In his 1810 response to the request of the Trustees of East Tennessee College that he assist in selling tickets for the lottery approved by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1809, Thomas Jefferson indicated that he had “made it a rule never to engage in a lottery or any other adventure of mere chance” and could not, therefore, urge participation on others, no matter how “laudable & desirable” the purpose, and offered wishes that the lottery succeed and the college flourish.
He then, apologizing for his presumptiveness, expanded upon his view of the appropriate plan for colleges and universities, coining the term academical village, as opposed to the single, multipurpose buildings that had characterized early American campus planning (Harvard, Yale, College of New Jersey [Princeton], William and Mary) grounded in the design of early English universities. He envisioned the institution composed of one- and two-story buildings arranged around a manicured lawn. Wrote Jefferson, “Much observation and reflection on these institutions have long convinced me that the large and crowded buildings in which youths are pent up are equally unfriendly to health, to study, to manners, morals & order.” Moreover, such a configuration as he was suggesting would be less vulnerable to fire.
Jefferson’s ideas were translated into actuality at the University of Virginia, which opened in 1825. While the campus of East Tennessee College, which opened in 1828, differed from Jefferson’s ideal, the fundamental principles of the academical village were those employed in its planning. Parenthetically, although Jefferson expressed his objection to lottery schemes in general, in 1826 he successfully petitioned the Virginia state legislature to allow him to conduct a quasi-public lottery to dispose of substantial holdings in order to avoid bankruptcy.