Belair | |
![]() Belair in 1940 | |
Location | 2250 Lebanon Pike, Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. |
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Coordinates | 36°10′9″N86°41′15″W / 36.16917°N 86.68750°W |
Area | 5.98 acres (2.42 ha) |
Built | 1832 |
Architectural style | Federal, Classic Revival |
NRHP reference No. | 71000815 [1] |
Added to NRHP | May 6, 1971 |
Belair is a historic mansion in Nashville, Tennessee. Built as a wedding present for Elizabeth Clay, a Southern belle and heiress to the Belle Meade Plantation in the 1830s, it was once the home of William Nichol, a mayor of Nashville.
The mansion is located at 2250 Lebanon Pike in Nashville, the county seat of Davidson County, Tennessee. [2] [3]
The mansion was built in 1832 as a wedding present from John Harding, the owner of the Belle Meade Plantation, to his daughter, Elizabeth and her husband, Joseph Clay. [3] It was designed in the Federal architectural style, with pine and ash-tree wood floors. [3]
In 1838, the mansion was purchased by William Nichol, who had served as the mayor of Nashville from 1835 to 1837. [3] He remodeled the house, adding a wing on each side and a winding staircase in the manner of The Hermitage. [3] He also added rosewood doors and silver hardware. [3] Meanwhile, the ceilings are painted with frescoes. [3] When Nichol died in 1878, his widow sold the house. [3]
Other past owners include the R. D. Stanford family of Nashville, and the Chitwood-Smith family. The Chitwood family bought the home in 1948. Attorney Harry H. Chitwood had the home added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and also petitioned the city to save the home from destruction when Briley Parkway was built. The home was sold to H. H. Chitwoods grandson (Smith) in 1994. The home was damaged from nearby blasting when Briley Parkway was widened in 1999.
As of August 2017, the owners planned to turn the house into a bed & breakfast. [4]
It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since May 6, 1971. [2]
Belle Meade is a city in Davidson County, Tennessee. Its total land area is 3.1 square miles (8.0 km2), and its population was 2,901 at the time of the 2020 census.
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Travellers Rest, also known as Golgotha, is a former plantation and historic plantation house, located in Nashville, Tennessee. The first owner of the site was John Overton in 1796, who built the first family home in 1799. For many years this plantation was worked and maintained by enslaved Black people.
Antebellum architecture is the neoclassical architectural style characteristic of the 19th-century Southern United States, especially the Deep South, from after the birth of the United States with the American Revolution, to the start of the American Civil War. Antebellum architecture is especially characterized by Georgian, Neo-classical, and Greek Revival style homes and mansions. These plantation houses were built in the southern American states during roughly the thirty years before the American Civil War; approximately between the 1830s to 1860s.
William Giles Harding was a Southern planter, attorney, and horse breeder who was made a Brigadier General in the Tennessee militia before the American Civil War. He took over operations of Belle Meade Plantation near Nashville from his father in 1839. During the course of his management, he acquired more property, expanding it from 1300 acres to 5,400 acres (22 km2) in 1860. He specialized in breeding and raising Thoroughbred horses, as well as other purebred livestock. In 1862 after Union forces took over Nashville, Harding was arrested as a leader and imprisoned at Fort Mackinac in northern Michigan on Mackinac Island for six months. He was released on a $20,000 bond.
Edward Emmett Dougherty, a.k.a. Edwin Dougherty was an architect in the southeastern United States. One of his best known designs was the Tennessee War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville in 1922. The work won state and national design competitions.
John Harding (1777–1867) was an American Southern planter and thoroughbred breeder in Middle Tennessee, near Nashville. He developed Belle Meade Plantation from 250 acres to 1300 in Davidson County; Bellevue at McSpadden's Bend on the Cumberland River, also in the county; and a 10,000-acre cotton plantation at Plum Point Bend in Mississippi County, Arkansas.
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Donald W. Southgate (1887–1953) was an American architect. He designed many buildings in Davidson County, Tennessee, especially Nashville and Belle Meade, some of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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William Ridley Wills II is an American author and historian living in Nashville, Tennessee, who has authored 28 historical and biographical books as of 2021. He received the Tennessee History Book Award in 1991 for his first book, The History of Belle Meade: Mansion, Plantation and Stud. He is a past president of the Tennessee Historical Society and in 2016, was given an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from The University of the South. He is a former executive of a company founded by his grandfather, the National Life and Accident Insurance Company and was on the boards of trust of Vanderbilt University and Montgomery Bell Academy, a prep school for boys in Nashville.
West Meade is a neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee. It is governed by the Metropolitan Council of Nashville and Davidson County, due to the fact that the government of Davidson County is consolidated with that of Nashville