The moment flies straight from the annals of science fiction - you're sitting on the Lawn, basking in the sunlight that March is beginning to provide. Norton's Anthology is open before you, your eyes are closing and you hear a "moo." The moo is shrill, and the sound is originating from the direction of the Rotunda. You look, and yes, the sound associations from pre-school are dead-on. There is indeed a cow on the rounded dome of Jefferson's Rotunda.
Sounds a little strange to Wahoos at the University today, but in 1887, it seriously took students seven hours to remove a cow from the roof of the Rotunda. No one ever quite figured out how the bovine found itself lowing in such a picturesque spot, but the cow undeniably managed to secure a niche in the University's history.
This odd tale is great to inspire any late night plan hatching, but it's only one of the many quirky stories in Coy Barefoot's new book, "The Corner: A History of Student Life at the University of Virginia." Barefoot's collection, which includes archive photos, historical accounts and firsthand memories, is the perfect tribute to a university with such a tremendous amount of history.
As a graduate student at the University and a former bartender at The Virginian, Coy Barefoot has a personal stake in the retelling of these historical moments. While the modern Corner was already well entrenched in his consciousness, an image of its former days literally walked into his bar. Late one night in 1994, a University alumnus of the 1920s took a seat at the bar and began to quietly relate his own fondest memories of the social district. Listening to the elderly man talk, Barefoot eagerly scribbled down notes on a bar napkin - and "The Corner" began to take shape.
Barefoot's collection is, first of all, an homage to the classic University student. Every part of this book rings a tone of sincere affection - whether readers are laughing or looking more than a little shocked at the historical facts, there consistently remains a firm loyalty and love of the University in the book.
Who knew that the earliest known photograph of the Lawn reveals turnstile gates and stonewalls built to prohibit the grazing of livestock? Is it beyond belief that an on-Grounds hill (now the site of Clemons and Alderman) once contained "passion-pits," old ice chambers used for out-of-the-way coupling? Can students today imagine having dances in Fayerweather Hall - if they even know where this is) - being allowed to dance "the hop," but only after midnight? Does it amaze anyone to realize that Fashion Square used to be the largest mall in a 12-county area? Have any of us ever called U-Hall "the pregnant clam?"
These anecdotes are indeed almost ridiculous, but Barefoot also captures the historical importance of the University. Far from amusing, these moments often are intensely profound, even silencing.
Many are aware of the great fire in 1895 - of the power surge from an electric cable car igniting rafters within the attic of the Rotunda Annex. Well known stories include Professor Echols' attempt to halt the spread of fire with dynamite (itself a new invention), students efforts to save Jefferson's books by throwing them from the library windows into the open skirts of women and the falling in of the Rotunda's dome. The photographs included here, however, are almost painful to a true lover of the University. With everyone on the Lawn dressed in their Sunday best (black), the pictures take on a funereal toned that is almost too appropriate.
As the collection continues and spreads far beyond any typical historical knowledge, however, all of the stories quickly become deeply relevant. After June 9, 1862, wounded Confederate soldiers were swiftly brought to hospital tents erected on the Lawn. Throughout the Civil War, University officials staunchly refused to close the school. In 1940, in a broadcast graduation speech within a crowded University gymnasium, Franklin Roosevelt made public a U.S. commitment to involvement in World War II.
Barefoot calls on the pride of anyone remotely related to the University to tell its story. Charlottesville, the Corner, and the school itself have maintained a role within several of the nation's largest historical memories. And while none of us have "taken off from the Lawn landing strip in our 1982 maroon convertible rockets," as one 1946 reporter predicted, the times have completely changed. The pride has not.
Barefoot's new collection should somehow find its way into the hearts of many University students, professors and alumni. For, after all, the Corner has worked its wiles on us all. To University lovers, it is there that one, to quote the "Song of the Corner" of 1915, "will find not the pallor of life / But the passion, the pain and the heat"
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