Damage and Destruction Sustained by Historically Significant Buildings

Tornadoes have no regard for man-made distinctions. Storms care not about class or race or social status. The devastation is both random and widespread. They’ve no sense of aesthetics or holiness or culture. Tornadoes are capable of destroying both the hideous and the beautiful, the sacred and the profane, the refined and the kitschy with the same violent capriciousness. Nor do tornadoes concern themselves with what we’ve chosen to honor and protect.

With reckless disregard for our collective inheritance and the legacy we’ve worked to preserve for the future, the March 3 tornado ripped across Davidson County, from John C. Tune Airport in the west to the Wilson County line in the east, sending homes tumbling and tearing lives asunder. Along the way, the tornado cut through neighborhoods with some of the highest concentrations of historic properties — Buena Vista, North Nashville, Germantown, East Nashville, Hermitage — damaging and destroying a host of buildings of historical significance.

The Metropolitan Historical Commission continues to assess damage to properties on the National Registry of Historical Places, a process that may not be completed for months, though initial assessments should be finished this week.

Photographs of Germantown’s Church of the Assumption — built in 1859 to serve the German immigrants who lent the neighborhood its name — are among the iconic images in the wake of the storms. Walls are gone. The stained-glass window near the altar is now in innumerable fragments on the floor of the sanctuary. The roof is damaged. The steeple teeters. The Rev. Bede Price, the church’s priest, ran from the rectory into the sanctuary as the twister passed 100 yards away to preserve the host — that is, the bread taken by Catholics during Holy Communion. He was uninjured. In the midst of Lent, the holiest part of the liturgical calendar, Assumption parishioners will hear Mass elsewhere: at Monroe Street United Methodist across the street (another NRHP property that saw some damage) and at a variety of facilities owned by the diocese.

Nearby, the Onyx Building at the corner of Jefferson and Seventh is destroyed, six years after being bought and restored. The neighboring Elliott School, currently being repurposed as residential space, is damaged. Both properties were under preservation easements.

Across the river, the YMCA’s Y-CAP facility on Russell Street sustained heavy damage. Built in 1910 as Russell Street Presbyterian, the building has served Presbyterian and Baptist congregations and as a funeral home. In 1997, the Y picked it up at auction, 16 years after it was added to the NRHP.

The Holly Street Fire Hall, built in 1914 and the oldest continuously operating fire station in the city, lost its roof. Across the street, The Church at Lockeland Springs — built in 1903 and formerly Lockeland Baptist — sustained significant damage. 

In Hermitage, Dodson Chapel Methodist is in tatters, much of the structure now a void. The current building was built in 1906, though the legacy of the congregation goes back much further; indeed, Andrew Jackson cast his last ballot at one of Dodson’s predecessor churches when he voted for fellow Tennessean James K. Polk. The tornado moved with such strength and such precision that the bricks were torn from the building, exposing the original exterior walls below. Three church buses lay among the wreckage.

The Metro Historical Commission and its sister Historical Zoning Commission provide technical assistance for repairs and restoration of historical properties damaged in natural disasters. For nonprofits, churches and private citizens, free consultations are available. Owners of income-producing buildings are eligible for a 20 percent federal tax credit if substantial rehabilitation is required.

Those prosaic and practical pieces of assistance go a long way, but some properties may never be fully rehabilitated, and the loss to our cultural inheritance won’t be easily mended.