Hopkinsville’s Bethel College was established as a private school for girls several years before the start of the Civil War and then survived almost 110 years.
The Bethel Baptist Association, organized in 1854 and supported by numerous white Baptist churches in surrounding counties, built the Bethel Female Institute on West 15th Street between Main and Canton streets.
The school closed for two years during the Civil War and served as a hospital for soldiers, including some who became ill during an outbreak of black measles.
A few years after it was renamed Bethel Woman’s College, a west wing with 24 residential rooms was added to the main campus building in 1919. An east wing with 30 rooms followed a year later.
An advertisement described Bethel as, “The school that friendship built,” and boasted of a strong music program in addition to traditional college classes. The ad also noted, “On the well-kept grounds of Bethel the visitor sees attractive girls from many States and some foreign countries, engaged in various sports, such as swimming, tennis, archery, and basketball.”
For the second time in its history, a war prompted a temporary closure at Bethel. There were no classes from 1942 to 1945, when the campus instead provided housing for Army officers at the new Camp Campbell south of Hopkinsville.
In 1951, the school became co-educational and was renamed Bethel College. It remained open until 1964. Across town, Hopkinsville Community College opened in 1965. Most of the buildings that comprised Bethel were razed in 1966.
In 2004, on the 150th anniversary of Bethel’s founding, alumni were invited to a reunion at First Baptist Church in Hopkinsville. Christian County Historian William T. Turner estimated at that time that about 1,770 students had graduated from the school. Turner attended Bethel.
One Bethel structure that remains standing today is the former gymnasium, which had been built in 1959 on South Main Street between 16th and 17th streets. It became the Croft Building in the 1960s with professional offices. In 2014, it was renovated and converted to an apartment house with 20 units.
Part of the Bethel gym floor is visible today in the apartment building. A curving black line on the first floor hallway marks center court.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
