Vanderbilt University & Peabody College

Nashville may be most widely known as Music City, but it’s hard to separate Nashville from its original reputation as a college town. Known as “the Athens of the South,” Nashville is a hub of higher education in the South with over twenty colleges and universities and over 100,000 students. Here we’ll tell you a little bit about Vanderbilt University and George Peabody College, a former teacher’s college which is now part of Vanderbilt University. Listen as you walk through the Peabody campus. 

Once you pass the Social Religious Building, completed in 1915, you will reach a sidewalk intersection with a campus map posted in the center. Turn LEFT, walking away from the Social/Religious Building, now called the Wyatt Center. Gillette Hall will be on your right, though it is not clearly marked. 

In 1867, George Peabody established a fund of two million dollars for the benefit of Southern education. This funding was distributed among the eleven former Confederate states, plus West Virginia. The University of Nashville was struggling financially post-Civil-War; with the Peabody fund, they re-branded as State Normal College, known after 1889 as Peabody Normal College. 

From 1875 to 1911, thirty-one state normal colleges (teacher’s colleges) were created across the South with the help of George Peabody’s endowment. Nashville’s Peabody Normal College was the first. The school’s mission was to train a new generation of educators who could revitalize K-12 education in Nashville and across the South. In 1911, it was renamed George Peabody College for Teachers.

University School of Nashville, just down the street on the corner of 21st Avenue and Edgehill Ave., was originally founded as the Winthrop Model School in 1888. This was an extension of Peabody College, where education students could observe and teach younger children as part of their training. In 1915, Dr. Thomas Alexander reopened Winthrop as Peabody Demonstration School at Peabody College's new campus on 21st Avenue and Edgehill. In 1974, the demonstration school legally separated to become an independent K-12 school. It remained on its original campus, across the street from Vanderbilt, and changed its name to University School of Nashville. 

Quick note: If you’ve reached the Jesup Pyschological Laboratory, turn RIGHT and walk between Jesup and Gillette, following the pathway to the end of campus where you will cross the street and continue on Horton Avenue. Now back to our story!

Not long before the founding of Peabody College, Vanderbilt University was established in 1873. Like George Peabody, railroad magnate Cornelius T. Vanderbilt granted the university with its initial $1 million endowment with the goal of bettering education in the post-Civil War South. Vanderbilt was known as a “Southern Ivy” along with Trinity College (now Duke University) and Emory University. These schools were seen as southern counterparts to the Ivy League schools of the North such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth Universities. Though the university never forbade female students, they were admitted only as special students until 1897. After 1915, women gained full access to all buildings, and while equal treatment did not immediately follow, the number of female students continued to increase. It had reached 20% of the student body by 1930. 

One of its most iconic buildings, Kirkland Hall was built in the 1870s; it originally had two towers until a devastating fire in 1905. Also, the school had ties to the Methodist Church, which were severed in 1914 under the leadership of Chancellor James Kirkland. In the 1920s and 1930s, the university gained fame, and scrutiny, with the formation of two literary faculty-student groups known as the Southern Agrarians and the Fugitives. 

In 1953, the School of Religion admitted the first African American student; however, in 1960 the university also expelled African American student and Civil Rights leader James Lawson. In 1966, Nashville’s own Perry Wallace became the first African American student-athlete to break the racial barrier in the SEC as a member of the basketball team. 

Over the last 150 years, Vanderbilt University has remained a staple of the Belmont-Hillsboro area, gradually expanding its campus and drawing in students from all over the world who diversified the neighborhood. With a total student body of over 13,000, Vanderbilt remains in the top 15 in national university rankings and top 10 for innovation in the United States, according to U.S. News and World Report. 

Fun fact: Vanderbilt University’s football team was an early powerhouse. Winning what would become the SEC conference for many years in a row between 1890 and 1926. The “father” of Vanderbilt football was actually a chemistry professor! His name? William Dudley—the namesake of Dudley Stadium, which was completed in 1922. Vanderbilt remains the only private school in the Southeastern Conference or SEC.

Peabody College, which had a longstanding relationship with Vanderbilt due to the proximity of the two campuses, eventually merged with the university in 1979. 

Today, Peabody College remains one of the nation’s leading think tanks for progressive education, leadership, human organization, and pedagogy.

In the middle of the quad, turn RIGHT and walk between the Jesup Pyschological Laboratory and Gillette Hall. Follow the pathway to reach a roundabout next to the Lower Quad where the path and campus ends and becomes Horton Avenue. Stay straight on Horton Avenue until you reach 18th Avenue South. Cross 18th Avenue and walk half a block down Horton Avenue until you see the main entrance for Little Sisters of the Poor. This building will be on your right and is your next stop.