The Athenaeum Rectory

The architecture is Gothic Revival crossed with Exotic Revival, a combination usually labeled “Moorish-Gothic.” This 1837 rectory in Columbia, Tennessee, served the Columbia Female Institute and opens today as a house museum.

The institute’s first president, Reverend Franklin Gillette Smith, opened a second girls’ school beside it in 1851. That school, the Columbia Athenaeum, taught until 1903.

The National Register of Historic Places listed the building on April 24, 1973, as reference 73001809. The Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities took ownership by donation that year.

Travel Channel put the house on national television in 2018. Its live series “Haunted Live” sent the Tennessee Wraith Chasers into the rectory for an episode broadcast on November 2.

Guides and visitors name the spirits of Smith’s children and of Civil War soldiers whose garden graves were disturbed. Others describe a woman in period dress and flashlights answering questions in the basement.

The museum does not leave the ghost stories to outsiders. Guides work them into evening candlelight tours that also cover 1800s mourning customs.

Tours run Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm, and Monday through Wednesday by appointment, at $5 a person. The house also books weddings, so check for a private event first.