Nashville has a veritable forest of historical markers. Since 1950, the Metro and Tennessee historical commissions have erected more than 200 plaques commemorating significant people, places and events in our history. Many, unfortunately, mark the spots of deconstructions. A marker is all that’s left, for example, of the grand home of President James K. Polk—hammered into dust by the wrecker ball and replaced by the Day’s Inn on “Polk Place.”
We have no markers, however, for the dreams—and some nightmares—that Nashvillians have spun, plans we made that failed to happen. Yet these visions of what might have been tell us as much about ourselves—and the eras that spawned them—as what we realized in three dimensions.
The story of unbuilt Nashville tells us of the central place that the tall tower occupies in the American imagination, and most especially in the mind of the American developer on the make. In 1986, Algernon Blair Inc. made the claim that its “Riverparc Plaza” idea, a 21-story office tower on the then vacant block on Second Avenue at Church Street, would blend in with the surrounding historic fabric. But the preservationists who objected prevailed. In 1989, the Alpha Group’s Rudy Ruark revealed a plan to construct three 12-story office towers in the Gulch—almost 600,000 square feet—but that lofty goal evaporated when the bottom fell out of the downtown office market. There were plans to one-up New York and punctuate the Nashville skyline with not one, but two, sets of twin towers—siblings to the American General building (now the Tennessee Tower) on Charlotte Avenue and to the City Center on Sixth Avenue. And in 1997, before mixed-use was cool, Orr, Houck & Associates designed a 60-story mega tower complex—that’s almost twice the height of Batman—for the East Bank. The program included a little something for everyone: hotel, offices, condos, restaurant, retail, ice rink, cinema—linked to the west by a moving sidewalk across the Cumberland attached to the Victory Memorial Bridge.
What some among us dreamed but didn’t build also demonstrates the broad streak of kitsch woven into the fiber of our city. A 1982 proposal by Dickson’s Dave Turk suggested turning Union Station into Bibleland USA, complete with actors in scriptural garb speaking the lines God had wrought. And we’ve had more than our share of blueprints for architecture-as-guitar, including a hotel with a guitar footprint, a tower on Music Row with the elevators running on the strings, and a stadium on the East Bank with the neck forming a bridge across the Cumberland.
Atrium architecture—naturalizing downtown by bringing the outdoors inside—was another impulse that popped up in plans, especially in the 1980s. The most dramatic manifestations were by Earl Swensson, the architect of the Opryland Hotel’s glassy pavilions. Swensson drew a glass ziggurat for the surface parking lot on Second Avenue North. And his design for the “Ryman Under Glass” showed a giant transparent bubble for the hallowed hall that would have stretched for two-and-a-half blocks. The theme was festival marketplace, with green space surrounded by restaurants and retail, an entertainment center backing up on Second Avenue, and a residential component with as many as 1,000 units attached to the mall.
The most grandiose of visions came courtesy of the urban renewers, who looked at downtown with eyes wide shut. Several plans involved segregating people and the machines that moved them. In 1968, the Middle Tennessee Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) developed what it called the “Downtown Plateau Concept,” extending Capitol Boulevard all the way to Broadway by means of a pedestrian-only platform over car storage, thus mitigating downtown’s steep topography. The staff of Metro’s Planning Department went the AIA one better with its 1975 plan for a downtown “street” system that had three different levels, one each for mass transit, cars and pedestrians.
Some of the plans we made but didn’t build were undone by their own silliness, some by citizen outcry, some by the ever-shifting forces of the marketplace or by evolving theories of what makes cities work. Here are 10 of the ones that got away—10 that deserve markers all their own.
The Public Square, Emmons Woolwine and Frederic Hirons, 1937
The design for the Davidson County Public Building and Courthouse didn’t stop at the building’s front steps. The architects also included plans for an expansive public square—in which people and cars mingled without conflict—a formal overlook on the river side of what is now the Gay Street connector, and a curious temple-like building punctuating the square to the east.
The temple’s vault of an interior is an homage to Nashville past. A central skylight sheds light on murals and statuary of notables, as well as a babe in classical Greek garb whose specific symbolism is unclear. In supplemental renderings, the Woodland Street bridge is a series of graceful arcs, the likes of which have never been spotted in a Public Works or TDOT manual. The whole ensemble testifies to a time when designers of the civic realm had a sure grasp on the qualities of dignity and elevated sense of purpose we struggle today to regain.
“The Pinnacle,” Henry Bledsoe, 1977
Architect Henry Bledsoe has designed many buildings that have never been built. But he keeps on drawing because, as he says, “I can’t stop.” He once sketched a hotel with a guitar shaped footprint for the site now occupied by the Music City Sheraton. And his plan for a convention center, hotel and restaurant on Taylor’s Hill—the location of the Skyline Medical Center at the intersection of I-65 and Briley Parkway, one of the highest points in Nashville—was a futuristic reshaping of the topography standing 300 feet tall.
Bledsoe proposed “The Pinnacle” for the address of the Shoney’s Inn on Demonbreun Street near I-40. The concept was a 999-seat theater—the personal venue of a “popular music artist”—with a gift shop and cafeteria, and topped by a restaurant pod.
The style of Jetsons-come-to-Music-Row exploits the kitsch latent in the music culture. Better than Shoney-bland, any day.
Cumberland Science Center, E. Verner Johnson and Associates, 1997
What is now the Adventure Science Center stands on Fort Negley Boulevard, a site with great visibility but difficult access. You can see it from the interstate but can’t figure out how to get there. A downtown location was supposed to solve this problem.
The center’s board developed an ambitious plan for a facility on Fourth Avenue South, where the concert hall for the Nashville Symphony is now taking shape. The Science Center’s futuristic architecture was to contain an IMAX theater and planetarium as well as exhibit space. But the price tag was too steep.
“The fund-raising feasibility study found that the center could expect to raise about $10 million,” says president Ralph Schulz. “But the plan would have cost $40 million. So in 1999 the board voted to stay where we are.”
Growing the State Capitol, Harry Frahn, 1917
Architect Frahn’s hypothetical “annex” to the state Capitol was published by the Nashville Banner on Jan. 13, 1917. According to the newspaper’s report, Frahn thought a 10-story tower plopped on top of the Capitol would solve the building’s overcrowding and “not interfere materially with the present arrangement and design.” Note that the belvedere has been relocated from the Capitol roof to the top of the tower. If Nashville had an award for best architectural giggle, this would win hands down.
Growing the Downtown Post Office, Tuck Hinton Everton Architects, 1989
The state Capitol wasn’t the only government building to get the tower treatment. Developer Pat Emery commissioned this scheme for the post office after the main distribution center for the postal service moved from Broadway to an industrial park near the airport in 1987. The next year the postal service advertised for redevelopment proposals which retained a small post office on the main floor and surrendered the rest to private office use.
The Tuck Hinton Everton drawing shows a 19-story office tower looming over the 1934 post office and dwarfing the tower of Union Station. The use of the original style for the much more massive “addition”—a theoretically admirable gesture of historical respect—illustrates how the 1930s style of “stripped classicism,” when inflated to these proportions, could result in an effect führer architect Albert Speer might have admired.
Monorail at Union Station, 1980s
As a symbol of Tomorrowland, the monorail has always held a special place in the hearts and minds of Nashvillians who like to imagine our city as aggressively hurtling into the future. This fanciful rendering shows the sleek train hurtling right through the bowels of Union Station. The drawing was a response to a discussion in the '80s about a high-speed mass transit link between the airport and downtown via the historic home of the railroad—a concept that periodically resurfaces among downtown and tourism boosters.
“I always shifted mentally to other things when the subject of the monorail came up,” recalls Mark Sturtevant, who served as development director for the Metro Development and Housing Agency in the 1990s. So have our transit planners.
Design for North Slope of Capitol Hill, Robert Lamb Hart, 1990
How to protect the sole remaining sightline to the state Capitol was a persistent question among government officials long before the planning of the Bicentennial Mall. The idea of some sort of park periodically surfaced, but the state’s needs for more office space and car storage took precedence.
In 1989, former president of Aladdin Industries Victor Johnson called on Gov. Ned Ray McWherter to propose a plan by his Aladdin colleague, John Bridges, for a linear park north of the Capitol inspired by the National Mall in Washington, D.C. With McWherter’s concurrence, Johnson hired New York architect Robert Lamb Hart to flesh out the park concept. Hart’s park plan, however, was derailed by the need for more state office space, and the architect was told to add some buildings to his mall. This model illustrated below was the result.
Hart’s design features a cluster of office buildings stepping down the north slope of Capitol Hill and bridging over both James Robertson Parkway and the railroad tracks, with a large parking garage and elevated pedestrian plaza. Crowding the hill with offices and a massive structure over the parkway proved unpopular and expensive, however. The state ultimately solved its shortages elsewhere, opening the way for the Bicentennial Mall we know today.
Metro Office and Judicial Complex, Robert Lamb Hart, 2000
One of Nashville’s most ubiquitous dreamers is Bobby Mathews. Among many visions for the future, Mathews proposed an industrial park on the site of MetroCenter before the office park concept triumphed. And he has had several schemes for what is now the Shelby Bottoms greenway. One was for a golf course as part of a land swap that would have allowed the developer and his partners to put a subdivision on the current 18-hole course. When that didn’t fly, Mathews countered with what he calls “The Fort Lauderdale of Nashville,” which would have carved canals into the floodplain so residents could live on their houseboats next to garages on dry land.
A Metro skyscraper complex was a Mathews proposition developed in response to Metro’s need for a new criminal courthouse. Mathews proposed a joint venture with the landowner in which they would build the complex, and Metro would do a lease purchase deal.
But the plan for the site across James Robertson Parkway from the Municipal Auditorium transcended the courts’ needs. Three linked towers featured 22 stories for city offices and two 15-story structures for courts and court offices, with retail on the ground floor and six levels of below-grade parking. Mathews’ plan consolidated Metro offices currently scattered at various sites. It also reduced the significance of the 1937 Metro Courthouse to what the ground plan calls the “ceremonial City Hall.” Mayor Purcell was cool to the concept, and so it died. But you can’t blame a guy for trying.
The Central Loop: General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, Clarke & Rapuano Inc., New York, December 1963
Since Nashville became Metro, there have been more than 100 plans dealing with some aspect of the central city. But only one remapped the entire urban core, and with such chutzpah. This was the urban renewal plan for downtown.
The urban renewers looked at broad swaths of land and saw tall buildings—surrounded by open space—and big highways. Their vision was a utopia for cars and the suburban commuter.
The lead designer was actually the federal government, which promised cities oodles of cash to eliminate so-called “urban blight.” Unfortunately, much of that blight included most of our historic architecture. In the Central Loop plan, the labels “requiring major repairs,” “substandard” and “obsolete” were laid on most of our older structures, which were targeted for demolition and replacement by bland boxes and towers. Of our most revered historic buildings, this plan kept only the State Capitol and the Downtown Presbyterian Church—goodbye, Ryman. This plan had the entire eastern side of Second Avenue North blown out for a park, and the street was designed to flow through a tunnel under the Metro Courthouse. Also noticeable by their absence are traffic congestion, surface parking and billboards.
If you don’t notice what’s missing, however, the gleaming white buildings (especially the new baseball stadium in Sulphur Dell) lush landscaping and elevated pedestrian-only walkways have the appealingly retro look of New Frontier cool. But we can thank the deity that the Central Loop plan is retro, and regret the parts that were actually implemented. This is a vision for utopia that ultimately produced dystopia, all over the country.
