Preservation

The Old Stone Fort State Park in Coffee County preserves a prehistoric enclosure consisting of embankments or "walls" constructed of undressed stacked or piled stone covered with earth. They circumscribe a fifty-acre plateau at the forks of the Duck River.…

The Patterson Forge, the site of which is now preserved at the Narrows of the Harpeth State Historical Area, was constructed at the neck of an unusual bend of the Harpeth River where, after approximately four miles, the stream channel…

Since its opening on September 2, 1925, the Peabody Hotel has been the place to be seen for wealthy and fashionable society in Memphis and the Mississippi River Delta area of West Tennessee, eastern Arkansas, and northern Mississippi. Chicago architect…

The Pink Palace is both a house and a museum. In 1922 Clarence Saunders, the father of self-service grocery shopping and founder of Piggly Wiggly, began building a mansion. Memphians called his 36,500-square-foot house, faced with pink Georgia marble, his…

The President Andrew Johnson Museum and Library, along with the Doak House Museum, form the Museums of Tusculum College, located in Greene County. The college’s Department of Museum Program and Studies administers the museums, which are located on the campus’s…

Ramsey House, the home of Colonel Francis Alexander Ramsey (1764-1820), was built between 1795 and 1797 by master carpenter and cabinetmaker Thomas Hope. Colonel Ramsey migrated to the North Carolina frontier from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1783. Settling first in the…

The mansion Rattle and Snap at Ashwood in Maury County is considered one of the most emphatic examples of Greek Revival plantation architecture in Tennessee. George Polk's elaborate Corinthian mansion is the largest and most pretentious of the great Maury…

Read House Hotel, located in downtown Chattanooga at the corner of Broad Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard, was constructed in 1926 at a cost of over two million dollars. The hotel was designed by Holabird and Roche, an architectural…

Red Clay State Historic Park, located twelve miles south of Cleveland, was the site of the last seat of Cherokee government before their forced removal by federal troops along the Trail of Tears. From 1832 to 1837 it was the…

Located in Marion County, Richard City is significant for its associations with the development of industrial company towns in Tennessee in the early twentieth century. In the early 1900s, representatives of the Dixie Portland Company, including engineer Ellis Soper, cement…

Located near the Tennessee-North Carolina border in Carter County, Roan Mountain State Park is a 2,006-acre park that preserves Roan Mountain, a 6,285-foot peak renowned for its annual blooming of wildflowers, especially its lush 600-acre carpet of crimson catawba rhododendrons.…

Rock Castle, a late-eighteenth-century plantation house, was once the home of General Daniel Smith, his wife Sarah Michie Smith, and their two children. General Smith (1748-1818), a well-read and classically educated Virginian, attended the College of William and Mary. A…

Rocky Mount, the home of William Cobb, served as the first capitol of the Southwest Territory. William Blount, the governor of the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio, presided over the newly formed territory from 1790-92.…

“Rogana,” the historic name of the stone cottage built around 1800 by Irish immigrant and Tennessee pioneer Hugh Rogan, is located near Bledsoe’s Creek in eastern Sumner County. The building is a rare surviving example of American architecture that is…

A Victorian-era village at the northern tip of Morgan County, Rugby was founded by a company of British and American capitalists who cleverly traded on the popularity of Thomas Hughes, a noted English author and social reformer of the time,…

The Rural African American Church Project seeks to identify and document historic African American churches located in rural areas throughout Tennessee. Administered by the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University, the program began in 1997 as a…

Built as the Union Gospel Tabernacle between 1888 and 1892, Nashville's Ryman Auditorium gained international renown from 1943 to 1974 as home to the Grand Ole Opry, the premier live country music radio broadcast of Nashville station WSM. It is…

After the Civil War, industrialization greatly reduced the need to produce handmade goods because factories and machines could produce store-bought items more quickly, more cheaply, and in larger quantities than they could be made in the home. Nevertheless, the Dougherty…

In 1884 two mechanics in Jackson established the Southern Engine and Boiler Works to build a line of small engines and boilers. In 1895 the mechanics sold their shop to local stockholders, who constructed a new complex on North Royal…

Three miles east of Sparta along U.S. Highway 70 is the Sparta Rock House, built initially as a toll house and stage stop along a busy antebellum turnpike between Sparta and Crossville. It is considered a significant and rare artifact…