#13 The Crackerbox

#13 The Crackerbox

This boxy building looks like little else on Grounds. Built between 1826 and 1840, it probably served as a kitchen and cook's quarters for the East Range hotels, although someone told The Cavalier Daily in 1974 that Jefferson had established a bordello here in order to keep students out of trouble. In fact, structures like this were thrown up and torn down regularly depending on the needs of the school's enslaved laborers.

UVA’s first students were prohibited from bringing slaves onto Grounds, but professors could, and many did. The University itself only ever owned a single slave, but it rented a minimum of five to eight a year. Others belonged to hotelkeepers, contractors who used enslaved labor to tend to the students’ every need. In buildings like this they worked and slept, and it's possible to still see where a twelve-by-twelve addition was added to the building, and probably used as slaves' quarters.