A lot of things can be said about UVA’s desire to grow: It’s aggressive, excessive, disruptive. And the South Lawn Project could be held up as a perfect example. It’s massive, costly, and from its conception, dissed by local experts like the faculty of the School of Architecture. But for our purposes, we’re not saying any of that. Really, we’re not.
One very small feature in the project’s landscaping design makes up for most of the rest. Catherine “Kitty” Foster, a free Black woman who is thought to have been a seamstress and laundress for the then all-male University, purchased a 2 1/8 acre plot of land in 1833. The property remained in her family until 1906. The site where her house once stood and its adjacent cemetery—with a total of 32 buried family members—will be preserved and commemorated as a one-acre public park close to the nearly completed South Lawn. Given the University’s history of racial discrimination and segregation, the decision to preserve and honor this 19th-century, African-American life was wise and correct.
