Downtown Presbyterian Church, Hospital No. 8

When Nashville’s First Presbyterian Church held its first service in 1814—James Madison was the president. This is the third church building to stand here, and it is also important to note the church’s name shifted from First Presbyterian to Downtown Presbyterian Church in 1955. That said, the current building is one of the city’s most impressive. Designed by renowned architect William Strickland, Downtown Presbyterian is a historical treasure and religious inspiration.

Completed in 1851, a decade before the Civil War began, you are looking at the same structure that someone would have seen over 150 years ago. As with other large buildings in downtown, the Union Army seized the church. From 1863 to 1865, Downtown Presbyterian was used as a hospital along with the Masonic Hall across Church Street and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church across Fifth. The three buildings were known as Federal Hospital No. 8. Of the 615 total beds in the complex, the ground floor and sanctuary of Downtown Presbyterian housed 206 beds.

In 2008, when the security system was being updated, workers discovered ink bottles beneath the building. As the church historian, they brought them to me to ask if they were from the Civil War. "I told them yes—Doctor’s used the ink to write medical reports and soldiers used it to write letters home," (narrator Jim Hoobler).

Many of those caring for the sick and wounded here would have been women. Before 1860, women could not be nurses. It was the Civil War that launched the profession of nursing in the United States. According to historian Jane E. Schultz in Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America: “Traditional numbers suggest 2,000 female nurses served on each side, but documents show 21,000 women on the payroll on the Union side alone. Female hospital workers were as diverse as the population of the U.S. in 1860: they were adolescent slaves, Catholic sisters, elite slaveholders, free African Americans, abandoned wives, and farm women.”

Although not nurses, there are two other important women to talk about at this stop. Former First Lady Sarah C. Polk and Belmont heiress Adelicia Acklen were both members of the congregation. In 1867, Adelicia Acklen donated a 4,000-pound bell that served as Nashville’s fire alarm until 1897. After the war, the federal government gave the church a sum of $7,500 for restorations. The columns and entablature were put in place in 1871, and the interior was extensively decorated in the 1880s. As a rare and extraordinary example of the Egyptian Revival Style, the Downtown Presbyterian Church was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and became a National Historic Landmark in 1993. The church still holds regular services each week. For more on Downtown Presbyterian see our Women’s History Highlights, Old Time Religion, and Capitol and Church tours, among others.

Keep walking west along Church Street, crossing Fifth Avenue, to reach your next stop. McKendree Methodist Church will be about half way up the next block on the left.