[2][3] The structure narrowly avoided destruction during the American Civil War, making it one of the oldest surviving buildings on campus today.

While the plans for the university and its already completed buildings had been designed by William Nichols in the late 1820s and early 1830s, he had left the state and was busy with new projects by this time.

[4] The trustees chose a site adjoining what today is the south side of The Quad, in an area which had been originally designated in the Nichols' plan as the future medical school grounds.

Disturbed by what he viewed as student discipline problems, Garland advocated the conversion of the university over to the military system as soon as he assumed the presidency.

As tensions between Northern and Southern factions became heightened in the lead-up to the Civil War, the state legislature finally acquiesced to his request on February 23, 1860.

Tradition maintains that the president's wife, Louisa Frances Garland, arrived at the mansion from the temporary refuge of Bryce Hospital just as soldiers were setting a pile of furniture inside the building alight.