(NPT News) Nashville Public Television Looks at History of City In Photographs

From the Official NPT News Department:

New documentary explores the changing face of Nashville through the early part of the 20th Century

NASHVILLE, Tennessee — May 18, 2009 — The story of how a replica of the Parthenon came to reside in Centennial Park is well known to Nashvillians, both natives and transplants alike. Temporarily erected to celebrate Tennessee’s Centennial in 1897, in what was then West Side Park, the people of Nashville fell in love with the structure. When the Tennessee Centennial Exposition ended in October of that year, after 1.8 million guests passed through its gates, public outcry demanded the temporary Parthenon remain — and it did — until a permanent version could be built.

It’s a good story, made even better when illustrated by photographs of the original Parthenon and its many visitors during the Centennial Exposition. Nashville Public Television tells that story, and many more, in NASHVILLE: THE 20TH CENTURY IN PHOTOGRAPHS (VOLUME 1), which premieres on Thursday, June 4 at 7:00 p.m. Central on NPT-Channel 8. It will be rebroadcast on Sunday, June 7 at 9:30 a.m.

Peppered with interviews from a variety of Nashville historians, and photographs from the archives of the Tennessean, the Tennessee State Library Archives, the Library of Congress and more, NASHVILLE: THE 20TH CENTURY IN PHOTOGRAPHS (VOLUME 1) traces what Nashville looked like from 1900 to the beginning of World War II. From the opening of Union Station to the gathering of shoppers at the Public Square near the courthouse; from the stylish dress of Nashville’s citizens to the opening of the Arcade; and from the importance of the electric street car in the city to the influx of industry during World War I, the documentary explores the swiftly changing face of the city during the first four decades of the century.

“There’s a photo of a Model T climbing the steps of the State Capital that you really have to see to believe,” said director and producer Justin Harvey (Memories of Opryland, Memories of Sulphur Dell, Nashville WWII Stories). “It was a stunt to show how tough the car was, and as the photo of hundreds of people gathered at the Capital indicates, it was a huge success.”

“There are so many of these great photos, in archives all around the city, that really provide a fascinating glimpse of what Nashville was like, and how quickly it grew,” Harvey continued. “We can talk about the impact that the Works Projects Administration grants had on Nashville, but it’s entirely different when you see the photos from the 1930s and the many projects that resulted from those grants.”

While Nashville suffered like the rest of the country during the Great Depression with unemployment rates of up to 25% — for African-Americans it was double — the WPA grants poured money into communities and put people back to work. The building of the Supreme Court Building, the John Sevier state office building, the Davidson County Courthouse, Berry Field Airport (now Nashville International) and the restoration of Fort Negley all occurred as a result of WPA Funds. Even the rock walls at Warner Parks were created as a result of the money.

“Imagine Nashville today without those iconic structures,” adds Harvey, “and you get a sense of the immense innovation and progress during the 30s.”

In addition to exploring the birth of the landmarks that make up the city’s landscape today, NASHVILLE: THE 20TH CENTURY IN PHOTOGRAPHS (VOLUME 1) also documents the day-to-day lives of the citizenry in the early decades of the 1900’s. There are photos of people attending baseball games at Sulphur Dell, gathering at pool halls, attending church services downtown, or doing their best to survive the grime and soot that permeated the air in the city.”

“Nashville was dirty,” says Jack May in the documentary. “The milkman would leave it (milk) on the doorstep and by the time you picked up it had soot on it. Some winter mornings, you would be driving around with your lights on and you could not see either sides of the road, the smog was so thick.”

The advent of air-conditioning and the use of natural gas brought cleaner air to city, just another way in which the city was changing, and would continue to change.

NASHVILLE: THE 20TH CENTURY IN PHOTOGRAPHS (VOLUME 1) airs on NPT as part of its June membership drive. Volumes Two and Three, planned for 2010, will focus on the era of the city after World War II until the millennium. NASHVILLE: THE 20TH CENTURY IN PHOTOGRAPHS (VOLUME 1) is made possible through the generous support of the Ford Motor Credit Company.

See more photos at wnpt.org/news.