On Friday, the Tennessee Historical Commission announced that eleven Tennessee sites have been added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The Middle Tennessee sites that made the list are Vanderbilt's Alumni Memorial Hall, the Coats-Hines archaeological site, Fort Nashborough, the Searcy-Matthews-Tarpley Farm in Rutherford County, the building that houses the Tennessee Attorney General's office, and U.S. Naval Reserve Training Center, which is, fittingly, that boat-looking building in Shelby Park when you come into the park from Davidson Street.
I don't know whether to be delighted or appalled that Fort Nashborough is on the list. There's something kind of mind-blowing about a site that is the wrong size and in the wrong place being granted historical protection, because "the buildings are good examples of early 20th century log-revival designs." In other words, the historic significance of the Fort Nashborough site has to do with what it shows us about life in the early 1900s, not in the late 1700s. That is hilarious.
But here's something a little troubling.
