Battle Ground Academy

Battle Ground Academy has been a boys' school, a mixed one and a mixed one again. Wall and Mooney, its first headmasters, opened it in 1889 at Columbia Avenue and Cleburne Street, and it admitted girls in its early years. A fire in 1902 destroyed the first building and the school moved. After a dormitory opened in 1922 it became a boarding school, and the last girl left in 1929, beginning a half-century as an all-boys school. The boarding program ended in the early 1970s and girls returned; they now make up about half the enrollment.

What the plaque says

Battle Ground Academy Founded in 1889 as Battle Ground Academy, named for its location where the Battle of Franklin occurred in 1864, and dedicated in an address by Confederate General William B. Bate, later governor and U.S. Senator, this boys' preparatory school was located on Columbia Avenue across from the Carter House. The school was popularly called the Wall and Mooney School and the Peoples School for its early headmasters. After being destroyed by fire in 1902, it was moved to its present site.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carnton — 1.1 mi
  The McGavock farm in Franklin, worked by 44 enslaved people in 1860, that became the largest field hospital of the Battle of Franklin.
• Fort Negley — 17 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.
• National Museum of African American Music — 18 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.
• Ryman Auditorium — 18 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.

More markers nearby

• Carter House — 0.2 mi
• Lotz House — 0.3 mi
• St. Paul's Episcopal Church — 0.7 mi
• Chickasaw Treaty Council — 0.7 mi