Wightman Chapel at Scarritt College

The stone building at 1110 19th Ave. S. is Wightman Chapel, dating to 1928 and part of the historic core of buildings at the former Scarritt College. The college began in Missouri in 1892 and was affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church South. The college, renamed Scarritt College for Christian Workers, moved to Nashville in 1924 and desegregated its student body in 1952. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech in Wightman Chapel on April 25th, 1957. The historic district at Scarritt College was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The college closed in 1988. Wightman Chapel has become a weddings venue within the Scarritt Bennett Center, a non-profit.

In 1892, the Scarritt Bible and Training School for Women Missionaries was founded in Kansas City, Missouri. A global understanding of racial justice and equality was an underlying theme of Scarritt College. The women were given training in the foreign cultures and languages where they would later serve.

Women's Missionary Societies of the Methodist Episcopal Church South raised funds to build a campus in Nashville. The first buildings constructed between 1925 and 1928 were Scarritt Hall, Bennett Hall, Wightman Chapel, a Bell Tower, and Susie Gray Dining Hall. The buildings are connected by open passageways with pointed-arch entryways of limestone. Maria Davies Wightman was the President of the Women's Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; she served from 1894 to 1908. She also was the wife of Bishop William May Wightman. The chapel, finished in 1928, was named in her honor. Wightman Chapel was designed by xx in the classic Gothic Cathedral style; like most of the other early buildings, it was constructed of mainly Crab Orchard stone (from a quarry near Crossville) and limestone. A log cabin dating to 1802 was moved to campus and reconstructed in the 1930s; it had been a Methodist meeting house in Sumner County, Tennessee. Six other campus buildings date from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Scarritt College was one of the first white, private colleges in Tennessee to integrate. In September 1952, two African American women began at Scarritt as full-time students.

The Conference on Christian Faith and Human Relations met at Scarritt College in April 1957.

Scarritt College for Christian Workers became co-educational in xxxx. The institution became Scarritt Graduate College in 1980 but closed just eight years later. The campus then became the site of a non-profit, Scarritt Bennett Center, whose aim is to continue the school's work in racial justice, women's empowerment, and spiritual growth.

Scarritt Bennett Center. Scarritt College for Christian Workers 1892-1988, Scarritt Bennett. Accessed October 22nd, 2022. https://scarrittbennett.org/scarritt-college/.