Tallahassee is the capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2020, the population was 196,169, making it the 8th-largest city in the U.S state of Florida, and the 126th-largest city in the United States. The population of the Tallahassee metropolitan area was 385,145 as of 2018. Tallahassee is the largest city in the Florida Big Bend and Florida Panhandle region, and the main center for trade and agriculture in the Florida Big Bend and Southwest Georgia regions.
Leon County is a county in the Panhandle of the U.S. state of Florida. It was named after the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León. As of the 2010 census, the population was 275,487.
Florida State University (FSU) is a public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher education in the state of Florida.
Robert Cleckler Bowden was an American college football coach. Bowden coached the Florida State Seminoles of Florida State University (FSU) from 1976 to 2009 and is considered one of the greatest college football coaches of all time for his accomplishments with the Seminoles.
Edwin Howland Blashfield was an American painter and muralist, most known for painting the murals on the dome of the Library of Congress Main Reading Room in Washington, DC.
Tallahassee Community College (TCC) is a public community college in Tallahassee, Florida. It is part of the Florida College System and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. As of fall 2017, TCC reported 24,639 students.
Florence Elizabeth Riefle Bahr was an American artist and activist. She made portraits of children and adults, including studies of nature as she found it. Instead of using a camera, more than 300 pen and ink sketchbooks catalog insights into her life, including her civil and human rights activism of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the many important captured events included the Washington D.C. event where Martin Luther King Jr. first gave his I Have a Dream speech. Her painting Homage to Martin Luther King hangs in the (NAACP) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's headquarters. She created illustrations for children's books and painted a mural in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) for the Johns Hopkins Hospital's Harriet Lane Home for Children. Her works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions since the 1930s. In 1999, she was posthumously awarded to the State of Maryland's Women's Hall of Fame, as the first woman artist they recognized.
Francis Wayles Eppes was a planter and slave owner from Virginia who became a cotton planter in the Florida Territory and later civic leader in Tallahassee and surrounding Leon County, Florida. After reaching legal age and marrying, Eppes operated the Poplar Forest plantation which his grandfather President Thomas Jefferson had established in Bedford County, Virginia, which he inherited. However, in 1829 he moved with his family to near Tallahassee, Florida. Long interested in education, in 1856 Eppes donated land and money to designate a school in Tallahassee as one of the first two state-supported seminaries, now known as Florida State University. He served as president of its board of trustees for eight years.
The history of Tallahassee, Florida, much like the history of Leon County, dates back to the settlement of the Americas. Beginning in the 16th century, the region was colonized by Europeans, becoming part of Spanish Florida. In 1819, the Adams–Onís Treaty ceded Spanish Florida, including modern-day Tallahassee, to the United States. Tallahassee became a city and the state capital of Florida in 1821; the American takeover led to the settlements' rapid expansion as growing numbers of cotton plantations began to spring up nearby, increasing Tallahassees' population significantly.
The history of Florida State University dates to the 19th century and is deeply intertwined with the history of education in the state of Florida and in the city of Tallahassee. Florida State University, known colloquially as Florida State and FSU, is one of the oldest and largest of the institutions in the State University System of Florida. It traces its origins to the West Florida Seminary, one of two state-funded seminaries the Florida Legislature voted to establish in 1851.
The FSView & Florida Flambeau is a for-profit newspaper owned by the Gannett Company that covers the on-campus events, happenings, and trends of the Florida State University as well as concerts, museum and art exhibits, movies, literature and poetry readings, and other events from the larger Tallahassee community. In early August 2006, the FSView made national news as being the first privately owned, college-oriented newspaper to be bought by a major newspaper chain.
Doak Sheridan Campbell was from 1941 to 1957 president of Florida State College for Women and its successor coeducational school, Florida State University. He oversaw the creation of this new university. His opposition to the admission of African-American students has caused controversy about the naming of Doak S. Campbell Stadium in his honor.
Kafi Benz is an American author and artist who began participation in social entrepreneurship through environmental preservation and regional planning in 1959 as a member of the Jersey Jetport Site Association, which opposed plans by the New York Port Authority to found a new airport in the Great Swamp, the central feature of a massive 55 square mile watershed in New Jersey bounded to the south and east by the Watchung Mountains, 25 miles west of Manhattan.
W. Stanley "Sandy" Proctor is an American painter and sculptor in Florida who makes bronze figures. He was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2006.
W. T. Cash (1878–1951) was an educator, author, Florida State Representative, Florida State Senator, and Florida's first state librarian. He is listed as a Great Floridian. A collection of his papers are held at the Florida State Archives. Some of his papers are also collected at Florida State University.
George Snow Hill (1898–1969) was a painter and sculptor in the United States known as a muralist. He lived in St. Petersburg, Florida until his death in 1969. He founded the Hill School of Art in St. Petersburg in 1946.
The Eppes Statue is a monument of Francis W. Eppes that is located in Tallahassee, Florida. The bronze sculpture sits in front of the Westcott Building on Florida State University's campus. It was commissioned by FSU president Sandy D'Alemberte to honor one of Florida State University's founders. This monument was created by sculptor Edward Jonas and was unveiled to the public eye on January 24, 2002.
Riley D. Housewright was an American microbiologist who conducted research on germ warfare. Having been assigned to the Fort Detrick laboratory in the mid-1940s and appointed scientific director in 1956, Housewright played a major role in the development of bioweapons for a proposed attack on Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1966, he was appointed president of the American Society for Microbiology. He left Fort Detrick in 1970 following President Nixon's moratorium on US bioweapons research, and later published several books on water safety for the National Academy of Sciences. In the 1980s, Housewright became executive director of the American Society for Microbiology. He died in Frederick, Maryland, in 2003.
Manley Rowley Whitcomb was a concert band and marching band conductor known for being the director of Florida State University's Marching Chiefs. Whitcomb was Director of Bands at FSU from 1953 to 1970. Whitcomb has been cited as an influence for band composers such as Clare Grundman, who dedicated his American Folk Rhapsody No. 2 to him.
Sally Elaine McRorie is an American psychologist and painter. She is the provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Florida State University and president of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.
