Explore an earlier seminary setting through a photograph from Dr. Wooten’s research collection.
A city street, a striking group of buildings, and the traffic of another era. This photograph gives visitors a visual setting for the seminary’s earlier life in downtown Louisville.
Southern Seminary’s institutional history places its downtown campus at Fifth and Broadway. The seminary moved to Louisville in 1877 and developed this campus in the following years.
The building history is broader than Broadus’s own lifetime. The photograph is presented as a view of the former campus, without assigning it a year or identifying every building from appearance alone.
Southern’s campus history dates the move to its present Lexington Road property, known as “The Beeches,” to spring 1926. That date marks the institutional relocation; it does not establish when this photograph was taken.
Read Southern’s campus history ↗Notice the relationship between the campus and the street: the towers, entrances, trees, vehicles, and neighboring buildings. What questions would this setting lead you to ask about a student’s daily life?
A visual-reading prompt from The Broadus Project.
Photograph: supplied by Dr. Wooten as sbts.jpg. Source identified by Dr. Wooten: The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, “Fulfilled Promise: 1878–1899.” The page title describes a period of institutional history; it is not a date assigned to the photograph. The image is reproduced without altering its content.
Institutional context: Southern Seminary, Fulfilled Promise: 1878–1899, for development of the downtown campus; Denominational Leadership: 1899–1928 and Campus, for the relocation in 1926.