Inside the Wren Building: First Floor

Yesterday, I posted an entry that talked about the Wren Building in College Yard at the College of William and Mary, where I am a graduate student.  Today, I am going to post some pictures that I have taken of the first-floor rooms of the Wren Building.

When the College of William and Mary was chartered in 1693, it actually consisted of three different schools: a classical grammar school (all pre-collegiate coursework), a school of philosophy (the collegiate curriculum), and a divinity school (for Anglican priests).  The grammar school taught the privileged sons of the gentry the important subjects of the day: Latin, Greek, mathematics, penmanship, and the Church of England catechism.  The boys were all in the age range of twelve to fifteen, and were expected to grow up to be leaders in their communities.  The big box in the first photograph is the master's box, and the benches with the desks are for the students.  On the wall above the desks hangs the Jefferson-Fry Map of the Most Inhabited Part of Virginia, from 1751.  In the second picture, you can see one of the smaller boxes where the assistants to the master would have stood (there are two in the room; the other is in the opposite corner).  Over the fireplace hangs Dr. Jon Mitchell's Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, first published in 1755.  This map really does its best to downplay the French territorial claims!  The room is pretty austere, and I imagine that it must have been really chilly there in the wintertime.

During "the good old days" in the colonial period, all the students and the faculty lived and worked within the Wren Building, since that was the entire College.  The Great Hall served as the dining hall as well as the room for large gatherings and lectures.  The General Assembly of Virginia even met in the Great Hall a couple of times in the colonial period.  They met here once while the Capitol building was being built and once after the Capitol building burned down.  In this century, the Great Hall is used for special events, lectures, and recitals.  There are portraits on the walls of lots of people: the founders of the College (King William III and Queen Mary II of England), the College's first president (the Reverend James Blair), and of the three US Presidents who were educated at William and Mary (James Monroe, John Tyler, and Thomas Jefferson).  The portrait hanging over the fireplace is of Queen Anne of England, who was nice enough to provide money for the rebuilding of the College after a fire in 1705.  There is also a bust of Thomas Jefferson in the room that was a gift from the French government in 1949 to the College as a sign of friendship and gratitude after World War II. 

The Wren Building also contains the Chapel.  The Chapel was added to the main building in 1732, and was designed to look like the chapels in other British colleges.  In the colonial period, the College had close ties with the Church of England, and the students attended daily prayer services and other formal gatherings in this room.  After the Revolutionary War, the College became a private institution, and had an informal relationship with the American Episcopalian Church through the 1800's.  William and Mary became a state institution in 1906, and has no official religious affiliation, but the Chapel is used by the campus ministries of many faiths, as well as being used for weddings, memorial services, and honor society inductions for Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest honor society in America, which was founded at the College in 1776.  The organ is from the mid-1700's, and is played frequently for visitors.

There is a piazza on the back of the building, and from there one can look out over the old sections of campus and the Sunken Garden.  When this building was built, the College had about 100 students.  Now the College has around 6000 undergraduates and 2000 graduate students.  On the walls of the piazza are plaques that list important alumni (George Washington was the College Chancellor for ten years) and important firsts of the College (it was the first college to have an elective system of courses and the first college to be a university, both in 1779).  The keyholes on the doors in this building are impressive; they are two inches long!  I took a picture because I was so impressed with the huge brass keys.

Well, that is all for the first floor of the Wren Building.  Maybe tomorrow I will post photographs of the second floor rooms!