the lawn at uva {august 5, 2022}

Last weekend we did a two day, there and back, to Richmond, VA. After seven + hours of driving, we got to the Charlottesville exit, our butts were numb, and we decided to take a quick side trip to the University of Virginia to walk around the campus that Thomas Jefferson designed. The campus is quickly accessed off I-64. We drove past the football stadium, followed a loop around the campus and saw new buildings, nothing that looked like anything that Jefferson designed. Back to the football stadium parking lot, Google UVA campus map, and we found The Lawn's location. Time for a stroll to the original campus.

The Lawn at the University of Virginia is surrounded by residential and academic buildings and gardens. Its focal point is the Rotunda, the most recognizable symbol of the university and designed by Jefferson as the library, not a church as would have been found at the center of most American universities at the time. 

In his design, Jefferson broke the traditional English university quadrangle form that earlier colleges in the colonies had emulated. The open-ended layout of the Lawn was intended to encourage learning, living, dining, and playing all in one place and continues to facilitate Jefferson's vision of a mixed-use campus where students and faculty interact in varied settings on a daily basis. His concept was of a utopian "Academical Village" set apart from the world and focused on the teaching, learning, and cultivation of educated citizens.

Much to my English-major delight, we came across a historical marker noting the site of Edgar Allan Poe's room at UVA. He was one of University of Virginia’s earliest students and was there from February to December 1826, living at West Range, Number 13. A glass door allows visitors to see it furnished as a student room would have been in the early 19th century, and they can press a button to hear a recording about Poe's time here.