211075 Downing Record 07 - Downing College - University of ...

74In contrast, Jefferson was a Palladian and by architectural standards in bothEngland and the United States in the years 1810 onward, old fashioned. He spurnedthe new interest in Greek architecture promoted years earlier by James Stuart andNicholas Revett’s Antiquities of Athens (1762), and never owned a copy of their book(nor any of Wilkins). Instead Jefferson preferred the much earlier book TheArchitecture of A. Palladio, (London, 1715, 1721, 1742), translated by Giacomo Leoni.He refused to use the more updated volume on Palladio by Isaac Ware and sponsoredby Lord Burlington, and instead used what was considered a “corrupted” edition,the Leoni.Central to Wilkins’ and Jefferson’s designs were some autobiographical elements.Downing reflects Wilkins’ recent studies in Sicily and Greece and also his Cambridgebackground. He knew well the Cambridge quadrangle scheme having been a studentat Gonville & Caius, and his original plan for Downing was a regularized, enlarged,and classicized Cambridge square. He had a gate, a chapel, a library, and rooms forthe master, fellows and students, similar to most other colleges. Jefferson’s designfor the University reflects his own collegiate background. He attended the Collegeof William & Mary in Williamsburg 1760–63. All the students-some 40 young menandthe faculty-mostly Anglican clergymen-lived in a single large building wherethey ate, slept, and took classes. Descriptions of life at William & Mary included ruttybehaviour and one of the clergymen liked to liquor up the students and lead themon “charges” against the town’s people. Another clergyman during Jefferson’s studentyears fathered an illegitimate child.In succeeding years Jefferson became a tireless advocate for public educationintroducing a bill in 1778 to the Virginia legislature for the state to assumeresponsibilities at the primary, secondary, and collegiate level. Also he argued thatcolleges should not be controlled by the church. Again while president he advocateda national university. But in both cases nothing happened.However his reputation as an education advocate led to solicitations for adviceand his response indicates his rejection of the College of William and Mary prototypeof a single building. In 1805 to a request he wrote: “large houses are always ugly,inconvenient, exposed to the accident of fire, and bad in cases of infection. a plainsmall house for the school & lodging of each professor is best. These connected bycovered ways out of which the rooms of the students should open would be best.These may then be built only as they shall be wanting. in fact an University shouldnot be an house but a village. this will much lessen their first expences [sic].” A fewyears later in 1810 to another inquiry he wrote that each professor’s “small andseparate lodge” should contain “only a hall below for his class, and two chambersabove for himself; . – . the whole of these arranged around an open square of grassand trees would make it, what it should be in fact, an academical village, instead ofa large & common den of noise, of filth, & of fetid air. It would afford that quietretirement so friendly to study.”