Tennessee Crossroads, NPT’s long-running magazine show highlighting the state’s places and people, received the Commissioners’ Award during Nashville’s Metropolitan Historical Commission’s 2019 Preservation Awards. The 44th annual event was held on Thursday, May 9, 2019, at the Nashville Public Library downtown, where awards were presented to winning properties in the categories of Residential, Infill, Monuments and Memorials, Educational and Institutional, and Commercial architecture. The Commissioners’ Award recognizes a group, program, or project that enhances Nashville’s history and historic resources and is designed to honor projects that do not fit within the traditional preservation award categories.
The Preservation Awards recognize outstanding efforts to preserve Nashville’s historic architecture. Along with celebrating exceptional preservation projects, the MHC recognized the contributions of Ann Toplovich and Judy and Steve Turner with Achievement Awards.
Nashville Public Television’s (NPT) original production travel series, Tennessee Crossroads, has been taking viewers on a weekly journey through the state since 1986. Joe Elmore has been the host of this Emmy-award winning series since its beginnings.
The series showcases the unique personalities, crafts, food, destinations, and events that make Tennessee such a special place to live and visit. Tennessee’s rich musical heritage, delicious delicacies, and friendly folk provide an endless source of entertaining stories.
As the show progresses weekly, viewers come to appreciate the active, vibrant, and ever-changing face of the state. To watch Tennessee Crossroads, it can be viewed on-demand or live through the PBS Video app, or by visiting tennesseecrossroads.org. Segments from the series can also be viewed on Tennessee Crossroads YouTube page or Facebook page.
The Metropolitan Historical Commission’s Preservation Awards program began even earlier than Tennessee Crossroads, in 1973 as an Architectural Awards program. Over the decades more than 400 awards have gone to a broad range of historic structures – dwellings, churches, commercial and industrial buildings, schools, even to bridges and new developments. Nominated by the public, these projects are honored for their sensitivity to the original architecture and the surrounding environment, creativity in adaptation for contemporary use, architectural merit and/or historic interest, long-term maintenance, adherence to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, and pioneering spirit.