Parthenon Recreated in Nashville 1925
TENNESSEE’S NEW PARTHENON
GENTLY, AS BEFITS THE FRENCH, a Parisian journalist pokes fun at the Tennesseeans for erecting at Nashville a superb copy of the Parthenon. It shows how genuinely they admire things European, he finds. Also, it reveals a certain discontent with things American. However, these are phenomena to be perceived only by those who can peer behind the mask of national pretense. As we are told, “The Americans affect to regard the Old World with a good-natured disdain. Convinced that they are the saviors of humanity, they make free to criticize our methods, our minds, our morals, and our usages. But their pride in being a new race is secretly tainted with chagrin over having no ancestors. ‘It’s a fine thing to know who your great-grandfather was,’ naively confess the Americans in Abel Hamant’s ‘Transatlantiques.’ Our literary and artistic past has an incredible charm for the American imagination.” And so, in L’Illustration, the anonymous writer runs on. We read:
“The particular delight of these builders of sky-scrapers and colossal factories is to take a ridiculous little train for one of our incredible little villages and then purchase at an enormous price an old bit of stone carved during the Middle Ages—some battered capital or bosse and take it home as a treasure to embellish some villa of theirs in a suburb of New York.
“The Nashville Parthenon provides a kind of collective satisfaction for this individual instinct of the ancestorless American. The new cities feel that they, too, deserve to have family portraits. It is a touching symptom—in reality, an expression of reverence for European intellectuality, whoso subtlety and richness no nation fails to appreciate. It is a reassuring indication, proving to us that no incompatibility of temperament separates the Old World from a new race which can so fervently and so ingenuously recite its ‘Prayer on the Acropolis.’”
The Nashville Parthenon, cause of the above outburst, is thus explained and described by R. A. Parodi in The International Studio:
“Nestled in the center of a modern city stands a replica in form, size and artistic embellishments of that masterpiece of Grecian art, the Parthenon, which stood completed on the Acropolis of Athens about the year 430 B. C.
“To Nashville, Tennessee, goes the credit for the idea, and after four years of constant work in which thousands of dollars were expended, the best architects, sculptors and artisans retained, the building is completed on the exterior and is an artistic, beautiful copy, in all but the material employed, of the original.
“The ancient building, or better the ruin of it, has been a matter of study by artists and sculptors for centuries. Models of it have been constructed in various museums of the world, and it has been conceded by artists of all ages to be the supreme architectural achievement of the Greek civilization. The temple was built of marble throughout and measured 228 feet by 101 feet, the body of the building being divided into smaller chambers containing sacred vessels, vestments, etc. The largest, 100 feet in length, contained the great statue of Pallas Athena, by Phidias, which faced the eastern and main entrance of the temple. The outer columns numbered eight at the ends and seventeen at the sides, there being also an inner row of six columns at each portico of the temple. Two longitudinal rows of columns supported a gallery in the Hekatompedos, or largest room; in the western part of the interior four great columns rose to the roof. There were no windows in the temple, light being admitted through the doors.”
As Mr. Parodi further reminds us, “the sculptures with which its pediments and walls were adorned, under the supervision of Phidias, represented the perfection of Greek plastic art,” while “the frieze, more, probably, than any other sculptural work, has been the study and the inspiration of artists and students.” In fact, “each portion of it is perfectly composed, and many of the most modern theories of art are based on the design of these reliefs.” As Mr. Parodi goes on to say,
“Before beginning their gigantic task, Leopold F. Scholz and Belle Kinney, entrusted with the recreation of these sculptures, spent many months examining all existing data on the subject and comparing notes with artists and archeologists all over the country. Besides this, the drawings made in 1674 by the French artist, Carrey, were extensively used, while innumerable treatises on the Parthenon and its sculptures and Greek art in general were studied. Also casts from the Elgin marbles ordered expressly from the British Museum for this work were used in this recreation of the Parthenon. Owing to the destruction wrought by decay during many centuries, and by the devastating hand of man, the exact design of the eastern and western pediments has become the subject of endless conjecture, but the painstaking research and the plastic skill of the sculptors of this reproduction make it reasonably sure that there is but little difference between the original and the modern replica.
“The present reproduction of the ancient Greek temple was begun in 1921. The work has been carried on with as great rapidity as the extreme care which has been given to every detail would permit.
“At first it was thought that marble would be used as in the original, but the cost of such material was so great that it would have been prohibitive, so after careful investigation by the architects and builders, a mixture of cement, gravel and sand was decided upon, and this composition, which has the durability of stone, gives the surface a rich tone and an even texture. With the exception of the frieze and the bronze doors the building is completed and it is hoped that the public spirit that has so far prosecuted the work of which the city, State and country are justly proud, will see fit to make these additions and also to reconstruct the interior as it was in the original, with the great statue of Pallas Athena, and on the lines of the ancient temple, and so make Nashville, which has already been named The Athens of the South,’ a veritable Athens of the United States.”
 Source: The Literary Digest for July 25, 1925
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