Emily, the lawn is a really familiar place to me, but, you know, I don't think I can read it. I don't think I can really make sense on it. You are the authority. Can you explain this whole thing. >> Well I'll sure give it a try. Really the lawn is the culmination of Jefferson's theories of what a university and an educational institution should be. >> Yeah. >> And that is really contained in the academical village, where we are now. >> Right. >> The Academical Village is really the culmination of what Jefferson thought an educational institution should be. >> But village? Why a village? >> The idea behind it is really that students and faculty live, and work, and study all together. >> What a bizarre idea. >> I know, can you imagine [LAUGH]? >> What was supposed to happen? >> Well, it was really supposed to be what promoted a true educational experience, in terms of a lifetime of learning, not just learning within the confines of a classroom. The intense engagement between students and faculty was really one of the lynchpins of his university, and really what made University of Virginia's so different from other places. >> How are you supposed to respond? What were you supposed to learn from the village, itself, if you were a student here? >> You learned everything. You learned your proper place in society. Jefferson organized the university in a very hierarchical way. >> Hm-mm. >> The large buildings are pavilions. >> Right. >> The smaller spaces in between, that's where the students live, that's where student rooms are located behind the colonnade. And then of course the rotunda at the end, temple of all knowledge, the crowning piece of the whole place. So you have students under a much simpler kind of architecture. They're at the bottom. They're learning. Professors live above, in the pavilions. >> Yeah, that makes sense. >> In the fancier buildings. >> Huh. So Emily, let's take a look at one of these pavilions. >> Great, I'd love to. >> Emily, lots of white columns, beautiful. Is there anything that distinguishes one of these pavilions from the others? [LAUGH] >> Jefferson would scream to hear you say they all look the same. [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] Oh come on! >> That's not the point at all, no, no, no. So everyone one of the pavilions is different. The pavilions are supposed to be specific examples of architecture, to teach good taste and edification to the students here. >> Right. So, what distinguishes them? What should we be looking at? What have I been missing all these years? [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] Well, let's start with the students. So, we mentioned that on a hierarchical level of the university, >> Right. >> The students were at the lowest. >> Yeah. >> So, they're gonna have Tuscan columns. >> Whoa! >> And you can see them marching exactly the same across the colonnade. Very simple, very little ornamentation. Jefferson thought that Tuscan columns didn't even belong on a domestic house. So this is really, architecturally speaking, the lowest of the low. So, then you get to the pavilions. And the pavilions are supposed to engage students with the concepts of classical architecture. And by classical architecture, I mean the stuff from Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Jefferson, in particular, was an Ancient Rome Aficionado. >> Right. >> And so he chose for each of the ten pavilions, a different model. Five taken from Antonio Palladio, the 16th century Italian architect. >> Right. >> And then five models from an author named Friar Deschamps, who was French. Who wrote a book about ancient Roman models. >> Right. >> So you have a combination of contemporary and ancient here at the university. >> So this is a very efficient way to take the grand tour. >> It sure is. >> Yeah. >> For those who can't make it to Europe. >> So the classical orders that is what we see at the top of the columns >> Absolutely. Well you have examples, a lot of different examples. >> Yeah. >> Many from Palladio, many from Ancient Roman buildings. >> Mm hm. >> So for example, here on Pavillion 5, you have a really lovely version of the Ionic. The Ionic is the one with the double scrolls. >> Got you. >> Then at Pavillion 3, right next door, you have the Corinthian. The Corinthian is the fanciest. >> Right. >> It's the most ostentatious. >> Hm. >> The Romans loved the Corinthian. And then at Pavilion I, at the very end, you have the Doric. And the Doric is the simplest, the sturdiest, the most sort of solid. >> Right. Right. >> Of the three. So in these three buildings, and these were some of the earliest pavilions built here. You have basically your A to Z primer on classical architecture. >> Yeah. >> Emily Jefferson's a vision of education here. It's inspiring, and the campus itself, the grounds, the lawn, they teach us something. They're edifying. But what was experience of students really like in the first generation? >> Well, you know, Jefferson couldn't help himself for trying. >> Right. >> We've got these colonnades. This is to protect students from weather. >> Yeah, he's so concerned about health and morals >> Health, and morals, and values, and interaction with experts. You can't miss class for claiming that you got caught in the rain with these colonnades. All the students were intended to live in the rooms under these colonnades protected. And you get to see one of these rooms right now. So take a look, they're not very big. Now only one student lives in each room. >> Mm-hm. >> But in Jefferson's day, they were intended to be doubles. >> Right. >> So two boys. >> Right. >> Two beds. Two trunks. Two of everything crammed into this little space. >> So, Emily, who are the lucky beneficiaries of life at this University? Where do they come from? What were they like? And did they live up to Jefferson's expectations? >> [LAUGH] >> Loaded questions. >> [LAUGH] No. [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] No. Most of them were planner's sons. >> Right. >> The University, of course, was all male in 1825 when students first arrived. They did not live up to the Jeffersonian ideal. A problem with Jefferson's curriculum of having students work directly and intimately with specific professors, was that most of the students didn't have the academic background to be able to benefit from that kind of sort-of tutorial-style education. >> So this was supposed to be advanced study at the very forefront of knowledge? >> It was. >> Kids who came here didn't really know their Latin and Greek and Mathematics. >> Precisely. And so very quickly, after Jefferson, the curriculum changed. And became a much more sort of basic, what you would expect from an undergraduate university setting, the kind that we still have today. >> Emily, you told us how crowded this village was in Jefferson's day. But we only had 100 people or so here. Now we have more than 20,000 at the university. Yet it's been very important to sustain and maintain this lawn as a kind of a shrine or a symbol of something. What function do you think the lawn and the village play today? >> Well, in many ways I think the lawn is really the heart of the university. I think that this is the most recognizable part of UVA, with the possible exception of the football stadium. >> No, no, please. [LAUGH] >> But I really do think that this is where >> This is maybe the symbolic center of the university. I think unfortunately when the library left the rotunda and moved over to Alderman Library in the late 1930s, that is when the intellectual center. >> So, the head migrated, but the heart stayed here. >> The head migrated but I think the heart stayed, yeah. >> Right, yeah. >> In many ways, it is what Jefferson intended the university to be. Students and faculty living together in harmony. >> Well you are an architectural historian. Then you'd think that old buildings are important. >> I think that old buildings offer us a way to understand Jefferson and his ideas about the university. >> Right. >> In ways that we couldn't ordinarily do. And so a building like Pavilion 10 here, Pavilion 10 was recently renovated in 2009. And- >> Hey what happened to the white columns? >> Exactly. It's brown, what? >> Yeah, something. >> I mean you have to think, in the early 19th century white paint. A, it wasn't as white as what we think white paint is, and B, it was extraordinarily expensive. Like any good building program, the university was over budget and late. So, >> So we're looking for an authentically cheap look, is that what you're saying, Emily? >> Precisely. You know, stucco was kind of a buff. This is maybe a little bit dark, but, you these buildings It wasn't red bricks and white columns, it was red bricks and kind of buff columns. >> It seems like we're worshiping the past here, now is that something at Mr Jefferson who was a great optimist and a progressive who looked to the future, what would he think about this? >> Personally I don't think he would be thrilled, the red brick white column aura of the university has really pervaded through the end of the 19th Century, through the 20th and even into 21st. I think that Jeffersonian principles and Jeffersonian materials might be too different things for us. >> But he did believe that the buildings here exemplify some of the eternal principles of good architecture. >> Precisely. >> So it would be value to sustain those principles >> Exactly. >> And those examples. >> And it's still a teaching space. >> Right. >> I mean It's still a teaching space for the orders, it's still a teaching space for what many people consider good architectural taste and through historic preservation initiatives. It's a teaching space about old buildings, historic building techniques and even more than that, how people lived in the past. >> What you're suggesting in a way is the University is a living dialogue between past and future. And this tension that we feel is the present is very much part of what Jefferson is all about. >> Absolutely. I think that's what makes the university remain vibrant. I think that's what makes a space like the lawn, which as you see is packed on a sunny Friday afternoon. Still an active space for students and faculty and visitors to gather.
