Don't know about the accuracy of the 150-year-old North Capitol history, but the geography is all wrong

Pith in the Wind blogger Betsy Phillips contends that she "solved the mystery" of a 150-year-old photo taken of Civil War soldiers during the Battle of Nashville. She argues that the photo was taken from Capitol Hill facing Germantown and North Nashville, given the current topography:

Well, there's only one place in town where you're going to be on a hill, overlooking a train trestle, and can see Fisk off in the distance — Capitol Hill facing Germantown. Here's a contemporary picture from the TSLA for comparison (though you can't see Fisk, because of the trees, but you can see farther than Fisk, because you can see the highrise on the far side of the river in Bordeaux, thus, if there were no trees, you'd be able to see Fisk.).

The problem with Phillips' theory is that the 2010 photo above could not possibly have captured Fisk in its angle. TSLA's camera orientation is pointed northwest. Fisk lies at an angle farther west of the camera position. A look at screenshot from Google Earth makes that plain:

Click on to enlarge.

The Bordeaux highrise Kelly Miller Smith Tower (not included in the screenshot, but to the left of center in the TSLA photo) lies on a direct line down 10th Ave N., through Fifteenth Avenue Baptist Church (whose steeple is clearly seen in the TSLA photo) to Capitol Hill. The farthest straight western line shown in the TSLA photo stops near where Jefferson Street crosses over the interstate, 3 blocks east of the Fisk campus. The Bordeaux highrise Kelly Miller Smith Tower is near Clarksville Highway, which drops down south to become D.B. Todd, Jr. Blvd, which brushes up against Fisk, but that road is not a straight shot between the highrise tower and the university. The road doglegs away from downtown at Clay St. Fisk does not actually sit between Capitol Hill and the Bordeaux highrise Kelly Miller Smith Tower. It sits off to the western side.

By the way, the photo of Fisk that appears on the masthead of my blog was taken from a spot near the intersection of Union and 9th Av. N, not too far from Capitol Hill. The sunset should tell you I am pointing my camera west. Also note that there are leaves on trees, but Fisk's main buildings sit high enough on a hill itself so as not to be blocked from sight. The Jubilee Bridge can also be seen in the masthead to the left of the Memorial Chapel's spire. Again, the theory that the TSLA shot--taken on the northern side of Capitol Hill--includes Fisk does not hold water.

Obviously I cannot speak to the actual location of the 150-year-old photo or the history of North Nashville during the Civil War, but I can say that if Betsy Phillips is operating under the assumption that the 2010 photo includes the Fisk campus, her theory that Capitol Hill is the only place the old photo could have been snapped is itself open to debate.

Whether the history is right, the geography is all wrong.


UPDATE: Based on Mike Peden's comments below and in respect for the legacy of the late Rev. Kelly Miller Smith, I corrected my references to the "Bordeaux highrise" to reflect its proper name.

Photos from 2014 Country Music Marathon and Half-Marathon around Bicentennial Mall and the Farmers' Market

Was the Nashville Civic Design Center contest on ballpark designs a process of imagining or of realization?

In 2011, I emailed Gary Gaston, the head honcho of the Nashville Civic Design Center, and I asked him about an event they were holding that April (co-sponsored by the Friends of Sulphur Dell, a group boostering a new North End ballpark) that would include University of Tennessee student renderings of ballparks for the Sulphur Dell area near Bicentennial Mall State Park along with commentary by Professor Mark Schimmenti. I was particularly concerned as to whether the students, who had visited various ballparks for ideas, had also attended 2010 North Nashville Community Plan meetings in order to learn more about local community character.

Mr. Gaston replied to me:

This is not a public meeting on the topic of a ballpark - these are student projects, theoretical exercises .... Student projects are wonderful ways to explore imaginative visionary solutions for sites - they are not meant to be grounded in the practical (otherwise we would be asking them to limit their creativity).

The NCDC has been all over the rapidly unfolding disclosure that indeed, Karl Dean favors a ballpark for Sulphur Dell (news that had been on the street for years) and, when they promoted it on their Facebook page this week, an official with their partner, the UT College of Architecture and Design commented:

This is incredible! Fantastic to see the work of Professor Schimmenti, our students, and the NCDC realized.

I don't understand. Was the purpose of the 2011 NCDC workshop to help expand our imaginations without regard to practicality or to help practically realize Mayor Karl Dean's plan to build a ballpark at Sulphur Dell?


UPDATE:  I went back over my posts from 2011. A commenter to one of those posts had the following observation to put after attending the meeting:

Someone asked why the NCDC and UTK did not study the Thermal Site, to which the UTK professor replied that the real planning should be left to the experts and a "professional" study will need to be undertaken. Further proof this was a sloppy PR move by the powers that want the Sulpher Dell site (or should I say, the powers that want the Thermal Site for something other than baseball), but had very little to do with actually advancing the planning debate.

Again, the purpose of the design contest is muddied by the question of whether it was supposed to have practical effect even as now NCDC and UTK are celebrating practical effects of the contest.

CRIME ALERT: Woman stabbed last week near Bicentennial Mall

From NewsChannel5 (no updates from Metro Police on their website in almost a week):

A homeless woman was stabbed near Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park on Wednesday morning.

Police were called to the scene off James Robertson Parkway around 8 a.m.

Laura Wilson was the one who called 911.

"I work here at the Farmers' Market and I was driving to work and I was driving the roundabout at Bicentennial Mall, she flagged me down and covered in blood and obviously upset," said Wilson.

The woman got into her car, and the witness drove to the Farmers' Market where police were called. The victim was believed to have just left the nearby Rescue Mission.

Police said the woman had been approached by a man she had seen previously in the area and he demanded sex at knifepoint. When she refused, he stabbed her and fled on foot toward 3rd Avenue.

The victim was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center by ambulance where she was treated and released. Her identity was not released.

Officials described the man wanted in this crime as a black man between 30 and 40 years old, with no facial hair, 5' 8" with a stocky build, and solid black hair. At the time of the crime he was wearing dark parts and a white coat.

I used to get alerts on crime from the Salemtown association. They do not seem to be communicating these much any more.

North Capitol

In a recent commentary on development around old Sulphur Dell, the Nashville City Paper comments on the status of public and private development:

Until a group of private investors announced earlier this year the rehabbing of two buildings at the southeast corner of Jefferson Street and Third Avenue North, Leibowitz’s District Lofts and Craighead Development’s two-building Harrison Square and conversion of Riverfront Apartments to a condominium building essentially had been North Capitol’s only significant private development since the Bicentennial Mall opened 16 years ago.

And if private development has been modest, the construction of civic structures on the multiple acres of state-owned property within the district has been nonexistent.

Plans for the public-private $47.5 million National Museum of African American Music, now pushing 10 years in the making, seemingly have stalled indefinitely. The most recently available tax return shows the nonprofit had only about $2.57 million on hand at the end of 2010. The tax records also indicate the organization tasked with spearheading the project operated at a deficit that year.

Support for a new home for the Nashville School for the Arts magnet high school has gained minimal traction. Progress has been painfully slow on a new Tennessee State Museum building. And a Nashville Sounds baseball stadium on the old Sulphur Dell site doesn’t appear likely.

I wasn't aware of any proposals for a new magnet high school. The last I heard was that the Nashville Civic Design Center was pushing the idea of a charter school for the area. While the journalists maintain that a new ballpark does not appear likely, I keep hearing about the prospect of it here in the community. Some here don't seem to be as willing to let it go. The prospect of the African American Music museum sadly lists in malaise, and in my opinion it could have been prevented if the Mayor's Office had put more of its own energies into it. The concept has dropped off the radar here in the North End. Chatter I hear from the associations shows no hint of political will to work on it.

I think that "North Capitol" is a much better moniker than "Capitol District" a name recently pitched by association officers here in Germantown and Salemtown. The term "district" is hackneyed and trite; NoCap is more attractive, less sterile and stale. In the past I have pitched the idea of calling our area "Capitol Downs".

One exception that I take to the City Paper is that the Bicentennial Mall area is "eerily people-free". We go to the area on a regular basis at all times of the day and we see quite a number of people, especially neighbors who live around the Mall using the common spaces and the Farmers' Market. Granted, it is usually not as densely packed with tourists as Downtown is (for some of us that makes it more attractive), but the park area has been consistently used in the 8 years we have lived here. My next door neighbors even had their wedding ceremony at the Bicentennial Mall chimes this year. The times we have seen denser crowds of tourists in the area include the Music City Marathon and the National Folk Festival (an event cancelled this year due to neglect from corporations and courthouse).

Bicentennial Mall in Autumn

More coming to light from Metro e-mails: State Fair Director did not take Civic Design Center plans seriously, ignored potential impact on Fairgrounds future

Local blogger Jay Voorhees analyzes those Metro e-mails that I posted on Google Docs and breaks news, previously ignored by Nashville's news media, that indicates that Buck Dozier and the former State Fair Director of Marketing did not take seriously the democratic process of collecting citizen feedback for planning and development last September:

Mr. Dozier and staff were not enamored with the report from the Nashville Civic Design Center. This report arose from public meetings on the future of the fairgrounds at the behest of the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development. During the “public” portions of this process there was criticism by those now known as preservationists that the there was inadequate opportunity for public comment. The report was supposed to guide the Fair Board and Mayor on future directions, ultimately suggesting that a master plan needed to be developed.

Click on image to enlarge

When the report was leaked to the press and then rushed into release, a former staffer emailed Mr. Dozier and asked, “Did you have to pay for THAT?” Mr. Dozier replied that the fair board was indeed charged for producing the report and that it cost around $30,000 to produce. “You can pick yourself up off the floor,” he joked when mentioning the cost. In a later e-mail he told another staff member that apparently they had paid over $30,000 to learn that “…Metro needs to hire a planner.” The report seemed to have little impact on discussions about the future of the fairgrounds.

Mr. Dozier has been accused by Fairgrounds supporters of deliberately running the facility into the ground. In that context it is hard to read these e-mail exchanges and not wonder whether he wasted tens of thousands of Metro dollars on a civic design process that he never took seriously. It also warrants asking the Mayor's council supporters like Megan Barry, Erik Cole, Ronnie Steine, etc. why they never bothered to ask what happened to the community-informed design process, but instead just went along with Karl Dean's bidding.

And there is something relevant here for North Nashville/Bicentennial Mall residents. When discussions for a new Sulphur Dell ballpark revved up before last May's flood, some of us involved in those discussions asked that the Nashville Civic Design Center be brought in to lead us through a community meeting process to answer questions, address concerns, and consider feedback. After I made several attempts to contact him, NCDC Design Director Gary Gaston replied to me by saying that he had been consumed in the Fairgrounds design meeting process.

He also said that his organization was conducting a design competition for the ballpark that would be presented to the community at the end of 2010 (presentation has yet to happen). NCDC has a ballpark event on its March 2011 calendar, but there is no indication that a community planning process will take place. However, if the ballpark development process emerges and follows the script laid out for Fairgrounds planning, North Nashville participation may be rendered a moot mockery by the wasteful courthouse elite.


CORRECTION: Gary Gaston asked me to correct one of the details in this post. He e-mailed that NCDC has not been conducting a competition. Here are his comments from October 2010:

We are working with our partners at the University of Tennessee College of Architecture + Design to host a design studio of student projects on the topic of a baseball stadium. A group of 14 graduate students are currently analyzing two sites (Sulfur Dell and North Gulch) and will be designing baseball stadiums for each site. (The SoBro site was excluded because so much study has been done in that area already, and the city recently submitted a grant that would pay for a complete master plan for SoBro - we felt the idea of a baseball stadium would be addressed during that process).

The signifying tug-o-war in North Nashville

One thing that I did not touch on in my previous minority-report response to Jason Powell's Tennessean op-ed on Sulphur Dell was his reference, which remains unresolved in a larger context, to our area as "uptown." Jason opines:

With the addition of a ballpark in Sulphur Dell, you would have a winning environment to make the uptown area one of Nashville’s treasures and gateway to a revitalized North Nashville.

I have engaged this issue several times before when it arose, most recently a little over a year ago. I have not changed my mind. "Uptown" is goofy:

Calling this area "Uptown" makes no geographic sense .... Historically, "uptowns" were those areas at the opposite end from "downtowns" with "midtowns" in between. Or "uptowns" were parts of towns where the street numbers rose (like "above 59th St." in Manhattan). By both of those definitions, Nashville's Uptown should not be in the north end of town, but in west Nashville.

So, if we're going to call the area we live in "Uptown," one of two things happens. One improbable scenario is that Nashville's Midtown moves to the Bicentennial Mall area (formerly "Sulphur Dell," now "The Market District," in hackneyed-haute fashion), and streets above Broadway should be numbered instead of named. A more likely scenario is that we acknowledge that we name communities now with no meaning or purpose, other than that which people contend over. To paraphrase political scientist Jean Bethke Elshtain communities are "floating signifiers." In that vein, you could call this area "Rural Free Delivery" and enough power and/or money could probably make it stick ....

But if logic won't suffice and you truly require someone more "official" to legitimate the name "North End," look no further than Metro Planning. They used the term "North End" on one of their 2005 maps (look left). And I played no advisory role in that process (read my inset disclaimer). In fact, I liked their use of it, I thought it logical, and I simply followed suit.

Hence, not only do I disagree with Jason on his views of a new ballpark, but I also disagree with his labels for these downtown-proximate neighborhoods to the north.

Photos of 2010 Nashville flood, Farmers' Market, Bicentennial Mall, Rosa Parks Boulevard (8th Avenue)

Flood scenes around the foot of Capitol Hill (Tennessee Capitol Building). I took all of these photos this afternoon.

Dedicated to State Senator Thelma Harper: "I Might As Well Go Up and Talk to a Wall"

Because I cannot get a reply to my letter and follow-up phone calls to my State Senator, I am reminded of a popular song from my college daze that I dedicate to her office's unresponsiveness:

Monoliths to the North End

The Check Is in the Mail

Yesterday I received the first $100 for the Google Ads that run on Enclave, and to fulfill an earlier pledge I sent a $100 check over to Friends of Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park. Here is the text of the letter enclosed with the check:

For the past two years I have authored a neighborhood-based weblog called "Enclave: Nashville North-by-Northwest." The purpose of the "blog" has been to focus on issues of concern to residents of the North End of our city and to provide a place for dialogue between those neighbors, organizers, planners, developers, and other leaders.

Recently, I pledged to my readers to donate the first $100 that I earned from the clickable ads displayed on my blog to your worthwhile charity. Today I received that first payment from Google Ads, and in fulfillment of my pledge, I am passing this check on to FBCMSP leaders to apply to the organization's very worthwhile mission of preserving the North End's premiere green space.

I trust that this money will help in some small way make the North End a better place to live, to work, and to visit by enhancing the jewel that is the Bicentennial Mall. And so, I am pleased to be able to make this donation to the organization's trustees. All that I ask is that you send me a receipt to verify that the donation has reached the appropriate stewards. I also hope that you will consider my donation as a vote of confidence in your worthwhile efforts.

Thanks to the ad-clicking readers who made this donation possible. I would encourage everyone to join Friends of Bicentennial Mall and, if you are able, I hope that you will consider making your own contribution to this valuable organization.

Over the Top

I met my $100 donation goal for Friends of Bicentennial Mall State Park this morning. Thanks to all who helped me help them out.

Friends of Bicentennial Mall Membership Form is Now Online

You can download it via the Historic Germantown blog.

Re-Greening Efforts in Bicentennial Mall Now Visible

Recently, I introduced you to Friends of Bicentennial Mall and their efforts along with Gardens of Babylon and the State of Tennessee to save many of the state park's trees, which have been damaged by acid rain, pollution, and a lack of "good bacteria" in the park's compacted soil. Try as I might, my camera does not really capture the scope of the affected trees' plight as does the naked eye.

The next time you visit Bicentennial Mall, take note of the blighted trees, which have the small, laminated Gardens of Babylon cards attached to their trunks. You can drop by Gardens--just a stone's throw away in the Farmers Market--to thank them both in words and in deeds of patronizing their business. (Those of you who strive to protect our environment and natural resources will be glad to know that Gardens is committed to "green," natural approaches to doing business). I hope that you will also consider joining Friends of Bicentennial Mall, which is spearheading this whole effort to save and to protect the park's flora for ourselves and our posterity.

North End Residents Moving to Form "Friends of Bicentennial Mall"

Out of concerns expressed for some growing problems with dying trees at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, several North End residents have started the process of forming a fund-raising and volunteer support group to make sure the park receives the attention it needs. Gardens of Babylon is already on board to save the trees.

My family just joined this important effort and I hope that Enclave readers will consider contributing their time and money to protecting the park for all who live here and for all who visit our side of town. It is truly one of Nashville's greenway jewels. Individual membership fees are $10.00 and families can join for $20.00. If you are interested in helping out, e-mail me and I'll put you in contact with the right people.

Gardens of Babylon Branches Out

While over at Gardens (in the Farmers Market) a couple of weeks ago exploring the possibilities of mineralizing my lawn, I heard that the boys are working with the state to replace some diseased and dying trees on Bicentennial Mall and that they are working with Tennessee's only exclusively green developer on a project in the 'burbs. Those projects join their contracts with Morgan Park Place and Martin's Corner developments. The Gardens just keeps branching out.

Then they told me the bad news: my soil samples sucked, thanks to builders who probably stripped any good top soil off and sold it before starting construction. That seems to be a general practice in home building unknown to me.

Minuteman Mass at Mall

mi·nute 2 (m-nt, -nyt, m-) ADJECTIVE:
1. Exceptionally small; tiny.
2. Beneath notice; insignificant.

The Minutemen were supposed to meet at Farmers Market tonight at 4:00 in counter-demonstration and protest to the 6:00 Hispanic Immigration Solidarity March. On our way back from Home Depot, we drove around looking to ogle the massive counter-demonstration and found this one Bedford County guy with a megaphone and a flag trying to persuade people to stay and listen to his thoughts on immigration. A NewsChannel5 crew was packing up and leaving when we arrived. Nothing to see but a guy with a megaphone on the mall. News 2 at 6:00 ran a story on nothing to see but a guy with a megaphone on the mall.

Jet Airliner

Bicentennial Mall Area Development Delayed And Reconsidered

According to this morning's Nashville City Paper, Harrison Lofts, which was to be built on the site where the old Sulphur Dell ballpark used to sit, will not emerge as planned. The developer reports that he had no problem stirring up potential buyers to live in the Lofts (50% had been reserved). Instead, the rising costs of concrete and steel seem to have made him skittish about the original plans. He looks now to either sell or scale back the development.