Reinhardt University
Reinhardt University is a private university with its main campus in Waleska, Georgia, and its Cauble School of Nursing and Health Sciences in Jasper. Over 50 graduate and undergraduate programs are offered on campus and online. Reinhardt is affiliated with the United Methodist Church. The 620-acre campus includes hiking trails, disc golf, professional concerts at the Falany Performing Arts Center, athletic teams, and the Funk Heritage Center and Bennett History Museum.
History
Founding
In 1883, former Confederate Army Captain and Atlanta lawyer Augustus M. Reinhardt and his brother-in-law, former Lieutenant-Colonel John J. A. Sharp, commenced plans to open a school in Waleska. Both Reinhardt and Sharp had grown up in the Waleska area, and after the American Civil War had ended and the hardships of Reconstruction begun, both men wanted to provide a school for the local citizens of impoverished Cherokee County.Reinhardt, who had been a successful lawyer after the Civil War with the firm of Reinhardt & Hook in Atlanta and owned interest in a successful Atlanta street car line, went to the North Georgia conference of the Methodist Church and appealed for them to provide a strong minister and teacher to start the school. In return, he promised to offer this individual a yearly salary of $1,000. Sharp, who had owned a store, cotton gin, and tobacco factory in the Waleska area before the Civil War, had retained some of his money after the war and was still active in the local area. Upon deciding to start the school with Reinhardt, he purchased a local sawmill and hired men in preparation to start construction on school buildings.
file:Reinhardt 1885 Administration Building.jpg|thumb|left|1885 Reinhardt Academy Administration Building
In 1884, with the Methodist Conference answering Reinhardt's request by sending Emory College graduate James T. Linn as the school's first teacher, Reinhardt Academy opened for classes in an old cabinet and wood shop located at the southern edge of Waleska. The school had been named in honor of Reinhardt's father, Lewis W. Reinhardt, who had settled in the area in 1833 and had established a local church known as Reinhardt Chapel.
Just a month after the school opened, a tornado struck Waleska, damaging a lot of property and injuring several people. The school, however, wasn't harmed and classes continued uninterrupted. The tornado left downed pine trees perfect for building. Seizing this ready supply of wood, school officials and local citizens had it cut up into lumber and began to construct Reinhardt's first permanent building. In January 1885, students moved out of the old cabinet and wood shop and into the school's newly completed, three-story framed building, which was capable of housing 11 classes of students. The school now had an official residence in the town.
Over the next century, many buildings were built and land acquired, expanding the campus's physical presence to a building site and overall college campus. Fire and or demolition over the years have left no trace of any of the original 19th-century buildings.
Growth
Reinhardt Academy opened in 1884 as a grammar school and academy for students of all ages. The founders had originally wanted the school to be just a college, but at the time there were no students of college age in the area.The grammar school taught reading, writing and arithmetic, supplemented by courses in elocution, geography, history and penmanship. The academy taught students algebra, astronomy, botany, chemistry, ethics, geology, geometry, grammar, languages, literature, logic, music, physics, psychology, and, by 1916, art and expression. In 1888, the school had its first graduating high school class of four students.
Image:Military Student Reinhardt College.jpg|thumb|170px|Early Reinhardt military cadet
In 1893, a military department was established in lieu of a physical education department at the school. Service in this department was compulsory for able-bodied boys, where they often participated in drills, exercises, encampments, dress parades, and mock skirmishes. In 1905, the military department suggested, but didn't make mandatory, that the school's boys should wear uniforms. For girls, however, it was decided that they had to wear "blue skirts, white waists and Oxford caps." The military department was replaced by the Department of Physical Culture in 1922.
By the last decade of the 19th century, the school was educating students who wanted to go on to be teachers in the art of pedagogy. At this time in American history, schools that offered this type of training were known as normal schools. Therefore, in 1890, Reinhardt Academy was incorporated as Reinhardt Normal College and operated under this name until 1911 when "Normal" was dropped and the school became, simply, Reinhardt College.
In 1920, Reinhardt became an official junior college, when it added a second year of postsecondary education to its curriculum. The school had its first graduating college class in 1921.
By 1925, the control of Reinhardt's grammar school was transferred to the Cherokee County school system; however, the school remained on Reinhardt's campus until 1948, when R.M. Moore Elementary School opened in Waleska. In 1956, Reinhardt's academy, then known as Reinhardt High School, closed when its students were transferred to Cherokee High School in Canton, Georgia.
In 1957, Reinhardt College began classes with only college-age students on its campus for the first time in its history. It admitted its first Black student in 1966 when James T. "Jay" Jordan from nearby Canton, Georgia, started classes.
In June 2010, Reinhardt College became Reinhardt University.
Campus
The Burgess Administration Building is one of Reinhardt's most recognized buildings. The Hill Freeman Library and Spruill Learning Center holds some 131,000 books, periodicals and audiovisual materials. Other buildings at Reinhardt include the Falany Performing Arts Center, which houses the university's music and communication programs and performance space, the Fincher Visual Arts Center, and the Brown Athletic Center.Students reside in nine residence halls and two apartment-style buildings. The Hasty Student Life Center opened in May 2007 and houses the bookstore, Starbucks, student activities, residence life, counseling, career services, campus ministry, and student affairs.
The campus is also home to the Funk Heritage Center, Georgia's Official Frontier and Southeastern Indian Interpretive Center. The Center features contemporary Native American art, exhibits on Native American culture, an extensive collection of hand tools, and a recreated Appalachian settlement village.
Early campus history
When Reinhardt Academy opened in January 1884, students convened in an old cabinet and wood shop located at the southern edge of Waleska. This original one-room frame structure had a huge fireplace at one end to keep the 30 or 40 original students warm as they sat on benches made of split logs supported by pine legs.In 1885, the school moved into its first permanent building, a large, three-story frame structure that cost $2,500 to build. This structure, which could house 11 classes of students, contained five recitation rooms, two offices, storage space and, eventually, a laboratory, a library, an armory and a music room.
In 1892, Reinhardt built a 1,200-seat, wood chapel near the administration building. The back of this building housed the Primary Department and provided rooms for music education.
As with many buildings in Reinhardt's history, fire destroyed both the three-story classroom-administration building and chapel in 1911. As a result, a campaign was begun to garner funds to build a larger, better administration building. Mary Reinhardt Sharp, school co-founder J. A. Sharp's widow, donated her home place for the new building and funds were secured.
In 1912, the cornerstone was laid for the new administration building to be named Mary Stuart Witham Hall in honor of board of trustees' member William S. Witham's mother. Witham had also chaired the building committee to raise the funds for this new structure. This new, wooden building had a stucco exterior and a beaver-board interior, and contained recitation rooms, offices, a library and music room, classrooms, a laundry room and an auditorium, which also doubled as the school chapel and community church. In 1912, this became the school's first building with indoor plumbing and in 1916 the first building on campus to be electrically lighted. This building was later torn down in 1950 to make way for the still-standing Burgess Administration Building.
In 1926, Reinhardt built its first non-wooden structure, the Dobbs Hall classroom building, named after Dr. Samuel Candler Dobbs, who donated $85,000 for construction of the building. Dobbs was an employee of Coca-Cola business tycoon Asa Griggs Candler's. Dobbs had served as Coca-Cola's first salesman and eventually became the advertising manager and president of the company. This building, originally designed by Atlanta architect T. J. Mitchell, was renovated and added onto in 1997. It now serves as the John Franklin Science Center.
Dobbs also gave money, along with the people of Canton, in 1931 to build the school's first gymnasium. In later years, this gym was converted into a student center, complete with administration offices, campus security offices, a book store and coffee house. It was torn down in 2004 to make way for the new Hasty Student Life Center.
In 1949, Reinhardt College hosted a Conservation Field Day, billed as a "one-day Master Soil Conservation 'Face-lifting Demonstration'", where the college added fifty acres of land to its property, built four buildings for various uses, constructed a one-acre fish pond and ten-acre athletic field, and put up five miles of fences. The highlight of the day was a speech given to 50,000 people by U.S. Vice President Alben W. Barkley.
Throughout the 1940s and 50s many other buildings were built on campus – faculty houses, faculty apartments, a president's home, a parsonage for the church, a farm and multiple out buildings. Multiple dormitories also were built throughout the last part of the 19th century and first part of the 20th century.