The Wren Building: What Survives Three Fires

The oldest academic building in continuous use in the United States has burned three times. The first fire came in seventeen oh five, just a few years after the building opened. It was rebuilt. The second fire came in eighteen fifty-nine, gutting the structure and requiring another reconstruction. The third came three years later, in eighteen sixty-two, when Union troops occupied Williamsburg and the building caught again. It was rebuilt a third time.

The Wren Building at the College of William and Mary was constructed between sixteen ninety-five and seventeen hundred, making it the oldest building of higher education still in use in America. Its name is a courtesy attribution: Christopher Wren, the architect of Saint Paul's Cathedral in London, was consulted on the original design, though the extent of his involvement is debated by historians. The building has operated as a classroom and administrative center continuously since its completion, through colonial government, revolution, civil war, and the particular indignities of being occupied by multiple armies.

It educated three men who became president: Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and John Tyler. It educated seventeen governors and, in the early years, served as the seat of the colonial Virginia government when the Capitol at Jamestown burned. The campus around it became the model for the American university quadrangle.

What the building's survival argues is not that colonial Virginia was a stable place, or that institutions are permanent, or that fire can be defeated. It argues something more conditional: that some things get rebuilt because someone decides the effort is worth it. Three times the decision was made again.