Henry Dawkins engraved this view of Princeton University with Nassau Hall to the left. Designed and built between 1755-57, the building contained a chapel, library, dining hall, kitchen, and dormitory rooms which also served as recitation chambers.
The site on which the University of Virginia was developed was typical of the rolling hills of the Piedmont countryside, and the campus layout was developed to fit the sloping ground. Jefferson described the site in a letter to U.S. Capitol architect Benjamin Latrobe in 1817: The site...is on a narrow ridge, declining from north to south, so as to give us a width between the 2 rows of pavilions of 200 feet only from East to West, and the gentle declivity [slope] of the ridge gives us three levels of 255 feet each from North to South, each about 3 feet lower than the one next above....1
Questions for Drawings 1 & 2
1. Compare Drawings 1 and 2. What differences do you observe in the design of these two universities?
2. In Drawing 2, how can you tell the difference between the professors' residences and the student dormitories? What features do they have in common?
3. Do the pavilions in Drawing 2 look identical, or not? Why do you think they were designed this way?
4. What elements of the architectural design of the pavilions made them "models of good taste and architecture" in Jefferson's mind?
5. What are the people doing on the Lawn in Drawing 2? What does this reveal to you about the way the Lawn was used?
1Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Latrobe, August 3, 1817.
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