Still Standing
As Clarksville rebuilds, the city's museum celebrates its survival
by Donna Dorian Wall
Clarksville-Montgomery County Museum might have sustained some extensive damage in the tornado that swept through Clarksville on Jan. 22, but it has much to be thankful for. It’s still standing, and, miraculously, none of its 18,000 artifacts have been lost or damaged. Just a few weeks before, the museum had dismounted its Red Grooms show. Announcing the exhibit, outside the building, was an Elvis banner designed by Grooms himself. The staff liked the banner so much that no one thought to take it down—and amazingly enough, it managed to weather the destructive winds. That Elvis had somehow survived the tornado symbolizes the city’s resilient attitude toward the whole disaster, says the museum’s assistant director, Linda Maki. “Elvis has not left the building!” she exclaims.
Although assessments are not yet complete, current estimates place damage to the building at $1.2 million. Still, the museum, which includes a fabulous 1898 Gothic Romanesque edifice and a recently completed 32,000-square-foot addition, received no structural damage. The storm did blow out the original windows and damaged the roof of the National Register structure, and most of the copper that decorated the building’s finials and cupola will have to be repaired. The $3 million addition, completed just two years ago, got hit a lot harder: Four inches of water left by the rains caused extensive water damage inside.
Over the last year, the new addition had hosted a series of shows devoted to works on paper on loan from Cheekwood. In fact, because Cheekwood has been undergoing renovation, the Nashville institution had shipped close to 3,000 works to a Clarksville storage house for safekeeping—and that’s exactly where they were at the time of the tornado. According to Cheekwood director John Wetenhall, the works were packaged in metal weather-safe cases, so the Cheekwood holdings, which make up more than half of its total collection of works on paper, weathered the storm unscathed. But for a small time there, news of the tornado created quite a scare.
Situated on the confluence of the Cumberland and Red Rivers, about 40 miles northwest of Nashville, Clarksville was established in 1785. The city hit its stride during the turn of the century, when increased rail service and the invention of the steamboat opened access to the international tobacco markets. Building a reputation for its choice “Dark Fire” tobacco—a leaf coveted for its strong nicotine content—the area became inundated with international trade mail, which explains the construction of the 14,000-square-foot Gothic Romanesque post office in 1897. The post office later became home to the city’s electric company, a civic center, and the county historical museum before it became the Clarksville-Montgomery County Museum in 1993. Its survival leaves intact one the city’s most serious architectural gems and an important part of Clarksville’s heritage.
The former post office houses the museum’s historical artifacts. Because transportation has been so essential to the prosperity of the city, the museum has amassed a wide-ranging collection of antique vehicles, including buggies, a Victorian hearse, one of the first fire trucks in the state, and two model trains, which 50 volunteers have been in the process of building. The building is also spacious enough to display an 1840s log cabin, which includes a turn-of-the-century schoolroom with original furnishings, a draper’s shop, and an old dentist’s office.
Talks to enlarge the museum began in the early 1990s, when citizens expressed their desire to see the museum reflect the ethnic, artistic, and cultural traditions of the area. Since opening two years ago, the museum’s addition has been used for this purpose, and for traveling exhibits on loan from the Smithsonian and a number of neighboring institutions—much like Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts plans to do when it opens next year. The Clarksville museum’s director, Ned P. Crouch, a former Cheekwood consultant, has also curated a number of exhibits for the museum, ranging from the recent Red Grooms show to “Shared Vision,” which showcased the work of Roy Ferdinand and Purvis Young, two well-known contemporary African American artists from New Orleans. Slated for next year is “Tennessee 2000: A Collection of Tennessee Artists,” which will include works by Bruce Matthews, Kit Reuther, Michael McBride, John Baeder, Alan LeQuire, and Paul Harmon.
“We are going to have a wonderful grand reopening as soon as possible, and the whole community will be invited,” says Maki, who anticipates that the museum will start welcoming visitors again sometime this summer. In the meantime, the staff is hardly sitting still. “We own Montgomery County’s first school bus, and we have been talking for some time of using it for community outreach projects in the schools and in nursing homes in the area.” If people can’t come to the museum, the museum will go to them—one more reason we should be happy it’s still standing after all these years.
