Nashville's Parthenon Replica: History and Preservation

The reason that the Nashville Parthenon was constructed in 1896 is connected to the centennial celebration of Tennessee's admission to the Union in 1796. By the end of the 19th century, Nashville had long been referred to as the "Athens of the South," principally because of the large number of colleges in the greater Nashville area, including Fisk and Vanderbilt universities, and because the city was the first in the South "to establish a public school system" (Duke). Nashville was the venue for Tennessee's Centennial Exposition in 1897, and the Parthenon was the architectural showcase of the event.

The original purpose for building the Parthenon in Nashville was to create an art gallery to house an art show for the Exposition. It was originally conceived as a temporary structure and was constructed out of plaster, designed to last for one year. Known during the Exposition as the Gallery of Fine Arts, it was distinctive because it was a full-size replica of the structure in Athens (Robbins

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nces between the original and the replica is that the replica, which is made of concrete, has a yellow-brown tint to it. That is attributed to the fact that the gravel used to mix the concrete came from the banks of the Potomac River (Robbins 46). The classical marble in Athens, on the other hand, has a pink tint. That fact further points to another key difference between the original and the replica. The Parthenon in Athens, like much classical architecture and sculpture elsewhere in Europe, has been ravaged by industrial-strength air pollution and environmental corrosion, as well as by sheer age (Winestock A1). When it opened as a museum and an attraction of Centennial Park in 1931, it was an immediate success, and it has been open ever since. There are two levels of the structure. The upper level is the open-air venue where the architectural and artistic details of the original structure were so painstakingly re-created. A lower level is the location of the art galleries that are embedded in the structure. It is clearly the intent of Nashville to maintain the integrity of its Parthenon. In 1991, a rehab costing $12 million was begun on the structure that was completed in 2001, another 11-year project (Bresnick-Kendler
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Approximate Word count = 1456
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)