History
The college was founded in 1970 by Eloise Pitts O'More. It is patterned after Le College Feminin in Paris, France, where Pitts studied in the late 1920s, and was aimed at women, who were traditionally not involved in the design fields. O'More began the college with nine students in her home. Since Pitts death in 2002, the college has passed into the hands of Dr. Mark Hilliard. He continues to "fan the flame" of creativity.
The Abbey Leix Mansion (ca. 1866), an Italianate-style home which serves as the College's administration building, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The McAfee Library and Hilliard Institute for Educational Wellness (ca. 1887), a Romanesque Revival-style home now in use as a sensory teaching and learning center and the visual communications department, is one of a handful of remaining examples of the work of H.C. Thompson, arguably Tennessee's most celebrated native architect.
The Abby Leix Mansion is named after the ancestral property in Ireland belonging to the O'More family, and was the first residential structure built in the area after the Civil War in 1867. O'more offers a study abroad program that usually travels to its sister school in Ireland (in honor of the O'Mores.) The mansion's cellar is left over from a previous structure that burned during the war. During the second Battle of Franklin, the Carnton Plantation was used as a hospital while the cellar of the original structure was used as a morgue. The grounds surrounding the mansion were also used for temporary placement of the dead.
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