Egyptian Building - History

History

After several years in the Union Hotel, the board of the college decided they needed a space specifically created for medical education. Aid was sought to pay for the structure and the Commonwealth offered a twenty-five thousand dollar loan and Richmond donated two thousand dollars. The board chose the noted Philadelphia architect, Thomas Somerville Stewart, who had just completed the new St. Paul's Church, to build the College Building. Stewart chose to design the new building in the Egyptian Revival mode, considered to be an exotic style. His choice of this style was considered to be appropriate by the board because it was considered that the origins of medicine went back to the Egyptian physician, Imhotep. Sir William Osler wrote that Imhotep was the "first figure of a physician to stand out clearly from the mists of antiquity."

The Egyptian Building was originally called College Building and later the Old College Building. The National Register of Historic Places considers it to be the oldest medical college building in the South. The battered walls of the structure recall the ancient temples of Egypt.

Originally the building housed medical lecture rooms, a dissecting room, an infirmary and hospital beds for medical and surgical cases. The building was restored in 1939 by the architects, Baskerville and Son, in honor of Dr. Simon Baruch, an 1862 graduate of the Medical College of Virginia. At that time the interior of the building was remodeled to carry on the Egyptian style.

The building has been in continuous use since it was built in 1845. In 1969 it became a historic landmark, and in 1995 it celebrated its 150th anniversary. It has at one time or another been used by every school in the Medical College. The MCV Campus has a strong sentimental attachment to the Egyptian Building. At Founders' Day exercises held at the Egyptian Building, 5 December 1940, historian Dr. Wyndham Blanton commented to alumni and guests:

"What old Nassau Hall is to Princeton, what the Wren Building is to William and Mary, what the Rotunda is to the University of Virginia, the Egyptian Building is to the Medical College of Virginia. It is a shrine, a sanctuary of tradition, the physical embodiment of our genius. It is a spiritual heritage. In a world often accused of cold materialism, with an ideology of human self-sufficiency, and an adoration of objects that can be handled and seen, there is a need for things of the spirit, if science is to do more than make life safer, longer and more comfortable."