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Survey of
Historic Sites and Buildings

	WREN BUILDING Virginia
Location: College of William and Mary, Williamsburg. The College of William and Mary

Ownership and Administration (1961). College of William and Mary, State of Virginia.

Significance. The College of William and Mary was chartered on February 8, 1693, and was the first successful college in Virginia and the second in all the English Colonies. Middle Plantation, later named Williamsburg, was chosen as the site, and the cornerstone was laid in 1695. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the college building was completed in its original form in 1702, when two sides of the proposed quadrangle were finished. Accidentally burned in 1705, the building was subsequently rebuilt and a third side of the quadrangle was completed in 1732. The building was damaged by fire again in 1859 and 1862, with consequent alterations in each reconstruction. When John D. Rockefeller, Jr., undertook its restoration in 1927, only two-thirds of the original wall height remained. Timely discovery of "Bodleian Plate" at Oxford University, depicting several important buildings of 18th-century Williamsburg, permitted an authentic restoration of the Wren Building.

Present Appearance (1961). One of the largest buildings erected in the English Colonies up to that time, the Wren Building, was four stories high (including English basement and attic) and 136 feet long. The mature Renaissance design, clearly identified with the 18th century although constructed partly in the 17th, incorporates a formal symmetry, with the central axis accented by round-arch portal, balcony, sharp-pitched gable, and cupola. Balancing the central axis are uniformly spaced windows and narrow dormers. The north wing, completed at the same time as the front portion, contains the "Great Hall"; the south wing, constructed in 1732, is the chapel. Restoration in 1928 was authentic, with the only alterations being additional stairs and other minor details needed to adapt the building to a continuing academic use. Painstaking research was necessary in order to permit authentic replacement, because the interior woodwork had been destroyed completely by fire. [79]