 The founding of the college was brought about after Holloway, seeking to fulfil a philanthropic gesture, began a public debate through "The Builder" regarding 'How best to spend a quarter of a million or more', at which point his wife, Jane Holloway, proposed to build a college especially for women.Holloway later increased his original sum of money to half a million, and today, the campus is still best known for its original 600-bed building, known as the Founder's Building, designed by William Henry Crossland and inspired by the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley, France.Sir Nikolaus Pevsner called the original college building "the most ebullient Victorian building in the Home Counties", and noted that together with its sister building the Holloway Sanatorium, it represents "the summit of High Victorian design".