University of Alabama Rotunda, 1859

The University of Alabama opened in 1831 with a campus of seven buildings, including the Rotunda, two dormitories, two faculty houses, the laboratory, and a hotel that later became known as the Gorgas House. The Rotunda, destroyed in a fire during the Civil War, housed the university library and was patterned after Thomas Jefferson's designs for the University of Virginia.

Courtesy of the University of Alabama W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library