The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

The school nearly folded before it was twenty. Chattanooga University opened in 1886 under Northern Methodists, and when it merged into Grant University in 1889 the college moved to Athens, leaving makeshift programs behind. By 1898 only thirty-nine of 247 students did college work. John H. Race, a minister with no administrative experience, arrived that year and rebuilt it as a liberal arts college, raising $750,000, including large gifts from Andrew Carnegie and the General Education Board. African American undergraduates were first admitted in 1965, and a merger with the University of Tennessee followed.

What the plaque says

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church with generous assistance by Chattanoogans, this institution became a principal campus of The University of Tennessee in 1969. As an endowed, privately controlled institution it was known as Chattanooga University, 1886 to 1889, as Grant University, 1889 to 1907, and as University of Chattanooga, 1907 to 1969. First buildings were erected on this site in 1886 and the present plant begun in 1916.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bessie Smith Cultural Center — 0.4 mi
  Chattanooga's African American museum and performance hall on the old Ninth Street, named for the Empress of the Blues, who started out singing for change on that same street.
• Tennessee Aquarium — 1.0 mi
  A river-themed aquarium that opened on May 1, 1992, on the Chattanooga bank where John Ross kept a trading post, tracing a raindrop from the Appalachians to the Gulf.
• Walnut Street Bridge — 1.0 mi
  An 1890 truss bridge now open to walkers, and the place where Alfred Blount in 1893 and Ed Johnson in 1906 were lynched, the case that led to the Supreme Court's only criminal trial.
• Ross's Landing — 1.2 mi
  The Tennessee River landing where Chattanooga began and where Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee people were put on boats and ferried out in 1837 and 1838.

More markers nearby

• Walden Hospital — steps away
• Bessie Smith — 0.3 mi
• Martin Hotel — 0.4 mi
• First Coca-Cola Bottling Company in the United States — 0.4 mi