Architecture

The Alex Haley State Historic Site is located at 200 South Church Street in Henning, Lauderdale County. This one-and-one-half story weatherboard bungalow was the house of Alex Haley's grandfather, Will Palmer, who operated a respected and profitable lumber business and…

The Knoxville-based architectural firm Barber & McMurry designed landmark residential, civic, and commercial buildings in Knoxville and across the Southeast during the twentieth century. In 1915 Charles Irving Barber joined his cousin, D. West Barber, and Ben McMurry to form…

Originally from Illinois, Hubert Bebb was an innovative architect who worked in Tennessee for the major part of his career. He moved to Gatlinburg in 1950, after having worked for the Chicago firm of Armstrong, Furst and Tilton in the…

Beechlawn, on Pulaski Pike (U.S. 31) south of Columbia, is one of southern Middle Tennessee's most imposing Greek Revival homes, distinguished by a full-temple front supported by four monumental Ionic columns. The house was built in 1853 for Major A.…

Originally named Belle Monte, Italian for "beautiful mountain," this lavish 180-acre Nashville estate was the summer home of Joseph and Adelicia Acklen.

Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, Blount Mansion was constructed between 1792 and 1830, with the first period of construction occurring between 1792 and 1796. As the home and office of William Blount, the governor of the Southwest Territory, Blount Mansion…

Captain William Bowen brought his family to what is now Sumner County in 1784. He first built a double log cabin on the bank of Mansker's Creek before erecting a brick home in 1787. Now within the present limits of…

Lewis C. Buckner, African American carpenter, cabinetmaker, and house builder in Sevier County, was born and raised as a slave in the Strawberry Plains community of neighboring Jefferson County. Buckner was the son of a white father and an African…

Located in the unincorporated community of Cairo, the Cairo Rosenwald School is one of three extant Rosenwald schools remaining in Sumner County and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Built in 1922-23, the school served African American…

Cantilever barns are nineteenth-century vernacular farm structures found principally in two East Tennessee counties, Sevier and Blount. Their characteristic feature is an overhang, or cantilever, which supports a large second-story loft atop one or more log cribs on the base…

The Carnton Plantation is a historic house museum located in Franklin. Randal McGavock (1768-1843), builder of Carnton, emigrated from Virginia in 1796 and settled in Nashville. He was involved in local and state politics and eventually served as mayor of…

Edwin Carpenter, nationally renowned architect of high-rise apartments in New York City, was born in Mt. Pleasant in 1867. His undergraduate training came at the University of Tennessee in 1885 and then the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received…

Located in historic Franklin, the Carter House was built in 1828 and completed in 1830 by Fountain Branch Carter. The Carter property included a farm of 288 acres, where Carter, a gentleman farmer, raised cotton, corn, wheat, and rye. He…

The John and Landon Carter Mansion on the Watauga River at Sycamore Shoals, Elizabethton, is one of the oldest and most architecturally significant houses in Tennessee. Local tradition holds that the house was built by John Carter, an early settler…

This landmark Chattanooga hotel located on Market Street in downtown Chattanooga initially served as the Southern Railway Terminal. Designed by Beaux-Arts-trained architect Donn Barber of New York City, this magnificent architectural gateway to the Deep South opened during the Christmas…

Cheekwood was originally a monumental country estate designed by leading American landscape architect Bryant Fleming between 1929 and 1932 for the family of Leslie Cheek. Cheek had made his fortune from his extended family's wholesale grocery and coffee-making businesses. Joel…

Once the antebellum home of attorney, planter, and political figure General Gideon J. Pillow (1806-1877), Clifton Place in Maury County is one of the more lavish examples of Greek Revival architecture in southern Middle Tennessee. The nearly intact plantation is…

Clarence Kelley Colley was a Nashville architect noted for his institutional designs, most in the Classical Revival style. Several of his buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including the North Branch Carnegie Library (1915), East Branch…

This grassroots agrarian cooperative movement was founded in 1886 by sixteen African American farmers in Houston County, Texas, and spread rapidly across the South. Similar to the white Farmers' Alliance, the Colored Alliance advocated a program of uplift that promoted…

Architect James B. Cook was born in England and studied at King's College and Putney College before becoming a supervising architect on the Crystal Palace for London's Great Exhibition of 1851. Cook immigrated to New York in 1855. Two years…