USA: Arthur J Morris Law Library Exhibit Illustrates UVA Law’s Move to North Grounds 50 Years Ago

September 1974 marked a time of new beginnings for the nation, as it sought to move on from the shadow of Watergate, and for the University of Virginia School of Law as it transitioned into its brand-new digs on North Grounds. A new exhibit in the Arthur J. Morris Law Library captures the moment, the memories and the groovy harvest gold vibes of the times.

These days, students at UVA Law enjoy an even more expansive facility, with remodeling joining the former Darden School of Business to the Law School during the 1990s, as the institution continually refreshes itself to accommodate student, faculty and staff needs. But the paisley-tied, bell-bottomed barristers of 1974 experienced a transformation of an entirely different scope, relocating from the Law School’s 42-year-old home at Clark Hall on Main Grounds.

For the exhibit, “we wanted to emphasize the visuals, the photographs in our archival collection that capture the early years here at North Grounds — that moment of transition,” said Addison Patrick, the curatorial specialist at the UVA Law Library. “The exhibit does not trace the many logistical details and decisions that went into the move, or the curricular and demographic state of the Law School at the time, but those stories can be found in the Library’s special collections and archives, too.”

By 1971, when ground was broken on the tract of land that is now home to both the Law School and the Darden School of Business, UVA Law had outgrown even the bowels of Clark Hall.

Law School building during construction
The Law School building was under construction in 1973.

In an interview marking Professor Richard Bonnie’s retirement from teaching in 2023, he reflected on life in Clark Hall. “I think it was built for something like 450 students and, even when I was in law school, we were already at 750 or 800,” said Bonnie, who graduated in 1969.

“There was no space, so they created offices in the stacks of the library, which was two floors below the actual ground,” he added. “The law review offices were down there also, and there were all these corridors that you had to make your way through in the stacks, so there were a lot of secrets down there and various games that we used to play in the corridors.”

When students showed up for their first day of class on the new campus, construction debris was still stacked at the front entrance of the school. (That entrance now joins up with Clay Hall.)

The exhibit’s photos show students with thick glasses and thicker mustaches, short shorts and long socks, quickly making North Grounds their new home. Student groups discussing the raging politics of the day over wine and cigarettes in the student lounge. Law librarian Frances Farmer, the first female full-time faculty member, teaching students to use the school’s first — and notably bulky — Lexis terminal. A lanky lad aiming to swat a softball at the school’s first softball diamond. Students awaiting the posting of grades (by partial Social Security number) at a bulletin board in the hallway they had dubbed “The Wailing Wall.”

The school didn’t add an official cafeteria until the second phase of construction, but an enterprising student, William H. Harrison Jr., withdrew from his classes to run an informal café and game room in the basement of the new building, eventually earning the ire of Law Student Council members who “thought he was overcharging for sandwiches,” Patrick said.

Harrison’s story was one of several “rabbit holes” Patrick said she tumbled into while poring through oral histories, photo negatives and digitized archives of the Barrister yearbook and Law Weekly.

Ultimately, Patrick and her colleague Jane McBrian curated the material into a handful of display cases and posters spread throughout the library. One poster, a view of a seldom-used courtyard that was later transformed into the library’s Caplin Reading Room, feels a bit like another psychedelic rabbit hole to the past. (Groovy, eh?)

The exhibit will be on display through the end of the spring semester.

https://www.law.virginia.edu/news/202501/library-exhibit-illustrates-uva-laws-move-north-grounds-50-years-ago