Drillfield land grant walking tour

#1 Olin-Preston Institute & Lane Hall

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:10:36 -0400

Lane Hall, known initially as Barracks #1, was completed in 1888, 16 years after VAMC opened its doors. It is the oldest existing building constructed by the college that became Virginia Tech.

#2 YMCA

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:16:46 -0400

The first of the so-called "Stone Group," the YMCA building was constructed in 1888-89. In contrast to the brick and wood buildings that had been erected on the campus, including the original Preston and Olin Building and Solitude, the Y building was one of only a few of the buildings that survived the early days of the institute. Most either burned or were razed for new facilities. A later series of new buildings were erected and many still remain. The YMCA building is still used today, although it no longer serves the YMCA.

#3 McBryde Hall & Mechanical Arts

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:20:04 -0400

The precursor to the incredible engineering school now in place at Virginia Tech all started with mechanical arts. Old McBryde Hall was the location of much of the modern facilities used to start the engineering program. At the time Virginia Tech was called the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (VAMC). (The 1st McBryde Hall was completed in 1917. The college’s name at the time was Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute, known popularly as Virginia Polytechnic Institute, or VPI. By then, engineering (mechanical arts) had been taught at the college for 45 years. In function, McBryde replaced the Preston and Olin Building, which had burned.

#4 Faculty Row

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:22:22 -0400

Imagine a line of very finely built spacious homes located to the northwest of the Drillfield where a number of the newer academic buildings are located today. Faculty Row was a beautiful community where faculty lived close to their work. You could literally step out of your home in those days and into a classroom or experimental plot in the experiment station buildings to the south and west.

#5 The Bug House

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:24:07 -0400

The original agricultural experiment station building was built in 1888-89. It housed the agricultural experiment station from 1890 to 1907 and was dubbed the “Bug House” by cadets. It was later known as Horticultural Hall (1907 to 1914). From 1914 to 1924 the building housed the Agricultural Extension Division. From 1924 to 1933 it was occupied by various academic departments and by women students from 1933 to 1935. In January 1936 it was razed to make way for Burruss Hall. The station building was at the center of the land-grant college. Not only were academic activities going on there, but research and outreach (what was after 1914 known as Cooperative Extension) originated from this site. Around this building were dozens of station buildings, greenhouses, orchards, crop fields, greenhouses, and faculty homes. The station remained until the institute started to grow. As you can see today, much of the land was used to locate new academic facilities as Virginia Tech grew from just a few hundred acres at this location to more than 2,000 acres today.

#6 Tree Grove

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:29:13 -0400

Between 1891 and 1895 the campus was involved in a tree-planting spree. Initially many of the trees planted were maples and pines native to the area. During this period, William Bradford Alwood took over the tree planting and over the next several years Professor Alwood planted Virginia Tech’s first arboretum. The plantings included a wide selection of trees including many species not normally found in Virginia. To the southwest of the old agricultural experiment station building, Professor Alwood planted a bur oak tree – a tree native to his home in Ohio. The tree, dedicated in October 2011 as the Alwood Oak, is located across Drillfield Drive from Burruss Hall.

#7 Solitude

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:31:53 -0400

Faculty Row extended to Solitude. The Preston family built the original log cabin in 1801; it was expanded in 1851. The house was acquired as part of the institute when Virginia Tech was established in 1872. The Preston family was quite famous and included four governors and many other well-connected and known people. Today, Solitude is one of Virginia Tech’s most beautiful sights. Located near the Ice Pond (then partly a pond used to harvest ice—it sits near today’s Duck Pond, which was created in the 1930s), it was the last home in a line that made up Faculty Row. Professor William Saunders lived in the home during much of his career, which spanned a period from 1890 to 1945.

#8 Price Hall (Agricultural Hall)

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:33:49 -0400

Price Hall was built in 1907 as Agricultural Hall. It was later named for Professor Harvey Price, dean of the College of Agriculture for nearly 40 years. It was a massive modern facility when it was built. Sporting some of the latest innovations, including the first ice machine on campus, which took most of the space on the first floor of the building and made it possible to cease harvesting ice from the pond to the southwest. Today, Price Hall is still home to part of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. It houses the Departments of Entomology and Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science.

#9 Sandy Hall

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:36:43 -0400

Cooperative Extension “extends” the educational opportunities of the land-grant university to the public through its agents and specialist faculty working in all parts of the Commonwealth. In 1914, the U.S. Department of Agriculture established the Cooperative Extension Service. This effort was based on the work of Seaman Knapp, the founder of farm demonstration work. Long before this, many institutes, including Virginia Tech, conducted Extension-type work through organized Farmer Institutes and the collaborative local demonstration of research through the agricultural experiment stations. In 1923, the Extension administration was moved from Horticultural Hall to a newly built Sandy Hall. This building was named after T. O. Sandy, Virginia’s first agricultural Extension agent and a pioneer in farm demonstration work. Today the building is used as a surge building for departments vacating buildings under renovation across campus.

#10 Early orchards, vineyards, and fermentation cellar

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:38:28 -0400

Located at this site were the vineyards, a fermentation cellar, and the orchards of the early agricultural experiment station. Established by Professor William Alwood, they included over 300 types of European and American varieties of grapes, apples, peaches, and other fruits. Professor Alwood helped establish Virginia’s wine industry prior to prohibition. He traveled all over Europe in the early 1900s to conduct his pioneer research on fermentation and grape culture and collect new varieties to expand the orchards and vineyards here on campus. Alwood was famous for his fruit culture work. He is noted for saving the Virginia fruit industry after an invasive insect was discovered in Albemarle County in 1892. In 1894, he was instrumental in starting the Virginia State Horticultural Society. After he left Virginia Tech in 1904, he was appointed head of the enology department of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1907, he was elected president of the International Congress of Viticulture, and the French government awarded him the prestigious Grand Cross of Officer du Merite Agricole for his achievements. In 1966, horticulturalists at Virginia Tech named a new variety of table grape after him - the Alwood grape.

#11 Panorama of VAMC

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:50:15 -0400

During the early days of the institute, there was the old Olin-Preston Institute and the newer buildings of the agricultural experiment station. Many of these buildings were located in the space you see before you (the Preston and Olin Building was located at the end of Alumni Mall facing Main Street). The Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College was built on 283 acres of land that today makes up the Drillfield, the mall, and the lands around Solitude and the Duck Pond. Today’s Virginia Tech main campus covers over 2,000 acres.

#12 Corps

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:53:16 -0400

All students at the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College were male and were members of the cadet corps. This arrangement was common with most land-grant universities into 1940s. The corp of cadets is still a very important part of daily life at Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech has one of the largest co-educational corps in the country.

#13 Rock House

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:57:35 -0400

The Rock House was located just to the west of the War Memorial Chapel on the Drillfield. The Rock House, built prior to 1880, was once the residence of Professor William Bradford Alwood – vice-director of the agricultural experiment station and head and professor of horticulture, mycology, and entomology from 1888 to 1904. It was later converted to house the offices of the administration and the commandant’s headquarters. The house burned on a blustery February night in 1900 destroying many of the records of the college. It was rebuilt to again house administrative offices and was occupied as Administrative Building #1 from April 1904 to 1936, when the offices moved into today’s Burruss Hall. The building was razed in 1950. When it was torn down some of its stones were used to build part of the War Memorial. If you look closely at the outside walls of the War Memorial, those stones are not your garden variety Hokie Stone. Some are sandstone and some have plaster and burn marks, which tie them to the old Rock House.

#14 University Library and Lincoln Exhibit

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 14:00:17 -0400

Because the college’s early records were destroyed when the Rock House burned at the turn of the 20th century, University Libraries have limited records of the early days of Virginia Tech and the land-grant college in its Special Collections department. One historical record documents a series of letters written from Professor Graham of the early Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College to the Honorable Justin Morrill, writer of the act that established the land-grant colleges. In the letters, Professor Graham asked Senator Morrill whether the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College had followed the spirit of the act that Morrill had written. Senator Morrill assured Professor Graham that a land-grant college was established to not only teach its students, who came from humble beginnings, agriculture and mechanics in a practical manner, but all subjects necessary to give its graduates a well-rounded education including the humanities and the arts. Today, we celebrate the Morrill Act with displays in the Library that you can view to learn more about this important subject.