Preservation

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…

Located near Byrdstown, Pickett County, the Cordell Hull Birthplace and Museum State Park is a twenty-acre site acquired by the Tennessee Historical Commission in 1990 and placed under the State Division of Parks in 1997. It is the birthplace and…

Cragfont is a beautiful Georgian-style mansion located on a craggy eminence above Bledsoe's Creek seven miles east of Gallatin. James and Susan Black Winchester had the house designed and built between 1798-1802. The masons built the two-story house of gray,…

In 1854 Robert Cravens, a leading industrialist in Chattanooga, purchased a thousand acres of land on the side of Lookout Mountain, where he maintained an orchard and built several cabins as a summer retreat for his family. Two years later…

Located at Brunswick, Davies Manor is recognized as the oldest extant dwelling in Shelby County and perhaps West Tennessee. The west section of the two-story, white oak log, central hall plan house dates to circa 1807 and has been attributed…

There are many historic examples of decoratively painted interiors across the state of Tennessee. While some of the paintings have been lost, many works from the late eighteenth century to the New Deal era have survived, indicating the wide variety…

Mary C. C. Dorris, a founder and early leader of the Ladies' Hermitage Association, was born in Nashville on January 28, 1850, to Emily Donelson Martin and George Washington Currey. She graduated from Ward Seminary in 1867 and three years…

Fairvue was the home of Isaac Franklin and his young bride, Adelicia Hayes Franklin. Built in 1832, the property was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1977, but lost the designation in 2005. Historically, the house had identical facades…

Tennessee Confederates constructed the earthen fort in the summer of 1861 to defend the river approach to Middle Tennessee and Nashville; the fort was named for Daniel S. Donelson, Tennessee's adjutant-general. Principally a commanding water battery with adjacent armed camp…

Fort James White, or James White Fort, was established in 1786 and became the nucleus of modern-day Knoxville. General James White (1747-1821) traveled to the wilderness of East Tennessee from Iredell County, North Carolina, in 1785, settling with his wife…

Located in present-day Monroe County, Fort Loudoun was named in honor of John Campbell, the Earl of Loudoun, commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America at the time of the fort's construction in 1756-57. Interest in building a fort…

The first permanent Anglo settlement of Nashville dates to 1770 when two parties of settlers led by John Donelson and James Robertson, respectively, established a fort enclosing two acres along the banks of the Cumberland River. The present Fort Nashborough…

Fort Negley was a Federal Civil War fortification built largely by African American labor in 1862 and garrisoned in part by African American soldiers during the battle of Nashville in December 1864. Located in Nashville, Fort Negley represented the first…

Constructed in 1797, Fort Southwest Point stands on a high knoll overlooking the mouth of the Clinch River where it enters the Tennessee River just within the boundaries of the Cherokee territory of the Territory South of the River Ohio.…

In April 1861 Governor Isham G. Harris ordered Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Wright, 154th Militia Regiment at Memphis, to proceed north and occupy a defensive position on the Mississippi River. Wright and a battalion of men and artillery established camp at…

Located in Murfreesboro, Fortress Rosecrans was the largest fort built during the Civil War; portions of the huge fortification remain intact today. Constructed between January and June 1863 after the battle of Stones River, the project was the responsibility of…

Until it closed its doors in 2006, the John Geist and Sons Blacksmith Shop was thought to be Nashville’s oldest business in continuous family ownership and operation. From 1886 to 2006, three generations of Geists shod horses, crafted ornamental ironwork,…

Shelbyville's historic Gilliland House is a unique vernacular stone building completed by locally renowned African American stone mason James S. "Jim" Gilliland in the late nineteenth century. Born near Shelbyville on November 15, 1858, Gilliland began as a builder of…

This twenty-seven-room, five-story Victorian house of handmade brick was built in 1868-69 in Mossy Creek (now Jefferson City). Considered one of the state's most nearly perfect examples of Second Empire style, Glenmore is now an Association for the Preservation of…

Located near Adams in Robertson County, Glenraven Plantation is the last large-scale, consciously designed tobacco plantation landscape in Tennessee. Its founders were Felix Ewing, a wealthy Nashville businessman and Arkansas Delta plantation owner, and his wife Jane Washington Ewing, who…