Wren Building, College of William and Mary

About this property

The Wren Building is a building in the College Yard on the campus of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. First constructed between 1695 and 1700 to host students and courses for William & Mary, it is the oldest college building in the United States. Its original design, often attributed to the English Renaissance architect Sir Christopher Wren, was the largest yet constructed in the Chesapeake Colonies and marked a departure from medieval forms previously found in Colonial Virginia. The building has been partially rebuilt multiple times following damage by fires, a tornado, and battles. The present appearance of the Wren Building is a restoration of its early 18th-century form, completed as part of the Colonial Williamsburg projects. Initial plans for the building conceived the completed form as quadrangle, with construction of the eastern and northern wings completed in 1699. Then known as the College Building, it was constructed by workers that included indentured servants and enslaved persons. A set of orations delivered at the building in 1699 convinced the colony's government to move from Jamestown to Middle Plantation, which was reestablished as the city of Williamsburg. The building hosted the government from 1700 to 1704, when the Capitol was completed. The first building was largely destroyed in a 1705 fire. A second building, utilizing surviving portions of the original structure, was constructed in 1715–1716. The southern chapel wing was completed in 1732, and Thomas Jefferson drafted plans for the unrealized fourth wing to the quadrangle in the 1770s. Following the American Revolution, the building was in a state of disrepair. It was significantly damaged by an 1834 tornado and an 1859 fire, with the third building constructed on the site in an Italianate style. The third building was destroyed in 1862 by a fire started by Union soldiers occupying Williamsburg during the American Civil War. The fourth building was constructed in 1867–1869 from designs by the Virginian engineer Alfred L. Rives. Utilizing funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. and an 18th-century depiction of the second building on the Bodleian Plate, the Perry, Shaw & Hepburn architectural firm designed the structure's restoration as the fifth building, which was completed between 1928 and 1931. The building was formally renamed as the Sir Christopher Wren Building in 1931. Wren's involvement in designing the first Wren Building has been the subject of debate since Hugh Jones attributed it to the architect in 1724. Further renovations were performed on the building in 2001. In 2006, the removal of an altar cross in the chapel resulted in controversy. The building continues to host classes, faculty offices, and services in the chapel. An ongoing renovation of the building, intended for completion before the 2026 United States Semiquincentennial, began in 2025.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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