Austin Peay State University

The subject of today’s post is a university that just a couple of years ago would have not meant the same thing to me as it does today. Austin Peay State University is located in Clarksville, TN, about 45 miles or so northwest of Nashville. The university is about eight miles from the Kentucky border and just a hop from Fort Campbell, a large US Army base which is home to the 101st Airborne Division. But what makes it unique for me is that I am now an alumnus of the university. I decided to go back to school to get a second master’s degree in management more than two decades after I received my Ph.D. from Texas Tech University. I graduated during the first weekend in May 2024, nearly thirty years after I received my first master’s from the University of Tennessee. When I put that into writing it really stands out as an exceptionally long time. Think of it. In the intervening years between receiving my first master’s and my second, a person could have been born, gone all the way through college (even on a longer than the normal four-year plan), completed a master’s degree and have been out of school and working for a few years in the same amount of time. Man, I am getting old. When I was an undergraduate at UT there were, from time to time, older students in some of my classes. It turned out that I became one of those old people as well. But this post is not about me.

Austin Peay was founded as a teacher’s college, hence its original name of Austin Peay Normal School. It carried that name from its founding in 1927 to 1943. From 1943 to 1967 it was named Austin Peay State College. The name changed to its current Austin Peay State University in 1966 and so it remains to this day. What is unique about Austin Peay is that the university occupies a campus that has been the site of many other unrelated schools and colleges. Readers of the blog may recall a post from a few years ago on Rhodes College in which I detail the history of the site. The first school located on what is now the Austin Peay campus was the Rural Academy which stood there from 1806 to 1810. This was followed by the Mt. Pleasant Academy (1811-1824) and the Clarksville Academy (1825 to 1848). The first college would occupy the site beginning in 1849. It would be reorganized in 1851 as the Montgomery County Masonic College. Another reorganization came in 1855, when it was named Stewart College. Stewart would close in 1854. As noted in my earlier post, Rhodes began life with the name Southwestern Presbyterian College on the site in 1875. The name would change to Rhodes only after it moved to Memphis in 1925. The state of Tennessee would acquire the former Southwestern campus in 1927 to provide a home for the newly established Austin Peay.

Today Austin Peay has a headcount of about 11,000 students and has about 550 faculty. The campus sits on 182 acres pretty much in the heart of Clarksville. The university is named after former Tennessee Governor Austin Peay. He was a force for higher education in the state at the time, doing much for the advancement of public colleges and universities across the state. Public colleges in the state saw significant increases in their budgets during his administration and a building boom was underway thanks to his support. It was during his time in office that the college that would eventually bear his name was created. Because of this association, the university eventually settled on its athletic moniker - the Governors. Many of the buildings are named for various governors of the state as well.

My first stop on this visit was the Kimbrough Building. Kimbrough is the home to the College of Business. It recently underwent a $9 million renovation. I wanted to make sure to get a number of photos of the building since I am now an alumnus of the College of Business. Although not always the case, the business building(s) on campus are generally well-kept structures and are frequently some of the most up-to-date. This is thanks in part to the fact that the alumni of business schools tend to have greater incomes than graduates of many other programs and thus when they donate their contributions tend be larger. The same is frequently true of schools of medicine, law, and engineering. The building was completed in 1982 and has some 32,000 square feet of space. The College of Business has seen its enrollment increase in recent years and it has generally outgrown the space. The university plans to someday build an addition that would connect to the portion of the building on the left in the first photo. The addition would essentially make the building into a "U" shape. It is named in honor of Ben S. Kimbrough, an alumnus (Class of 1951) and his wife  Margaret. He was a local businessman and community leader. His sone Ben Jr. and wife Beverly Kimbrough are also donors to the university having endowed the Ben and Beverly Kimbrough Scholarship.

The first four photos show various views of the building's exterior. The first two are of the side facing Henry Street, the third on the Marion Street side of the building. The sculpture in the fifth photo is called Light Modulator. The piece is the work of artist Mike Andrews and was completed in 1985 and donated to Austin Peay in 1986. Andrews works out of a studio in Cunningham, Tennessee, a small community about nine miles from the university. 

The set below is the ​Foy Fitness and Recreation Center. It has all the accoutrements of a modern fitness center including cardio and weight training spaces and equipment, a multicourt gym, studio spaces, a wellness center, classroom and administrative space, locker rooms and showers, and a cafe. The building was designed by the Lyle Cook Martin Architects firm of Clarksville, Tennessee. The firm also designed the Joe Morgan Student Center on campus (see below). Readers may recall that they designed the University Village Phase II residential complex at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Completed in 2007, the 76,450 square foot Foy Center cost $8,762,000 to construct (which is about $14.1 million in today's value). It is named in honor of John N. Foy and his wife Trish. Mr. Foy is an alumnus of Austin Peay (Class of 1964). After a 44-year career with the real estate giant CBL, he founded the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based investment firm Noon Management. He is also a graduate of the School of Law at the University of Tennessee.

​The first two photos show the front façade of the building which faces Marion Street. One of things I like about the university is that they are very active in branding. They make great use of their colors, red and black like my other alma mater Texas Tech, and their various logos. In this case, you see the stylized face of the APSU Governor, the athletic team mascot. The dedicatory plaques, seen in photos three and four, are by the main entrance. The fifth and sixth photos show the building from the side which faces Fortera Stadium (see below).

The set below provides two views of the front of the Winfield Dunn Center and close up's of the state seal of Tennessee and the APSU seal which are on opposite sides on the building's front façade. The building faces Marion Street and there is an intramural field and a sand volleyball court between it and the street. The Dunn Center was once the home of the Governors basketball program. The program has moved to the F&M Bank Arena, but I did not get a photo of it during this visit. Construction on Dunn began in February 1973, and it opened in 1975 with the name Winfield Dunn Health and Physical Education Building and Convocation Complex. The first game in the arena was played on December 1, 1975, and saw the Governors beat the Old Dominion Monarchs 78 to 73. The last men’s game played in Dunn occurred on February 22, 2023, and again saw the Governors win, this time beating North Florida 73 to 71. Overall, the team had 350 wins and 144 losses in the arena. The 132,000 square foot building is now home to the Governors volleyball team. It cost $5.3 million to build, which is about $37.7 million in today's dollars. It is the first building on my tour that is named for a Tennessee governor. Winfield Dunn was a Mississippian by birth who came to Tennessee for dental school. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of Mississippi (Class of 1950) and then went to the University of Tennessee Health Science Center for dental school (Class of 1955). The Dunn Dental Building at UTHSC is also named in his honor. He stayed in Memphis to practice and eventually went into politics. He was elected the 43rd governor of Tennessee in 1971. Buildings at Tennessee Tech and the University of Memphis are also named for him.

The set below is of a number of residence halls on campus. The first photo is of the Castle Heights building. The building, which is for first-year students, can accommodate up to 416 residents. Its name comes from the area in which it is located, which is in turn an homage to the former Castle Building (see below) on campus. It was completed in 2011, with a grand opening celebration being held on August 11th that year. The 140,000 square foot building was designed jointly by Lyle Cook Martin Architects and Clark and Associates Architects. 

The second photo shows two groups of residence halls. The building on the left is Governor's Terrace North. An identical building sits behind it and is called Governor's Terrace South. North is a coed facility for upper division students. It can house 116 people in double occupancy rooms. The building on the right is Eriksson Hall. It is a match for the two Governor's Terrace buildings. All three were completed in 2013 and have a combined 132,000 square feet of space. Cumulatively, they cost $31,338,813 (or about $43.7 million today) to build. Eriksson is for upper division women. Technically, it is called Martha Dickerson Eriksson Hall. Its namesake was an alumnae (Class of 1962) who spent more than thirty years as a public school teacher. Upon her passing, her husband made a substantial contribution to the university. In addition to this building, the College of Education is named in her honor as is a scholarship. I believe all three (Terrace North, South, and Eriksson) were designed by the Nashville, Tennessee firm Bauer Askew Architecture.

The buildings you see in the background between North and Eriksson are part of Hand Village. There are a total of eight buildings in the complex which can house 200 upper division residents in apartments. It is named after businessman and Austin Peay donor Charles Hand. 

The set below begins with a photo of two residence halls, Blount Hall in the foreground, and Sevier Hall. Although the façades look the same, Sevier is a much bigger building. I was not able to find out for certain, but I believe Sevier was expanded at some point. Sevier is L=shaped, and if you look at aerial photos online, you can see a line where it looks like an addition has been made. It makes sense that this was the case, as the buildings are otherwise very much alike.  

Blount is named for the first territorial governor of what would become Tennessee, William Blount. Blount, by the way, is pronounced by most Tennesseans as “blunt” as in a blunt instrument. I have met people from other regions of the U.S. with the same name and they all pronounced it “blau-nt” which has a Germanic sound to it. I once met a gentleman from Quebec City, Canada, and his French-Canadian pronunciation was a beautiful sounding “blue-ent”. William Blount was from North Carolina and at the time there was no Tennessee at all. He was a signer of the U.S. Constitution and was appointed to the governorship by President George Washington of what was called the “Federal Territory South of the River Ohio”, commonly referred to as the “Southwest Territory”. He was sworn in as governor on September 20, 1790, and the first territorial capital was located in Piney Flats in present day Sullivan County in east Tennessee. He would move the capital to James White Fort in an area he subsequently named Knoxville after U.S. Secretary of War Henry Knox. He had a storied life that is well beyond the scope of this blog. But after serving as territorial governor, he was a “shadow senator” for the territory (territories could not have official voting senators or members of congress) and an actual U.S. Senator for Tennessee when it became a state. He finished his political career as a state senator for Tennessee.  

Readers from Tennessee, and graduates of the University of Tennessee, may know that there is a Blount Hall on the campus in Knoxville. Of course, UT was once named Blount College, and there have been many things named for Governor Blount’s daughter there. The Hill, an iconic location at the center of campus at UT once carried the name “Barabara Hill” in her honor. There were not one but two buildings which carried the moniker “Barabara Blount Hall” there as well. There is also a county in east Tennessee named for Governor Blount as well as the city of Blountville, near Johnson City in the eastern portion of the state. Blount Hall can house up to 65 residents in traditional double occupancy rooms in its 22,675 square feet of space. It currently houses first year students. 

Sevier is for women only, and can house 188 people in traditional two-person rooms across its 47,085 square feet of space. It takes it name from John Sevier, the first governor of the state when it was formally established and carried the Tennessee name. He took office on March 30, 1796, and served three terms. Born in Virginia, Sevier had previously been a Congressman representing North Carolina for June 1790 until March 1791. He served in the Virginia Colonia Militia prior to the American Revolution, and the again in the Southwest Territorial Militia during the revolution. He would rise to the rank of Brigadier General. He died while conducting a survey of land in the Alabama Territory on September 24, 1815, at age seventy. He was initially buried near Fort Decatur in Alabama, but was he was reinterred in Knoxville in 1889. His importance to the state is reflected by numerous monuments and places and things being named in his honor. The city of Sevierville and Sevier County are both named for him. The Governor John Sevier Highway in Knox County, the John Sevier Middle School in Sullivan County, and the John Sevier Elementary School in Blount County are named in his honor as well. A statue of Sevier stands in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. 

A walkway which extends from near the Foy Fitness and Recreation Center from Marion Street to Harned Hall and the Food Hall building (see below) can be seen in the remaining five photos of this set. It is named the John Morgan Walk of History. He is the son of Joe Morgan, the university's fourth president. An alumnus of Austin Peay (Class of 1973), Morgan would go on to be the Chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) from 2010 until 2016. For many years, all of the states colleges and universities, including community colleges and technical colleges, were governed by this solitary board with the exception of the University of Tennessee System. The second, third, and fourth photos show the entryway to the Walk near Marion Street. The fifth photo is a fire department connection box along the walkway. I took the photo because of the image that is applied to it. What you see is the Castle Building, a fixture on the campus for many years. Indeed, the Castle Building pre-dates Austin Peay. Designed by Gallatin, Tennessee-based architect G.B. Vennoy, the Elizabethan style building stood on the campus for ninety-eight years. It was built at a time when the institution which occupied the campus was the Masonic College. It continued as part of Montgomery County Masonic College, Stewart College, Southwestern Presbyterian University (now Rhodes College), and finally, beginning in 1927, Austin Peay. It was both large and quite ornate. It cost the hefty sum of $32,000 to build (about $1.3 million today). The years were not easy on the building. By the 1940's, large cracks in the brick work could be seen on the outside of the building. It collapsed in 1948.

The last photo is of ​Marks Hall which stands at the end of the Walk. Marks is unusual in that it began life as a woodworking shop. During World War II, students who were part of the National Youth Administration built a woodshop that would eventually be transformed into the building you see today. When it opened, it was called the Marks Industrial Arts Building. It was modified and expanded for years beginning in 1948 and finally being completed in 1961. 

The set below begins with three photos of the Memorial Health Building, commonly referred to as the Red Barn. The building actually sits atop a grave. You read that correctly. At the conclusion of World War II, a flood of new students came to campus thanks to the G.I. Bill. Many were married and along with their families lived in old barracks converted for use as married student housing. The families took to cultivating a garden with the help of an old mule. The mule was also used to entertain their kids on the weekends. Kids would taking rides on the animal guided by one of the parents. The mule died in the late 1940's and the students buried him on campus near the old barracks. The site would become home to the university's new arena. So as not to disturb the grave, the building was built above it and left it untouched. The mule's grave is supposed to be near midcourt of the basketball court which is still inside. It opened in 1952, and the Memorial portion of its name denotes its dedication to those killed during the Second World War. It was expanded in 1954. Intercollegiate sports moved out with the completion of the Dunn Center. ​This is not the first grave site I have covered in a post. Readers may recall that Murray State University's first horse mascot, Violet Cactus, is buried inside Roy Stewart Stadium there. The first photo shows the building from across Marion Street near the Dunn Center. In the grass near the building on that side is a rock which was painted with the university logo during my visit. I don't know if its an imitation or not, but the University of Tennessee has its own iconic rock on campus which students have routinely painted for more than half a century.

The last photo is currently called the Food Hall. It opened as Catherine Evans Harvill Hall. Mrs. Harvill was the wife of Halbert Harvill, Austin Peay's second president (see below). I believe it was a cafeteria when it first opened. In the early 21st Century, it was renovated to be the university's bookstore. It was subsequently renovated and repurposed again as a food court building, re-opening in September 2024 as the Food Hall.

The set below begins with Harned Hall, a former dorm that has been converted to office space. The building’s full name is Myra McKay Harned Hall. I had thought the building was named for Perry L. Harned, a notable figure in public education in Tennessee. Harned was an educator who, among many other notable accomplishments, was Commissioner of Education for the State of Tennessee. In that capacity, he played a significant role in getting Austin Peay founded. It would make sense that the building would have his name as a result. However, that is not the case. Sources say that at the time, the tradition was to name buildings only in memoriam. Given his support of and role in getting Austin Peay started, many wanted to name a structure to recognize his support. But Harned was still alive, and thus naming something for him was not on the table. The decision was made to name it in honor of his late wife Myra who had passed away in 1926. The building opened in 1932 as a dorm for women. The first three photos show the front façade of the building. The second and third photos show the stylized "AP" the university uses as a logo in front of the building. I have often shown photos of various animals on the campuses I visit, from a cat at Rhodes College, to rabbits at Montana State and Wright State, and albino squirrels at Western Kentucky. It was natural, then, that I took the fourth photo of this set of a cat surveying the campus from in front of Harned.

The fifth photo is of a dormitory, Harvill Hall. It is a comparatively small building which houses about forty residents. Harvill is named in honor of Halbert Harvill, the second president of Austin Peay. He served in that capacity from 1946 until 1962. When he assumed office, Austin Peay was tiny, with only about 417 full-time equivalent (FTE) students. When he retired in 1962, the student body number about 2,118 FTE. As was the case for most universities in the U.S., the period of Harvill’s presidency was one of tremendous growth not only in students but also in the physical plant of the university. Some thirteen new buildings went up during his presidency. Harvill was a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University (then called the Middle Tennessee State Teacher’s College) in 1927. He joined Austin Peay in 1929 as a history professor. He would later become the registrar. His youngest brother, Richard A. Harvill was also a college president, serving in that capacity at the University of Arizona from 1951 to 1971. Arizona is an Association of American Universities (AAU) school, which is an organization of the elite research universities in the U.S. and Canada. The Richard A. Harvill Building on the Arizona campus is named in his honor. Which leaves me with two questions I had not thought of before: (1) I wonder how many siblings have been presidents of universities? and (2) how many collegiate buildings are named for siblings? Being the academician I am, I will have to look into that. Of course, the University of Arizona gained a great deal of media attention in the last year thanks to a budget misstep in which the university found itself in a deficit of over $100 million. 

The university placed a nice sitting area complete with a pergola just across from Harvill seen here in the sixth photo. I took a moment to sit there and I imagine it would be a good place to read, visit, or just hang out. 

The last two photos of this set are of the former cupola which once stood atop Clement Hall (see below). On January 22, 1999, an E3 tornado ripped through the Austin Peay campus. Trees were down all over campus, windows were broken, whole sections of the roofs of numerous buildings were ripped away, and the cupolas of both Clement and Browning were torn from their rooftops. As noted above, Harned Hall was in terrible shape. When the windows broke in the Music/Mass Communication Building, the fire suppression system went off and flooded the building. It was the largest single property loss in the Tennessee history at that time. It took years of effort to get the campus back to the shape it was in prior to the tornado. Clement's cupola was place in a spot near Harned, the Morgan University Center, and the Woodward Library as a memorial. It was placed as it was with no repairs, hence the tilt of the point on top. This marks the fourth campus covered in this blog which was hit by a tornado, with the University of Memphis, Lambuth, Union University, and the Mississippi University for Women being the other three.

The set below begins with twelve photos of the ​Morgan University Center, Austin Peay's student union. Morgan is named after APSU’s third president, Joe Morgan, who served in that role from 1963 to 1976. It was during his tenure that the institution’s name changed from Austin Peay State College to Austin Peay State University, which occurred in 1966. Students at the time appreciated Morgan’s forward thinking. He ended the previously required attendance at a midweek assembly and reduced/eliminated some antiquated policies requiring women to sign in and out of their dorms and prohibiting them from wearing shorts around campus. Prior to his time there were even curfews! Alumnae and former Dean of the Eriksson College of Education, Dr. Carlette Hardin, once reflected on the change stating things quickly moved from her having to wear dresses on campus to wearing hot pants. Quite the change indeed. The Morgan University Center was designed by Clarksville-based architects Lyle Cook Martin. It opened in 2002 at a cost of $12,200,000 (or about $21.2 million in 2024 value). Like most student unions, it has a cafeteria, fast food options, a ballroom, meeting space, offices, lounges, and recreation areas. It has about 100,000 square feet of space.

The photos give you various views of both the exterior and interior of the building. Some work was going on inside. It appeared as though they were renovating space for a fast food establishment. Austin Peay does a great job in branding itself, and I had to take a photo of the small dining services vehicle parked outside. 

The thirteenth photo is a monument to the many people involved in helping the university overcome the damage wrought by the tornado mentioned above. The sculpture you see in photos fourteen and fifteen is called The Sentinel and is the work of artist Olen Bryant. Bryant served on the faculty in the art department from 1963 to 1991. The piece is affectionately referred to as The Green Man by students and alumni alike. Bryant completed his undergraduate work at Murray State University (Class of 1950) and his master’s at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He passed away on July 17, 2017, at the age of 90.

Below we have the Felix G. Woodward Library, better known as simply the Woodward Library. It very much looks the part of the late 1960’s design that it is. When Austin Peay first opened, it had no free-standing library. This was not, and is not, unusual for a brand-new institution. From the time the university opened until 1950, the library collection was housed in the Stewart Building on the third floor. Its first librarian was Sarah O. Morrow, who for a time was its sole employee. The collection moved to Browning Hall when it opened in 1950. I had mentioned in my post on the Montana State University that moving a library was no easy task. In Austin Peay’s case, a chain of students, faculty, and staff lined up and passed each journal, item, and book hand to hand from one location to the next. The collection had grown from about 1,000 to 20,000 volumes by that point, and the time and effort it took to move everything must have been something. I would have loved to have seen it, or better yet, been a part of it. 

Construction of the Woodward Library began in 1965. It officially opened on February 20, 1967. The cost of construction came in at about $1.5 million (or about $14.9 million in today’s value). Part of the funding for the library came from the Library Services and Construction Act of 1964. Unlike the move from Stewart to Browning which was completed by students and staff (see below), the university hired a moving firm to relocate the collection, which by this point numbered well over 100,000 volumes. These days you not only see students eating and drinking in the stacks of any public university library, but you are also more often than not able to find a coffee shop or fast-food establishment located in them as well. When the new library opened in 1967 this was unheard of. No food was allowed. Smoking, however, was a different matter. Smoking was completely acceptable back then and more than 44% of adults smoked in the late 1960's. Thus, there were smoking areas in the building. I am old enough to remember smoking in public everywhere and recall walking into restaurants and other places so filled with smoke that they appeared foggy. My how times have changed! In 1967, a student could light up a cigar or cigarette but would likely face scorn if they brought in a bottle of soda and tried to take a sip. Today, smoking would never be allowed, but you can bring in a veritable buffet of foods and a giant cup of coffee and no one will bat an eye. 

I have mentioned the various classification systems libraries use in earlier posts on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Tennessee at Martin. Most university libraries use the Library of Congress Classification System to assign call numbers to their materials whereas most public libraries use the Dewey Decimal Classification System. Austin Peay used the Dewey system until 1975. Well, that’s not quite correct. I should have said until a change which began in December 1975. It took the staff nine years to complete the changeover! That means a process that began under President Ford was not completed until Ronald Reagan was president! In those nine years, numerous whole classes of students came and went. You could have been a freshman in the Fall of 1975, graduated in 1980, and came back for a visit several years later and the work would not have been completed! I don’t know for certain, but I imagine the card catalog was entirely on paper when it was started, so it was a massive undertaking. The staff reclassified about 15,000 books during each of those years. Although the library was probably open on the weekends, I imagine most if not all of the work was done during the week. That means there were something in the neighborhood of 250 working days per year for them to do that. Keep in mind, the process didn't involve a simple change of a number on a book. The Library of Congress system and the Dewey system would have books placed in quite different places in the stacks. It would be a complete overhaul of the entire collection. Thus, the library staff retagged, relocated, and created new cards for the card catalog to the tune of about sixty books a day for nine years. All the while the library was open, and people were using and checking out materials. That puts the nine years into perspective. Felix G. Woodward was the Dean of Faculty at Austin Peay. He retired in 1968, shortly after the library opened. His wife Laura would pass away that December, and he passed away on July 12, 1971.

The first photo shows the façade of the building as you approach it from the Morgan University Center. As I have mentioned, Austin Peay does a great job of branding and as you can see in the second photo they have branded the library's door in the official colors of the university. The sculpture you see in the third photo is a piece by artist Howard Brown called Synthesis. Brown is an an Austin Peay alumnus (Class of 1984). In addition to being an artist, he is an ordained minister. He completed the work, which is made from Tennessee black marble, in 1984. The hole in the piece is meant to evoke the Austin Peay community and the events on campus which draw students to the university. The winged elements represents the heights to which alumni can go as a result of graduating from APSU. There had been a message on the base that detailed the meaning of the piece, but it has weathered off. Synthesis was meant to be an indoor piece, but its weight prevented it from being installed in that fashion. The last photo was taken of the building near Clement Hall (see below).

The set below begins with two views of the front façade of McCord Hall. ​McCord opened in 1949 as a science building. Coming in at 52,222 square feet, it was a large building for its day and had a variety of classrooms and wet labs. It is named after Jim Nance McCord, who was elected governor in 1944 and served in that role for two terms (at that time, governors of Tennessee served only a two-year term). Currently, there are buildings named for him at Tennessee State University, Tennessee Tech University, the University of Memphis, and the University of Tennessee Knoxville. A building at the University of Tennessee at Martin was named for him, but it has since been razed.

The next six photos provide a number of views of the front of Browning Hall. Browing opened in 1950 and was for a time a multi-purpose building. It housed the university’s administrative offices, the library, and a small space which acted as a student union. The administrative portions opened in February of that year, and the library portion (the east wing of the building) opened later that spring. As mentioned above, classes were cancelled for a day so that students, faculty, and staff could form a human chain to pass books from the library’s previous home in Stewart Hall to the building. The cupola on top contains a clock and chimes which were a gift of the Pettus Foundation. The cupola was ripped off during the January 1999 tornado, but the chimes and the clockworks were left in good condition. Browing was named after two-term Governor Gordon Browning. I wrote about him in my post about the University of Tennessee at Martin where there is another Browning Hall. A third Browning Hall named for him is at the University of Memphis. The building at Austin Peay, which was inspired by Independence Hall in Philadelphia, comes in at 34,071 square feet of space.

The sculpture you see in the fourth and fifth photos is called The Gateway, and it is the work of artist and former Austin Peay faculty member James Diehr. He created the piece in 1986. Some sources say the piece is made of tin, but this is inaccurate. It is made of Cor-ten steel, a type of weather steel. The second half of that word is pronounced "tin" and I imagine this is where the confusion developed. Readers may recall that the sculpture Drum Rhythm No. 11 at the University of Texas at San Antonio Downtown is also made of Cor-ten steel. If you enlarge the photo, you will see that the center of the piece is a human figure. The bottom pieces are books, and the top is a crucible. 

The ninth and tenth photos are of Clement Hall. The building is one of five collegiate structures in Tennessee to carry his name. The building opened in 1962. There is a large dormitory with a cafeteria in it named Clement Hall at the University of Tennessee, and there are Clement Halls at Tennessee State, Tennessee Tech, the University of Memphis, and the University of Tennessee at Martin. All are named for Frank Clement, the 41st governor of Tennessee. I wrote about the one at UT Martin in my recent post and refer readers to that post for more information about Governor Clement.

The quad area you see in photos eleven, twelve, and thirteen has recently been given a name and is now known as the F. Evans Harvill Quadrangle. He is the son of Halbert Harvill (see Harvill Hall above) and a two-time Austin Peay alumnus (Classes of 1944 and 1947). Owing to his father's presidency, he spent much of his childhood on the campus. It is a lovely area, and despite being close the street rather quiet. Of course, I was there on a Sunday so it may be that during the week the sound of traffic could be more noticeable. 

The last photo is the entrance gate to the campus on the Harvill Quad. It is not robust in its ornateness, but I very much like it and it fits with the campus. Sometimes, being a bit understated is more than enough. There are photos online of the aftermath of the 1999 tornado, and this area is covered with fallen trees and a toppled street light. Yet, as best I can tell, no damage to the gate nor to the stylized APSU occurred.

Claxton Hall is next in our visit and the first photo in the next set. It is one of a number of buildings on campus that is not named for a governor of Tennessee but rather for an Austin Peay president. It gets its name in honor of Philander P. Claxton, the second president of Austin Peay, who held that role from 1930 to 1946. Claxton was a two-time alumnus of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville having earned both his bachelor’s degree (Class of 1882) and master’s (Class of 1887) there. He left the state to become the superintendent of schools for the state of North Carolina, a position he held from 1883 to 1893. He then taught at the then-named North Carolina State Normal and Industrial College (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) until 1902. He then returned to UT Knoxville where he helped establish the Department of Education (currently the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences). He stayed at UT until 1911 when he was appointed the U.S. Commissioner of Education by President Woodrow Wilson. He kept that position until 1921 when he left to be provost of University of Alabama for two years. He then moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma to be a school superintendent for six years until he took the presidency at Austin Peay. The College of Education at the University of Tennessee is housed in part in the Philander P. Claxton Hall. I had many classes in that building during my time there. There is a large auditorium-style classroom on the first floor, and I had a variety of first- and second-year classes there.

The second photo is of Archwood, a historic mansion on campus. It was the home of local businessman Samuel Rexinger. It is believed that Nashville-based architect John L. Smith designed the home. Work began on the house in March 1878. It cost $6,000 to construct (about $188,000 today). It was sold to the Southwestern Presbyterian University (Rhodes College) at some point and in the early 20th Century it was used as a residence for some of their faculty. During World War II, it was acquired by the Army and divided into apartments for service members. After the war, it was purchased and returned to a single family home. It was acquired by the university in 1965 and renovated for use as the home of the president. The university stopped using for that purpose in 1980, but it has returned to that use and current APSU president Michael Licari and his wife Kirsten live in the home. It was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1977. The last photo is the building's historic marker. 

​The set below is of three science buildings on campus. The first four photos of the set are of the Sundquist Science Complex. The building is named for Don Sundquist, a six-term U.S. Congressman and the 47th Governor of Tennessee. It opened on September 17, 2001. Currently, the Department of Biology, Department of Chemistry, Department of Physics and Astronomy, and, for the time being, the Department of Allied Health Sciences call Sundquist home. Allied Health will move into an entirely new building in a matter of months (see below). The building has lecture halls, classrooms, offices, and a variety of lab space. The building is quite large, coming in at 221,213 square feet. Sundquist cost $38 million to construct, which is about $67.3 million in today’s value.

Photos five through seven give you three views of the Technology Building. The building opened with the name Hemlock Semiconductor Building, thanks to its creation being a partnership between Austin Peay, the state of Tennessee, and the Hemlock Semiconductor Company. Hemlock was opening a large facility in Clarksville and donated $2 million to aid in construction of the building after which the university offered an Associate’s degree in Chemical Engineering Technology to support local labor force development. The name changed to its current moniker in 2015. The 20,068-square-foot two-story building has a solar focus. As you can see, the main façade is graced with a clock tower with a sun dial. The building has numerous solar panels installed with a maximum generating capacity of 33.6 kilowatts. It was designed by the local Clarksville architectural firm Rufus Johnson Associates in association with Bauer Askew Architecture. It opened in 2010 and had a grand opening on September 16th that year. 

The last photo in this set is the Maynard Mathematics and Computer Science building. Groundbreaking for the building occurred on August 17, 2012. The 27,327 square foot building was also designed by Rufus Johnson Associates. It's named after alumnus James “Jimmy” Maynard (Class of 1956). For years, Mr. Maynard paid the way for students from Montgomery County, Tennessee to attend Austin Peay. He also donated to other university initiatives. The building It was dedicated in a ceremony on November 18, 2013.

The set below begins with the ​Trahern Building, which is sometimes (at least historically) referred to as the Margaret Fort Trahern Art and Drama Complex. She taught English at Austin Peay for many years prior to her passing in 1966 at the young age of only sixty-three. Her son followed in her footsteps, being a English professor at the University of Illinois and then the University of Tennessee. He made a contribution to the university for the construction of the building. It has just over 60,000 square feet of space. There is a longstanding belief that the building is haunted (see here and here).

The second photo is the Art and Design Building, which was completed in the summer of 2017. The 46,000 square foot building was designed by Walter Smith of Street Dixon Rick Architecture of Nashville. The firm has since been acquired by Orcutt|Winslow which has a page on the building you can see here. The building, which cost $21.3 million to construct (about $28.2 million today), has two galleries, classrooms, a lecture hall, offices, and support spaces.

The first three photos of the next set are of a new building under construction, the Health Professions Building. The building was designed by the Nashville, Tennessee-based Hasting Architecture in collaboration with the Ayers Saint Gross architecture firm and will have some 114,000 square feet of space. It will combine units now spread across several different buildings. It will have classrooms, wet labs, simulation labs, two patient-serving clinics, and administrative offices. It is slated for completion in 2025 and when it opens it will be the largest academic building on campus. It will house four academic units including the Departments of Health and Human Performance, Medical Laboratory Science, Psychological Science and Counseling, Radiologic Technology, and Social Work as well as the School of Nursing. Ayers Saint Gross is very active in collegiate architecture and campus planning. The firm was responsible for the renovation of the Hayden Library at Arizona State University, and the most recent campus master plans for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Tennessee. 

The fourth and fifth photos of this set are of the Music/Mass Communication Building. It has a variety of performance and rehearsal space, classrooms, and media rooms. It is also home to a 600-seat concert hall and an 80-seat recital hall. A mobile TV/radio van, seen in the last photo of this set, was parked outside the building. It is yet another example of the extent to branding has a place at the university. It would be hard to miss that driving down the road, or to confuse it for something other than an Austin Peay vehicle.

Next, we have Fortera Stadium, home of the Governors football team. You would not know it to look at it, but the stadium dates back to 1946. It opened that year with the name Clarksville Municipal Stadium, and it was not actually owned by the university. Rather, the city of Clarksville owned the place and rented it out at cost to the university for the football program. It remained property of the city until 1970, when its ownership was divided equally between the city, the county, and APSU. The university eventually bought it outright in 1990. It upgraded the place and renamed it Governors Stadium. The Fortera Credit Union paid for naming rights in 2016, and it has carried their name since. It will carry it for a long time, as the agreement was for a whopping twenty-five years. When it opened in 1946, it had seating for 5,500 and today that number is up to 7,000, at least in terms of permanent seating. Additional bleachers can be added and have been from time to time. Indeed, on October 6, 2018, an all-time attendance record was set at 12,201 in a game that saw the Governors defeat the Tennessee State Tigers 49 to 34.

I had mentioned in my post on Arizona State University that at one time they were known as the “Normals”. It was, and is, a very bad name in my opinion. Well, it was one of those moments where I put my foot in my mouth. Not only was I being unfair to Arizona State, I was also showing my ignorance of one of my own alma mater’s former name. Austin Peay’s athletic teams had a couple of different names before they settled on Governors. The Governors moniker did not take hold until around 1937, and before that they were know conversely as the Warriors and - wait for it - the Normalites. Yes, the Normalites. I have to say, that is far worse than Normals. I had to laugh at that one.

I will close with Austin Peay's version of the ever present college lamppost sign. The first photo shows the sign that is most common around campus, and I have to say that I really like this one. First, I am partial to the combination of red and black for the school colors. My doctoral alma mater Texas Tech also has red and black as its official colors. The university has worked the tri-star figure from the state's flag into its overall logo scheme at present and it makes a good addition to this lamppost sign. The three stars represent the three regions (East, Middle, and West) of the state. The second photo shows the signs common around athletics facilities. 

I know I am biased, as any alumnus would be, but I really like the Austin Peay campus. The buildings are mostly modern in style, and they thus lack any uniqueness which some schools have. But it is a lovely green campus and the layout makes it easy to get around and does so in varying and pleasant atmospheres. If you ever find yourself passing through the area, I would encourage you to stop and have a look.