Parthenon (Nashville)

The Parthenon in Nashville is a full-scale replica of the ancient Parthenon in Athens, Greece, and stands as the centerpiece of Centennial Park along West End Avenue. Originally built for Tennessee's 1897 Centennial Exposition, the replica serves as a monument to what is considered the pinnacle of classical architecture. The Nashville Parthenon is the world's only exact-size and detail replica of the original temple in Athens, Greece. Today it functions simultaneously as a civic landmark, an art museum, and one of the most recognizable symbols of the city's identity. It is owned and operated by the Metropolitan Board of Parks and Recreation, a department of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County.

Origins and the Tennessee Centennial Exposition

When Tennessee celebrated its 100th year of statehood with the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, Nashville took advantage of its nickname "Athens of the South" and built the Fine Art Building as a copy of Athens' most famous building and the epitome of Greek classical architecture. In the 19th century, Nashville earned the nickname "The Athens of the South" because of the number of colleges and universities located within the city and the surrounding areas.

Major Eugene Castner Lewis was the director of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, and it was at his suggestion that a reproduction of the Parthenon be built in Nashville to serve as the centerpiece of Tennessee's Centennial Celebration. It was designed and built in 1897 by architect William Crawford Smith as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of Tennessee's entry into the union in 1796. U.S. President William McKinley officially opened the exposition from the White House when he pressed a button that started the fair's machinery, and he would visit in person a month later.

A number of buildings at the exposition were based on ancient originals; however, the Parthenon was the only one that was an exact reproduction. It was also the only one that was preserved by the city, although the Knights of Pythias Pavilion building was purchased and moved to nearby Franklin, Tennessee. The Centennial Exposition of 1897 — it happened a year later than originally planned — ran for six months. People, including President McKinley and suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony, came from all over the United States to see the exposition grounds, take in the museum displays, see the shows, and even ride the rides.

Reconstruction and Permanent Structure

Although built to be temporary, as were all the buildings of the Centennial, the Parthenon crystallized for Nashvillians their image of themselves and their city, and they were loathe to tear it down at the conclusion of the exposition. The exterior coating, sculpture, and decorative work were made of plaster and soon deteriorated. Repeated patching kept destruction at bay for several years, but in 1920 the city was forced to a permanent solution: tear it down or rebuild it in lasting materials.

In 1901, the Nashville Board of Parks was formed, and in 1902, Centennial Park — Nashville's premier urban park — was established. The decision to rebuild involved local architect Russell Hart and, as consultant, architectural historian William Bell Dinsmoor. The roof, expanded walls, and load-bearing columns were made of reinforced concrete, the novel new building material of the twentieth century; the brick walls and non-load-bearing columns of the 1897 building were retained and incorporated into the new construction. For the permanent surface treatment, Hart selected a cast concrete aggregate using a formula developed by John Earley of Washington, D.C. This material was used for all exterior surfaces as well as the roof tiles, decorative work, and sculpture.

Sculptor George Julian Zolnay, who had created the pedimental sculptures on the 1897 Parthenon, returned to make the metopes of the Doric frieze. Nashville sculptor Belle Kinney and her Austrian-born husband Leopold Scholz were hired to create the permanent pediment figures. To assist them in creating figures as close to the original as possible, the Park Board purchased from the Victoria and Albert Museum a set of casts of the original marble fragments. Work on the exterior of the building was completed by 1925. Due to various financial crises, work continued haltingly until its completion in 1931.

The permanent structure was to be a complete replica and as accurate as scholarship would allow, recreating the camber of the horizontal lines, the inclination of columns and walls, and the entasis of the columns. As was the case with the original Parthenon, Nashville's version has nary a straight line to it, with columns and walls bulging out in what the Greeks called entasis.

The Parthenon was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 1972. In 1987, the Metropolitan Board of Parks and Recreation undertook the rehabilitation of the interior of the Parthenon. The improvements included upgraded gallery space, a ground-level entrance, and an elevator resulting in barrier-free accessibility to the entire facility for the first time.

The Athena Parthenos Statue

When the doors of the reconstructed building were opened to the public, two major elements were still missing: the great statue of Athena in the naos and the Ionic frieze on the exterior. For decades, a small maquette of Athena stood in the east room in place of the full-scale figure. After a donation box was placed next to it in the 1960s, "people just nickled and dimed it over roughly 15 to 20 years," eventually raising almost $30,000. Those funds became the seed money used to create a statue. Still, it took eight more years and a total of $250,000 to build the Athena, which was unveiled in May of 1990.

In 1982, the Park Board commissioned Nashville sculptor Alan LeQuire to recreate the 42-foot statue for the interior. This monumental task took almost eight years. LeQuire won the commission in 1982 by proposing a historically accurate replica of the ancient statue. The young artist began an odyssey of research which included a visit to the ancient Parthenon in Greece and consultation with leading scholars. The statue was finally unveiled on May 20, 1990, generating much excitement and a renewal of interest in the Nashville Parthenon as an icon of the city. Additional money was raised during the next 12 years, and in 2002 the statue was finally completed with gilding and painting.

The 42-foot-tall recreation of the lost ancient original remains the tallest indoor sculpture in the United States. While the replica appears opulent, concessions were made: the original was coated in over 2,400 pounds of gold leaf, whereas Nashville's version boasts just eight pounds.

Compared to the contemporary ruins in Greece, the Nashville Parthenon boasts a major historical detail: polychromy. Along with parts of the exterior and interior of the building, the massive gold Athena statue is painted in bright colors. In actuality, the ancient Greeks painted all of their statues, and seeing them emblazoned in green, red, blue, and other colors is more historically accurate.

The figures along the pedestal of the Nashville Athena all relate to Phidias's fate — but instead of the ancient artist, they depict LeQuire, his family, the project's donors, and the assistant sculptors.

Art Museum and Collections

The Parthenon also serves as Nashville's art museum. Since the 1930s, the Parthenon has continued to host changing art exhibitions in its galleries and to educate both Nashvillians and visitors about the legacy of the ancient Greeks and their impact on American civilization.

The plaster replicas of the Parthenon Marbles found in the Naos are direct casts of the original sculptures, which adorned the pediments of the Athenian Parthenon dating back to 438 B.C. The originals of these powerful fragments are housed in the British Museum in London.

The art museum has 63 paintings by 19th and 20th century American artists as a permanent collection, donated by James M. Cowan. Cowan donated them between 1927 and 1929. Temporary exhibitions rotate throughout the year, drawing on local, regional, and national artists, and the museum hosts educational programming aligned with school curriculum standards.

The Parthenon built for the Centennial was not a replica on the inside; its interior was a series of galleries for exhibiting the enormous collection of paintings and sculptures borrowed from Europe and throughout the United States for the Exposition. The current configuration of galleries reflects the permanent rebuilding of the 1920s–1931, during which the interior was redesigned to more closely mirror the ancient original's spatial arrangement.

Cultural Significance and Popular Culture

The Parthenon has served as a gathering place and cultural venue for Nashville for more than a century beyond the 1897 Exposition. Some of the most elaborate events that occurred at the Parthenon were the Spring Pageants of 1913 and 1914. These extravaganzas were theatrical productions. With casts of up to 500, the pageants attracted audiences from surrounding states, and rail prices were lowered to encourage attendance. The 1913 performance was entitled The Fire Regained, a play written by Sidney Mttron Hirsch, and featured a mythological story line enhanced by theatrical spectacle popular in that era. The 1914 production, The Mystery at Thanatos, had a similarly mythological plot but was shorter and better received. Both shows featured displays ranging from chariot races to large dance numbers to thousands of live birds to set pieces that shot flames, all set against the backdrop of the Nashville Parthenon.

In the summertime, local theater productions use the building as a backdrop for classic Greek plays such as Euripides' Medea and Sophocles' Antigone, performing — usually for free — on the steps of the Parthenon.

The building has also featured prominently in American film and music. The Parthenon served as the location for the political rally in the climactic scene of Robert Altman's 1975 film Nashville. It was used as a backdrop for the battle against the Hydra in the 2010 film Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.

In 2001, the Nashville Parthenon received much-needed cleaning and restoration of the exterior. The exterior lighting was upgraded to allow the columns of the building to be illuminated with different colors than the facade. Metro Parks announced that the Parthenon would be closed from March 1 through an anticipated June 28, 2026, due to a scheduled replacement of the building's HVAC temperature control systems, a measure necessary for the ongoing preservation of the museum's artwork and artifacts.