First Drafts
Architectural Designs Not Selected for UVA Law
What should a law school look like?
The University of Virginia School of Law began in a single Lawn classroom. Over the next 200 years, the Law School rethought, redesigned, and rebuilt its physical spaces to meet the changing demands of legal education.
Many building proposals never made it past the drawing board. This exhibition examines those preliminary designs, revealing how successive generations tinkered with architectural solutions to the challenges of growth, new teaching methods, and law’s evolving place in the academy. First Drafts recovers the Law School that might have been and the decisions that shaped what was ultimately constructed.
Audio guide
This exhibition includes a narrated audio guide, created for low- and no-vision visitors and available to everyone. Each stop page carries its narration; the two tracks below introduce the exhibition. The guide is also available as a playlist on SoundCloud.
Audio guide — Welcome (visiting in person) (0:17)
Audio guide — Introduction (1:16)
Proposal for new law building at the University of Virginia by the UVA Architectural Commission, 1930, UVA Law Library.
Image description
A watercolor rendering of a long, colonnaded law building of red brick and white trim, seen from the front amid mature trees under a bright sky. A lettered border beneath the image reads “Proposed New Law Building for the University of Virginia — Architectural Commission, Architects.”
Explore the exhibition
The Rediscovered Drawings
The two Architectural Commission drawings at the center of this exhibition were presumed lost for decades — until a chance discovery in a Clark Hall closet brought them to Law Special Collections. Historian Philip Mills Herrington, author of the definitive architectural history of the Law School, discusses the drawings, the scheme behind them, and what it was like to finally see them.
About this exhibition
First Drafts is on view on the second floor of the Arthur J. Morris Law Library beginning September 2026, marking the 200th anniversary of the start of classroom instruction at the UVA School of Law. This online exhibition presents the full text of the physical installation, with deep-zoom images of every drawing and written descriptions of each image.
Exhibit team: Dan Cavanaugh, Randi Flaherty, Philip Herrington, Jane McBrian, Loren Moulds, Addie Patrick, Izzie Wilcox.