The Short-Lived Third Building

After the 1859 fire, a third and much-altered Main Building with twin Italianate towers was constructed on the surviving walls. The lithograph shows its general appearance from the east front, although the roadway and the campus scene are almost certainly fanciful (Fig. 12, College of William and Mary Archives) . One of two extant drawings by L. J. Cranstone shows the building from the vicinity of Richmond Road with the President’s House and dependencies in the foreground (Fig. 13, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation) . The third building had a very brief history, for it was burned on September 9, 1862, by Union soldiers who were occupying the campus.