Lemon Hall; a residence hall building dedicated to Lemon
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Memorial Structure
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Named Building
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Lemon
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Lemon Hall; a residence hall building dedicated to Lemon
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In April 2016, William & Mary Board of Visitors named a dormitory constructed in 2006, known as Jamestown South, after Lemon, a man who was enslaved by William & Mary in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This large dormitory, along with its companion dorm Hardy Hall, were the first buildings on William & Mary's campus named after people of color.
As stated above, Lemon Hall is named for Lemon, a man who was enslaved by William & Mary. He was legally the property of William & Mary. As an enslaved man in Virginia, he owned neither his work nor his own person. But he grew and sold produce to the College, and received a monetary Christmas bonus from the faculty at least once. Even from scant evidence, we can tell that Lemon was an actor on the stage of history, using ingenuity to help mitigate the circumstances of his enslavement. We do not know why the faculty gave Lemon a Christmas bonus in 1808, but there is evidence that the white professors took Lemon’s well-being into some consideration. In 1815, an aging Lemon was given an allowance to purchase his own food, and William & Mary paid for his medicine in 1816. Finally, in 1817 the university paid for the coffin in which Lemon was buried.
Gene Nichol was President of William & Mary during this building's construction, and Taylor Reveley was President when the Board of Visitors renamed the building after Lemon.
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One side of this large brick dormitory building fronts Jamestown Road and features generous lounge spaces with many large windows. There is also a piazza with columns on the side of the building that faces Barksdale Field. This L-shaped building fits well into the rest of William & Mary's campus with its light-colored brick facade. Each dorm room has one window. Together, Lemon and Hardy Halls added 128,000 square feet of dormitory space for William & Mary students.
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Nichol, Gene
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Reveley, W. Taylor III
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William & Mary Board of Visitors
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2006
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2016
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William & Mary
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