From the Editor: The Art and the Craft, Brick by Brick

Amid the dust and disruption at the corner of Emmet and Ivy, workers recently wrapped the future home of the School of Data Science in a single layer of brick. They flew, by one estimate completing 20-foot sections every five or 10 minutes. Attempt that speed across the way, on Central Grounds, and the single-layer brick walls will bite you like a serpent.

Famously more stable than if built along a straight line, the four-inch-wide Serpentine Walls behind the Lawn pavilions still lack the sturdiness of a conventional double-thick garden wall. Sections topple. They weather faster, single thickness exposing two sides of each brick and its mortar to the elements. As underlying roots win the ground war, student climbers seek the upper hand.

When the walls tumble, it falls to specially trained brick masons to fix them. What sets these tradespeople apart from modern masons isn’t hand skill—the technique at Emmet and Ivy is largely the same—it’s temperament. “Being more patient” is how Assistant Director for Trades Wayne Mays explains the approach, as much deconstruction as construction, understanding how something was built. He knows from 40 years’ experience, including work on Monticello and Poplar Forest. “I’ve probably touched more brick of Jefferson’s structures than … anybody living today,” he says.

Matt Proffitt, who has spent 20 of his 32 years in the trade, has learned you can only repair a hurting Serpentine 4 feet at a time. He uses levels to plot a curve with a series of plumb lines. “It’s a lot of eye work too, for sure,” he says. “Definitely a very artsy trade.”

Proffitt supervises UVA’s five restoration brick masons within Facilities Management’s 110-person-plus in-house construction firm. We’re likely the only college or university in the country that has one. Mark Stanis, who oversees it, can explain the economies and does so around the country at seminars.

Project leader and architectural historian Sarita Herman (Arch class of ’10) makes a larger point: “There really is not another university that compares to us,” she says, the country’s only one selected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. “Even if universities have a handful of buildings that are equally historic, they don’t have an entire campus designed by a U.S. president.”

This issue of Virginia Magazine takes you on an updated tour of the beauty of Grounds, including a more-than-200-year arc of architecture, from before the Serpentine Walls to beyond the School of Data Science. Masonry artisans helped build just about all of it. You can see their story and ours in the very bricks—including, we should acknowledge, one behind 26 East Lawn that bears the finger marks of the enslaved child believed to have made it.

Richard Gard (Col class of ’81)
Vice President, Communications, UVA Alumni Association