What's Out There Weekend (WOTW) in Nashville, Part 3 - Sunday, April 14, 2019

Continued from Part 2...This is the second day of our "What's Out There Weekend" tours put on by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (tclf.org).

On Sunday, April 14, we drove to Tennessee State University to meet our guide. We weren't quite sure where to park and ended up in an employee parking lot. Our guide said since it was a weekend, we didn't need to worry about it. The parking pass for the tour was in our windshield, so we were good to go.

The tour group assembled at the base of the Air Force Jet in front of the U.S. Air Force jet. The focus of this tour was not only landscaping. Founded in 1912, it is the largest and only state-funded historically black university in Tennessee and is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

Starting on our tour.

Our first stop was a historical marker about Lt. William McBryar, a Buffalo Soldier assigned to the frontier in 1887 and awarded the Medal of Honor in 1890. He went on to live his life and in 1934 graduated (at the age of 73!) from Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial College (this university's former name).

The large institutional buildings are in a grid pattern and campus is divided into four quadrangles. Some of the buildings are art deco.

Health, Physical Education
and Recreation Building.

McWherter Administration Building.

Entrance to campus through
McWherter Administration Building portico.

McWherter Administration Building.

Formerly the College of Education building.

Performing Arts Center.

The campus is spacious and has a number of different architectural styles. But what Tennessee State University is famous for is its rich Olympic tradition. Many Olympic athletes hailed from this school. There is a beautiful monument commemorating all the Olympic athletes who trained here. Bob w.as super impressed by the athletes

A monument to TSU's Olympians.

In honor of Coach Ed Temple.

Hale Stadium

Hale Stadium.

We finished our tour at Hale Stadium and walked along the track where Olympians trained. We thanked our guide, hustled back to our car, and headed out. 

This afternoon, I am going to Cheekwood Estate and Bob is going to watch the Portland Trailblazers on TV in a sports bar. He will pick me up when I am done with the estate tour.

What's Out There Weekend (WOTW): Nashville - Part 1, Saturday, April 13, 2019

Or, how to do six tours around Nashville in two days! The best way to do that is with The Cultural Landscape Foundation (tclf.org). If you go to their website, you can find when and where the next WOTWs will be held. The way it works is, you register in advance online for the tours you'd like to take. When it's time for the weekend, you are sent an email about where and when to meet your guide and where to park. You have a tour of the location given by an expert, whether it's the president of a college or the person who originally designed the landscape architecture, you're sure to learn a lot. 

We have fallen in love with this unique way to tour an area. And the tours are FREE! Pretty simple overall. We first learned about WOTW in San Antonio and were blown away by the quality of the tours.

Bob and I had already done three Volksmarches in Nashville, so we had been through a couple of the places the tour would cover; however, to go back and hear an expert talk about it, gives so much more depth to your experience in a place. 

NOTE: This is Part 1 of 5 blogs covering our What's Out There Weekend tours with The Cultural Landscape Foundation (tlcf.org).

The first tour on Saturday: Belmont Mansion which later became Belmont University. A light rain was falling as we pulled into the parking lot. It was chilly, so we bundled up and grabbed our umbrellas before meeting our guide, Mark E. Brown, who has been Director of the Belmont Mansion for over 30 years! Brown had been a history student at Belmont College. After graduation from Belmont, he earned a Master's Degree in Historic Preservation from Middle Tennessee State University. Talk about an expert. 

It was obvious from the start, Brown loves his subject. He was prepared for us at each stop on the tour with historic photos of what Belmont Mansion's property looked like back in the 1850s. The mansion was built in the style of an Italian Villa set amidst elaborate gardens. You have to keep in mind that this was only a "summer residence." There was a water tower, plus a two-hundred-foot-long greenhouse, a conservatory, a zoo, a bear den, a bowling alley, gazebos, and an art gallery. The owner, Adelicia Acklen, opened up her property for local citizens to enjoy the zoo.

Mark E. Brown, Executive Director, at right.

Belmont Mansion today

Sleeping lions were in place by the
beginning of the Civil War.

Sitting lions are far rarer than sleeping lions.
The sitting lions are on "guard duty."

I fell in love with the Four Continents garden ornaments.

Africa

Europa

America

Asia

Part of our tour group.

Original photos of parts of the estate.

More photos and a drawing of the grounds.

The famous water tower on the Belmont University Campus has an interesting history. Enlarge the photo below to read about it.

Water tower history. It is now
a carillon tower with 42 bells.

Mark Brown mentioned in his talk about how Adelicia Acklen and the Belmont Mansion fared in the Civil War. Bob asked, "When so many other plantation owners were ruined by the Civil War, how did they survive?" The answer is that when Adelicia's first husband died, he willed their seven Louisiana cotton plantations and all the cotton crops to her. 

At one point during the Civil War, Adelicia and her female cousin made a trip to Louisiana to secretly and illegally "negotiate" with both Union and Confederate authorities the sale of 2,800 bales of her cotton to London, England. She made $690,000.00 in gold off the sale.

Once again, we thoroughly enjoyed this tour even though it rained on us. On to our next tour.

Tour #2 on Saturday: Music Row Nashville. The biggest impression this tour made on me is that Nashville music started out as blues and gospel, and then evolved into country and rock 'n' roll. It all happened here. 

Our guide, Carolyn Brackett (senior field officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation), is currently directing the Music Row National Treasures project in Nashville. This includes working with local partners to document Music Row's history, prepare a preservation-oriented design plan, and develop plans to tell Music Row's story to residents and visitors.

We started out at The Quonset Hut/Decca Records on Music Row. This is fitting since Music Row began when Owen Bradley opened The Quonset Hut in 1955. In 1957, Chet Atkins opened RCA's studio. Other studios, publishing houses, and record labels including Columbia, Epic, Decca, Warner Bros., Capitol, and Curb followed. Street names were changed in 1975 to Music Square East and West.

Many of the record studios congratulate/advertise their new artists' hits by placing signs in front of their studios. See below.

Ads for stars and their new recordings.

Warner Music building.

One of the most interesting things we learned on this tour is that musicians vary the studios they use which gives their music a different sound depending on the qualities of each studio. Each studio is better for certain musical qualities, or back-up musicians, sound engineers, depending on what sound the musicians are trying to achieve. There are many collaborations between artists and they even may share drummers, bassists, etc.

Broadcast Music, Inc. is one of four performing-rights organizations. It collects license fees on behalf of songwriters, composers, and music publishers and distributes them as their work is performed. [Wikipedia.]

BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.)

The guitar-shaped pool below is at NASHVEGAS, a recently renovated building that used to be the Spence Manor (a five-star hotel) that catered to the rich and famous on Music Row: Elvis, The Beatles, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson, and many others. [NOTE: Rooms there can be rented through VRBO or Airbnb.]

The guitar-shaped pool at NASHVEGAS.

Sculpture of Owen Bradley, the one
who started Music Row in 1955.

Below is the Nashville branch of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). ASCAP is an American non-profit, performance-rights organization that protects its members' musical copyrights by monitoring public performances of their music, whether via a broadcast or live performance, and compensating them accordingly.

ASCAP Nashville.

RCA Victor, Studio B

This loud, raucous party wagon blaring music
came by making it hard to hear our guide.

Our guide, Carolyn Brackett (right), and
some others on the tour.

RCA Victor, Studio A

RCA Victor, Studio A was set to be sold to a developer who wanted to tear it down and build condominiums. It was saved at the last minute. The developers will not get it. This is a huge problem in Music Row. Large condominium buildings are moving into the area overshadowing Music Row. Our tour guide is helping fight the developers by working with lawmakers to establish new legislation limiting the developers in what they can do in historic areas.

RCA Victor, Studio A

This building is set to be remodeled.
It is currently empty.

Our tour ended and we thanked Carolyn for the tour and for working to preserve historic buildings.

We have two more WOTW Tours this afternoon: Clover Bottom and The Hermitage.

(To be continued...)

The Seven C's - Friday, April 12, 2019

I'm taking a look at the Seven C's (not the high seas) around Nashville this weekend. They are:

1. Cedar Creek Campground
2. Cumberland River
3. Corps of Engineers (COE)
4. Country music
5. Civil War
6. Cultural Landscape Foundation's "What's Out There Weekend?" in Nashville
7. City traffic

Today is a day of change for us. We're packing up the 5th wheel and moving 14 miles to another COE campground. Even though we made reservations months ago, we could not get a week in either campground, so we split the week between the two. It's nice because we could check out another COE park.

Cedar Creek Campground is on the Cumberland River. The road to this campground is quite narrow. 

We had a level site underneath a cherry tree in full bloom. The sites were spaced nicely, and we had a view of the river. Throughout the day, we could see a couple of great blue herons and an egret fishing close to shore.

Our site at Cedar Creek COE outside Nashville, TN.

Sunnie approves.

We were surprised to learn that tugs/barges go by on this river. The Cumberland River travels 687 miles from its headwaters in Lechter County, Kentucky, to Smithland, Kentucky, on the Ohio River. Over 300 miles of its course is through Tennessee.

The Army Corps of Engineers was instrumental in building dams and dredging the river to make the area navigable and has had a major influence on the Cumberland River since 1832. In "1825, increasing steamboat trade caused the Tennessee legislature to petition Congress for a survey of the Cumberland which was the main shipping route for middle Tennessee produce. Between 1832 and 1838 Congress appropriated $155,000 for river improvements, viewing the potential production from the coal fields of eastern Kentucky as justification for navigational improvements. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began clearing snags and constructing wing dams to deepen the channel." [Reference: Tennessee Encyclopedia. Click the link for more U.S. Army COE and Cumberland River history.]

We had a relaxing day in the park. In the evening, Bob took a walk around the campground. We had a magnificent sunset!

Evening falls.

Bob walking the campground. There is a great blue
heron in the water to the left of all the trees.

Sunset photo by Bob Alton (taken
while on his walk around the campground).

Sunset photo by Susan Alton (taken from
our campsite).

Here we are in Nashville, the country music capital of the United States, and neither one of us are country music fans. We learned a little about country music history when we were in Memphis, learning about the history of rock 'n' roll and soul music. They're all interrelated through the early roots of hillbilly music from the Appalachians, Gospel, and the blues. As I was looking up the history of country music, I stumbled upon an excellent blog about Nashville that will take you through the whole Nashville scene. The blogger is Amanda and her blog is Dangerous Business: a Travel Blog. Click on her blog link to read her take on Nashville's music history.

Bob's quest to immerse himself in Civil War history found him learning about the Battle of Nashville and the Stones River Battlefield 30 minutes away in Murfreesboro. You can reference his guest blog here.

When we planned our trip to Nashville, we learned The Cultural Landscape Foundation (tclf.org) would be holding one of their "What's Out There Weekends" in Nashville. After having gone to the TCLF weekend in San Antonio, we were delighted to learn we could attend their free tours in Nashville and planned our stay accordingly. For the next two days, we will be on six different tours with them.

One thing we do not like about Nashville is its traffic on I-40. Holy smokes, to stay on I-40 you have to change lanes left/right/left. In most of those places, you have less than a mile to move over. And everyone else is trying to change lanes too. This was some of the gnarliest traffic we have encountered on our trip to date. Come to think of it, when Susan Medlin and I made our trip to Washington, D.C. last October, Nashville's freeways proved to be quite stressful then as well. This city needs a complete redesign of I-40 through the downtown core area. Easier said than done, I'm sure.

That was my visit to the seven C's of Nashville. I hope you enjoyed the ride. Our six tours with The Cultural Landscape Foundation over the weekend include:

• Music Row
• Belmont Mansion
• The Hermitage
• Clover Bottom Mansion
• Tennessee State University
• Cheekwood Estate and Botanic Garden.

Stay tuned.