Rhodes College

The Gothic campus is younger than the college. Charles Diehl moved the school from Clarksville to Memphis in 1925, and architect Henry Hibbs, consulting with Charles Klauder, designed the first Collegiate Gothic buildings: Southwestern Hall, Kennedy Hall and the Robb and White dormitories. The names track its history: Stewart College under the Presbyterians in 1855, Southwestern Presbyterian University in 1875, Southwestern at Memphis in 1945 and Rhodes in 1984. Women were admitted in 1917, and the first Black students arrived under President Peyton Rhodes, between 1948 and 1964.

What the plaque says

Rhodes College Its progenitor was Montgomery Masonic College, founded at Clarksville in 1848. Named Stewart College in 1855, it became a college of the Presbyterian church in 1861 and was incorporated as Southwestern Presbyterian University in 1875. It moved here in 1925 as Southwestern. Renamed Rhodes college in 1984 in honor of Dr. P.N. Rhodes, President Emeritus.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sun Studio — 2.7 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• Elmwood Cemetery — 2.9 mi
  Memphis's oldest active cemetery, a rural garden cemetery of about 1,500 trees opened in 1852, with Black civic leaders, yellow fever victims and the city's whole history in its lots.
• Stax Museum of American Soul Music — 3.4 mi
  A rebuilt Stax studio on the site of the old Capitol Theatre, with a replica of the sloped-floor Studio A, Isaac Hayes's Cadillac and the story of an integrated soul label.
• Beale Street — 3.5 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.

More markers nearby

• Idlewild Presbyterian Church — 1.3 mi
• Tom Lee — 1.4 mi
• William Herbert Brewster, Sr. — 2.1 mi
• St. John's United Methodist Church — 2.1 mi