Wake Forest is the rare town named for a college that no longer lives here — and the reason the story isn't a tragedy stands on the original campus grounds.
The inheritance
When Wake Forest College departed for Winston-Salem in 1956, its historic campus — the magnolia-lined grounds the town literally grew up around — passed to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The seminary has occupied and stewarded the old campus ever since, keeping the town's founding architecture in daily educational use rather than behind ropes.
The institution today
Southeastern is now one of the largest seminaries in the Southern Baptist Convention, a graduate theological institution whose stated mission is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ by equipping students to serve the church and fulfill the Great Commission. Programs span preaching, Christian apologetics, missions, church planting, counseling, and student ministry, drawing students from around the world to a town of thirty-odd thousand.
The result is a downtown neighbor few towns this size can claim: a working graduate campus on historic grounds, whose students and faculty thread through the coffee shops and sidewalks of the town their institution's predecessor named. Visitor and program information is on the directory listing.
