Lord Botetourt: Campus Icon

The 1773 statue of Norborne Berkeley, Lord Botetourt, royal governor of Virginia from 1768 to 1770, rector of the Board of Visitors of William and Mary, and patron of the College, is, after the three original buildings, the most enduring symbol of the colonial traditions of the College. Commissioned by the Virginia House of Burgesses after the death of the popular governor, it was executed by the English sculptor Richard Hayward and placed on the piazza of the capitol upon its arrival in 1773. After the capital was moved to Richmond in 1780, the old capitol building suffered neglect, and the Botetourt statue was mutilated by College students at the time of the French Revolution. Soon after his arrival in the United States, the artist and architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, on a journey through Williamsburg in 1796, sketched the statue in its deteriorating condition (Fig. I, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore; photograph by Colonial Williamsburg Foundation).

In 1801 the president and masters of the College purchased the statue, repaired it, and moved it to the College Yard in front of the Main Building, where it soon became a campus landmark, a prominent feature in extant illustrations of the antebellum campus (see, e.g., figs. 10, 11, and 12 in Volume I). From 1801 until 1958, it was removed only once, from about 1864 to 1874, when it was placed for safekeeping on the grounds of Eastern State Hospital. One view of the statue in that location is known to survive (Fig. 2, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation).

The statue then reoccupied its honored spot, now in front of the fourth Main Building, where it stood as the modem period at the College began (Fig. 3, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation). The statue had suffered so much from weathering that in 1958 it was placed in storage and then was installed in 1965 in its own gallery in the Earl Gregg Swem Library, where it stands today (see fig. 24, following). So great has its symbolic value been to students and alumni that before the tercentenary observances conclude, a full-size replica of the statue will be restored to the traditional location in front of the Wren Building.

Campus Growth at the Turn of the Century

With the accession of Lyon G. Tyler to the presidency of the College in 1888 and the assumption of control by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1906, William and Mary entered upon a period of growth that included some expansion of the campus. The front campus continued to look much as it had after the Civil War, with the fourth version of the Main Building, the President’s House with a porch and an added wing, and the Brafferton, which had fallen into disrepair during the closing of the College but had now been renovated and which also had a porch. Of the extant views of the front campus in this period, this 1910 Colonial Echo photograph is among the most appealing, presenting a scene hardly less bucolic than depictions of the campus in the nineteenth century (Fig. 4, College of William and Mary Archives; Colonial Williamsburg Foundation photograph).

A rear view, probably from between 1906 and 1908, shows more of the expansion and modernization of the campus that Tyler undertook, which resulted in the addition of some eight buildings plus an early version of Cary Field. This photograph depicts a considerable alteration of the Great Hall wing of the Main Building and two of the new structures—a gymnasium, completed in 1901, on the south side of the Main Building and a science building, completed 1905-1906 and ultimately named for Benjamin Ewell, on the north. By 1908 a new library, the front wing of what is today Tucker Hall, would stand in the left foreground (Fig. 5, College of William and Mary Archives; Colonial Williamsburg Foundation photograph).

Tyler also expanded the campus across Jamestown Road, utilizing some existing structures and constructing others. The Taliaferro Building (not the present dormitory), constructed in 1894, became the fine arts building from the 1930s until its destruction in the 1960s, following completion of the Campus Center. Also shown just beyond it in the same photograph is the College Infirmary, which was completed at the same time (Fig. 6, College of William and Mary Archives). The College Hotel had been in use since 1852. It housed the College steward and some number of students, later serving as a women’s dormitory and becoming the first building named for Ewell (Fig. 7, College of William and Mary Archives). In the same area, Tyler also added a dining hall in 1914 (later incorper rated into Trinkle Hall) and a dormitory, Tyler Hall, in 1916 (now the Reves Center).

The Completion of the Chandler Design

New construction continued under President J. A. C. Chandler at an even faster pace than Tyler had achieved. Between 1919 and 1934, some ten new buildings were erected, and at the end of the period, a final major building for the new campus and the modem version of Cary Field were nearing completion. By May 1926, when the College was the setting for an observance of the sesquicentennial of the Virginia Resolution for Independence, an aerial view of the occasion showed several additions to the Tyler campus: a new dining facility, Trinkle Hall (1926), faintly visible at the top of the photograph; Jefferson Hall (1921), of which a comer can be seen on the right edge; and Monroe Hall (1924), of which a portion of the right roof can be seen at the bottom left. The center of the photograph shows an addition to the library, a nearly completed Phi Beta Kappa Hall, and the apparent removal of some of the small additions to the rear of the Great Hall wing of the Main Building (Fig. 8, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation). By this date Blow Gymnasium (1923) was also completed.

Another aerial view, apparently taken not much later, shows a completed Phi Beta Kappa Hall; the full Monroe Hall; the roof of a newer building, Rogers Hall ( 1927); and the soon-to-be-restored front campus. Across Jamestown Road the Tyler buildings and Trinkle Hall are also plainly visible (Fig. 9, College of William and Mary Archives).

Between 1927 and the mid-l 930s, several more buildings were added to the new campus west of the colonial buildings. Figure 10 (College of William and Mary Archives) must date from 1934 or early 1935, either just before or just after the death of J. A. C. Chandler. It depicts all of the buildings completed or begun before World War II on the new campus. Barrett Hall (1927) and Chandler (1931) are in the lower left of the photograph. Washington Hall (1928) stands alongside Phi Beta Kappa Hall and across from Rogers, while Old Dominion (1927) is the building nearest the upper left of the photograph. In front of Old Dominion is the old Marshall-Wythe ( 1935), now James Blair Hall, which may still be nearing completion, since there seem to be small temporary buildings, perhaps relating to its construction, in front. Behind Old Dominion, the new Cary Field is also under construction, with no permanent stadium yet built. The center area shows sufficient disturbance of the land to suggest that work on the Sunken Garden might also be getting under way.

The Restoration of the Colonial Campus

Still another transformation of the campus occurred in the Chandler era as a result of the restoration of Williamsburg to its aspect in the eighteenth century under the auspices of what is today the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Given their location at one end of Duke of Gloucester Street, the three original College buildings, although scarcely recognizable as such in their modernized form, became a key project of ” the Restoration.” Carried out between 1928 and 1931, the work changed the College not only in physical terms but also by leading it in a short time, especially under President John Stewart Bryan, to reestablish many of its colonial traditions. The College also gained a new national visibility. The actual restoration, as a photograph of the work in progress suggests, required a major effort (Fig. 11, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation). With its completion, the restored building, officially designated as the Sir Christopher Wren Building by the Board ofVisitors in 1931, became the most famous landmark of the College. This view (Fig. 12, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation) shows the west front and highlights distinctive hipped roofs on the main wing, which had been first revealed on the Bodleian Plate.

The Sunken Garden: Centerpiece of the Campus

As the campus continued to expand in the 1930s, the area to the rear of the Wren Building increasingly became a focus of campus activity. As the 1935 “before” photograph of the future Sunken Garden suggests, the new area still needed something to give the campus unity (Fig. 13, College of William and Mary Archives). Completed shortly thereafter, the Sunken Garden proved an inspired solution; from the first it was a center of many campus activities, official and unofficial (Fig. 14, College of William and Mary Archives).

The Post–World War II Campus

Despite a-rapid increase in enrollment after World War II, conditions were not favorable for any systematic expansion of the campus, although, as at many colleges and universities, a number of temporary buildings were erected to help relieve crowding. In the 1940s the campus had perhaps taken on a more “settled” quality, with more finished landscaping and a manicured Sunken Garden, but there had been no significant addition to the campus of the 1930s (Fig. 15, College of William and Mary Archives). During the 1951-60 administration of Alvin D. Chandler, a few buildings were added, but none, apart from the new Phi Beta Kappa Hall, that opened up new areas or changed the basic dimensions of the campus. An aerial photograph from about 1960 (Fig. 16, College of William and Mary Archives) shows, in the area across Jamestown Road, the new Campus Center (1960) with old Taliaferro, now housing the fine arts department, sitting somewhat awkwardly in front of it, and alongside, the newer Taliaferro dormitory. Also visible in the lower right comer is a bit of the roof of Landrum, a dormitory that had opened in 1959. Not visible was the Bryan dormitory complex, built in the 1950s between Cary Field and Old Dominion Hall and Blow Gymnasium, and a new Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall, dedicated in 1957 and located on Jamestown Road a little beyond any of the existing buildings (Fig. 20, following). Old Phi Beta Kappa Hall, renamed Ewell Hall, had been rebuilt without its auditorium after a fire in 1953.

A New Era of Expansion: The 1960s and After

The modest but significant growth of the campus in the last years of the 1950s was the harbinger of a period of more dramatic expansion. Already partly envisioned, it took shape in the 1960s under President Davis Y. Paschall and continues to the present day. It has no counterpart in the earlier history of the College, except perhaps in the building that occurred under J. AC. Chandler. As in that era, when the campus expanded to the land around the future Sunken Garden, the post-1960 construction extended the College into two new, adjacent areas. One, which ran to the south along Jamestown Road where Phi Beta Kappa already stood, became essentially an academic area. Another, primarily providing additional residential, dining, and athletic facilities, lay to the west, beyond Cary Field. In the Paschall administration, from 1960 to 1971, some eleven buildings or residential complexes were completed, including such major buildings as the Earl Gregg Swem Library ( 1966) and William and Mary Hall ( 1971). Three others were brought to completion, and four new projects and two major renovations were completed during the administration of Thomas A Graves from 1971 to 1985. An aerial view of the campus in 1980 (Fig. 17, William and Mary Office of University Communications) does not depict all of the additions that had been made to that date, especially those to the south of Swem Library and adjacent buildings, which appear at the upper left. Yet, this view provides a dramatic contrast with any of the earlier aerial photographs of the campus. The process continued under President Paul Verkuil from 1985 to 1992, and in the tercentenary year, still other building projects were under way or being planned.

The “Greater” Campus

If the campus contiguous to the original colonial campus has shown dramatic growth in the twentieth century, it is also important to remember that William and Mary has also spread to noncontiguous areas. One that is located reasonably nearby is the new law school complex, including the building housing the Marshall-Wythe School of Law and the adjacent National Center for State Courts (Fig. 18, William and Mary Office of University Communications). Since this photograph was taken, new residences for graduate and professional students have also been added. A more distant part of the “greater” campus includes the buildings occupied by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the School of Marine Science at Gloucester Point on the York River opposite Yorktown (Fig. 19, William and Mary Office of University Communications). Located a few miles west of the main campus, the Dillard Complex, a group of residential buildings originally constructed as staff residences for Eastern State Hospital, is another outlying area of the expanded campus.

A Campus Arts Center

No one seems to speak of Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall (Fig. 20, William and Mary Office of University Communications), completed in 1957, which houses the Department of Theatre and Speech and the College theatre; Andrews Hall, added to the west side of Phi Beta Kappa Hall in 1967 to provide space for the Department of Fine Arts; and the Muscarelle Museum of Art (Fig. 21, William and Mary Office of University Communications), completed in 1983 and subsequently enlarged, as a unified art and cultural center for the campus. Yet, informally they do constitute such a complex, lacking only the Department of Music, located across the campus in Ewell Hall.

New Directions

The growth of the College after 1960 made it impossible to retain the coherence and the sense of compactness that had been achieved between the original buildings and those constructed on the old campus before 1960. This circumstance gave a certain physical expression to the fact that William and Mary had become, after all, a far more diverse and complex institution than it had been in the first half of the twentieth century. However, new construction after 1980 did not expand the territorial limits of the developed campus so much as it filled in remaining open spaces. The new University Center, scheduled for completion in the fall of 1993 (Fig. 22, William and Mary Office of University Communications) and located below Cary Field, stands at the meeting point of the old and new campuses. Even though many students were opposed to its location, it may well, as a focus of student activities, provide something of a bridge between the two areas. Also, the University Center, the Muscarelle Museum, and other recent buildings, such as the Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Residences near the law school and the Sarah Ives Gore Child Care Center, an addition to the area aero~ Jamestown Road, introduced new trends in the architectural design of campus buildings.

A Continuing Tradition

For all the growth that marks William and Mary as a modern institution of higher learning, there are few who would not instinctively think first of its colonial buildings, especially the Sir Christopher Wren Building (Fig. 23, William and Mary Office of University Communications) , as the defining feature of the campus. And although the 1773 statue of Lord Botetourt stands today in the Earl Gregg Swem Library rather than in front of the Wren Building, it, too, remains a vital part of that historic tradition (Fig. 24, William and Mary Office of University Communications).