The Lawn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Lawn (called the Academical Village by Thomas Jefferson) is a large, terraced grassy court at the historic center of Jefferson's academic community at the University of Virginia. Its most famous building is The Rotunda, which sits at the north end of the site, opposite Old Cabell Hall. Interspersed and parallel between them are 10 Pavilions, where faculty reside in the upper two floors and teach on the first, as well as 54 Lawn rooms, where carefully selected undergraduates reside in their final year.
There are a total of 206 columns surrounding the Lawn – 16 on The Rotunda, 38 on the Pavilions, 152 on the walkways.
Graduation exercises at the University of Virginia are held on the Lawn every May, and it is considered one of the institution's major traditions.
Being chosen for residence in one of the Lawn rooms is considered prestigious. All undergraduate students who will graduate at the end of their year of residency are eligible to apply to live in one of the 47 rooms open to the general student body. Applications – which vary from year to year, but generally include a résumé, personal statement and responses to several questions – are reviewed by a reading committee and the top vote-getters are offered Lawn residency, with several alternates also given notice of potential residency. Five of the remaining seven rooms are "endowed" by organizations on Grounds: the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society (room 7; founded there on July 14, 1825), Trigon Engineering Society (room 17; founded there on November 3, 1924), Residence Staff (room 26), the Honor Committee (room 37) and the Kappa Sigma fraternity (room 46; founded there on December 10, 1869). These groups have their own selection process for choosing who will live in their Lawn room although the Vice President for Student Affairs renders final approval. The Gus Blagden "Good Guy" room (15) resident is chosen from a host of nominees and does not necessarily belong to any particular group. Residency in the John K. Crispell memorial pre-med room (1) is usually granted to an outstanding pre-med student from among the group of 47 offered regular Lawn residency.
Residence in the pavilions is also desirable. However, only nine of the pavilions have faculty residents, as Pavilion VII is the Colonade Club. The University's Board of Visitors has final approval over which faculty members may live in a pavilion. Pavilion residency is typically offered as a three- or five-year contract with the option to renew. Pavilion residents are expected to interact with their younger "Lawnie" neighbors, as Jefferson intended.
The University has recently begun celebrating winter with the "Lighting of the Lawn". Early each December since 2001, some 22,000 small white lightbulbs are draped around the various buildings of the Lawn and lit up at once with great ceremony, immediately following the reading of a student-composed holiday-themed poem. The lights are turned on each nightfall until the end of the semester, usually about two weeks later. Thousands of students turn out for the opening event.
In the near future, the Lawn will change considerably. The McIntire School of Commerce will move to a newly-renovated Rouss Hall, formerly home of the College's Economics department. At this time, Monroe Hall (current home of the McIntire School) will become part of the College. New Cabell Hall will be torn down, and in its place will be a technology-equipped classroom space that will straddle both sides of Jefferson Park Avenue; the Lawn will extend to the space across and "above" the street – where today there is a faculty parking lot. This South Lawn Project is expected to be completed sometime after 2010.
