The Teacher Education Program is currently housed on the first floor of Alexander Twilight Hall. One of Middlebury College's most interesting buildings is Alexander Twilight Hall. It occupies the approximate site of the College's first home. It is named for the first black American to earn a college degree (Middlebury 1823). The pioneering forefathers of Addison County petitioned the General Assembly of the State of Vermont, and in 1797 they were granted a charter for the Addison County Grammar School. Seth Storrs and others gave the land; the required funds were raised; and in 1798 a three-story wooden building, forty by eighty feet, was erected.
When Middlebury College was founded in 1800, it was housed in the Grammar School building. Classrooms and a library were on the first floor, rooms for students upstairs, and a chapel room on the third floor. In 1805, the Grammar School moved out, leaving the building entirely to the College. It was called East College, as distinguished from West College, or Painter Hall, built in 1815. The Grammar School moved back in 1844, and the College used it only as a dormitory. 
The old wooden Academy building deteriorated badly, and was torn down in 1867. It was immediately replaced, a few feet to the west, by the present structure, made of brick, with brownstone details of Italianate style. The new building had heavy, bracket-supported cornices, a gable on each facade, and a mansaraded cupola. A fire in 1904 damaged it badly; it was rebuilt without the cupola, and with minor changes to the roof line.
Meanwhile, organizational developments in the public school system brought changes. The grammar and high school districts were incorporated, and the old Grammar School was left almost empty in 1960. For a time in the 1970's, the fifth and sixth grades used the structure, but by 1983 it was again empty and deteriorating. Motivated by historic and community spirit, the College purchased the building from the School District in 1984 and undertook major renovations. On May 23, 1986, the restored building was rededicated and named Alexander Twilight Hall.
Twilight graduated from Middlebury College in the Class of 1823. He was the first black citizen to earn a baccalaureate degree in an American college. He was born in Corinth, Vermont, in 1795. After studying at Randolph Academy, Twilight enrolled in Middlebury in August 1821 with advanced standing as a junior. 
After graduation he taught school four years in Peru, NY, studied theology, and was licensed to preach. In 1829, he became the Preceptor of the Orleans County Grammar School in Brownington, Vermont, and pastor of the village church. For a growing enrollment, and without support from his trustees, he built a large, four-story granite academy, Athenian Hall, which he directed for 21 years, until his death in 1857. He is buried near this great Academy. Alexander Twilight is representative of those teachers who past, present, and future, have devoted their lives to showing the way to wisdom, truth, and understanding.