Wren Building
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.
Architecture
Site
The Sir Christopher Wren Building also known as the Wren, the College, and Main Building is located in the Old College Yard on the campus of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. The Wren Building sits on the western end of the Old College Yard, which is formed into a triangle narrowing eastward by Jamestown and Richmond Roads, which meet with the western terminus of Duke of Gloucester Street at an intersection known as College Corner. While not perfectly perpendicular with Duke of Gloucester Street, the wide main street of just under long was designed by the politician and city planner Francis Nicholson with the Wren Building as its western terminus, with the now-reconstructed Capitol its eastern terminus.The grass yard is crossed by brick paths and enclosed by early 20th-century brick walls and an interior picket fence. East of the Wren Building are the Brafferton and the President's House flanking south and north respectively. Though the two are similar two-story house-like buildings, the President's House is slightly larger and oriented at right angles with the Wren Building, while the Brafferton is parallel to Duke of Gloucester Street. The arrangement provides the illusion of symmetry and is more similar to Georgian domestic patterns in English country house than traditional English campuses.
Also adjacent to the Wren Building is Lord Botetourt, a bronze replica of an 18th-century statue previously displayed on the site, and Hearth: Memorial to the Enslaved. To the west is William & Mary's Old Campus with its Sunken Garden, largely the work of the early 20th-century architect Charles M. Robinson.
First building
The first building, built between 1695 and 1699, was an incomplete quadrangle comprising an eastern wing with the façade and a northern wing containing a great hall. The eastern wing sat on a basement with relatively high ceilings and rose three full stories and a half-story roof. The façade was thirteen bays wide for a length of. It was deep and may have been of equal height to the cornice. The northern wing projected from the rear to form an ell. Its external dimensions were to a double-square plan at long and wide. The brickwork of the 1695–1699 construction was done in the English bond pattern both above and below the water table. The College Building's sash windows were the first in the colonies.The eastern wing was topped by a two-story tall cupola. The stairs were likely in the middle of the eastern wing, immediately inside from the central entry. Though they would be present on other iterations of the structure, no pavilion was present at this entrance on the first College Building. The grade to this entrance would be raised approximately in later buildings, negating the several steps from the ground to the door. Apartments for students, professors, and servants were installed in the eastern wing, as were classrooms and chambers.
While the medieval pattern at colleges at Oxford and Cambridge had halls and chapels sit back-to-back in a single block, some more recent English collegiate construction featured a separate chapel wing. This new arrangement was adopted for the College Building. Due to the failure to construct the chapel wing, the first building's great hall served chapel functions.
Second building
Preliminary arrangements for the second College Building began in 1709 and it was complete enough for use in 1716. As the second building utilized surviving elements from the first, few changes were made to its design, with some attributed to the Virginia governor that oversaw its construction, Alexander Spotswood. The second building introduced Wren-like Baroque openness towards the growing city of Williamsburg, reorienting the building towards the east and giving up on the planned quadrangle. The brickwork of the second building followed its predecessor in utilizing English bond. A new drainage system was also installed. Perhaps to prevent the spread of fire, the stairs were positioned to the south of the central entry in a partitioned stair-hall. An "Ingine for Quenching Fire" was also requested from England.The most substantial deviations from the original building were in the eastern wing. While the western exterior wall of the eastern wing had survived, the façade's walls were damaged such that they were repaired or rebuilt to the level of the original third story before the roof was installed, giving the building two and a half stories. The asymmetrical heights of the western and eastern walls meant six transverse hip roofs on the taller western side and a single three-sloped hip roof on the eastern side. Spotswood likely influenced the new cupola and pavilion. The cupola's height was reduced to a single story, with a weathervane mounted atop it. The main entrance was then set on the first floor, surrounded by a central two-story pavilion topped with a classically styled pediment. Among the only rooms attested to in contemporary writing was the large Blue Room, which was described as featuring blue paneling akin to that present in the Raleigh Tavern's Apollo Room.
The original chapel, built from 1729 to 1732 as the building's south wing, was completed by the Henry Cary Jr. Its brickwork deviated from the rest of the building by being laid in Flemish bond. The chapel and the great hall share exterior dimensions of wide and long, with both following Palladian form in forming a double cube shape. The round, bullseye windows installed on the western ends of both those wings may have been inspired by those in the Capitol. Little evidence for the original chapel's interior survives, though the height of the wainscot at, the width of the stone-paved central aisle at approximately, and presence of a pulpit are known. This pulpit is thought to have been positioned in front of the communion table on the east–west axis. The congregational seating may have followed the English collegiate pattern of stalls facing inward with backs towards the walls. There was probably a rail for the communion table, typical of nicer late-colonial Virginia parish churches. The 1859 fire damaged the chapel and its contents.
Third building
Designed by the architect Eben Faxon of Baltimore, the third College Building was in use by November 1859. The Virginian Henry Exall had been initially been charged with designing the rebuild, and elements of his plan were adopted by Faxon. It was in an Italianate design that featured two towers on the front.Fourth building
The fourth College Building was constructed between 1867 and 1869 to a design by the Virginia architect Alfred L. Rives. It again utilized surviving portions of the walls. Following what Wilson called a "more sober" design, Rives's College Building removed the Italianate frontispiece in favor of a three-bay pedimented pavilion. The façade's center bay featured an arcaded loggia. A small cupola surmounted the structure.By the 1890s, the chapel's styling were Victorian.