Eighteen-year-old Wade Hampton Frost entered the University of Virginia in 1898. Both of his parents were well educated, and they made efforts to secure higher education for those of their children with an aptitude for learning. The young Frost was interested in medicine, and the University of Virginia had offered a medical degree from its inception. Thus, the decision was easily made, and August of 1898 saw him depart to Charlottesville to begin his university studies.

The University of Virginia was founded by Thomas Jefferson, who had long been a promoter of higher education. During his long political career he tried repeatedly to find a way to establish a university in Virginia, success finally coming with authorization and appropriation of fifteen thousand dollars by the Virginia legislature in 1818. Jefferson himself designed the institution’s grounds in Charlottesville, and on March 7, 1825, the university opened with the aging former president at its helm as rector. Jefferson lived only sixteen more months. It is said he considered the University of Virginia the finest of his many accomplishments in the service of his fellow citizens. “If I had to decide between the pleasure derived from a classical education which my father gave me and the estate he left me,” Jefferson is alleged to have said, “I would decide in favor to the former.”

The handsome original buildings designed by Jefferson in classical elegance are still in use today. They included a dome-capped building known as the rotunda at the head of a gracious lawn; it was used for administrative offices. Flanking the lawn on its east and west sides were two parallel rows of buildings containing faculty and student apartments as well as classrooms. Behind the two rows of lawn buildings were two additional rows of similar buildings known as ranges. As the grounds have expanded in modern times, Jefferson’s original buildings have retained their central position. During his first two student years, Frost lived in Room 42 East Lawn, sharing the room with his Marshall friend and classmate, John Ramey.