Nashville History Corner

Nashville architect Henry C. Hibbs designed many of the area’s buildings

By Ridley Wills II

Nashvillians tend to remember William Strickland from the 19th century and Edwin Keeble from the 20th century as Nashville’s premier architects. There were others you should remember. One of those was Henry C. Hibbs. Born in Camden, New Jersey in 1882, he was educated at the University of Pennsylvania. After working in Philadelphia and New York, he moved to Nashville in 1914 as the local head of Ludlow and Peabody, a New York architectural firm. Henry Hibbs supervised the construction of the George Peabody College for Teachers, designed to resemble The Lawn' at the University of Vir ginia, according to texts written in the Ten nessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture by Jim Hoobler.

After finishing his work on the Peabody campus, Hills went on to design the Obstet rics and Pediatric Building at Meharry Medi cal College, the Fisk University Library (paid for by Andrew Carnegie), the Sunday School Building at the First Presbyterian Church, the Nashville City Market, and the American Trust Building.

In 1929, Hibbs won the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal for his design of Scarritt College. Hibbs also designed build ings on the campuses of Middle Tennessee State University, Vanderbilt University and Ward-Belmont College.

Hibbs additionally designed buildings in the neo-Gothic style for Davidson College near Charlotte, North Carolina; Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas; Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia; Southwestern University in Memphis, and the University of Tulsa. Grad uates of Southwestern (now Rhodes College) will notice the similar architectural style of their alma mater and that of Scarritt. Harriet Hall Cates, Hibbs’ granddaughter, oversaw the rehabilitation of the library at Fisk University — Cravath Hall — in 1998.

Hibbs also designed two hospitals in West Tennessee — the West Tennessee Insane Asy lum in Bolivar and Kennedy General Hospital in Memphis. When boys in small West Ten nessee towns misbehaved in the 1940s and 1950s, their fathers sometimes threatened to send them to Bolivar.