Estey Hall, completed in 1873, was the country's first building for the higher education of African-American women. This building, completed in 1873, was the first constructed for the higher education of African-American women in the United States. It is the oldest surviving building at Shaw, itself the oldest historically black college in the South and the second institution of higher learning established for freedmen after the Civil War.
When it opened it was known as "Estey Seminary," named for Jacob Estey, the largest donor to the construction project. The story of the school begins with Henry Martin Tupper, a Union Army chaplain and Baptist missionary, who founded the school in 1865 to educate former slaves. In the very earliest days students and faculty met in a hotel room because land and buildings could not yet be afforded.
A donation from Elijah J. Shaw in 1870 bought land near Fayetteville Street, and the school was chartered in 1875. Estey Hall itself was recognized decades later, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and designated a Raleigh Historic Landmark. The Shaw campus and the East Raleigh-South Park Historic District hold those layers of history beside you now.