Product Description

In Charlottesville, Virginia, at the University of Virginia, there is today—beneath the irregular rhythms of modern student comings and goings—a severely rhythmic expression of the Enlightenment, a philosophy concretized in brick and timber. The play of one architectural element into another is meant to express the interconnectedness of all knowledge. It is Jefferson’s last but not his least achievement, and one of the three things that he put on his own tombstone to be remembered by.

In important ways, this architectural complex is a better expression of Jefferson’s mind than is his home on the hill overlooking the campus. Chance had a great deal to do with the way Monticello grew up over the years. But everything in the university’s structure was planned, to the last detail—a meticulous ordering that is both romantic and quixotic. It is a place of study that itself repays study, and makes on lost world of the 18th century only half lost after all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #810585 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-15
• Released on: 2002-11-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Skilled historians have a way of making the past seem more vivid than the present, and Wills (whose Lincoln at Gettysburg won a Pulitzer) is no exception. His new book is part of National Geographic's series devoted to travel writing (other titles include Oliver Sacks on Oaxaca and A.M. Homes on L.A.), though it doesn't quite feel like it belongs. Wills is far nimbler at describing the hurdles Thomas Jefferson faced while constructing the "academical village" of his dreams, the University of Virginia, than he is at imparting any real sense of what a visit to the finished product is like. Jefferson employed a fair amount of diplomatic and legislative trickery along the project's course-fending off competition from the burgeoning College of William and Mary (his alma mater), deflecting criticism over not having a chapel or professor of divinity, and enlisting the advice of such esteemed fellow architects as Benjamin Latrobe. Describing these various tasks is by far Wills's strongest gift, and he's wise to devote as much of the book to them as he does. (An early chapter describing the central buildings one by one, while well reasoned, feels a bit obligatory.) Visitors to the Charlottesville campus may not glean much in the way of practical information from Wills's tour of the university, but they'll have a much deeper appreciation for how it got there.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
It is impossible to visit Virginia too often.... Visitors can do no better than to explore it with this book. -- The New York Times Book Review, December 15, 2002

About the Author
Garry Wills, adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University, is the author of many books, including Lincoln at Gettysburg, Papal Sin, Venice: Lion City, Saint Augustine, and James Madison. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Presidential Medal of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Customer Reviews

A "Must Read" For Anyone Interested In Jefferson
This book is about the founding of The University of Virginia. If you are interested in learning about Jefferson, Garry Wills fills in a lot of the gaps with "Mr. Jefferson's University". Much of Jefferson's philosophies on education are behind his academic and architectural intentions for his University of Virginia. This is a "must read" for anyone interested in Jefferson. I think another "must read" is Norman Thomas Remick's "Mr. Jefferson's Academy, The Real Story Behind West Point" (1998), a book now known as "West Point: Character Leadership Education....Developed From The Readings And Writings Of Thomas Jefferson" (2002), available right here on Amazon.com. Though many know that Mr. Jefferson's University (The University of Virginia) was our third President's favorite, high-profile educational project, no one knew (until Mr. Remick's groundbreaking research) that Mr. Jefferson's Academy (West Point) was our third President's best-kept-secret, low-profile educational project. In my opinion, you should read both books.

Jefferson's Academical Village
Thomas Jefferson's reputation in America has declined greatly over the last two decades. It is now commonplace, both among scholars and the reading public, to criticize Jefferson and place him on a lower mantle of historical accomplishment, along with several of his contemporaries. His friend, James Madison, whose reputation has long lived in the shadow of Jefferson's, is now widely considered to be the superior political thinker of the two. Former political opponents, such as John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, are now sometimes favorably compared to him. The ongoing controversy over Jefferson's affair with the slave Sally Hemings has also contributed to his reputation's decline.

But as an artist, Jefferson's historical reputation has only been strengthened in recent years. He is considered one of America's greatest architects, and his work at Monticello and the University of Virginia has been voted by modern architects as the premiere achievement in American architecture. Jefferson himself seems to have had some sense of the importance of this work when he requested his tombstone read:

HERE WAS BURIED

THOMAS JEFFERSON

AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA

FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

AND FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

This is Garry Wills' third book on Jefferson. Wills wholeheartedly admires Jefferson's work as an architect. No one else in the Western tradition, Wills says, has ever combined the artistic and political talents of Jefferson. Unlike artist-politicians like Benjamin Disraeli, Jan Paderewski or Václav Havel, who were primarily artists before becoming politicians, Jefferson worked at both his entire life. According to Wills, the Virginian was no mere dilettante dabbling at design, but an experienced, masterful innovator of forms. He worked on his first university design project in his mid-twenties, a few years before writing the Declaration of Independence. While serving as president, he helped Benjamin Latrobe design the federal city. And he would cap off his long life with his finest work, the "academical village" - the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, the subject of this work.

It took Jefferson nine years to complete his masterpiece. From the age of seventy-four to eighty-three, the design and building of the university dominated the final years of his life. He would die soon after it was completed. To do so, Jefferson had to outmaneuver the extremely hostile Virginia legislature to acquire the state money to finance his project; he also had to face down religious interests -- who were concerned about his decision to build a secular school; and he outlasted several local powers - particularly fellow builders and other state-financed universities - who sought to undermine his efforts in order to satisfy their own interests. Jefferson's local political struggles to build his university actually take up more of the book than details about its design.

Jefferson wanted to build a university that embodied his ideas on what learning should be about. Where universities in Europe at that time had primarily been either urban or monastic in appearance, Jefferson followed an American pattern by designing a rural university, built around a lawn. Ten unique Pavilions -- to represent Jefferson's ten important branches of learning -- would be built on the east and west sides of the lawn, five on each side. To the north of the lawn was the centerpiece of the university - a large Rotunda that would serve both as the university's library and for communal activities. Nothing was built on the south of the lawn to allow for an easy approach to the school and an open vista for those on the lawn.

Connecting the Pavilions and Rotunda was a Tuscan colonnade. The colonnade was blended in with the front of each of the ten Pavilions, a difficult design trick since each Pavilion had a unique style with -- depending on the Pavilion -- Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and composite columns that had to work visually with the Tuscan style of the colonnade that connected them all. The Pavilions were two-story buildings. The first story served as the classroom. The second story was the professor's home. Jefferson did not want any of the Pavilions to be considered superior to the others so he had the professors draw lots for who would live and teach in each Pavilion. The colonnade also had a two-story function. On ground level, it was covered, allowing for students to walk between Pavilions in any weather. The colonnade's second level, however, which connected the professors' homes on the second story of each pavilion, was not covered. This was meant to symbolize the connection Jefferson wanted the ten disciplines to have with each other. Professors could get together and exchange ideas, but the lack of a covered walkway meant that such exchanges would be informal and unscheduled, unlike the more regimented programs of the students walking below.

The effect of this design was striking and somewhat paradoxical. There is both regimentation and individualism in the work. Wills says that some critics seize on some single aspect of the design and complain that it is either too orderly or too chaotic. But Jefferson wanted both elements to express his ideas about education. Echoing Ruskin's comments about the cathedral front at Pisa, Wills writes that Jefferson achieved "a daring variation of pretended symmetry" that escaped "the lower or vulgar unity of law."

One of the more interesting sidelines in the book is Wills' discussion of the Bishop George Berkeley, the famous eighteenth century empiricist who was the transitional philosopher between Locke and Hume. Berkeley, who at the time was still just a parson, wanted to build a school in North America. He spent time at Yale, where a residential college was named after him. (One of the graduates of that college would later found U.C. Berkeley in California in honor of the bishop.) But Berkeley did not want to build his school in any of the colonies. He decided that Bermuda was a more appropriate location since there it would not be subject to the provincialism of the colonies, and he could allow Native Americans to attend. He believed that knowledge needed a fresh start away from the prejudices of the cities and society and that only a school built in nature could achieve this. Like Jefferson at a later time, Berkeley would struggle to find funds to build his school. But where Jefferson persevered, Berkeley would eventually give up and return to England. Nevertheless, his ideas about university design in the new world would affect many later American designers, and Jefferson was obviously influenced by him.

Also interesting is Wills' history of how the original professors - most of whom were Europeans -- would struggle with their new lives in the new world. Jefferson had originally not wanted Europeans to teach at his school, fearing they would contaminate American students with their alien ideas. But he been forced to recruit there after qualified Americans had either turned him down or been rejected by the state legislature for their unorthodox views. Universities in the early United States were largely state affairs, especially in the south. Jefferson had pushed for the founding of University of Virginia to create a regional alternative to Harvard, Princeton, and Yale in the north. But now he had been forced to leave not only the south, but even the U.S., in order to find teachers to fill the new positions. The result, however, appears to have ended up harming the professors more than it did the local students. Since most students were the progeny of local Virginian plantation owners, and were used to slaves and owning guns, the professors didn't quite know what to make of them. As Wills puts it, "slave owners were used to giving, not taking orders." The students didn't like their foreign teachers for the most part, taunting them and throwing rocks through one professor's windows. Some professors attempted to resign after being terrorized by masked students (their resignations were not accepted). Stricter rules were implemented and some students were expelled. But the problems continued. The south's tradition of violence didn't help either, as undergraduates often challenged each other to duels, despite the best efforts of the faculty to prevent them. Professors were sometimes caned by students and began to arm themselves in self-defense. Fourteen years after Jefferson's death, one professor was shot and killed after stepping outside of his Pavilion to quell a disturbance.

This is a wonderful book, interesting both as a history of the early U.S. architecture and as a partial biography of a Founding Father. Jefferson's will to see through his masterpiece forms the core of the story, but the many interesting details on various subjects also delight. While Jefferson's genius as an architect is more taken for granted than demonstrated, Wills does show that Jefferson had a tremendous artistic vision and fire to see his project to completion.

A small treasure of a book about an idea and a reality
Although a slim volume, Gary Wills has packed this book full with information about this period in Jefferson's life that most other biographers - and I've read 22 - missed. Starting a university from scratch is just about more than one man, even Jefferson, could handle. He had to design the buidings, the dorms and rooms for the students and professors, and then hire the professors from all over the world, then make sure it ran properly even down to the rowdiness of the students. And all of this in the decade prior to his death, while he was in his 70's. That the university continues today in his spirit is a strong testament to his original thinking, his designs, and his vision for the future. This is a short book that can easily be read in one sitting, and well worth it.