The Hampden-Sydney that Never Was
by: Yonathan Tarekegne ‘13Dr. McClintock describes early-1900s plans for the campus that never got off the ground
The Plans, Dreams, Aspirations, and Downright Follies
For a first-time visitor to the beautiful Hampden-Sydney campus, navigating around can be a challenging task. The placement of the scattered academic and office buildings is hard to understand; the confusing cement trails webbing around campus successfully lead you astray. Maybe I am a slow learner, but had it not been for those handy campus maps all over the dining hall, my first couple of weeks could have been disastrous. That leads to my curious question: what were the architects thinking?
To answer that question, one only needs to pay the college museum a visit. Currently on display at the Atkinson Museum are plans, models, and documents tracing what the college campus could have been. Dr. Richard McClintock, Director of Publications, gave a gallery talk on the 19th of January. Several days before the event, I sat down with Dr. McClintock for a short interview.
“It was commissioned in 1919 for about 1 million dollars,” he starts, referring to the Visscher and Burley campus design for the college. “That was a lot of money back then,” he quickly adds, probably in response to the unimpressed look on my face. The very symmetrical—almost militaristic—design featured dormitories, several departmental buildings, a laundry, an ice plant, a church, and an infirmary. It was a huge upgrade considering that prior to 1919 the Hampden-Sydney campus was roughly three major buildings—Venable Hall, Graham Hall, and Cushing. In the end, the construction plan didn’t come to be for several reasons including the market crash that occurred in the late 1920s.
The 1919 Theodore Visscher & James Burley General Plan of HSC
“How then did the Campus come to be?”
“Well, there were a lot of spurts. For example, from 1858-60 College Church and Hampden-House were built. In 1890 McIlwaine was built shortly followed by Bagby in 1922 and the Bell Tower, Cable House, and the Atkinson Museum in 1930. The modern growth spurts began with Johns Auditorium in 1950. The old library, Gilmer, and White House followed in the 60s. Kirby, several new dorms, and the Blakes were built in the 70s.” The new Bortz Library, finished in 2007, was the last of the major constructions.”
Looking around his office, I see stacks of old documents, maps, plans, and posters. I ask him to tell me about the process of putting such a gallery together.
“It was a personal project,” he assures me. “I like collecting things. I looked around one day and saw all the things that could have happened. In my mind, I have been working on this project for 10 years. It took a lot of research and organizing what I had and what needed to be blown up, enlarged, labeled, and hung. The hardcore part was the 4 or 5 months of putting it all together.”
The gallery featured a lot of interesting and ambitious plans for the school. For example, on display there is a 1973 plan for a giant Athletic Convocation Center, which was to serve as a sports arena during the school year and a venue of conventions during the summer—ambitious, indeed. Had it not been for the careful decisions made every step of the building process, our campus could have turned out quite different. In fact, our friends in Ashland would not have been the only ones forced to bear the burden of having a railroad cutting through the heart of campus. That is right: there was an actual plan to build a railroad called The Orange & Keysville Railroad that would have ran parallel to college road. Sure, it is not surprising considering the growing market for railroads at the turn of the 20th century. But think about it: a train running through campus–talk about a downright folly.
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