College Place Historic District

This neighborhood grew up around one of the most important schools in Southern education. The University of North Alabama traces back to LaGrange College, chartered in eighteen thirty, which moved here and was rechartered as Wesleyan University in eighteen fifty-five. Then in eighteen seventy-two the church deeded the school to the state, and it became Florence State Normal School, the first state teacher training college in the entire South.

It was part of a national wave, roughly one hundred eighty normal schools founded in the eighteen hundreds to supply teachers for booming public schools. As students and faculty filled the area, the streets around the campus developed into College Place, a district of homes shaped by the life of the school. In nineteen seventy-four it took its modern name, the institution we know today as the University of North Alabama.