Architect, professor leaving unique legacies

Anderson helped build vision for University’s architecture

Photo by Andrew Shurtleff

Pete Anderson’s happiest memories as U.Va. architect center around the renovation and construction project at Scott Stadium.

By Matt Kelly

To architect Pete Anderson, the University’s buildings are like the books in a library, each well read and representative of its period.

“Each one recalls the time when it was written and published,” he said. “These 500 buildings are a collection, each building reflecting not only the period of its creation but also the history of its usage at that time.”

While some advocate that the University should have only traditional Jeffersonian buildings, Anderson sees the “books” as reflecting an evolutionary process.

“[It] gives you a sense of the University as a continuum as opposed to a something that exists only here and of this moment,” Anderson said.
“It’s all about what a university is. It’s one of those things that promotes discourse.”

Anderson, whose given name is Samuel A. Anderson III, is retiring this month at age 69 after eight years as the University’s architect. During that time, he said he has guided the design of almost $1 billion in construction and helped shape the master plan that will chart the architectural path of the University for the next half century.

“The master plan was the most important,” he said of the projects on which he worked.

It stressed principles, not specifics, and was crafted around “principles that we thought would endure beyond the specifics of five years to the big principles that would guide the growth of the University over the next 50 years,” he said. “We talked about a pedestrian environment and carrying forward Jefferson’s great ideas, inherent in the Lawn, with students living cheek-by-jowl with faculty and the classrooms and the recreation space all tightly interwoven, and extending that idea, if we could, over the whole University.”

University President John T. Casteen III praised Anderson’s accomplishments.
“Pete Anderson has brought to the University a brilliant coherence, adroit diplomacy and a perfect aesthetic sense of the business of architecture and architectural planning.”

Colette Sheehy, vice president for management and budget, said Anderson is a consummate professional with a great love of the institution.

“I credit Pete with the notion of reconnecting the North Grounds with the rest of the University,” she said. She also noted his concern for how buildings are placed in the environment and including outdoor places to socialize.

Anderson stepped into the newly created post in 1995 after 25 years as a partner in Glave Newman Anderson and Associates Inc. in Richmond. He felt he had accomplished all he had set out to do in private practice, designing free standing buildings on individual sites for unrelated clients and rehabilitating houses. At U.Va., he has worked on the total environment, making his legacy more intangible.
The project he has the happiest memories of is the renovation and expansion of Scott Stadium, working with the athletics staff and local architectural firm VMDO, which he credited for some of the best aspects of the effort.

“You want a project to get better as you go along, and this did that,” he said. “There was good chemistry all the way through, and good chemistry makes all the difference.”

He said the stadium was designed so features could be added as more money was raised for the project.

Anderson’s time with the University has been book-ended by New Cabell Hall. It was being built when he came as student, and as he is leaving it has been slated for demolition, to be replaced with another structure as part of the South Lawn project. The Lawn was a key element of Anderson’s school days in the ’50s; he attended classes in the pavilions, and the University’s administrative offices were in the Rotunda.

“We were constantly in and out of the Rotunda,” he said. “It was both a great piece of architecture and a day-to-day part of your life. It was special because it wasn’t special. It was special because it was the way it was.”

He didn’t fully appreciate its architectural implications at the time. Anderson, reared in Richmond, came to architecture after considering several other careers, including medicine, law, history and foreign service. He graduated from U.Va. in 1955 with a bachelor’s degree in history and joined the Navy.

While at sea, he realized that from an early age he had been interested in building. After leaving the service, he got an architectural degree at the University of Pennsylvania and eventually set up practice in Richmond.

Now, Anderson gets withdrawal pains when he thinks about pending projects, such as the new master plan for the Health System, the studio arts precinct and the recently announced performing arts center.

“I think, ‘How can they do it without me?’ Then I realize after these three projects get through, there’s going to be three more and at some point somebody’s going to have to do these things. Why not start now?”

Anderson will start his retirement with a trip to France then will settle into his family’s summer home in Norfolk, Conn. He plans to build a shed in which to build a sailboat and take the sailboat around a small lake near the property.

“The best gift I can give to my successor is to be in Connecticut and stay there,” Anderson said.

Smith makes his mark as Darden’s ‘institutional soul’

Photo by Tom Cogill

C. Ray Smith has remained friends with many of his students after they have graduated.

By Sophia Coudenhove

When C. Ray Smith first came to teach at the Darden School, he was 26 years old and thought he would stay no more than a year.

Forty-two years later, he has held almost every important administrative post there, served three times as interim dean, built executive education programs, led the Darden School Foundation and taught hundreds of classes. When he retires in August, he will have been at Darden longer than any other faculty member.

In April, at a reunion weekend, nearly 1,000 people attended his farewell party. At the celebratory pig roast, Donald Wilkinson, chairman of the Darden trustees, dedicated C. Ray Smith Alumni Hall to him and unveiled a portrait to hang within its walls. Wilkinson also announced the establishment of the C. Ray Smith Fund for Academic and Professional Excellence, of which $4.2 million has already been raised. The eventual goal is $25 million.

But ask Smith what he’s most proud of, and he blushes, looks toward the courtyard from his office window and pauses for a long time.

“There’s nothing individually that I’m proud of,” he said. “But as an institution we’ve tried to look to the future and to change — but also to recognize — our core values. The proudest thing is that I’ve been able to be a part of that.”

Those who have worked closely with him say those core values (not to mention modesty) are a fundamental part of how Smith lives and works. University President John T. Casteen III has called him “Darden’s institutional soul,” praising his “kind, devoted and big-hearted spirit.”

“He’s everything the school stands for,” said William H. Goodwin Jr., a former student now on U.Va.’s Board of Visitors.

Friendly and extremely approachable, Smith has long been the link between students, faculty and the administration, and he has remained friends with many of his students after their graduation. Goodwin remembers socializing with Smith and his wife, Phyllis, on weekends. That was back when Goodwin called Smith “Sir,” though Smith was younger than many of his students. While this is no longer the case, Smith still adores the company of those he teaches.

“If you’re not having a good day, you can always talk to some students and you feel better,” said Smith, the Tipton R. Snavely Professor of Business Administration.
Smith never planned to make a career of teaching. Born in Bassett, in southern Virginia, he came to Darden in 1956 as a student.

“I came over, brought my application and they accepted me. Right there.”

He graduated with the school’s second MBA class, then went on to serve in the Army in Kentucky, where he also started teaching personnel. He returned to Darden to help former accounting professor Almand Coleman, who was writing a book.

A year later, just as Smith was preparing to leave, he started drafting the first Chartered Financial Analyst exam, which today is administered to more than 100,000 people all over the world.

After that, Smith decided to teach full time. By 1971, he was a full professor, and that year he was named associate dean.

“I didn’t think I’d end up here so long,” he said. Over the years he considered business offers elsewhere but turned them all down to stay at Darden.

“It’s been the best of both worlds,” he said. “I’ve been a practitioner and an administrator, and over the past 20 years pretty active as a consultant. So I’ve always had that connection to the real world.”

Two things that have given Smith (and the University) that connection to the real world are the executive education program, which Smith co-developed in 1968, and custom programs, where courses are geared to an organization’s specific needs.

“I’m more practical than I am academic,” he said. “I’m not sure I would ever have been completely satisfied just doing the teaching. I like some action.”

Smith has overseen the expansion of parts of the Grounds, and the hard hat that sits on his bookshelf is a testament to how many different things he does. He accomplishes so much simply by working very long hours.

“Showing up is 90 percent of the job,” he said. “I graduated from high school, and I’d never missed a day of school. I’m not as smart as lots of other people, so I have to work hard. I put in a lot of hours.”

Others would argue that his achievements have been the result of combining hard work with exceptional intelligence.

“He’s got a mind like a steel trap,” said Charlottesville businessman Troost Parker, another former student. “He’s a lovely guy, but he has a mind that’s absolutely phenomenal.”

The other secret tool has been his wife, Phyllis, who has also been close to Smith’s friends and colleagues at Darden. “They’ve just been a real team over the years,” Goodwin said, “and you admire that.”