We take you to the special Collections Library to learn more about the Thomas Jefferson papers. Jefferson is the founder of uva. He worked many years to develop the system of education in virginia. Uva was his last great project. He did it after he left the white house. He designed the buildings and the curriculum. He was the first chair of the board of visitors. He was intimately involved as you will see in a lot of details about building the buildings. His vision is called an academic village. If you look at his plans for the university, at the time a lot of universities consisted of one very big building for classes were held and there were dormitory rooms. Jeffersons idea was to make a village out of it, with students living here the professors and classes being given in the professors homes. There was constant interaction of students and faculty. Its in charlottesville, and in the 1820s there was a small town, a village really. If you think about these amazing buildings that went up in the early 1820s in the middle of nowhere, it was part of his ideal of the United States as an Agrarian Society and the elite becoming leaders of the country. The University Archives are the official Historical Records of the university. They go back to long before the university was chartered in 1819. Records go back to 1814, back to the institutions that preceded uva. The archives are about 4 million items. Its the records of the president , the deans, the provosts, the library, every facet of the university. Its paper, sound recording, video recording, digital material, email, websites. Anything that is a historic record of the university we try to capture. Some go back to 1817. This is a letter that jefferson wrote in 1817 to William Thorton , who was the man he assigned to work on the capital building. They were very good friends. Jefferson wrote to thought and about the idea of the university. He included a little sketch of what he was thinking, and open ended rectangle with civilians interspersed with dormitory rooms. There was no more detail than that. That is one of his very first conceptions of the university. Its a basic part of the idea, but it changed dramatically between the time he drew the sketch and when the university was completed. It was nine years after the sketch, the university was completed in 1826. Each of the 10 pavilions were inhabited by a professor and they taught their classes there in the pavilion. They lived among the students and the students lived adjacent to the faculty. That was jeffersons idea that the proximity would result in all kinds of educational and intellectual exchange. This is pavilion 7. It was the first building construction. It is now a faculty club. This was constructed for the before the university was constructed. He did this drawing, and elevation and floor plan for each of the 10 pavilions. You can see he didnt quite get his scale rate. He had to glue on a small piece of paper to put on the chimney stack. I like that. It makes him a little more human to make a mistake like that. This is an example, the ground floor pavilion was here. This is the cellar. The upstairs of be the living room for the family and the lower floor was where the cooking happened and where some of the slaves who worked for professors wouldve lived. You can see it is neoclassical and he was very interested in classical architecture. One of his big sourcebooks was in english. It came out in 1721. He used those to draw inspiration, especially for the various billions. Each one is different. He wanted the university to be an openair classroom. You can walk around and see the classical architecture and the different orders of architecture in different styles and features. That was part of what he wanted to have happen. The University Got off the ground officially in 1819 when the General Assembly gave the university a charter. They gave the University Funding to continue building the buildings. That is very critical, as it always is. This is a ledger that was maintained by the proctor, who was the chief operating officer of the university. Its his daybook. This is where you wrote down in coming in at going funds every day. Of you would eventually transfer them officially to a ledger under the various funds. You would establish the balances. The great thing about this is the proctor made notes to himself about what some of these expenses were for. It goes from a things like a barrel of nails to 500 pounds of flour to lumber to hauling bricks. Most importantly for uva, it shows you the source of the labor that was used to actually build the buildings. Here on this page, the proctor has recorded payments that were made to individuals for the hire of their slaves. The slaves were actually named. This is payment for his time. It we know who the individuals were and what the name of the slave was who was hired to work here. This goes on and on throughout the years of construction. Its been identified that there were 50 to 75 uniquely named slaves. Sometimes if we are not sure its the same person, not every slave was hired for a duration. It was, the slave would be for the year. On the new year, the contract would be offered to the owner and renegotiated. A lot of this was done a monthly or daily or weekly basis. If you finished moving earth, you dont need as much labor until you can send them back to their owner to work it on the other hand, if you have someone who is a skilled carpenter or skilled at making bricks, you might need them for much longer. This is the rotunda. It is probably the most iconic building of the university. It is what everyone thinks about when they think of uva. It is based on the model of the pantheon in rome. It is a model jefferson adapted. We point out that in the lower corner he says it is a library, which it was. It is the library from when it opened in 1836 until 1928. We are proud of that. It served as a library and classroom building. There was a Chemistry Lab in the basement. There were meeting rooms. He was the center of university life. It changed dramatically in the century. 20th it was the library until 1938. The new library was built adjacent to this one. The rotunda was used as an event space and for offices. From world war ii until recently , there was not a lot of assigned activity to the rotunda. It was more of a ceremonial space. Students could go here there for years without ever having to go into the rotunda, which did not seem like the right thing. Recently, the rotunda has undergone about two years of repair and renovation with an eye to making it more accessible and more appealing to students. Study in the domes, study in the other rooms, have it open at night. Have more spaces for classes to me. They are trying hard, and it is a good idea to bring it back to the center of academic life. There is no question jefferson would be astonished about uva today from size alone. If you think about the size of the original buildings versus what exists now, it is immense. The student body is enormous. Before the civil war, they had probably 800 students. Now we are into the tens of thousands of students. Other things that would astonish him are the fact that women are being educated at uva and africanamericans are being educated at uva and students from all around the world are being educated at uva, and yet there is still a great deal about his original vision that has survived. I think that is probably as astonishing as anything. Archaeologists are trying to cover a president ial mystery here at James Monroes highland. , we will introduce you to the woman who is trying to figure out what his house once looked like and what happened to it. I call it a president ial cold case. There were always questions abth
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