The University of the South — universally known simply as Sewanee — is a private Episcopal liberal arts college founded in 1857, though the Civil War interrupted construction and the university didn't formally open until 1868. The campus is one of the more distinctive in the United States: a cluster of Gothic Revival stone buildings set on a forested plateau, with the surrounding 13,000-acre Domain acting as a permanent green buffer against development.
Wandering the campus is free and visitors are welcome. The main academic quad, anchored by All Saints' Chapel, has a contemplative, slightly otherworldly quality — gowned students are still a common sight, a tradition the university has maintained. The bookstore (in the Stirling's Coffee House building) stocks local and literary titles alongside university merchandise and is one of the better small bookshops in the region.
story: > Sewanee was founded before the Civil War by Episcopal bishops from the South, who envisioned a "University of the South" to rival Yale and Harvard. The site on the Cumberland Plateau was chosen partly for its remoteness and partly for the cool climate. The first cornerstone was laid in 1860, but within months of the ceremony, Tennessee seceded and the university's founders went to war. Several of them never came back. The plateau land sat uncleared until after the war, when the university was finally established on a much-reduced budget with a much-changed world around it.