
(Thirst for the springs of lore that in the lie),
I kneel, an altered and an humble man,
Admid thy shadows and so drink within
My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory!

. . . . . .

But stay! these walls—these ivy-clad arcades—
These mouldering plinths—these sad and blackened shafts—
These vague entablatures—this crumbling frieze—
These shattered cornices—this wreck—this ruin—
These stones—alas!

Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia in Charlottesville comprise one of the architectural masterpieces of the new world. Curiously, little of the vast literature that encompasses Jefferson's life and work has had as its focus the actual construction of these buildings, erected between 1817 and 1828. This is surprising given the scale of the building project, perhaps the largest in the history of the United States up to that time, and given the esteem that the American architectural community holds for the group of buildings.⁽¹⁾ Most of the authors who have contributed to the written history of the University of Virginia have approached the subject from perspectives best described as either institutional or architectural; a third line of inquiry that deviates significantly from the first two is followed in the present work.

The more traditional institutional histories of the university have tended to highlight the educational and social achievements of the university's founders, professors, and alumni, began with the publication in 1856 of Nathaniel F. Cabell's Early History of the University of Virginia, as Contained in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell. Senator Cabell of Nelson County was the university's principal spokesman in the Virginia General Assembly (and the editor's uncle), and the unifying theme of his correspondence with Jefferson was the political and legislative efforts that were necessary to establish the university as a state institution. The book is an excellent documentary edition and continues to be useful.⁽²⁾ In the decade following the American Civl War, a host of catalogs, pamphlets, and historical sketches of the University of Virginia and its alumni appeared in print, many of which called attention to the early history of the university or paid homage to the alumni's service in the Confederate army or government. Herbert Baxter Adams drew on many of these writings, most of which are now extremely rare, when editing a report for the U.S. Bureau of Education in the 1880s, entitled Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia.⁽³⁾ The report refers to many important facets of the university's founding and subsequent history, and Adams apparently was the first to synthesize the broad range of themes associated with the institution's past.

Shortly after the turn of the 20th century a completely different kind of work attempted to bring the history of the university up to date. Paul B. Barringer and James Mercer Garnett's University of Virginia: Its History, Influence, Equipment and Characteristics with Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Founders, Benefactors, Officers and Alumni, was of a genre that became popular in the late 19th century and, as its subtitle suggests, consisted largely of biographical sketches of university alumni. The editors did incorporate into the historical part of their work some worthwhile documents that are primarily of a legislative and educational nature.⁽⁴⁾ The work that best represents the "institutional" perspective, however, is historian Philip Alexander Bruce's five-volume centennial history of the university. Gracefully written and full of interesting ancedotes, Bruce's History of the University of Virginia, 1819–1919: The Lengthened Shadow of One Man quickly settled into its unrivaled position as the standard history of the University of Virginia.⁽⁵⁾ After three-quarters of a century the entrenchment of The Lengthened Shadow has hardly abated although many of Bruce's stories have been discounted or are regarded as suspect. A useful supplement to The Lengthened Shadow is Virginus Dabney's Mr. Jefferson's University: A History, which brought the history of the university up to the mid-1970s.⁽⁶⁾

The studies of the university that focus upon its architecture are exemplified by the works of William A. Lambeth and Warren H. Manning, Fiske Kimball, Frederick Doveton Nichols, and most recently, Richard Charles Cote, K. Edward Lay, and Richard Guy Wilson.⁽⁷⁾ To their credit, each of these authors has tended to write about the creation of the University of Virginia in the context of Jefferson's larger architectural corpus. Lambeth and Manning's Jefferson as an Architect and Designer of Landscapes treated its topics in a competent manner but its appearance in 1913 was overshadowed three years later by the publication of Fiske Kimball's folio-sized facsimile edition of Jefferson's architectural drawings.⁽⁸⁾ Kimball was the first to articulate the importance of Jefferson to the classical revival, and the publication in 1916 of his Thomas Jefferson, Architect left an indelible imprint on the study of Jefferson's architecture.⁽⁹⁾ Forty-five years passed before Nichols supplemented Kimball's work with an annotated checklist of all the then-known Jefferson architectural drawings. Nichols became recognized generally as the leading authority on Jefferson's architecture after the publication of Thomas Jefferson's Architectural Drawings, and at his direction the University of Virginia's Rotunda underwent renovation in time for the celebration of the nation's bicentennial in 1976. The outpouring of interest in Jefferson's architecture that manifested itself at that time resulted in the publication of numerous articles by Nichols as well as other writers and introduced Jefferson's Academical Village to an audience far greater than ever before.⁽¹⁰⁾

The recognition of the university as a national architectural treasure is secure, and the widespread interest in it has shown no signs of waning. In the last twenty years, the momentum to protect and preserve the buildings has grown and scholarly inquiry from the architectural perspective has diversified. Focus on the university's architecture has broadened to include the careers of some of the university's builders, or "architectural workmen" as Richard Charles Cote called them in his 1980s dissertation on the subject.⁽¹¹⁾ K. Edward Lay also has followed the post-university careers of some of the more prominent builders who had worked at the university and has examined their influence on local architecture.⁽¹²⁾ In honor of the 250th anniversary of Jefferson's birth in 1993, the largest exhibition ever of Jefferson's architectural drawings for the University of Virginia was held at the university's Bayly Art Museum. Richard Guy Wilson prepared the accompanying exhibition catalog, which incorporated the most recent scholarship on the architecture of the university.⁽¹³⁾ Since that time Wilson has been working on an electronic database of Jefferson-related architectural material that includes all of Jefferson's architectural drawings, and that will help place the architectural history of the University of Virginia in a larger context. It promises to transform the work that Kimball began eighty years ago.⁽¹⁴⁾

A third way of looking at the history of the University of Virginia, however, was pioneered in the late 1950s by William B. O'Neal, who, while simultaneously writing notes on the volumes about architecture known to have been owned by Jefferson,⁽¹⁵⁾ began to edit from primary sources several selections of documents connected to the construction of the university. O'Neal's efforts resulted in one book, Jefferson's Buildings at the University of Virginia: The Rotunda, and three articles in The Magazine of Albemarle County History: "The Workmen at the University of Virginia, 1817–1826," "Michele and Giacomo Raggi at the University of Virginia," and "Financing the Construction of the University of Virginia."⁽¹⁶⁾ These studies by O'Neal, who worked from an architectural perspective, along with the studies of university workmen by Cote and Lay, set the precedent for my own work. More inclusive than O'Neal's efforts, this project consists of both a history of the construction of the buildings and the documentary record upon which that history is based.

The recent changes in technology that makes practical Wilson's electronic database of Jefferson-related architectural drawings also provides the means for presenting in its entirety this documentary history of the university's construction in an electronic format. Furthermore, the nature of the emerging electronic environment will allow the future incorporation of a number of other sources, both primary and secondary, that could supplement this documentary history as well as stand alone in their own right, like "The Autobiographical Ana of Robley Dunglison, M.D.," Mathew Carey's 1812 Philadelphia Price Book, Asher Benjamin's The American Builders Companion, and Andrea Palladio's Quattro Libri dell'Architettura. Wilson already has incorporated into his electronic database Kimball's Thomas Jefferson, Architect, Nichol's, Thomas Jefferson's Architectural Drawings, O'Neal's Jefferson's Fine Arts Library, and Wilson's own Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village. Vaughan and Gianniny's Thomas Jefferson's Rotunda Restored recently was converted to an electronic format for the centennial anniversary of the fire that destroyed the Rotunda. Taken together, these databases may prove to constitute the best case study (to date) of the origins of American architecture, and their integrated approach will offer both architects and historians an unprecedented opportunity to reevaluate Jefferson's prominence in the conceptualization, articulation, and design of the republic's political and social institutions. Although we will have to wait and see how this new genre will alter our understanding of Jefferson and his role in American architectural and building history, it is safe to assume that at the very least its dissemination will supply the means by which research may be more fully and easily undertaken while helping to provide a more secure basis for judging existing or new interpretations. It is already clear from the documentary sources that Jefferson cannot be separated from the specific contexts in which he functioned or divided into the various roles he filled. This is particularly true in the case under consideration because for various reasons his architectural plans for the University of Virginia changed or evolved in significant ways during the process of construction. The changes reveal that while Jefferson never wavered from his original conception of a rural academic villa, he was not so rigid or doctrinaire as to reject suggestions that conflicted with his own ideas when the proposed alterations promised to improve his plan.

To keep to a chronological narrative, which has been one of my primary objects throughout, has not been easy. By following the documentary record, the story unfolds unevenly (or even haphazardly) at places, but it nevertheless accurately reflects the process of building that took place at the university's construction site. The limitations inherent in rejecting a more thematic approach in favor of a chronological one while relying strictly on the documentary record are best overcome by breaking the material up according to the rise and ebb of the weather-related building seasons, or what architects call building campaigns. This approach opens (and reopens) many subjects for inquiry and discussion (as the campaigns in fact did for the workers) but at the same time it cannot settle every question or problem that arises. Buildings were never finished on time, and certainly not when Jefferson or the reports said they were, and it is thus very difficult if not impossible to pinpoint their completion. To confuse matters, repairs, alterations, or additions on buildings were begun in some cases before the conclusion of the originally planned work.

Many topics directly related to the construction are addressed but left to future researchers to explore in depth—the processes of brickmaking and laying or woodworking and the calculation of the quantity of necessary materials used (like sand, lime, water, lumber, etc.), the transportation of those materials and other supplies by water and across land—questions remain about what types of boats and wagons were used, for instance, what routes did they take, and so forth—and what special technology or workmen's techniques were needed to erect a building the size of Rotunda. (How was the scaffolding built, for instance, or how were the heavy marble capitals raised to their heights?) The important but largely undocumented role played by slaves and free blacks at the construction site can only be alluded to. Also, the study of the contractors and other workers for which their is more evidence is not exhaustive. Although the work executed elsewhere by these workers is noted in many cases, no attempt has been made to trace their careers in any detail. Certain craftsmen or subjects reappear at unpredictable times, too. The Italian stonecutters, for example, appear on the scene several times, throughout the entire process of building, working in either Italy or Virginia, or traveling in between. The elder Raggi actually accompanied the final shipment of marble capitals from Leghorn after an absence from the university of several years.

It is not yet possible to summarize with any degree of assurance what specific builders and other workers earned during their years of toil at the university. Early on, the system of accounting at the Central College and the University of Virginia was poorly organized, and when finally in place its procedures were primitive. Understanding the financial issues is complicated by the fact that the university proctor, Arthur Spicer Brockenbrough, failed to keep proper records for at least the first year after coming to the site. (Many of the receipts for the period are backdated.) The minute details of construction costs, especially those involving the division of labor, are obscured, and when combined with the serious financial and political struggles that were involved in establishing the university, that obscurity leads to an overall general inconclusiveness about the finances at the institution, although K. Edward Lay's estimates as to which builders earned the most or the least probably is on target. It is also impossible to determine if the university's official statements and reports to the Literary Fund represent the actual state of the finances at a given time.

The complexity of the story of the founding of the University of Virginia very naturally arises throughout this work, but for the most part I have attempted to stick to the central theme of building. Important related subjects such as architecture, economics, politics, aesthetics, and education, are treated superficially, if at all, and only where they directly and palpably impinge upon the building process, usually in order to show how they enhanced or impeded the pace of construction. The effect of the building project on the local economy, which presumably was not unimportant, is ignored, although its impact on various firms and individuals is apparent throughout. Moreover, the accuracy of many statements in the documentary record are at points unclear or obscured, and even unreasonable, and sometimes no attempt is made to sort out their truthfulness. Contrast, for example, Dabney Cosby's proposal to make and lay as many as 600,000 bricks in a single year, with the aid of another good brickmaker, with Jefferson's constant carping about the workers and the slow pace of their work. Whether Cosby's offer was sensible is uncertain; if it indeed was, then Jefferson's complaints seem hardly valid. The only way to adequately appraise Cosby's proposal would be to compare it to other projects of the era, which is outside the scope of this work.

Finally, attention must be drawn to the fact that the society in which Thomas Jefferson lived and in which the University of Virginia was built was a society in which the methods and working conditions of laborers, artisans, and craftsmen in many ways had changed very little since the Middle Ages.⁽¹⁷⁾ The construction that took place during seasonal building campaigns was governed largely by the vicissitudes of the weather, and the most productive time for work to be done often was limited to the period from mid-spring to mid-fall. Every aspect of the building process was labor intensive, whether it was clearing land and cutting grass, or quarrying and hauling rock, or making and burning and laying bricks, or felling timber and sawing it into plank, or plastering and painting interior walls and ceilings, or carving the fine delicate trim and ornamental work. The tools used were hand-tools that were hand-made; the machinery, where it existed at all, was crude and inefficient.⁽¹⁸⁾ Nevertheless, the sophisticated and intricate work executed by the post-Colonial artisans and craftsmen, using hand tools only, rivals any made with the powerful precision instruments of our modern era, and indeed, the work done by the artisans of the period reveals that the American craftsman was at the height of his creavity and productivity. The extraordinary rich style that culminated from the outpouring of the skills, resources, and imagination of these workers is amply represented in the original buildings of the University of Virginia.