Architects working on renovations at the University of Virginia’s Rotunda, one of the oldest buildings on the Charlottesville campus, have made a startling discovery: a chemistry lab that was constructed in the 1800s and which was boarded up since at least the 1840s.
According to the UVA student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, the lab dates back to founder Thomas Jefferson’s time at the university and it was hidden behind a lower-level wall. It consists of a brick hearth, a complex ventilation system, and several controls designed to manipulate the flow of heat, and is believed to be part of what had been a larger chemistry classroom.
The lab also contained five workspaces where students would have conducted experiments, and Popular Science speculates that the facility was built for the university’s first professor of natural history, John Emmet. Emmet, the website added, also wound up teaching chemistry (along with several other subjects) and went on to publish several papers on the topic.
Most of the lab was thought destroyed in an 1895 fire
Brian Hogg, senior historic preservation planner in the Office of the Architect for the university, called the discovery “ a surprise” and a “very exciting” one at that. “This may be the oldest intact example of early chemical education in this country,” he added in a statement.
While university officials were aware that the lab had existed at one point, based on references to it in correspondence between Jefferson and Emmet, Hogg told the student newspaper that it was believed to have been destroyed in an 1895 fire that severely damaged the original Rotunda. Part of the lab had been found in 1970, and at the time it was thought that nothing else survived.
The hearth was constructed in a semi-circular niche in the northern end of the Lower East Oval Room, UVA said in a statement. A pair of fireboxes, one which burned wood and the other a coal-burning furnace, were used to provide heat while underground tunnels built from brick were used to provide workstations and fireboxes with fresh air. Fumes and smoke were carried away by flues, and the students used portable hearths at workstations cut into stone countertops.
“The hearth is significant as something of the University’s early academic years,” Mark Kutney, an architectural conservator in the university architect’s office, said. “The original arch above the opening will have to be reconstructed, but we hope to present the remainder of the hearth as essentially unrestored, preserving its evidence of use.”
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Image credit: Dan Addison/The Cavalier Daily
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