Vanderbilt and its four buildings named Wesley

by Bill Carey

When alumni return to the Vanderbilt campus and see the Wesley Place parking garage and apartment and retail building on 21st Avenue, they might say they remember the "old" Wesley building that used to be on that site.

In fact, the Wesley Hall they remember was the third building on the Vanderbilt campus to go by that name.

Little is known about the first. When the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, first organized Vanderbilt University in the 1870s, one of the buildings already on the land chosen for it was a boarding house located near where the Jean and Alexander Heard Library now stands. The organizers of the University converted it into a dorm for theological students. In deference to the founder of the Methodist Church, people called it Wesley Hall.

A much larger Wesley Hall building was built in 1880 and funded by a $150,000 gift from William Henry Vanderbilt, the son of "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt. It was located near the first Wesley Hall and housed the Vanderbilt Biblical Department and library, 160 dorm rooms for students and professors, lecture halls and a cafeteria. Wesley Hall number two was a beautiful, five-story structure that looked similar in architectural style to the building now known as Benson Hall.

"It had the look of strength and massiveness, with wings and towers and knobs and other ornaments representative of the era," Bard Thompson wrote in Vanderbilt Divinity School; A History.

The architectural similarities between Benson Hall and Wesley Hall number two are not surprising, as both buildings were designed by Nashville architect Peter J. Williamson, who also designed the building now known as the Fine Arts Gallery.

For five decades, Wesley Hall number two meant many things to many people. To the Vanderbilt administration, it represented the Biblical department and the Methodist church that originally organized the University but had a strained relationship with it during the first two decades of the 20th century. To Nashville residents, Wesley Hall was one of the most beautiful buildings on campus, and its cafeteria was a favorite place to eat on Sunday afternoons. To students, it was the closest thing Vanderbilt had to a center of campus life.

"No one is a true Vanderbilter who has not during his sojourn there spent a part of his life in Wesley Hall," a 1932 Tennessean article said. "Many have enjoyed the entertainment of sliding down the coal chute, pulling himself up in the elevator and jumping off before reaching the floor and keeping the banisters polished by sliding down them."

Some people even grew up in Wesley Hall. Allen McGill, whose father John McGill was dean of the Vanderbilt Pharmacy Department in the early 1900s, described growing up in Wesley Hall in William Waller's book Nashville: 1900 to 1910.

"As children of professors we were naturally interested in research, and we often dropped parachutes consisting of a small rock tied to four corners of a handkerchief, from the third floor," he wrote.

When Wesley Hall number two burned down on Feb. 19, 1932, it was a major blow to Vanderbilt. No one was killed in the fire, however, hundreds of rare books, students' possessions and academic research were destroyed. At the time, 10 faculty members were living there, and their possessions were also lost.

"Many of the students lost practically everything they possessed with the exception of the clothes they were wearing and the books they happened to have with them," an account of the fire in the Tennessean said.

The University had only about $145,000 in insurance on the building, which by that time had a replacement cost about three times that amount. And as far as raising money to replace the second Wesley Hall was concerned, the fire took place at the peak of the Great Depression.

For a few years, it appeared as if the 1932 fire would doom the Vanderbilt School of Religion, which had been fighting for survival since the University's split with the Methodist Church in 1915. However, Frederick William Vanderbilt, whose father funded the construction of Wesley Hall in 1880, gave $150,000 toward a new home for the religion department. The University used that and other donations, plus the insurance settlement, to start an endowment for the School of Religion (renamed the Divinity School in 1956) and to find the school a new home -- the next Wesley Hall.

Wesley Hall number three was a large structure with classrooms, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, dormitory space for 70 students, a small auditorium, office space and dining facilities that was located across 21st Avenue from the main Vanderbilt campus. It was originally built in 1927-28 by the YMCA as a training school for secretaries. For a few years, it was used jointly by the YMCA and Vanderbilt. However, the YMCA Graduate School went out of business during the depression. Vanderbilt bought it in 1936, renamed it Wesley Hall and put its Department of Religion there.

Meanwhile, the University, under a campus plan devised by New York architect Edward Stone, decided to leave the site of the second Wesley Hall undeveloped. The land on which it used to sit is now an open space called Library Lawn.

The Vanderbilt Divinity School left Wesley Hall number three in 1960 for a new quadrangle next to the Joint University Library. However, Vanderbilt continued to use the third Wesley Hall as home to its psychology department and a place for students to have classes, swim and play basketball.

In the mid-1980s, after a study showed that the building would be too costly to rehabilitate, Vanderbilt tore down the third Wesley Hall. For a few years, the University used the site as a parking lot. Then, Vanderbilt came up with a plan to put a massive multi-use building on the site, with 20,000 square feet of retail space on the west side and a 800-unit parking garage on the east side. Under the advice of trustee and Nashville developer Nelson Andrews, the University also built 46 townhouses on the upper portion. The new building's name: Wesley Place.