Last updated: September 5, 2023
Place
Hulda Margaret Lyttle Hall of Meharry Medical College
Photograph by Meharry Medical College, courtesy of the Tennessee State Historic Preservation Office
Quick Facts
Location:
1005 Dr. D. B. Todd, Jr. Boulevard, Nashville, Tennessee
Significance:
Architecture, Ethnic History - Black, Education, Health/Medicine
Designation:
Listed in the National Register - Reference number 98000842
MANAGED BY:
Hulda Margaret Lyttle Hall on the campus of Meharry Medical College, a medical HBCU, in Nashville, Tennessee, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. The building was named after Hulda Margaret Lyttle, a head nurse, superintendent, and dean at Meharry, and the first Black dean of an American nursing school.
Meharry Medical College was founded in 1876 as a department of Central Tennessee College, a community school for newly-freed Black Americans which was founded by The Freedmen's Aid Society and the Freedmen's Bureau of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The medical college was named after the Meharry family, an Irish-American family of abolitionists. George W. Hubbard, a Northern schoolteacher who had worked with the formerly enslaved in Alabama and Nashville, was tasked with opening the medical department and served as its first president. Into the turn of the century, Meharry added programs in nursing, dentistry, and pharmacy.
Hulda Margaret Lyttle was in the first class of graduates from Meharry's professional nurse's training program in 1910. She quickly earned a reputation for clinical excellence, and by 1915, she was appointed as the Director of Nurse Training at Meharry. She continued to rise in the ranks at Meharry, where she was appointed Superintendent of the school's hospital in 1923, and dean of the nursing school in 1938, making her the first Black dean of a nursing school in the country. During her tenure at the school, she raised entrance standards, implemented curricular improvements, and established the nursing school's first library.
In 1946, three years after Lyttle retired, the Nurse's Home building was rededicated as Hulda Margaret Lyttle Hall. Due to lack of funding, Meharry was forced to shut down the nursing school in 1964. Despite some earlier financial difficulties, Meharry is now the second-largest educator of Black doctors and dentists in the country.
Meharry Medical College was founded in 1876 as a department of Central Tennessee College, a community school for newly-freed Black Americans which was founded by The Freedmen's Aid Society and the Freedmen's Bureau of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The medical college was named after the Meharry family, an Irish-American family of abolitionists. George W. Hubbard, a Northern schoolteacher who had worked with the formerly enslaved in Alabama and Nashville, was tasked with opening the medical department and served as its first president. Into the turn of the century, Meharry added programs in nursing, dentistry, and pharmacy.
Hulda Margaret Lyttle was in the first class of graduates from Meharry's professional nurse's training program in 1910. She quickly earned a reputation for clinical excellence, and by 1915, she was appointed as the Director of Nurse Training at Meharry. She continued to rise in the ranks at Meharry, where she was appointed Superintendent of the school's hospital in 1923, and dean of the nursing school in 1938, making her the first Black dean of a nursing school in the country. During her tenure at the school, she raised entrance standards, implemented curricular improvements, and established the nursing school's first library.
In 1946, three years after Lyttle retired, the Nurse's Home building was rededicated as Hulda Margaret Lyttle Hall. Due to lack of funding, Meharry was forced to shut down the nursing school in 1964. Despite some earlier financial difficulties, Meharry is now the second-largest educator of Black doctors and dentists in the country.