17th and 18th centuries , by Swiss traveler Franz Ludwig Michel, 1702 On February 8, 1693, King
William III of England and Queen
Mary II granted a
royal charter that established the
College of William & Mary in Virginia and made
James Blair the first
president of the college. Blair returned to the
Colony of Virginia in October that year and the
Virginia General Assembly began debating the location of the new college's
campus. The assembly selected
Middle Plantation, a spot roughly equidistant between the
York River and
James River on the
Virginia Peninsula. Middle Plantation lay between two
palisades, with the campus site just west of the second, 1633-authorized fortification which ran from
Queen's Creek to
Archer's Hope Creek (now known as College Creek). The college trustees purchased 330 acres from
Thomas Ballard for £170 and assigned Thomas Hadley to begin developing a portion of the property. Some of the college's early funds were devoted to restoring a degraded Middle Plantation schoolhouse that likely hosted William & Mary's first classes.
Daniel Parke Jr. was given a contract to produce around 800,000 bricks. Construction was stalled by "intrigue", which Blair attributed to Virginia governor and opponent to the college
Edmund Andros. Despite political resistance, the cornerstone of the
College Building, now known as the Wren Building, was laid on August 8, 1695. Blair had contracted Hadley while in England, bringing both plans and construction materials with them to Virginia. Planned as a
quadrangle, only the north and east wings were built. The College Building's construction involved English masons,
indentured servants, and
enslaved persons. The enslaved persons, owned by the contractor, were assigned the hard labor. In 1724,
Hugh Jones wrote that the College Building was "first modeled by
Sir Christopher Wren". Since then, Wren's supposed involvement in the building's design has been the subject of lengthy debate. The College Building was completed in 1697. It thought to have originally been three stories tall and topped with a two-story
cupola. Swiss traveler Franz Ludwig Michel executed the earliest known surviving depiction of the College Building in 1702. Opposition to Andros in England led to him being recalled and replaced by
Francis Nicholson as
colonial governor in 1698. After the statehouse in
Jamestown burned in October 1698, both Nicholson and Blair supported moving the capital from the Jamestown to Middle Plantation. A series of orations were given at the college on
May Day 1699 before a crowd which included government officials. One of these orations, possibly sponsored by Nicholson, persuaded those assembled to move the capital to the college's community. The move was passed by assembly in June and Middle Plantation was reestablished as a city named
Williamsburg. Nicholson planned the city like he had at
Annapolis, Maryland, and extended a nearly mile-long street named for the
Duke of Gloucester from the College Building on its western terminus to the new
Capitol (constructed 1701–1705). The college's Board of Visitors offered the College Building as a host for all branches of Virginia's government until the Capitol was completed. This offer was accepted and the College Building served as a statehouse from October 1700 until April 1704. During the night of October 29–30, 1705, the College Building burned. The library and furnishings were destroyed, as were scientific instruments donated by
John Locke. Queen
Anne donated £500, which was enough to clear the burnt remains of the building, and John Tullitt purchased the lumber rights to the college's properties for £2000. Additional funds being required, the Queen donated another £500 in 1710. Governor
Alexander Spotswood, knowledgeable about architecture, sponsored the reconstruction. The College Building rebuilding was completed in 1715 to a design credited to Spotswood. The 1715 rebuild was two and a half-stories tall and featured a possibly shorter cupola. The
Bodleian Plate depicts this iteration of the structure with three stories of full masonry and a
loggia. , a
copperplate engraving dated to . Left to right:
Brafferton, College Building, and
President's House The
Brafferton was built in 1723 south of the College Building to support the college's
Indian school. It was renovated in 1734 to accommodate
dormers, provide for a library on the second floor, and add living space to the third floor.
Henry Cary Jr. designed the
President's House, which was built to the College Building's north in 1732–1733. The College Building's chapel and south wing were completed in 1732. By the early 18th century, the College Yard containing these structures was walled, as depicted on the Bodleian Plate. A garden that may have been designed by James Road, the gardener at
Hampton Court Palace, remained into the 1770s. With only occasional repairs, the College Building remained roughly unchanged until the
American Revolutionary War. In 1772,
Thomas Jefferson drew a plan to expand the building and make it a complete quadrangle; pre-Revolution events stalled this project before much work was done. During the 1781
Yorktown campaign of the war, British general
Charles Cornwallis occupied the President's House in June. From that fall until summer the next year, the College Building was used as a hospital by
French troops. The President's House was a hospital for French officers from October to December 1781, when it was accidentally burned; the French government paid to rebuild it. Jefferson, who had graduated from William & Mary, referred to the college as "rude, misshapen pile" reminiscent of a brick kiln in his 1787
Notes on the State of Virginia. When planning construction for the
University of Virginia, Jefferson considered risks such as fire and disease in having all a university's functions within a single building, as was the case at William & Mary. Instead, he would support a plan for an "Academical Village" comprising a complex arranged "around an open square of grass and trees".
19th century towers A tornado damaged the Brafferton in 1834; it was heavily renovated in 1849. The College Building burned again in 1859, destroying marble tablets in the chapel, the library, and scientific equipment. It was rebuilt and opened to students by October that year. The reconstruction was to a new
Italianate design by Henry Exall and Eban Faxon. This short-lived design sported two three-story towers and enclosed the loggia. The
American Civil War saw the campus host troops from both the
Confederacy (which the college supported) and the
Union. As Confederates arrived in the city, the College Building was used as a barracks. The night prior to the
Battle of Williamsburg, a Confederate brigade was posted behind the College Building. On the day of the battle–May 5, 1862–Confederate troops were held in reserve on the campus; rear guard commander General
James Longstreet utilized the campus for his headquarters during the battle. Immediately following the battle, the campus served as hospitals for the wounded. The college and Williamsburg came under Union occupation following the battle, with
pickets just beyond the campus. Until 1864, the city and campus were on the
de facto border between the Confederacy and Union. A Confederate cavalry raid briefly seized the town from the Union on September 9, 1862, but soon withdrew. In retaliation, troops from the Union's
5th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment burned the College Building that afternoon. Another Confederate raid fought Union pickets on the campus in 1863. Defensive trenches were dug along the campus, with windows and entrances facing the Confederate lines bricked up. The Brafferton housed Union officers during the occupation. Following the war's conclusion, the President's House was used by Union soldiers stationed there to oversee
Reconstruction. An addition was made to the President's House in 1865 to house professors while awaiting the College Building's reconstruction. Rebuilt between 1867 and 1869, the College Building's walls had survived the previous fires which allowed their reuse in this "more sober" rebuilding that featured a wider center pavilion, no towers, and a small cupola.
Alfred L. Rives's design removed the Italianate
frontispiece in favor of a three-bay pedimented pavilion. The façade's center bay featured an
arcaded loggia. The college purchased ten acres on the former site of the Governor's Palace in 1870, building a brick schoolhouse on the site using funds from Mary Whaley, who wished to commemorate her late son Mattey. From 1882 until 1888, college operations were suspended. College president
Benjamin Stoddert Ewell rang the College Building's bell through these "silent years", an act that according to tradition "maintained the royal charter and kept the college alive". William & Mary reopened in 1888, by which point the Brafferton had suffered substantial damage from sitting empty. The Wren Chapel's styling became
Victorian by the 1890s.
20th century , In the early 20th century, president
Lyon Gardiner Tyler initiated a campaign to develop and expand the college's campus; in 1906, William & Mary had become a
public university of the
Commonwealth of Virginia. The subsequent growth required substantial fundraising, exemplified by Tyler financing the construction of a new library (built 1908–1909, now
Tucker Hall) by raising $20,000 () to attain a matching
Carnegie Foundation donation. Tyler also oversaw the construction of a greenhouse (built 1909) near the College Building and the Tyler Hall dormitory (built 1916, now the Reves Center) on the corner of Jamestown Road and Boundary Street. In 1903,
Episcopal priest
W. A. R. Goodwin accepted his assignment to
Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg on the condition that he would be able to restore the church to its colonial appearance. This restoration began in 1905, but Goodwin hoped that a similar program could be adopted throughout the city as a means to teach visitors about the 18th century and to rekindle their
Americanism. After returning to Williamsburg from a rectorate in
Rochester, New York, in 1923, Goodwin–also a professor of biblical literature and religious education at the college–set about seeking a financial backer for his vision of a restored Williamsburg. He met wealthy philanthropist
John D. Rockefeller Jr. at a
Phi Beta Kappa dinner in New York City in 1924 (Phi Beta Kappa had been founded at William & Mary). Goodwin asked Rockefeller to support the construction of the college's Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall (now
Ewell Hall). At the dedication for the for Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall in 1926, Goodwin pressed Rockefeller to consider a city-wide restoration. After further deliberation and planning, Rockefeller hired architects
Perry, Shaw & Hepburn to plan a restoration spanning the length of Duke of Gloucester Street. Claiming to be purchasing property on behalf of William & Mary so the college could preserve historic sites in Williamsburg and without revealing Rockefeller's involvement, Goodwin acquired large portions of the city for the planned
Colonial Williamsburg. Rockefeller had originally considered giving the restored Williamsburg to the college, but his concerns that Colonial Williamsburg could suffer from future political pressures precluded him from transferring the project to a public institution. The cooperation of the college with the Colonial Williamsburg restoration proved integral in successfully displaying the city in a more accurate 18th-century context. The Colonial Williamsburg restorations of the three main College Yard buildings–all designed by Perry, Shaw & Hepburn–began in 1928 with the College Building. For both the College Building and Brafferton, the restoration involved stripping the structures to little more than their brick exteriors and installing steel reinforcements. The College Building was renamed the Wren Building in 1931. The Citizenship Building, a former gymnasium located between the Wren Building and the 1926-opened Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall, was torn down after the Wren Building's restorations were completed. The Mattey School, which was jointly owned by the college and the Williamsburg school system and had been operated by the college as a training school for teachers from 1894, was sold to the Colonial Williamsburg in 1929. As part of the arrangement, the college and Williamsburg would jointly own the new
Matthew Whaley School (built 1930) at the intersection of Scotland Street and Nassau Street and continue using it to train teachers. (pictured in 1896) created a
master plan for the college's campus. College president
J. A. C. Chandler oversaw the expansion of the campus's facilities after the college went
coeducational in 1918. From July 1919, Chandler sought to purchase land from the adjacent
Bright Farm to the campus's west. Of the farm's 284 acres, 274 acres were purchased by the college in 1923, with the rest of the acreage and the farm's house acquired later.
Charles M. Robinson, an architect with a background in designing schools elsewhere in the commonwealth, and his firm designed Jefferson Hall (built 1920–1924), the first purpose-build dormitory for women. They also designed Monroe Hall (opened 1920). In 1925, Chandler contracted Robinson to produce a
master plan for the campus; the plan was followed for 25 years. Robinson designed the
Sunken Garden around which he placed Old Campus's
Colonial Revival halls, including Blair, Rogers (now Chancellors), and Washington Halls. With his junior partner John Binford Walford, Robinson further designed additional Old Campus halls, all built between 1925 and 1930. Robinson died in 1932 and was succeeded by Walford. Walford and D. Pendleton Wright designed the conservative but still modern
Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall (built 1956) on New Campus, beginning a new, modern architectural period at the college. In 1938–1939, architects
Eero Saarinen,
Ralph Rapson, and
Frederic James won a competition to design the
American National Theater and Academy's new National Festival Theater.
Modernist in design–without precedent at on the college's campus–the complex would have ringed the ravine now named Crim Dell but went unbuilt. Eleven lodges capable of housing seven students each were built on the campus in 1947–1948. Between Old and New Campus, they were used by fraternities and popular as housing with upperclassmen. Lodges 1, 3, and 5 were demolished for the construction of what is now the Sadler Center in 1994. Campus Center opened opposite of main campus on Jamestown Road in 1960. While built with facilities for campus publications and the
WCWM radio station, it had become overcrowded by 1980. In 1983, the nearby former dining area of Trinkle Hall was renovated as office space and connected to Campus Center. The 1970s saw college president
Thomas Ashley Graves Jr. expand upon socially liberal dormitory policies, improve campus housing, and establish student-interest housing. The construction of the large concrete exterior of William & Mary Hall began in 1969. Replacing
Blow Hall as the main athletic facility, William & Mary Hall hosted its first game in December 1970 and was dedicated in 1971. The arena area was renamed to Kaplan Arena in 2005; the remainder of the building adopted that name in 2016. William & Mary affiliated with the Richmond School of Social Work and Public Health, later renamed the
Richmond Professional Institute, in 1925. The core campus of
Virginia Commonwealth University, the institute's independent successor, comprises property purchased by Chandler and the
Richmond division's director, H. H. Hibbs, between 1925 and 1929. The popularity of the college's
extension classes in
Norfolk led to the opening of a campus there in September 1930. This division became independent in 1962 as
Old Dominion University. The General Assembly approved
The Colleges of William & Mary in 1960 as a reorganization of William & Mary and its affiliates in Richmond and Norfolk. It also added campuses at
Petersburg, which became
Richard Bland College, and
Newport News, which became
Christopher Newport University. The Colleges of William & Mary
university system was disestablished in 1962. All but the Richard Bland College campus would become independent institutions. The Virginia Marine Laboratory was established in
Yorktown in the 1940s before moving to
Gloucester Point. William & Mary, the University of Virginia, and
Virginia Tech all offered degree programs at the laboratory; the latter two university's programs were discontinued in the 1970s. The Gloucester Point became part of William & Mary as the
Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) in 1979. Governor
Linwood Holton pressed the college to convince the
National Center for State Courts (NCSC) to relocate to William & Mary in the 1970s. While the effort succeeded, the
American Bar Association threatened to withdraw its accreditation of the
William & Mary Law School if the college's facilities–particularly its library–were not improved. The law school's dean,
William Spong Jr., secured a site had a mile away from the main campus and adjacent to the new NCSC location. The law school's new location–boasting a library, academic facilities, and
moot court space–was dedicated in 1980.
21st century , opened in 2009 An expansion and renovation of Swem Library, which included the installation of an 800-pound
Honduran mahogany window bearing the library's logo, ended in February 2005. Preston Hall, which housed the Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic residence houses, burned down on the afternoon of May 3, 2005, with no injuries. In 2006, large residence halls were built on part of the Barksdale Fields in a style similar to other older dormitories along Landrum Drive. A recreational center addition was also completed in 2006. The
Jimmye Laycock Football Center, containing facilities for the
football team, was under construction in 2007. In August 2009, the Integrated Science Center (ISC) opened for classes. The 2008 portion was the first part of an originally three-part renovation to construct the ISC along Landrum Drive; construction on ISC IV, inspired by the 1920s buildings along the Sunken Garden, began in 2023.
Alan B. Miller Hall was constructed for the
Mason School of Business and designed by
Robert A.M. Stern Architects, opening to students in August 2009 after two years of construction. Miller Hall, which borders the College Woods to its west, received
LEED certification in 2010. In 2010, the
School of Education moved from Jones Hall to a newly constructed building on the former site of the Williamsburg Community Hospital along Monticello Avenue. The remaining 1940s lodges, with the exception of one housing a cafe, were torn down in 2016 to allow the construction of the McLeod Tyler Wellness Center. (under partial demolition, left) and the Integrated Science Center, September 2019 In 2020, Trinkle Hall, named for Virginia governor and
Jim Crow law-backer
Elbert Lee Trinkle, on the Williamsburg campus was renamed to Unity Hall and Maury Hall, named for
Confederate States Navy admiral
Matthew Fontaine Maury, on the Gloucester Point campus was renamed to York River Hall. In April 2021, the college renamed a number of buildings, locations, and departments that had been named for racists
in the wake of the George Floyd protests. Among name changes were Morton Hall renamed Boswell Hall, Taliaferro Hall became Willis Sr. Hall, and Tyler Hall reverted to Chancellors Hall. Despite recommendation from the working group, Benjamin Stoddert Ewell's name was retained on Ewell Hall. Demolition on the 1950s Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall began in 2019 but was stalled by funding limitations. The renovated PBK Hall and a new music building, comprising the Fine and Performing Arts Complex, opened in 2023. The renovated PBK Hall
proscenium theater and lab theater seat 492 and 100 respectively, while the new studio theatre and dance recital theater seat 250 and 60 respectively. The new music building includes a 450-seat concert hall and 125-seat recital hall. ==Williamsburg campus==