Walden College

Methodist Episcopal missionaries founded the school in 1865 to educate formerly enslaved people, and it was chartered in 1867 as Central Tennessee College. In 1900 it was renamed Walden University for Bishop John Morgan Walden. Its medical department, founded in 1876, became Meharry; a law department followed in the 1880s. In 1922 it moved to a 12-acre campus overlooking the Trimble Bottom neighborhood. Financial trouble closed it, and Trevecca Nazarene leased the campus in 1935 and later bought it. A marker was unveiled at Trevecca on September 30, 2022.

What the plaque says

Walden College Founded in 1865 as Central Tennessee College for freedmen, the college was later named Walden University and finally Walden College, which stood on these grounds from 1922 to 1925. While here, Walden College served as a normal school for teacher education and preparatory college in several areas. including pre-dental and pre-medical fields. Walden equipped students for Meharry Medical College. An important contribution to Nashville as the Athens of the South, Walden College closed in 1929.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Negley — 1.2 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 — 1.9 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 — 1.9 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.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 2.1 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.

More markers nearby

• Cameron-Trimble & Black Self-Emancipation / Education for Black Empowerment — 0.5 mi
• Battle of Nashville: Lafayette Street — 0.6 mi
• Tom Wilson Park — 0.6 mi
• Hubbard House — 0.7 mi