The University Library in the reconstructed Rotunda
Photograph of the University Library in the reconstructed Rotunda dome room, ca. 1930-1938 U.Va. Visual History Collection

Stanford White designed a two-story space underneath the dome, justifying this departure from the original Jefferson interior with the argument that it was more practical and more like the Pantheon upon which Jefferson had based the original building. White believed that he was both respecting Jefferson’s design for the Rotunda and improving upon it. He claimed that Jefferson “was forced at the time the Rotunda was designed, for utilitarian reasons, to divide it into two floors, with great loss to the singleness, dignity, and proportions of the interior” and that Jefferson would have come to the same solution as White “had he been able to do so when the Rotunda was built…[and] still more could he have directed the restoration.”

 

The University Library in the Rotunda dome room prior to the fire
Photograph of the University Library in the Rotunda dome room prior to the fire, pre-1895 Edwin M. Betts Memorial Collection of University of Virginia Prints (MSS 7073)
Rotunda Library shelving schedule
Rotunda Library shelving schedule, 1897 Green’s Patent Bookstack and Shelving Blueprint, 21 x 29 ½ in. University Archives (RG-31/1/2:2.872)
Details of the Rotunda reading room
Details of the Rotunda reading room, 1896 McKim, Mead & White, architects; signed by Haase, draftsman Blueprint, 28 x 31 ½ in. University Archives (RG-31/1/2:2.872)
White’s dramatic and elaborately decorated reading room featured two mezzanine levels of stacks with cast-iron balconies stretched between a ring of twenty twenty-four-foot Corinthian columns. A frieze with the names of famous authors circled the building’s perimeter.

III-12

Balustrade railing from the interior of the Rotunda, 1898

Iron

On loan from the Office of the Architect for the University of Virginia


Plan of the ceiling light of the Rotunda dome
Plan of the ceiling light of the Rotunda dome, 1896 McKim, Mead & White, architects; signed by Haase, draftsman Blueprint, 16 ½ x 14 in. University Archives (RG-31/1/2:2.872)
For the interior of the dome, White specified a design of eagles, stars, and rays, referencing the ceiling of the entrance hall at Monticello.
The interior of the Rotunda dome
Photograph of the interior of the Rotunda dome, ca. 1940 A. L. Hench, photographer U.Va. Visual History Collection

 

III-16

Stars from the Rotunda dome ceiling, 1898

Plaster

On loan from the Office of the Architect for the University of Virginia