April 2018 – Jarrett House North

The Old Cabell Hall skylight

Old Cabell Hall ceiling and skylight, 1994 (University of Virginia)

I read with interest a UVA Today article about Andrew Ashcraft, a fourth year architecture student who has had the privilege of exploring attics and other hidden spaces at the University as an intern in the Historic Preservation team. Having been an inveterate explorer of the University’s nooks and crannies myself (with a particular fascination for Old Cabell Hall and the roof of Clark Hall), I envy Ashcraft his job. However, one paragraph caught my attention:

“His favorite view so far has been from the attic of Old Cabell Hall, where he could look down through an ornate false skylight into the building’s grand two-tiered theater.”

It may be a “false skylight” today, but it certainly didn’t start out that way. The evidence, as always, is the University’s collection of the photographs of Rufus Holsinger. In a collection of views of the Grounds dating to 1914 we get the photo below, showing the view of the stage but also the ceiling above:

Old Cabell Hall stage, 1914, Rufus Holsinger (UVA Library Special Collections)

That sure looks like a working skylight to me! The Library’s online exhibit on the work of McKim, Meade, and White (the designers of Old Cabell Hall) indicates that the skylight was eventually enclosed “to accommodate modern lighting equipment,” and from the stage you can see the lighting in the space that would originally have let natural sunlight in.

The University has a small tradition of enclosing skylights, apparently, or at least doubling them up. As an undergrad I learned from some of my older neighbors how to enter Clark Hall (originally the home of the Law School) at night and climb up to the dusty hidden room enclosed by the outer skylights and the inner skylights of the building. Yes, there are two layers of skylight. I haven’t been able to determine if this was the original design or a concession to weatherproofing. (You can see a hint of the double-layered design in this photo.)

Wohl denen, die in deinem Hause wohnen, die loben dich immerdar

Boston Globe: John Oliver, founder of Tanglewood Festival Chorus, dies at 78. I wrote an appreciation of John on his retirement some years ago, which still expresses most of how I feel about him.

And yet, there’s one important part of what he taught me that my essay didn’t include, which is apparent only in retrospect. Which is this: drilling and refining details of musical performance is important, but so is singing that is fully committed to the purpose and mystery of the music. Full musical commitment cannot be taught, only shown. I’m grateful for all he showed me in my ten years singing with him, and for how I feel I’ve continued to learn after.

Shaker Glen

Yesterday morning, I happened to take a different route to work and noticed a sign along the road (courtesy, it turns out, of Lexington’s Eagle Scouts) for Shaker Glen. This wasn’t just a fanciful developer’s name for the subdivision that’s there; it turns out there was, briefly, a significant Shaker presence in the Lexington area.

First, the subdivision. Peacock Farm was a postwar modernist subdivision, designed by Walter Pierce, that’s literally right down the road from my house. It turns out that the developers of Peacock Farm, Edward Green and Harmon White, replicated the Peacock Farm design in a couple other areas around Lexington, including at Shaker Glen. But why did it get that name?

Seems the area came by the name honestly. From the Lexington historic survey site:

The name Shaker Glen refers to part of the hemlock-lined glen which extends into neighboring Woburn. In the late 1700s Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers, settled temporarily at the Kendall Farm in Woburn, which included part of the glen. Nathan and Sarah Kendall were converted to the Shaker faith in 1781. But local residents were suspicious of the Shakers and the Kendalls sold the farm and left Woburn while Mother Ann Lee went on to establish a utopian religious community in Harvard, Massachusetts in 1791.

So not only is Shaker Glen named for a real Shaker settlement, it’s named because the founder of the Shaker faith lived there. Who says history is boring?

Virginius Dabney on mint juleps

Yesterday was Easter, which around our house means that the food is a little more Southern than usual. In addition to ham and deviled eggs, I made a pimento cheese spread for the first time, an experiment I’ll be repeating. And the best beverage with all of the above is, of course, the mint julep.

But what is a mint julep? Turns out there’s a fair amount of confusion, stemming from the original recipe using brandy. The version we know and love is really the Kentucky mint julep; others used to exist, including the Maryland version (rye) and the Georgia version (peach brandy). Such heterodoxy, however, be damned: we seek the One True Mint Julep, and fortunately Virginia historian Virginius Dabney (author of the second history of the University of Virginia) has our back. In a 1946 letter to Life Magazine, he wrote: