Consider the architects who designed the buildings where University of Virginia law students have labored for 200 years:

First, Thomas Jefferson, who designed the Academical Village: The School of Law got its start in Pavilion III on the Lawn, because its professor lived upstairs and taught classes below. The school later moved to Pavilion X.

John Kevan Peebles, who created two new wings for Jefferson’s State Capitol in 1905: He designed Minor Hall for the School of Law in 1911, and headed the committee that built Clark Memorial Hall in 1932.

Hugh Stubbins, famous for his tower at CitiCorp Center in Manhattan: In 1976, he designed the School of Law, the Graduate School of Business Administration, and a master plan for the north grounds.

All are featured in a new book on the history of the School of Law, written by Philip Mills Herrington, who earned his Ph.D. in history at U.Va. and now teaches at James Madison.

In “The Law School at the University of Virginia,” he chronicles its evolution from 1817, through its architectural legacy. It was a school with many homes for many years. “It moved like a pinball around the Lawn,” Herrington says.

But Minor Hall at the turn of the 20th century gave it its first permanent home, followed by Clark Memorial Hall in the 1930s. By 1976, Stubbins was creating the north grounds for the school.

And anyone who’s waited patiently for a few hours on its lawn in anticipation of graduation ceremonies knows that the most successful law school building at U.Va. is Caplin Pavilion, designed by Ayers Saint Gross in 1997. It is a stunner in scale, proportion, and materials, and it unifies Stubbins’ plan while creating a diversion from the less appealing buildings that flank it.

“It recalls Monticello and the Lawn and Clark Hall from the 1930s,” he says. “The 1970s buildings are there but you don’t pay much attention to them because of the design of the central buildings.”

Herrington is a gifted writer and thorough researcher whose fluid prose style takes the reader on a fact-filled, action-packed journey through two centuries of legal and architectural history at Jefferson’s University.

It’s well-worth its Kindle price tag $49.95, or a hardcover at $32.95.

For more, go here.

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