From the June 1, 1988, Nashville Banner
By Kay Beasley
The first attempt to organize a public school system in Nashville was in 1821, but it was not until the 1850s that the move succeeded. Today’s Hume-Fogg High School not only has its beginnings in but also occupies the same site as the city’s first public school, Hume, which opened in 1854.
In June 1852, the city appropriated $250 in expense money to send one of its most prominent educators, Alfred Hume, to study public school systems in the northeast.
His report in August became the basis for Nashville’s public school system. A board of education was formed, and the first school was built at the corner of Spruce (Eighth Avenue) and Broad streets facing Spruce.
Completed in 1854 and named for Alfred Hume, the school, according to one report, stood on a 150-by-180-foot lot purchased for $10,000.
Built for $40,000, the three-story school, with offices and eight classrooms, included all levels of instruction, the high school operating on the third floor. Enrollment was reported at 900.
After the Civil War, during which schools had been closed, a temporary wooden building, a mess hall built by the Union Army, was moved from South Vine Street (Seventh) to the Hume property to accommodate increasing numbers of students in the district.
Finally, in 1875, a separate brick high school was built on the vacant half of the Hume lot, facing Broad.
The three-story, 13-room school was named for the attorney Francis B. Fogg, then president of the Board of Education and a founder of the city’s public school system.
Arriving by foot or streetcar, Fogg School boys and girls were kept separate, the girls entering on Eighth Avenue and the boys on Broad Street. Separate classes and playgrounds were the rule of the day.
Discipline was strict, the classes were taught, and there were no official competitive sports, only those organized by the students themselves, who practiced in the YMCA gymnasium and on vacant lots. Those students “neither absent, tardy, nor dismissed during the entire session” were rewarded at graduation ceremonies.
In 1912 the present Hume-Fogg building, a four-story Gothic stone structure now stretching from Eighth Avenue to Seventh, replaced the old Hume and Fogg buildings.
The alma mater of thousands of Nashvillians, Hume-Fogg remained an academic school until 1940, when it became a vocational and technical facility.
In 1983 it returned to a liberal arts curriculum, and today as a magnet school carries on the tradition of academic excellence begun by its predecessor 134 years ago.
At ceremonies Thursday Hume-Fogg will add 102 students to its generations of Nashville graduates.
(Tennessee State Library and Archives)
Editor’s note: This article appeared in the June 2017 issue of The Nashville Retrospect newspaper along with other stories from the city’s past, including: “Happy Opry Tradition Coming To End” (1973); “Thos. A. Edison In Nashville” (1906); and “Indian Village Uncovered In Granny White Area” (1973).
The schools are shown in this detail from the 1908 map of Nashville. (Nashville Public Library)
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