1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sewanee

SEWANEE, a village of Franklin county, Tennessee, about 15 m. E. of Winchester, the county-seat, and (by rail) 95 m. S.S.E. of Nashville. Pop. about 1200. Sewanee is served by the Tracy City branch of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St Louis railway. It is on a spur of the Cumberland mountains about 2000 ft. above the sea and about 1000 ft. above the surrounding country. It is a resort for sufferers from malaria and pulmonary complaints. There are mineral springs, coal mines and sandstone quarries here, all on the “ domain,” about 10,000 acres, of the University of the South, a Protestant Episcopal institution of higher learning, founded in 1857, largely through the efforts of Bishop Leonidas Polk, but not opened until 1868. The principal buildings of the University, on a tract of 1000 acres, are all of Sewanee sandstone; they include Walsh Memorial (1890), with offices and college class-rooms; the Library (formerly Convocation Hall, 1886; remodelled 1901), with a tower copied from Magdalen College, Oxford; Thompson Hall (1883; enlarged 1901), with science lecture-rooms and laboratories; Hoffman Memorial (1898), a dormitory; All Saints' Chapel (1909), a copy of King's College Chapel, Cambridge; a Gymnasium (1901); Quintard Memorial (1901), the home of the Sewanee Military Academy (until 1908 the Sewanee Grammar School), the preparatory department of the University; and St. Luke's Memorial (1878), the home of the Theological Department; and St Luke's Memorial Chapel (1907). The University is governed by a board of trustees consisting of the bishop, one clergyman and two laymen from each of 19 Protestant Episcopal, dioceses in the Southern States.