Written by Jason Kerr
Unlike plenty of more uniform campuses around the country, UNC’s buildings showcase many different styles of architecture. Some of the most iconic structures draw inspiration from Greek and Roman ideals—classically styled columns are ubiquitous among scores of structures, and the campus even contains a bit of Greco-Roman art. UNC’s symbol, the Old Well, used to be a simple wooden structure for the first century of the school’s history. It was not until 1897 that Edwin Alderman, then president of the University, peered out of a window of South Building (which itself features four Ionic columns with their simpler volutes) and determined that the well ought not retain its “squalid and ramshackled” shape. Alderman proposed modeling the well after the Temple of Love at Versailles, a neoclassical rotunda structure; the current Old Well is a close 1954 reconstruction of Alderman’s vision.
Wilson Library and its Roman dome follow the Beaux Arts style, which emerged from the style of French kings at Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) and combined neoclassicism with Baroque and Renaissance ideas. Six Corinthian columns (which, with their acanthus leaves, feature more complex designs than their Doric or Ionic counterparts) adorn its portico and the library is “much more ornamented than its contemporaries,” thanks to the Beaux Arts influence, states UNC’s webpage dedicated to campus history. The reading room inside Wilson features yet more columns and an ornate chandelier suspended from the eighty-five-foot-high dome. Antebellum architect Alexander Jackson Davis contributed a lot to the design of campus and created the Playmakers Theatre on Cameron Avenue located right near the South Building and Old Well. Davis designed the building to evoke the feeling of an ancient temple. According to UNC’s virtual museum website, Davis constructed the portico on the Theatre’s eastern side “as a welcoming gesture to visitors from the state capital.” Wheat and ears of corn decorate the portico’s Corinthian columns, rather than Greek acanthus foliage, indicative of “the antebellum impulse to Americanize classic forms.”
Classical art—in particular, statues—also exist in various spots around campus. Two replicas of ancient statues are in the aforementioned reading room at Wilson Library. Both come from the mid-nineteenth century Florentine studio of Pietro Bazzanti. Bazzanti’s studio crafted fine replicas of art for travelers wishing to bring copies of masterpieces home. Crouching Venus and Boy with Thorn, originally marble and bronze respectively, are on display in the reading room. The first statue depicts the goddess in a pose that artists both ancient and early modern reproduced in a range of media. A boy extracts a thorn from his foot in the other statue—a common image from antiquity likely in reference to injuries sustained from grape-treading during harvest. An English traveler rediscovered Boy with Thorn as early as the twelfth century and it became one of the most imitated statues at the beginning of the Renaissance.
Murphey Hall, home of the classics department, boasts three works of art much larger than those in Wilson Library. The statues are each a gift from classes who graduated at the beginning of the twentieth century. Around that time, plaster imitations formed from direct molds of the original statues became a popular way to appreciate ancient art without making the arduous journey to the sites that hosted the authentic pieces. Murphey Hall contains a copy of Venus de Milo, one of the most famous works now at the Louvre. Further, the building has a replica of Athena Giustiniani on display. A rendition of Apollo Belvedere—the original currently located at the Vatican—also sits next to these two statues. People have admired Apollo Belvedere for centuries; eighteenth-century critic Johann Winckelmann’s writing about the statue became an immensely appreciated work of German-language literature in its own right, highly influential on the burgeoning fields of art criticism and art history, and solidified Apollo’s place in the eyes of many as the superlative example of Greek aesthetic perfection. Curiously—according to an adjacent plaque—an added fig leaf on the Apollo Belvedere’s copy in Murphey obscures the statue’s original nudity due to “turn-of-the-century mores” and its movement around campus over the past century caused its arms and cape to be destroyed.
Some original classical art and works even more ancient also exist at the Ackland Art Museum. Perhaps most notably, a dual portrait at the Ackland painted by Peter Paul Rubens and titled Germanicus and Agrippina portrays the profiles of the two historical figures in a manner heavily inspired by ancient cameo carvings. Works of both art and architecture continue to make UNC one of the most beautiful campuses in the country, just as Alderman had imagined when he sought to redesign the Old Well more than a century ago.