Browse Items (963 total)

Auburn’s first post-Civil War public school, possibly founded as early as 1870, was actually a women’s school. Auburn Female Institute was located on Tichenor Avenue. Under Principal George W. Duncan, Auburn Female Institute offered instruction…

In the early 1850s, Colonel Nathaniel Scott petitioned Auburn’s local Masonic lodge (Auburn Lodge #76) to sponsor a female educational center in town. In 1853, Auburn Masonic Female College became the town’s first women’s educational…

In 1857, this institution opened on the corner of what is now Tichenor Avenue and North Gay Street. Slaton’s Academy functioned as a preparatory school for young men pursuing admission to East Alabama Male College. William F. Slaton, a local…

Judge John Harper led a party of Methodists to the future site of Auburn, Alabama in late 1836. The next year, members the new community collaborated to erect a log Methodist church, located on the corner of modern-day East Magnolia Street and South…

Southern Union State Community College began its institutional life as Bethlehem College on June 2, 1922. John M. Hodge, a Wadley banker, donated forty acres to the Southern Christian Convention of Congregational Christian Churches as a site for the…

As World War II neared culmination, Congress passed the G.I. Bill of Rights, ensuring a paid college education for American military personnel. America’s universities saw a massive influx of veteran students, and Alabama Polytechnic Institute’s…

Alabama Polytechnic Institute built the Graves Center – actually a complex of thirty cottages, an amphitheatre, a large dining hall, and a brass bust of New Deal era governor Bibb Graves – piecemeal throughout the 1930s. The complex of 30 Greek…

Irritated by the state’s flat refusal to fund a gymnasium for Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College, Tom Bragg, the president of the Auburn Alumni Association, solicited funds from Auburn graduates all over the country. In February 1916,…

The largest building on Auburn University’s campus, the Haley Center is capable of accommodating 8,000 students at any given moment. The labyrinthine, 357,000-square-foot structure includes four quadrants centered around a central ten-story tower,…

By the late 1950s, Alabama Polytechnic Institute’s Carnegie Library exceeded its storage capacity. The Board of Trustees recognized the immediate need for a larger facility, and in the early 1960s the university planned the construction of a major…

The institution that would come to be known as Auburn University’s first library operated out of three rooms on the second floor of William J. Samford Hall. These rooms quickly became overcrowded with an excessive amount of volumes. In 1908, Andrew…

Erected in 1888 on the foundation of Old Main Hall (which burned down in 1887), William J. Samford Hall is one of Auburn University’s most easily recognizable buildings. Bruce and Morgan Architectural Firm fashioned the four-story Italianate-style…

Established by charter in 1856 as East Alabama Male College, the academic institution that would come to be known as Auburn University was founded ten years before Lee County’s inception. Local residents, such as John Bowles Glenn, the pastor of…