Huntingdon Yesterday and Today

Enter to Grow in Wisdom; Go Forth to Apply Wisdom in Service. The inscription engraved in stone over the entrance to Flowers Hall is a tangible reminder of the mission of Huntingdon College, a historic landmark in central Alabama. For more than 150 years, Huntingdon has upheld a mission of faith, wisdom, and service as it has created pathways to fulfilling lives for thousands of alumni.

The charter of Huntingdon College was signed by Alabama Governor John Winston on February 2, 1854. Chartered as Tuskegee Female College, this was the first of four names under which the College has operated.

The cornerstone on the Tuskegee campus was laid April 9, 1855, and can be found today in Massey Memorial Hall. On February 11, 1856, the doors of Tuskegee Female College were officially opened under the leadership of Dr. Andrew Adgate Lipscomb, the first president of what would eventually be known as Huntingdon College. There were four students in the first graduating class in 1856, but by September 1859 the College’s enrollment had risen to an average of 216, with 29 women graduating that year.

In 1872, the Alabama Conference of The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, assumed full management and control of the College. The reincorporation created the present governing body—a board of trustees—and a change in name to Alabama Conference Female College.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, it became evident that the survival and growth of the College would best be ensured if the campus relocated to a more populous, urban environment. In 1906 Dr. John Massey, who had assumed the presidency in 1876, led the plans to move the College to Montgomery while College friends in the area began the search for a suitable site. Several citizens had initiated negotiations with landowners in the area in an effort to persuade a donation of land, but these negotiations were unsuccessful. As a result, Dr. John Sellers, C.G. Zirkle, and William Moore approached J.G. Thomas, who agreed to sell to the men 50 acres in the Cloverdale section of Montgomery. The land was then donated to the College.

On August 24, 1909, furniture, equipment and all official college records covering a period of more than half a century were moved into a rented building in Montgomery, which was to house the College until the first building on the new campus was completed. That night, the rented building burned, destroying its contents. Other housing arrangements were made, however, and in the fall of 1910 the new campus opened under the name Woman’s College of Alabama. Since the move to Montgomery had occurred the previous year, 1909 remains the recognized founding date of the Montgomery campus.

The College’s beautiful campus was designed in 1908 by Frederick Law Olmstead Jr., son of the designer of New York's Central Park. Olmstead Jr. had planned the landscapes for such constructions as the Boston Park System and the Biltmore Estate in Asheville. Flowers Hall, the first building on campus, set the architectural style for the campus and was designed in the Collegiate Gothic tradition by H. Langsford Warren of England, a former professor of architecture at Harvard. Warren’s plan was meant to reflect the Gothic buildings of Cambridge and Oxford and used the Chapel of St. James College at Cambridge as the model for the building’s chapel, now known as Ligon Chapel.

Since its move to Montgomery, many changes have taken place for the College. In 1934, the first male student was graduated, but it was not until 20 years later—in 1954—that full-time male resident students would be admitted. Once the College became a co-educational institution, the name Woman’s College of Alabama was no longer suitable. In 1935, in recognition of its affiliation with the United Methodist Church, the name Huntingdon College was selected to honor Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, a woman who had been one of the first and most influential persons associated with the Wesleyan movement in England.

Presidents of the College