Hume School, serving the first through 12th grades, opened in 1855 on Eighth Avenue (Spruce Street) just north of Broad and was the first public school in Nashville.[4]
In 1875 Fogg High School was built adjacent to Hume School at the corner of Broad and Eighth and absorbed its high school students. Around 1910 both schools were razed and replaced by Hume-Fogg High School, a Gothic Revival building, which opened in 1912.[5] The building consists of five floors including a basement, which has several tunnels leading to various locations in downtown Nashville. However, they are currently boarded off and inaccessible. In 1942 Hume-Fogg was recast as a technical and vocational school.
It continued in this capacity until the 1972 court-supervised desegregation of Nashville's public school system, decades after the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional.[6] In that year Hume-Fogg was redeveloped as an academic magnet school for Nashville's gifted and talented secondary students.[4] In the 2004–2005 school year Hume-Fogg celebrated its sesquicentennial anniversary.
Academics
Hume-Fogg is an academic magnet school and offers 31 advanced-placement (AP) courses.[7] All academic courses—with the exception of PE and art courses—are taught at the honors or AP level.[8]
Nearly 100 percent of graduates each year go on to four-year colleges, many earning prestigious academic scholarships in the process. Each year the Hume-Fogg senior class is granted over ten million dollars in cumulative scholarship and grant money from various universities across the United States.
In the 2006–2007 academic year Hume-Fogg received the National Siemens Award for one of the best science- and math-based academic programs in the country.[11] In addition, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report have consistently ranked Hume-Fogg among the top public high schools in America:
The Band program consists of Beginning Band, Concert Band, Wind Ensemble, and two Jazz Bands, and jazz combos. The jazz band has competed in the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival in New York City on several occasions. The Orchestra program consists of Beginning Strings, Philharmonic Orchestra, and Chamber Orchestra. The Chamber Orchestra has played at the Nashville Downtown Partnership and the Governor's Literacy Alliance Dinner for several years. The Choral program consists of a Mixed Chorus and a Show Choir. Several students perform in musical groups outside of school such as the Curb Youth Symphony, Music City Youth Orchestra, and the Blair Chorus programs.[22]
Athletics
Hume-Fogg has the highest percentage of students in sports in Davidson County. In 1964, it was the first public high school in Nashville to desegregate its sports teams.
