Things I have learned tonight:
1. There was a Nashville centennial celebration in 1880. The exposition hall was at the corner of Broadway and 8th Avenue South, where the federal courthouse is now. This should be so very close to Ben and Sue Allen’s house that I can’t help but wonder if I might find pictures in the metro archive.
2. Nathaniel Baxter Jr. lived at 117 North Spruce. The Allens, who were Ed Baxter’s in-laws (Ed being Nathaniel’s brother), were at 125 South Spruce. Perhaps we could put Nathaniel on the list of potential runners away from the Thing.
3. Colonel Colyer’s description of Jere Baxter (another brother–Jones, Nathaniel, Edmund, and Jere were the ones I know about, but it looks like there may have also been a Montgomery and a sister, Mary) in the History of Nashville, Tennessee about makes me blush. Whew, some folks really loved that guy.
4. Looking at other houses in town, I think the thing that makes me nervous about my tentative floor plan is that a lot of the houses look deeper. And certainly Ben would have had a library. But he had to have a garden out back because we know he had a workshop in his garden out back in which he made his jewelry.
5. The authors of History of Nashville, Tennessee seem struck in wondrous awe that Black Bob ran the best tavern in the town and was friends with white people who even came to his house for dinner. It just goes to show you that things can get worse. Not that you’d call life for black Americans great in the 1790s, but the fact that white people in the 1890s were like “what is this strange thing? Who would be friends with a black guy? How could you possibly even go to his house for meals?” is pretty depressing.
6. People used to bury people in the public square but they had to put a stop to it because they didn’t bury them very deep and the bodies would come back up. And, I presume, be eaten by the pigs that seemed to roam around town for much of our history.
7. Speaking of livestock, the fence around Vanderbilt was to keep the cows out. Ha ha ha.
8. Most histories I’ve read of Jere Baxter gloss over how kind of shitty the end of his life was. But here’s something funny. When Jere Baxter died, his friends put up a statue of him where Broadway and West End intersect. One of his detractors then put a statue of John “I’m a haunted thumb at the Tennessee State Museum” Murrell put up at Centennial Park to indicate that Jere Baxter was no better than a horse thief.
I wonder where that statue of John Murrell is now…
Edited to add: I’m kind of bummed more people don’t sit on the roof of the capitol nowadays.
Like this:
Filed under: About Town
You can find a shit-ton of photos of the Centennial in the art gallery at the Parthenon. There’s an art gallery with paintings, but as you walk up to the enclosed gallery space you pass an exhibit of photos of the building of the Nashville Parthenon (which was erected for the Centennial) and then pictures of the Centennial festivities–which took place all over, i think.
We saw this for the first time in October, and let me tell you. It is a damned weird experience. I know back then they were thinking they were so urbane, but in hindsight it’s like the most racist Kiwanis Parade of all time. I can’t remember all of it because I was with my brother AND having some sort of physical problem. But there are huge pictures of parts of town made up to look like other parts of the world. And pictures of obviously rich society people looking really proud of things. And lots of pictures of Nashville. And IIRC those pictures are printed in one of the souvenir photo books on sale in the gift shop. And if after all this you want to get your $6 back by going upstairs to see Athena maybe you can tell me why she has a third boob that is also a screaming monkey head.
FWIW, I found the art museum lovely, the pictures compelling in an eerie way and the famed Athena statue horribly troubling in the extreme.
And none of this is probably what you meant.
Oh look at whose Nashville history sucks so much she didn’t realise all the creepy pictures were 1897, not 1880. Damn it. I’m an idiot.
I walk by/look at the centennial historical marker in front of the Estes Kefauver regularly. The text ends with something about how the centennial celebration featured the grandest display of fireworks ever seen in town. What kind of fireworks did they have in 1880? Seems like they would be really loud and very dangerous.
Coble, don’t feel bad. I had to read the paragraph four times in the book to get that they were saying “The Nashville Centennial Exposition” (the exposition in honor of the Nashville centennial) and not “The Nashville Centennial Exposition” (the state centennial exposition held in Nashville). But both look to have been strange racist Kiwanis rallies, just in different ways.
Jess, I can’t even imagine. The thing that stuns me is that, looking at these old pictures, Nashville in the 1880s through the 1910s is just disgustingly smoggy. The coal smoke is so thick in the air that every picture of an exterior of the city seems to have a cloud of pollution in it.
Those must have been some incredible fireworks to even be seen through the layer of coal smoke. Speaking of which, if my atmosphere were that full of soot, I’d be nervous about sparking it. But that’s just me.
I get the heebie jeebies, worrying about someone sliding off that roof.
I will resist getting all pedantic about fireworks (especially after the Centennial debacle of 3am….) but since the publisher I once worked for also imported fireworks and I had to write copy about the Upstanding History and Tradition of Pyrotechnics….
The fireworks we have and use now are actually pretty unchanged in fundamental composition since about 1700AD. I mean, it’s just gunpowder, paper and various other chemical compounds for colour and explosion variance.
The modernisation of fireworks has been more about the computational lighting and choreography.
Jess, I have noticed that sign and nodded my head. Because Nashville appears to me to have the best official-fireworks-displays-per-capita of any place I’ve been. Seriously, I’ve seen better and longer fireworks here than in much bigger cities. So I’m willing to believe that this was a tradition started at the Centennial celebration. And a good thing, I say.