The New Old Town

When we moved to downtown Franklin 30 years ago, farmers still drove in from the country most Saturdays, parked their pickups down the street from us, and traded pigs and stories. At the other end of our street, R.N. Moore Feed and Seed was open for business, and down on the Public Square, Standard Farm was everyone's favorite hardware store.

These days, the people who drive into Franklin on Saturdays are more apt to be exurbanites enjoying beer and sunshine at the Mellow Mushroom or a latte at the Starbucks two blocks down the revitalized Main Street. The Confederate monument still presides over the Public Square, but the small-town, Old South culture it once symbolized is a lot harder to see. The Square, in fact, isn't even square any more—it's been round since 1991, the centerpiece of a $2 million streetscape program that complemented the 19th century buildings with new sidewalks, period lighting, tree plantings and other amenities.

Once the seat of one of Tennessee's most prosperous agricultural counties, a place where you needed to at least have grandparents born here to feel you truly belonged, Franklin is now the epicenter of miles of sprawling development, from Avalon, emerging from the ground five miles east of town, to the neo-traditional village of Westhaven out to the west. There's a lot more retail activity in Cool Springs than on Franklin's Main Street, and native Franklinites are increasingly rare. In fact, of the 5,000 citizens responding to a City of Franklin survey in 2000, fewer than 500 were Franklin natives and almost half came from out of state. Some 50,000 people now make their homes in Franklin, the fastest growing city in Tennessee. With thousands of houses, condos and apartments platted and approved but still unbuilt and with new developments wearing out the planning commission with monthly six-hour meetings, Franklin natives are an increasingly endangered species.

But even though most of us these days are newcomers and thus by our very existence threaten what makes Franklin different from the rest of exurban Middle Tennessee, we take fierce pride in our island in a sea of surrounding subdivisions.

We know we've got something precious—our challenge is to keep it that way.

So far, preservationists have saved the town from some of its own worst impulses. Compare what downtown Nashville has lost to what Franklin has saved, and you know why Franklin residents think they live somewhere special."

At first glance, Franklin may appear to be a fairly ordinary small town—but it's actually an extraordinary place," says Dick Moe, president of the Washington-based National Trust for Historic Preservation. "It has a remarkably rich history, but what's even more remarkable is the spirit of innovation and vision with which that history has been kept alive."

"Historic preservation has been going on in this town for a long time, and it has involved not only the members of organizations such as the Heritage Foundation but also leaders of the business community who may not even think of themselves as preservationists," Moe says. "Their work has made Franklin a model of what grassroots preservation can do to strengthen a community's economy without sacrificing the qualities that make it unique, appealing and livable."

The preservation effort centers the whole community, not just the historic downtown. They may live in new housing, ranging from pattern-built homes on quarter-acre lots to custom-built million-dollar McMansions, they may shop in Cool Springs and work in Nashville, but residents identify with downtown Franklin, where the original 15 blocks were platted in 1799.

"I still feel a part of Franklin," says freelance writer Laura Hill, even though she lives in a 1990s house in the Fieldstone Farms subdivision two-and-a-half miles north of downtown. "I get downtown a lot. I like to shop there, patronize the restaurants and stores and visit friends who work downtown. Franklin is gorgeous. I love walking down Main Street and seeing Roper's Knob at the end of the street. Also, we make a conscious effort to support downtown Franklin. We like what it stands for."

Even developers of new subdivisions use the image of our historic downtown as a marketing tool. "MainStreet Living Changes Everything You Thought a Home and Community Could Be," said a recent ad for a new development, a gated community promising a "tranquil retreat from today's chaotic world."

The most ambitious attempt to replicate the ambience of a historic downtown is Westhaven, a 2,750-home neo-traditional development rising from fields and hills west of downtown Franklin. Whereas downtown Franklin's residents celebrate the fact that they live in a real town, not a theme park, Westhaven's parent company proudly quotes its founder, Tim Downey, as saying, "I like to imagine that our communities offer the fantasy of Walt Disney combined with the simple lifestyle of Norman Rockwell. We blend the best of yesterday and today." (Think New Urbanism.)

But whether or not Westhaven is a Norman Rockwell painting, downtown Franklin still hasn't reached the tipping point at which a community morphs into a kind of colonial Williamsburg theme park. "It could become too cute very easily, but so far it has avoided becoming a kind of Disney World," Hill says.