Belmont Mansion, also known as Acklen Hall, and originally known as Belle Monte, Belle Mont or Belmont, is a historic mansion located in Nashville, Tennessee. It was built by Joseph and Adelicia Acklen to serve as the center of their 180-acre summer estate in what was then country outside the city, and featured elaborate gardens and a zoo. They lived much of the rest of the year on her plantations in Louisiana.
The estate was sold in the late 19th century and since 1890 has been used for educational functions. It was first used as a girls academy, then as the first building of what became Belmont College and now Belmont University. Today it is operated as a museum.[2] It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
History
In 1849, after the death of her husband, the infamous slave traderIsaac Franklin who bequeathed his slave-trading fortune to her,[3][4] the extremely wealthy widow Adelicia (Hayes) Franklin married Joseph Alexander Smith Acklen, a young attorney from Alabama. They began construction of Belle Monte (Belmont) on 180 acres (73ha) in Davidson County near the county seat of Nashville. It was completed by 1853 as an Italian villa-style summer home. Adelicia and Joseph used Belmont as a summer home. They lived the rest of the year on one of her seven Louisiana cotton slave plantations, which totaled 8,600 acres (3,500ha).
At Belmont Mansion, the Acklens built, furnished, and landscaped one of the most elaborate antebellum homes in the South, totaling 36 rooms and 19,000sqft (1,800m2). The estate contained a variety of buildings, with the house situated at the top of the hill. Covered balconies with cast iron railing and trim surrounded the house to protect windows from the sun. Atop the house, a ten-foot octagonal cupola vented the house during the summer months. It was also used as an "astronomical observatory" used for viewing the stars, the estate and downtown Nashville.
Beside the house, there was a T-shaped guest house and art gallery. The south wing of the guest house contained guestrooms and a bowling alley. The art gallery had a corrugated glass roof and comprised the north wing.
The grounds included lavish gardens, conservatories, aviary, lake and a zoo. The conservatories housed tropical fruit and flowers, along with camellia japonica, jasmine, lilies, and cacti. The zoo featured bears, monkeys, peacocks, singing birds, a white owl, alligators from Louisiana, and a deer park.
Joseph and Adelicia had six children together, but their twins died of scarlet fever at the age of 2 in 1855. In 1863, Joseph died in Louisiana, where he was supervising their plantations during the Civil War. Adelicia secretly negotiated agreements with both Union and Confederate authorities to allow 2,800 bales of her cotton to be shipped to Liverpool, England, and sold for a total of $758,000.
Despite a two-week occupation by Union General Thomas J. Wood prior to the Battle of Nashville, Belmont Mansion and its contents went undamaged during the Civil War. Only the grounds, where 13,000 Union troops spent those first two weeks of December 1864, suffered damage.
Immediately following the war, Adelicia and her four surviving children traveled to Europe. While there, she continued amassing her large art collection, including five major marble statues by the most important American sculptors who were working in Rome. These included works by Randolph Rogers, William Henry Rinehart, Joseph Mozier, and Chauncey Ives. Four of these pieces remain in the mansion today. In France, Adelicia was presented at the Court of Emperor Louis Napoleon and his wife Empress Eugénie.
Months before her death, Adelicia sold Belmont and the surrounding land to Lewis T. Baxter for around $54,000. It was adapted and in 1890 opened as a women's academy and junior college. The school merged with Ward's Seminary in 1913 and was renamed Ward-Belmont. The Tennessee Baptist Convention purchased the school in 1951, and developed a four-year, coeducational college, Belmont College.
It was developed as a university offering graduate programs and, in 2007, Belmont University separated from the Tennessee Baptist Convention. Today the mansion is owned by the Belmont Mansion Association and Belmont University. It is operated and preserved by the Belmont Mansion Association.
Gilt frame mirrors hang over marble mantels, reflecting the elaborate gasoliers and elegantly furnished parlors. Much of the original Venetian glass still adorns the windows, doors, and transoms of Belmont. The Grand Salon is considered by architectural historians to be the most elaborate domestic interior built in antebellum Tennessee. Now maintained as part of the university campus, the gardens contain five cast iron gazebos. The 105-foot (32m) water tower remains on the grounds and today serves as a Bell Tower for Belmont University.
Ward–Belmont College was a women's college, also known at the time as a "ladies' seminary," located in Nashville, Tennessee, on the grounds of the antebellum estate of Adelicia Hayes Franklin Acklen Cheatham.
Isaac Franklin was an American slave trader and plantation owner. He was the co-founder of Franklin & Armfield, which became the largest slave trading firm in the United States. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, it also had offices in New Orleans and other Louisiana cities. Franklin owned six plantations in Louisiana and Tennessee. His Fairvue plantation, in Sumner County, Tennessee, was formerly listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Waveland State Historic Site, also known as the Joseph Bryan House, in Lexington, Kentucky is the site of a Greek Revival home and 10 acres now maintained and operated as part of the Kentucky state park system. It was the home of the Joseph Bryan family, their descendants and the people they enslaved in the nineteenth century. Bryan's father William had befriended Daniel Boone and they migrated west through the Cumberland Gap.
Belle Grove, also known as Belle Grove Plantation, was a plantation and elaborate Greek Revival and Italianate-style plantation mansion near White Castle in Iberville Parish, Louisiana. Completed in 1857, it was one of the largest mansions ever built in the Southern United States, surpassing that of the neighboring Nottoway, today cited as the largest antebellum plantation house remaining in the South. The masonry structure stood 62 feet (19 m) high and measured 122 feet (37 m) wide by 119 feet (36 m) deep, with seventy-five rooms spread over four floors.
Hillsboro Village is a neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee, located 3 miles southwest of downtown. Hillsboro Village 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.
Joseph Hayes Acklen was an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative from Louisiana from 1878 to 1881.
Carnton is a historic home and museum in Franklin, Williamson County, Tennessee, United States. The plantation played an important role during and immediately after the Battle of Franklin during the American Civil War. It is managed by the non-profit organization The Battle of Franklin Trust.
Isaac Franklin Plantation, also known as Fairvue, is an antebellum plantation house in Gallatin, Tennessee.
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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.
Adelicia Hayes Franklin Acklen Cheatham, best known as Adelicia Acklen, became the wealthiest woman in Tennessee and a plantation owner in her own right after the 1846 death of her first husband, Isaac Franklin. As a successful slave trader, he had used his wealth to purchase numerous plantations, lands, and slaves in Tennessee and Louisiana. Acklen later in 1880 sold four contiguous plantations in Louisiana as one property. These have formed the grounds of the Louisiana State Penitentiary since 1901.
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.
The Houmas, also known as Burnside Plantation and currently known as Houmas House Plantation and Gardens, is a historic plantation complex and house museum in Burnside, Louisiana. The plantation was established in the late 1700s, with the current main house completed in 1840. It was named after the native Houma people, who originally occupied this area of Louisiana.
The Clover Bottom Mansion is a historic mansion located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. It is the home of the Tennessee Historical Commission, the State Historic Preservation Office.
West Meade is a historic mansion in Nashville, Tennessee, United States.
Two Rivers Mansion is an Antebellum historic house in Nashville, Tennessee, United States.
Edward Saunders Cheatham was an American politician and businessman.
William Hayes Ackland was an American lawyer, writer, and art collector from Nashville, Tennessee. He lived most of his life away from Tennessee, in Washington, DC, and various social spots, traveling to England annually for its social season. The Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill was begun with his collection.
The Belmont Tower and Carillon is an iconic structure on the campus of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. The Tower is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Belmont Mansion registration and is prominently featured in the university logo. The current Belmont University Tower and Carillon chimes each hour from 9:00am–8:00pm.
Joseph Alexander Smith Acklen was an American lawyer, planter, and veteran of the Texas Revolution, best known as the second husband of Adelicia Hayes Franklin Acklen Cheatham, and the father of U. S. Representative Joseph H. Acklen.
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