Bridging the Gap Between Old and New

From vehicles crowding the streets to scaffolding climbing up the walls, the looming presence of construction at the College of William and Mary is impossible to escape. It leaves students frustrated, as the campus they chose for its beauty and historical charm is getting overtaken by building materials. But what is the light at the end of the tunnel? What do they have to look forward to in the coming years?

Currently, the College is in the first of four phases of a 10-year project to renovate or replace 80% of all campus living and dining facilities. Phase one is slated to be completed by the fall of 2025 and has an estimated cost of $234 million. While phase two is still being planned, it is expected that construction will begin at the culmination of phase one. 

Now, let’s do a rapid-fire overview of what you can expect when you step onto campus next fall. West Woods 1 will come with the ability to house 935 students and feed even more. Jamestown East, another residence hall, will be able to house 269 students and will serve as the final side of the triangle in which Lemon Hall and Hardy Hall reside. Regarding academic buildings, ISC is expanding into a fourth wing, which will become home to the computer science, data science, and design/engineering departments. These new additions come alongside renovations to various spaces on campus.

As for why the College decided to renovate, there is no shortage of reasons. For administrators, a major concern is the appeal of housing and dining facilities to prospective students. As stated in the publicly-viewable Housing & Dining Facilities Plan, “Along with enrollment increases, the University is continuing to attract a high-caliber student population, demonstrating the institution’s need to ensure a high-quality student experience to compete with some of the nation’s premier colleges and universities.” 

It’s no secret that many of the facilities are insufficient for students. Most notably, the lack of air conditioning in many freshman dorms causes an uncomfortable environment, especially with Williamsburg’s warmer temperatures in the early fall and late spring. Additionally, there is a large standard deviation in room size. In Barrett Hall and the Bryan Complex, residents can expect an average of 10 square feet per bed while in Tribe Square, the average is closer to 100 square feet. As a result, the College is starting to lose more and more students to off-campus housing. Not only that, but it is at a competitive disadvantage compared to many other schools in the area. The residence halls are not the only source of complaints: In a recent student survey, only 37% reported satisfaction with the dining services.

While there are a variety of other reasons that revolve around student grievances, there is another   reason that I find particularly interesting: the harsh disconnect between Old Campus and New Campus. However, in order to understand what’s changing, we first need to understand the history of the campus.

The College remained small for the first 200 years after its charter in 1693, but in 1906, it received financial support from the Commonwealth of Virginia to expand. Charles Robinson and Charles Gillette developed the first comprehensive plan in the early 1920s that was based on the design of the Chelsea Hospital, a retirement and nursing home founded in 1682 for veterans of the British Army. Buildings were to form a three-sided quadrangle around the Sunken Gardens. They used similar size, scale, and materials as the Wren Building to maintain continuity but also to cement the historic building as the figurehead of campus.

In the 1960s, the campus faced another large shift: It began to spread to the west. With this expansion came designs that rejected traditional references, leaning into Modernist principles instead. From then on, the two areas of campus have been seen as separate entities, and little has been done to reunite them — until now.

A group of architects for the College came together and created a set of design principles upon which the new projects would be based. The goal was to develop a smooth transition between old and new while still maintaining the traditional appearance in the wider Williamsburg community. 

When being designed, each project was given a designation: most traditional, less traditional, traditional/transitional, or transitional. Most traditional refers to the style of the buildings surrounding the Sunken Gardens. They have simple shapes that tend to be squares, rectangles, or barbells. They also have sloped roofs and a symmetrical elevation. A less traditional designation allows for slightly more interpretation, with larger footprints and a wider variety of elements. Traditional/transitional buildings aim to blend traditional and modern. While they are not necessarily 18th- and 19th-century gothic architecture, they feel cohesive. The last designation, transitional, refers to buildings that have highly individual footprints and elements while remaining connected to the rest of campus.

In this phase of projects, Jamestown East will have a traditional/transitional feel. Its footprint will match that of Hardy and Lemon, but its design elements will still have an 18th- and 19th-century feel. Because of its location on Jamestown Road, it will be designed in a way that maintains the College’s traditional presence in the community. West Woods, on the other hand, will be much more transitional as the campus expands to the west and designers can have a greater sense of creative freedom. 

While we have to wait until August to see the final results of phase one, the plans are promising. Though this is only the condensed version of construction plans, there is plenty more information available to anyone who is interested on the website for the Office of the University Architect. 

One large question remains: Will this improvement plan lead to the demolition of Boswell? Students would like to hope so, but only time will tell.