A beloved building

Pallavi Guniganti is one of several alumni pleased with plans to renovate, rather than tear down, New Cabell Hall.
Photo by Jack Looney.

We recently asked readers of our online newsletter, A&S Online, the following question: “What is your favorite place on Grounds?” While many answered the Lawn, Rotunda and Pavilion Gardens, several wrote nostalgically of the special place New Cabell Hall held in their memories. They were relieved to learn that the building would be renovated rather than razed. Here, they react to the news:  

“I was thrilled to hear of New Cabell Hall’s planned renovation. While it was not the most technically advanced building on campus, it holds the most classroom memories from my time at Virginia. For me, New Cabell was ‘college.’”
Susan M. Gantz (Foreign Affairs ’99)

“When I take visitors on a tour of Grounds, New Cabell Hall isn’t an obvious point of interest. It lacks the Jefferson-slept-here aura of the Rotunda, Old Cabell, Pavilions and Lawn rooms, yet also isn’t as airy and recently-built (valuable qualities for bathroom stops) as Newcomb or Bryan Halls. The exterior classrooms depend on bulky, unreliable air conditioners shoved into windows. But even New Cabell has lovably quirky aspects that made me happy to hear it would be renovated instead of torn down. The windows interior to the building and accessible from the hallways were put in somewhat unevenly relative to each floor, so that from one floor to another there are differences in how high you have to hop up to reach the broad window sills. Once ensconced in your seat, you can look outside to the grey stone of Old Cabell’s lower levels and to the grass and flowering bushes that feel like a secret garden, walled in by New and Old Cabell from the outside world. As you race through the assigned reading before the class for which it was assigned, or ignore homework in favor of fiction or daydreams, your friends come through on the way to and from their own classes. If they have time to chat for a while, you swing your legs down to give them space on the sill. Spotting your professor down the hall, you hop back down, hike on your backpack and go into the classroom. New Cabell is neither splendid nor modern, but the homely comfort of its window seats remains one of my favorite memories of Grounds.”
Pallavi Guniganti (English, Economics ’02)

“I think it’s great that U.Va. decided to keep New Cabell Hall! Maybe it’s strange to have a connection to a building, but the memories that I have from my time at U.Va., first as a child of a graduate student, then as a child of a professor, and finally as a student myself, really make New Cabell a special place for me. With the renovations, I hope U.Va. keeps the window seats where I spent so much of my life reading, watching and dreaming.”
Elisabeth Miller (Sociology, History ’02)

Read more responses from readers describing their favorite spots at U.Va.