Science Hill School

About this property

Science Hill School, originally known as the Science Hill Female Academy was founded on March 25, 1825, by Julia A. Tevis as a female preparatory school. In 1975 the school was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and in 1978, it was opened as a restaurant known as the Science Hill Inn by Donna Gill and Tim Barnes. On March 25, 1825, Julia A. Tevis founded the Science Hill Female Academy as a preparatory school for women. It was one of the first schools founded for girls west of the Allegheny Mountains and utilized the Lancastrian system, in which older or more advanced students taught the younger pupils. The school name derived from Tevis' belief that girls were as able to master the sciences as young men. Though she attracted students from throughout the country, the majority of her students were from wealthy Southern families. These aristocrats wanted their daughters to have social polishing and learn French, music and art. Tevis taught these traditional courses, but also taught her students history, math, rhetoric, science, and Latin. In its early days, the school was funded by the Methodist Church, with which Tevis' husband, John, served as a missionary. The initial class had thirty-five pupils, of which six were boarders. Within twenty-five years, the class had grown to two hundred students with half of them boarding at the school. Its reputation was widely known and it had students from throughout the country as well as students who attended as a day school from the local community. A reunion of alumni was held in 1875 with three generations of the thousands of students who had been educated at the school in attendance. Tevis operated the school until 1879, when she sold it to Wiley Taul Poynter, who operated the school as a secondary academy to prepare young women for further education at institutions such as Vassar, Wellesley and other well-known women's colleges. He and his descendants operated the school until 1939, when it closed due to financial constraints caused by the Great Depression. When it closed, Science Hill Academy had the distinction of being the oldest Protestant female academy in continuous operation in country, as well as in Kentucky. When the school closed, the daughters of Dr. Poynter lived in the home and rented out the dorm rooms as apartments. The buildings were sold in the early 1950s to Mark J. Scearce, who renovated the former chapel as the Wakefield-Scearce Antique Gallery and continued utilizing the dormitories as apartments for let. In 1978, the former dining room was converted to a restaurant by Louisville restaurateur Tim Barnes, who opened it with chef, Donna Gill. Ellen Gill McCarty later became the chef of the restaurant which has become a focal point in Kentucky's culinary history.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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