Although Americans love disasters, a talk commemorating the destruction of a library is of dubious taste as an academic gathering. As he turned the corner from University Avenue onto Rugby Road he noticed smoke rising from the Rotunda Annex. The best efforts of faculty, students, and fire companies failed to extinguish the blaze, and though students saved some books and the Galt statue of Jefferson, the Rotunda burned until only the outer brick walls remained. Almost exactly to this hour 100 years ago the faculty and some members of the Board of Visitors met to consider the future.
Buildings tell stories as do books.
Buildings, through size, placement, design, style, and function, can be read. Quite clearly the central building of the institution Thomas Jefferson created was the Rotunda. Its principal feature, the dome, representing the cosmos in pagan religion and heaven in Christianity, became in Jefferson's hands a dome of enlightenment, of reason. The Rotunda marked the beginning of American archetype for colleges and universities, the preeminence of the library as the central building and symbol. But Hugo failed to foresee how the library, not just as a container of books but in its very form, became an icon.