After several years in the Union Hotel, the board of the college decided they needed a space specifically created for medical education. Aid was sought to pay for the structure and the Commonwealth offered a $25,000 loan and Richmond donated $2,000. The board chose the noted Philadelphia architect, Thomas Somerville Stewart, who had just completed the new St Paul's Episcopal Church, to build the College Building. Stewart chose to design the new building in the Egyptian Revival mode, considered to be an exotic style. His choice of this style was considered to be appropriate by the board because it was considered that the origins of medicine went back to the Egyptian physician, Imhotep. Sir William Osler wrote that Imhotep was the "first figure of a physician to stand out clearly from the mists of antiquity."