Pretty campuses

I was pretty lucky in college. The setting around W&L was the Blue Ridge mountains. Lexington was a quaint little village which sometimes seemed to be caught in the Nineteenth Century. The buildings at W&L were all red brick and white columns. The whole place breathed history as if time had stopped for a second.

When I got to Athens to attend law school I fell in love with downtown and the old campus. Walking around among the old buildings and the trees on the old campus was so peaceful. I loved strolling around among the old commercial buildings. Even driving around Athens brought your eye to restored old antebellum mansions and such.

Momma told me that I had been very fortunate in the colleges I chose. They were both beautiful. Most campuses have their places which draw the eye and charm the spirit. But I have also seen some college campuses which don't live up to the example of others.

I remember walking around the campus at one college and wondering why all the buildings looked like late Soviet realism architecture. Another college was surrounded by shopping districts and strangling civil engineering which did nothing but confuse you as you tried to navigate the traffic snarl. A trip to UVA really disheartened me because the beatiful architectural plan created by Thomas Jefferson was somewhat overwhelmed by the downtown's urban blight. It just didn't match up.

I suppose it would be hard to keep any campus pristine as it develops and even harder to keep the town around it matched to the spirit of the college. Lexington and W&L and Athens and UGA have been pretty good in trying to keep the town and gown in sinc. It doesn't happen like that all the time.