page_title: Vanderbilt University
section_title: Founding and early years
hierarchical_section_title: Vanderbilt University / History / Founding and early years
caption_attribution_description: Drawing of the campus of Vanderbilt University - this seems the most reasonable identification; it isn't identified explicitly in the article
context_page_description: Vanderbilt University is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million endowment; Vanderbilt hoped that his gift and the greater work of the university would help to heal the sectional wounds inflicted by the Civil War.
  Vanderbilt enrolls approximately 13,100 students from the US and over 100 foreign countries. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". Several research centers and institutes are affiliated with the university, including the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, and Dyer Observatory. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, formerly part of the university, became a separate institution in 2016. With the exception of the off-campus observatory, all of the university's facilities are situated on its 330-acre campus in the heart of Nashville, 1.5 miles from downtown.
  The Fugitives and Southern Agrarians were based at the university in the first half of the 20th century and helped revive Southern literature among others.
context_section_description: In the years prior to the American Civil War of 1861–1865, the Methodist Episcopal Church South had been considering the creation of a regional university for the training of ministers in a location central to its congregations. Following lobbying by Nashville bishop Holland Nimmons McTyeire, church leaders voted to found "The Central University of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South" in Nashville in 1872. However, lack of funds and the ravaged state of the Reconstruction Era South delayed the opening of the college.
  The following year, McTyeire stayed at the New York City residence of Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose second wife was Frank Armstrong Crawford Vanderbilt (1839–1885), a cousin of McTyeire's wife, Amelia Townsend McTyeire (1827–1891); both women were from Mobile, Alabama. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the wealthiest man in the United States at the time, had been planning to establish a university on Staten Island, New York, in honor of his mother. However, McTyeire convinced him to donate $500,000 to endow Central University in order to "contribute to strengthening the ties which should exist between all sections of our common country".
  The endowment was eventually increased to $1 million (roughly $20 million in 2015 dollars) and though Vanderbilt never expressed any desire that the university be named after him, McTyeire and his fellow trustees rechristened the school in his honor. They acquired land formerly owned by Texas Senator John Boyd and inherited by his granddaughter and her husband, Confederate Congressman Henry S. Foote, who had built Old Central, a house still standing on campus.
  The first building, Main Building, later known as Kirkland Hall, was designed by William Crawford Smith, a Confederate veteran who also designed the Parthenon; its construction began in 1874. In the fall of 1875, about 200 students enrolled at Vanderbilt, and in October the university was dedicated. Bishop McTyeire was named Chairman of the Board of Trust for life by Vanderbilt as a stipulation of his endowment. McTyeire named Landon Garland (1810–1895), his mentor from Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and then-Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, as chancellor. As chancellor, he shaped the school's structure and hired the school's faculty, many of whom were renowned scholars in their respective fields. However, most of this faculty left after disputes with Bishop McTyeire, including over pay rates. When the first fraternity chapter, Phi Delta Theta, was established on campus in 1876, it was shut down by the faculty, only to be reestablished as a secret society in 1877. Meanwhile, Old Gym, designed by Peter J. Williamson, was built in 1879–1880. By 1883, the Board of Trust passed a resolution allowing fraternities on campus, and more chapters were established in 1884.
caption: Drawing of Vanderbilt University's Main Campus from Appletons' Cyclopedia of American Biography (1889)
exif: {}