Your walk brings you to Transylvania University, Kentucky's oldest university, founded in 1780 as the first college west of the Allegheny Mountains. Founded in 1780 and chartered by the Virginia General Assembly as Transylvania Seminary before Kentucky became a state, this institution is Kentucky's oldest university and was the first college west of the Allegheny Mountains. Its name—Transylvania, Latin for "across the woods"—comes from its origin in the heavily forested western Virginia region once called the Transylvania Colony, which existed between 1775 and 1776.
Transy offers 46 major programs and dual-degree engineering options, and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Its medical program has graduated 8,000 physicians since 1859. The university has been a notable producer of American statesmen: it is the alma mater of two U.S. vice presidents, two U.S. Supreme Court justices, 50 U.S. senators, 101 U.S. representatives, 36 U.S. governors, and 34 U.S. ambassadors.
Initially promoted chiefly by Presbyterians, the school carries a long heritage in American education. Those alumni numbers and the 8,000 physicians since 1859 testify to a long record of graduates from the institution chartered in 1780. Notice the Transylvania campus around this stretch of Lexington, and the Lexington streets that carried generations of statesmen to its gates.