Belle Meade Plantation
Belle Meade Historic Site and Winery, located in Belle Meade, Tennessee, is a historic house that is now operated as an attraction, museum, winery, and onsite restaurant together with outbuildings on its 30 acres of property. In the mid 19th century, the plantation encompassed roughly 5,400 acres with over a hundred enslaved persons.
Location
A Winery and Visitors' Center have been constructed on the property. Preserved original outbuildings, including the original Harding Cabin where Belle Meade began, a dairy, a gardener's house, a carriage and stable house built in 1892, one of the largest smokehouses in Tennessee, and a mausoleum may also be seen. Since the 1990s, the executive leadership of the site began an effort to reconcile the past and to tell the stories of African Americans who were brought to and born at Belle Meade and worked there before and after emancipation. By 2018, this emphasis resulted in developing two tours through which the story of Belle Meade is told. The Mansion Tour tells the century-long history of Belle Meade through the stories and experiences of the Harding and Jackson families, as well as the enslaved women, men, and children who were held in bondage here. The Journey to Jubilee Tour invites discussion and explores the stories of the enslaved African-Americans who were brought to, and born at Belle Meade from 1807 through the years following Emancipation.
Mansion and grounds[edit]
Architecture[edit]
John Harding bought a cabin and 250 acres (100 ha) near the Natchez Trace; enslaved people began to clear and develop the land. They also built their own slave quarters, which are documented as two-family cabins.
In the 1820s Harding commissioned the first red brick Federal-style house on a small hill near Richland Creek. The entrance façade featured a two-story, five-bay block constructed on a limestone foundation and flanked with symmetrical one-story wings. Chimneys flanked the central block as well as the two hyphens (wings).
His son William Giles Harding took over operating Belle Meade in 1839, as his father was developing another farm in Arkansas. William G. Harding began to acquire more land for breeding and raising high-quality livestock, first emphasizing thoroughbred horses and adding cattle, sheep, and other breeds. He ultimately owned 5,400 acres (2,200 ha). In 1853, he had the house altered and enlarged in a Greek-Revival style. Stucco was applied to cover the red bricks, and a two-story veranda was created on the central block, featuring six solid limestone pillars quarried at Belle Meade and styled in the Doric order. A solid limestone pediment entablature is set above the columns.
A two-story kitchen extension was attached to the house via a two-level breezeway. This was customary to keep the heat of the kitchen away from the main house. The breezeway was enclosed in the 20th century by successive families living at Belle Meade. Through the 1880s and 1890s a Dairy, Carriage House, and Stable were also added. William G. Harding had a mausoleum built in 1839 for the interment of family members.
Interior[edit]
The 14 feet (4.3 m) high central Entrance Hall runs the full length of the house from west to east, following the prevailing wind direction for natural cooling. The walls display thoroughbred horse paintings by 19th-century painters Edward Troye, Harry Hall, Henry Stull, Herbert Kittredge, and Henri De Lattre that depict some of the most famous horses.[2] On the north end of the hall, double parlors feature poplar wood, Tennessee's state tree. The library and dining rooms are found to the south. These rooms feature portraits of the Harding family and chandeliers that were once lit with methane gas.[3]
The central hall configuration is found on the second and third floors as well, accessed by the winding cantilevered, Second Empire-style staircase carved from cherry. The second floor contains two connected bedrooms to the north and a guest bedroom and master bedroom to the south. William Hicks Jackson, son-in-law of William Giles Harding, modernized the interior of the house in 1883, adding three full bathrooms, complete with hot and cold running water. In 1907, just after being sold, the home was outfitted with an additional bathroom complete with a surrounding needlepoint shower which was believed to help circulation and those suffering from arthritis.[3] The third level is known as a Garret and has two single rooms flanking the central hall with 8 feet (2.4 m) high ceilings.[4]
The Mansion also has a cellar, which was uncommon at the time. It contained a steam engine and a boiler to power the hot and cold running water for the home.