In 1840–1841, the Mississippi legislature fought bitterly over the location of a state university before choosing Oxford. On January 17, 1845, an appointed board of trustees voted to invite architect William Nichols to meet with them. Nichols then “submitted sundry plans and suggestions as to the University buildings.” A year later, the board hired him for a period of two years at a salary of $1,000 per year. For the fledgling institution, Nichols proposed a campus of seven buildings arranged in an incomplete octagon: the Lyceum Building to the west and flanked by dormitories and professors’ residences to the north and south, and a chapel and third dormitory to the east. Over more than a century, the construction of buildings on what is today called University Circle largely followed Nichols’s plan.