Did you know that the original plans for Chamberlayne Hall called for a much more ornate and complex building? The Rev. Dr. Churchill Gibson Chamberlayne, the school's founder and first headmaster, died in 1939, which led the community looking for a way to memorialize him on campus. Plans for a large, central building were drawn by longtime Richmond architectural firm Baskervill and were first published in a document from 1940 that we would now call an admissions brochure. 

The design called for a clock tower and cupola, a facade structure with doric columns, and arcades on both sides of the main building. Construction began in 1942, but ended earlier than originally planned in 1943 due to funding issues most likely related to the ongoing world war. 

A description of the design in the 1940 document reads, "This spacious brick structure to be erected in memory of Dr. Chamberlayne, will serve both day and boarding pupils. It will contain assembly rooms, classrooms, teaching facilities, administration offices, laboratories, a library, and other rooms essential to the requirements of an adequate central building."