I could perhaps as conveniently visit Hartford this week as at any time for several weeks to come but I should gain no advantage nor do I think that at this season you would do so by a visit to the ground.

It would be unsafe to adopt any conclusions as to the positions of the buildings without the topographical map and the only advice I could give you would be negative—advice against forming plans without all the necessary data which should be accurately weighed in their final and exact determination.

It is much to be desired that while securing opportunity for a large future extension the object & character of which cannot now be clearly forseen you should not involve yourself in the necessity of continuing for years with an outward aspect of raw make-shift, half dressed frontier life. Though so rarely done in this country it is by no means impossible to obtain in a few years order, completeness, maturity & finish of character throughout the whole of a large place (buildings & grounds) and yet hold the opportunity for large additions to its buildings.

As you desire my personal interest in the matter, I shall take the liberty of telling you frankly where in my judgmnt you will find the principal difficulty in accomplishing this end and yet cutting your coat according to your cloth.

Your trustees have had & will have I presume several ways of regarding what is to be aimed in your building enterprise—several problems in view, the perfectly satisfactory solution of each of which is not compatible with the perfectly satisfactory solution of all the others.

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As for example 1st to provide an apparatus for an organized pursuit of learning by a chosen body of men, secluding themselves as a body for that purpose at least during certain hours of the day from the ordinary concerns of the community at large.

2.   to rear a material monument of piety, learning and art.

3   The publication and public exaltation of a popular institution for the education of young men.

4.   the gaining of something for the college endowment by the incidental commercial advantage which the building of the college will give to the market value of adjoining ground.

As to the 1st, to honor and promote learning, the more set apart, shut in, retired and cloister like in character the site and the building the better. On the other hand, for publicity and display the more elevated the site, the larger the sky line of building, and the more open the situation the better.

The English colleges are designed with a strong predominance of the first motive. They are not situated in parks but in the midst of cities and often entered from narrow public streets; their grounds are within and hidden from the public. The quadrangle is an expedient for securing by means of the inner court abundance of light and air consistently with a sense of retreat from the outer world. If they have additional grounds they also are arranged with a view to seclusion; not as a means for the display of the building. They are on the side opposite the public entrance. There is a consistent adherence in all this to the primary motive.

American college buildings have been generally placed and planned with an equally consistent regard for the other class of motives, to make the greatest public display possible. They are in this respect Greek and pagan as the English are Gothic and Christian.

I do not mean that the quadrangular arrangement is by any means essential to convenience of collegiate life nor to the artistic manifestation of the pursuits of scholarship, nor do I mean that a range of buildings in a line cannot be made satisfactorily convenient and expressive of the purpose of a community of scholars but that there are advantages in the English arrangement for this purpose and disadvantages in the American, and we should not close our eyes to either.

That part of your ground which alone is considered with reference to the position of the buildings—is a very narrow plateau on an elevated ridge with a precipice of rock on one side and an inconveniently steep slope on the other. It is favorable to the American plan—a continous line of narrow buildings with a “campus” “yard”, “lawn” or “park” in front of them, the plateau being wide enough, though barely so, for convenience, with such buildings so related one to another. It would not do to undertake to place a long series of buildings upon it in a straight line but a dozen buildgs of various character might be picturesquely ranged in adaptation to the topography very effectively along the summit of the ridge with a sufficient space of nearly level ground on [131] each side of them for convenience & for an appearance both of convenience and of stability.

The same conditions are not at all well adapted to a quadrangular plan and you will find that in the end you will have made your choice between four alternatives, as follows:

1st   Abandonment of the quadrangle;

2d   abandonment of the site;

3d   a costly modification of the natural conditions of the site;

4    a compromise in which you will sacrifice something of the advantages of the quadrangle in order to save the ground & something of convenience in the surroundings of the buildings in order to save the quadrangle with the incidental result of a lack of happy relation, fitness and propriety between the buildings and the neighborhood and a difficulty laid over to your successors in regard to the placing & satisfactory correlating of additional buildings to those now definitely contemplated.

As to your remark that someone will have to watch the progress of building with the eye of a lynx, let me recommend you to insist on the English plan of a clerk of the works, a professional watcher, constantly on the ground, looking to every detail as it is no part of the duty nor by any means in the power of the Architectural Superintendant to do. It will pay many times over and it will not pay but be a source of endless vexation, hard feeling, delay and embarrassment to undertake or allow a nonprofessional, occasional & desultory superintendence by yourself, your trustees or your building Committee.