Hume-Fogg Academic High School

Hume-Fogg sits on the site of two earlier schools: the Gothic Revival Hume School, which opened in 1855 as the state’s first public high school, and the Victorian Gothic Fogg School, which opened in 1874. They were demolished to make way for the new school building, Hume-Fogg, so named for the city’s early educators, Alfred E. Hume and Francis B. Fogg.

Hume-Fogg was designed by St. Louis-based architect William B. Ittner, one of the country’s leading architects in the early twentieth century, who designed over 430 schools across the United States. The two octagonal, castellated towers on the building’s entrance and castellation along the roof parapet and the building's corners, make this 1916 structure one of the most recognizable in downtown Nashville. Hume-Fogg’s east wing, which added more classrooms and an auditorium, was completed as a second phase in 1922 with Henry C. Hibbs and Donald W. Southgate as the supervising architects. Hibbs specialized in academic buildings such as those he designed for George Peabody College for Teachers, now part of Vanderbilt University, and buildings on the campus of Fisk University.

Originally a segregated whites-only school, in 1964 it became Nashville’s first public high school to integrate. Since 1982, the school has operated as an academic magnet school for gifted and talented students from across the city. Hume-Fogg High School consistently ranks as the top public high school in Tennessee.

Completed in 2015, at the northwest corner of the building was the addition including a gymnasium and underground parking garage. The school’s most famous alumni include Academy Award winning director Delbert Mann, noted poet and author Randall Jarrell, and model Bettie Page—known internationally as the “Queen of Pinups.”

Keep heading in the same direction on Broadway until you reach your next stop, the Southern Methodist Publishing Company on your right.