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July 02, 2009, 02:59 PM ET
For Independence Day, a Debate Over a Building by a Founding Father
You probably know the story: In 1895, fire gutted the single most famous academic building in America, the Rotunda that Thomas Jefferson designed to be the centerpiece of the University of Virginia campus. The university’s Board of Visitors chose a supremely talented architect, Stanford White, to oversee the Rotunda reconstruction. But he made significant changes to Jefferson’s building, among them substituting a grand Roman-style interior for Jefferson’s more modest Greek Revival design. In the 1970s, the building was renovated again, and many of White’s interior elements were removed. His exterior changes remained, however, including columns larger than those Jefferson used and a green copper roof that the original architect would not have recognized.
Now, according to the Charlottesville weekly The Hook, the university is debating another set of changes to the Rotunda and to the Lawn stretching out before it. The debate pits those who would restore as much as possible of Jefferson’s vision for the campus against those who say that generations of alumni and friends of the university have sanctioned White’s changes.
The problem, as the article describes it, is that about 95 percent of the existing Rotunda is White’s work and that of those who carried out the 1970s renovation. “The only thing that’s really left of Jefferson is the brick,” according to Brian Hogg, a historic-preservation planner for the university. “Are we faithful to the White exterior, or do we try to recapture more Jefferson?”
In addition, some people on the campus want the building returned to the university library system. “The day the library moved out was the day that the Rotunda lost contact with the student body,” says Brian Broadus, a lecturer in architectural history at the university.
The debate promises to be interesting, to say the least, although the Hook article seems to cast its lot with those who want the university to stick with what it’s got now. As Richard Guy Wilson, an architectural-history professor at the university, puts it: “We have a genuine Stanford White, and destroying that for a fake Jefferson is just plain wrong.”
What do you think?
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