Perhaps you have heard of the Belle Meade plantation, a place in Nashville that is extremely popular for tourists. You may have also heard of the Parthenon, a full-size replica of one of the most famous Greek buildings ever created. It is also possible that you have been to the Country Music Hall of Fame, or at least heard of that from time to time. All of these things are available in Nashville Tennessee, the capital of the state. Let’s take a look at how you can save money on your trip to this fun filled destination, as well as a few Nashville TN activities that will be fun for everybody. Also when you are on trip consider looking at luxury apartments in Nashville TN in case you might want to move there.
Three Things To Do In Nashville
If you decide to go see some of the landmarks that are considered to be museums, you might want to go to the Ryman Auditorium. It’s a place that has excellent acoustics, and you can get a great sampling of all of the history related to music in this area of the world. You can also take advantage of the Nashville Music Attraction Discount Pass that is sold online. You will likely get the best deal if you are booking your entire vacation on the web. There is also the RCA Studio B combination tour which also has rave reviews from people that have actually been there.
Battlefields In The Area
There is one thing about the South that you will not find anywhere else and that is a multitude of battlefields from the Civil War and the American Revolution. These places include Shy’s Hill, Kelly’s Point Battlefield, and the Battle of Nashville location. What is unique about these areas is that some of them are quite remote. You might not be able to find them without some type of tour guide. There are maps, and they provide you with bite-size history that you can digest very quickly, related to how we all got to where we are today.
Anybody that is simply coming to Nashville to learn about country music will be greatly surprised at how many other activities there actually are. You are going to spend more than a few days at these different arenas, stadiums, cemeteries, and historic sites that will help you learn about Nashville. Tennessee is just a wonderful place to be, and if you do get to head over to Nashville TN, make sure that you get to stay for at least a week. That way, you will be able to find the best things to do, and also save money when you order online.
John Prine has just bought a beautiful mansion in Nashville, and let’s just say it’s got plenty of closet space.
The legendary country and folk singer-songwriter and his wife, Fiona Whelan, paid $2.6 million for a 7,200 square-foot "NeoClassical Farmhouse" on two acres of land in Nashville. According to the Nashville Scene, it was the second-largest home purchase price in Nashville in March of 2018.
Built in 2000, the four-bedroom, eight-bath mansion includes a pool, a hot tub and a very large walk-in closet in the master suite, which has its own bathroom and porch. The house also boasts a formal library with a fireplace, a den with large windows and wonderful views of the property, a formal dining room, a butler’s pantry, a huge kitchen with white quartz countertops, a rec room and office and a sitting room.
Alan Jackson’s Mansion Is Unbelievable!
Prine tells the Scene that his former home was close to Kellie Pickler’s house, which draws too much traffic as one of the stops on a Home of the Stars tour in Nashville. The 71-year-old music legend and his wife will have more privacy on their private two acres, which also includes a pool with a separate pool house that has its own porch and porch swing. There are also beautiful outdoor living spaces and an outdoor fireplace.
Jake Owen and Loretta Lynn Have Both Lived In This Amazing House!
NASHVILLE, TN (WKRN) – A Nashville T-shirt company known for its philanthropy has created a new design to honor and benefit the victim’s of the Waffle House shooting in Antioch.
Project 615’s latest shirt is a redesign of the Waffle House logo and reads "Spread Love."
"Due to the recent tragedy at a Waffle House in Nashville, Tennessee, we are reminded just how important it is to Spread Love," said Project 615.
"With heavy hearts, we created this tee in hopes that in some small way we can create a ripple effect to spread love after such a tragedy and to bring any relief we can to the victims who were impacted."
All profits from the shirt will be donated to the victims of the Waffle House shooting. It is priced at $29.99.
When Robert F. Kennedy’s plane touched down at Nashville’s Municipal Airport, a 30-foot banner stretched across the lobby entrance.
It read, "Suddenly there’s hope for America."
The crush of the wall-to-wall crowd who had come to get a glimpse of Kennedy reinforced the intensity and the urgency of the times.
It was March 21, 1968, and Kennedy — who five days earlier had announced his candidacy for president — was on his way to speak at Vanderbilt University’s Impact symposium.
The event, established in 1964 to give students a voice in an unsettling age, was focused that year on the “Destiny of Dissent.”
Dissent had become part of Nashville’s disposition. From the success of the sit-ins in 1960 to the pursuit of John Lewis’ famous “good trouble” protests, student-led movements in the city fueled civil disobedience and fostered change.
"You can’t stop that kind of avalanche of pride and hope," says Nashville civil rights dignitary Kwame Leo Lillard, who helped desegregate Nashville’s lunch counters, movie theaters and downtown stores.
When Kennedy, the 42-year-old senator from New York, set foot in Music City, he embodied that spirit.
As Kennedy pushed through the airport mob, hundreds of sign-toting onlookers — many students — deafened him, shouting, “Speech! Speech!”
Kennedy obliged, climbing atop an escalator railing and offering an impromptu greeting from the precarious perch.
The crowd went crazy.
Frye Gaillard, the Vanderbilt student chairman of Impact that year, walked by his side.
As a biting wind whipped the rain outside, Gaillard attempted to put up his umbrella. The force of bodies, not the weather, ripped it from his hand, carrying it through the crowd between people’s shoulders.
In the crush, it took Kennedy five minutes to walk 30 feet to a car waiting outside.
When he emerged from the throng, he slipped into the back seat alongside Gaillard and Impact’s other speaker, astronaut John Glenn.
"It feels a little safer in here than out there," Gaillard said.
Kennedy smiled. "Yes," he replied. "It does."
On the other side of the city, a crowd of 10,800 packed Vanderbilt University’s Memorial Gymnasium, waiting impatiently for Kennedy’s arrival.
He was two hours late.
Continuum of student-led crusades
Looking back, Gaillard marvels. The symposium nearly didn’t happen that year.
It was a time of resistance, rebellion and deep reflection in the USA.
The idealism of equality ran stride for stride with the specter of war, and no one knew exactly what would be the defining feel of the decade.
Nashville, at the buckle of the Bible Belt, was considered a place of morality and keen enlightenment.
It was home to myriad colleges and universities, including Fisk, Vanderbilt, American Baptist, Meharry and Tennessee State (then Tennessee A&I).
Although unrest raged overseas, the fight for civil rights gained momentum at home among student activists on the front lines.
Future congressman John Lewis attended American Baptist College in the early 1960s where he was trained to lead the nonviolent protests he would use to organize sit-ins.
Later, he studied at Fisk alongside future Freedom Rider Diane Nash, who boldly confronted Nashville Mayor Ben West in April 1960 on the steps of city’s courthouse in front of 3,000 black marchers.
“Mayor,” she asked, “do you recommend that the lunch counters be desegregated?”
To the shock of many, West said yes.
Nashville made history by becoming the first city in the South to integrate its lunch counters. That bolstered the black community.
"History really has a continuum," says Reavis Mitchell, a Nashville native and professor of history at Fisk. "And we kept believing that optimism was going to roll over and multiply itself."
By the time Mitchell enrolled as a student at historically black Fisk University in the summer of 1965, leaders such as Lewis and Nash had left their marks but moved on to bigger fights.
Two miles across town at the almost entirely white Vanderbilt, the landscape looked different.
There, civil rights were still taking shape.
Conservative, Southern and very segregated
Eileen Carpenter remembers that when her parents dropped her off at an ivy-covered entrance gate at Vanderbilt, the theme from The Twilight Zone played in her head.
"I just had this feeling it wasn’t going to be good," the 70-year-old Baltimore real estate attorney recalls.
She saw only one other black woman.
It was 1965, and Vanderbilt had admitted its first black undergraduate students only the year before. Carpenter could count the number of black students on campus on her fingers.
"Nashville was just…" She pauses. "It was so conservative and very Southern and very segregated."
Carpenter grew up in Nashville; her neighborhood on the east side of the Cumberland River boasted nice homes for black professionals, doctors, lawyers and professors.
She didn’t know she wasn’t allowed to go to certain swimming pools or to sit anywhere but the balconies of the city’s movies theaters. Her parents simply said they didn’t have enough time for those activities or couldn’t afford them.
She watched as the black kids in her neighborhood were bused past the nearby white school while she attended the only integrated Catholic high school in town.
When the sit-ins at Woolworth’s dime store downtown made the news, her parents’ half-truths started to come undone.
As progress persisted, more opportunities presented themselves. Desegregation moved past lunch counters into affluent white universities.
For Carpenter, a lover of astronomy, Vanderbilt offered both Dyer Observatory and an astrophysics degree, which nearby Tennessee A&I did not.
The chance to enroll was a great opportunity.
Vanderbilt, however, also had a contemptible history with race.
In the late 1950s, the Rev. James Lawson enrolled in Vanderbilt Divinity, in part so he could begin a push for social justice that Martin Luther King Jr. wanted him to start in Nashville.
Lawson conducted early morning classes in nonviolent resistance at a nearby church, where students role-played as demonstrators and attackers to prepare for the hatred they would encounter.
Despite the peaceful efforts, Vanderbilt officials were incensed about Lawson’s protest activities and expelled him.
By 1964, educational institutions in the South were forced to confront segregationist underpinnings.
A shift from nonviolent to proactive
The Vanderbilt student body tended to be more conservative than its radical protesting peers. But as violence broke out at Berkeley, Vanderbilt officials became concerned.
To address potential unrest, Chancellor Alexander Heard approved an initiative called Impact.
The program brought controversial figures selected by the students to campus and gave students an active role in addressing what they deemed unjust. The first Impact Symposium was held in 1964.
By 1967, Impact had tackled divisive topics such as sex, war and race. Speakers included Allen Ginsberg, Strom Thurmond, Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael.
The appearance of two high-profile black men in the recently desegregated Southern city emboldened some and enraged many others.
Carmichael, in particular, was a polarizing figure.
Tough-minded and militant, he served as head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the leading spokesman of the Black Power movement.
He often made national headlines for the incendiary actions he left in his wake.
“It was your daddy’s NAACP, your daddy’s Martin Luther King,” Mitchell says. “Stokely represented activism, not passive resistance. He was a romantic figure."
And much reviled.
The Tennessee Senate passed a resolution chiding Impact planners for giving the “dangerous, unprincipled demagogue the dignity of its platform."
Dozens of Vanderbilt donors wrote to the chancellor and organizing committee angry at the inclusion of Carmichael and King in Impact’s lineup.
"Students do not need to drink from the gutter to know what’s in the gutter," came one note to the chancellor, scrawled in cursive blue ink along the margin of a newspaper clipping showing the headline "Carmichael Talk Draws Fire."
‘We’re all in this together’
The day before Carmichael was to arrive at Vanderbilt, his advance team — four black men with bandoliers of bullets crisscrossing their chests and Roman sandals on their feet — strode into the office of the campus chaplain.
There to greet them was Gaillard, a tall, skinny white boy from Mobile, Ala.
"It fell to me,” Gaillard recalls, “to tell them we had death threats against Stokely, and to ensure his safety, we arranged to have police protection."
Gaillard grew up in a place where white people implicitly believed they were better than black people. He didn’t meet a white person who thought otherwise until he came to Vanderbilt.
He had never been as dogmatically certain about segregation as his parents. Joining Impact was his way of refuting the racism of his roots.
"We think of police as the occupying army," one of Carmichael’s men responded brusquely.
Gaillard summoned his will.
"In this set of circumstances," he said, "we need to think we’re all in this together."
The next day, when 85 policemen were prepared to keep the peace, Carmichael led a standing ovation from the crowd as King entered Memorial Gymnasium to evaluate equality. It was three days after King’s politically charged anti-war speech at Riverside Church in New York.
In his deep and measured tone, King told the crowd of 3,500 that nonviolence was the most potent weapon. He also condemned the inequalities that inspired unrest.
"There is nothing more dangerous than the man who feels he has no status," he said.
"As long as justice for all people is postponed," he said, "there will continue to be riots."
He seemed to predict the future.
Riots and radical change
The following afternoon, Carmichael, 25, stood behind the very same podium and preached something completely different.
As he started his speech, a white student in the balcony unfurled a Confederate flag over the rail. Carmichael paused.
"Just as long as you don’t burn down any of my churches," he said, a touch of Caribbean accent in his voice.
Then he began a sophisticated lecture on black power to a predominantly white audience.
In the crowd, Carpenter — late into her sophomore year at Vanderbilt — listened with special interest.
In her first year at Vanderbilt, she felt a crushing mix of loneliness and depression.
"Nobody called me names, nobody spit at me," she says. "Everybody was polite. If they caught your eye, they might even smile. But it also seemed like you just weren’t there. They just kind of ignored you."
She wanted to transfer, maybe to Tennessee A&I, the historically black university where her father taught, but she worried about the repercussions.
"I felt that it would embarrass my parents, that it would embarrass my race," she says. "I thought maybe they wouldn’t let more blacks in at Vanderbilt if I failed.”
Carmichael’s words enlightened her.
She attended Vanderbilt, but she wasn’t a part of Vanderbilt.
"He opened my eyes to the fact (that) discrimination doesn’t just have to be lynchings and throwing rocks at you," she says. "It’s an assault on your humanity, and that’s real."
It wasn’t the first time Carpenter had seen Carmichael speak. A month earlier at Fisk, he talked to a small group of students in a classroom on campus.
She went with a girlfriend and approached him afterward to invite him to a meeting of black Vanderbilt students hoping to organize an Afro-American Association at the university.
The meeting was to take place at her parents’ home after his speech at Impact.
He showed up — but nothing happened exactly as anticipated.
‘They’re rioting in Nashville’
As Carpenter paced her house awaiting the arrival of her esteemed guest, the city outside began to rage.
When her roommate arrived, throwing open the door of the Carpenters’ brick, three-bedroom, split-level home, the stricken look on her face screamed something was wrong.
"They’re rioting in Nashville," she said.
Carpenter switched on the news. Reports described "several hundred Negroes" roaming the streets, throwing rocks, bricks and bottles at the police officers who were trying to disperse them.
Carmichael was spotted in the clash on Jefferson Street, reports said.
"Almost right after they said that," Carpenter recalls, "Stokely and some Fisk students walked in the door."
He certainly wasn’t in any mood to have a meeting. "Let’s party," he said.
They didn’t stay long.
A storm had been stirred.
When passive Nashville disappeared
The next day, on a sleepy Sunday morning, Nashville woke up to a horrifying headline:
Riot flares in Fisk area
For two stifling spring nights, race riots ripped through the city, punctuated by sporadic gunshots, persistent rock-throwing, scattered fires and tear gas.
A Fisk student was shot in the leg. A Tennessee A&I student got a bullet in the neck. Thirty-six were arrested.
"The riots were a coming of age of a new young, black Nashville," says Mitchell, who walked to his father’s liquor store in north Nashville when the violence escalated in case his family needed him.
“It was an active Nashville. … The passive, old Nashville disappeared.”
Police and politicians blamed the riots on Carmichael.
Rep. Harry Lee Senter — a Democrat from the town of Bristol in the far east corner of the state — stood in front the Tennessee House and proclaimed in a quavering voice that Nashville suffered "a tragic weekend of treason, anarchy, arson and bloodshed" because of Carmichael.
He sponsored a resolution asking U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark to have Carmichael — a U.S. citizen born in Trinidad — deported.
News of the events spread to the coasts. The New York Times ran a front-page story.
Some questioned whether the unrest was stoked by Carmichael’s fiery words or by the preceding effort to silence him.
Either way, Impact was in the fray.
The most conservative Vanderbilt board members called for the resignation of the chancellor, the symposium’s staunchest supporter.
"We knew we did not want to back down from being provocative, from being relevant, from being a student-run organization that made people think," Gaillard says.
In a news release, Gaillard wrote, “Our concern is not with controversy. We do not seek it; neither do we fear it.”
The topic for 1968 would not be surrender, but dissent.
‘I dissent from that, and I know you do, too ‘
At the Impact symposium in March 1968, more than 10,800 people — double the student population at Vanderbilt — crammed inside Memorial Gymnasium.
They listened to young country crooner George Hamilton IV pick folk ballads on his guitar and waited impatiently for Kennedy’s arrival.
It was the largest crowd to attend an Impact symposium.
A two-minute standing ovation greeted Kennedy when he finally walked in.
In front of a massive American flag, he vigorously defended the right to dissent.
"The president tells us we can look forward to summer after summer of riot and repression," Kennedy said to the overflow crowd in his magnetizing Massachusetts twang.
"Here in Nashville, as all across the nation, we have seen the tragic and intolerable consequences. I dissent from that, and I know you do, too."
Carpenter, again, was in Impact’s audience.
At Vanderbilt, she had become more conscious of her race, not less. As the city around her worked to overcome its conflict, she, too, persisted.
She saw dissent as a valid means to create change. But she knew dissent, as it had in Nashville, could turn ugly and dangerous.
When Kennedy finished his speech, people pressed in from all sides to shake his hand. The button was torn from his right sleeve, but Kennedy did not stop smiling.
Robert Kennedy Jr. remembers that his father had many enthusiastic supporters, from people living in the ghettos of New York and California to those on Indian reservations and in Hispanic communities.
College students could be particularly intense.
“The college students really inflamed that point in history,” Kennedy Jr. says. “They were literally looking down the barrel of a gun. And they were angry.”
It was a rousing start to the Impact symposium, which was split into two parts in 1968 because of scheduling conflicts.
The second half was set to take place April 5, featuring speakers John V. Lindsay, the mayor of New York, and Nicholas Katzenbach, undersecretary of the United States.
But on April 4, peaceful dissent met a violent end in Memphis.
In Gaillard’s off-campus apartment, where the sofa was tattered and the kitchen was filled with dirty dishes, the Impact organizing group members were busy with last-minute preparations.
They were sorting through stacks of papers and making confirmation phone calls when someone ran into the room. “King’s been shot,” he shouted.
"It was surreal," Gaillard says.
King’s appearance at Impact the year before was overshadowed by Carmichael’s speech and the riots that followed.
King’s death was not.
Hundreds of Vanderbilt University students, led by 40 black student members of the Afro-American club at the school, marched from campus toward downtown.
They attended an interfaith memorial service at St. Mary’s Catholic Church led by clergymen of four faiths — a rabbi, a bishop, and two reverends.
Riots again threatened the city, tanks took to the streets, and Impact appeared in jeopardy once more as scheduled speakers began to cancel. First Lindsay. Then Katzenbach.
Nashville instituted a curfew to curb the unrest, but Impact — by the grace of city officials — went on as planned.
Gaillard remembers the eloquence of Georgia legislator Julian Bond, the passion of muckraker Jack Newfield, the intelligence of influential conservative William F. Buckley.
King’s death gave every discussion more depth
"But you had to ask, ‘What in the world is going to happen to our country?’ "
Two months later, Kennedy was shot and killed.
A better place
Gaillard says, "Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, for a lot of us, were the embodiment of hope. They were the champions of the idealism that had begun to take root for that whole decade.
"All of a sudden, their appearances at Impact had a tragic urgency that we never expected — or asked for. We were horrified and stricken.
"It was hard to hope after that."
Recovering has been a generations-long struggle, says Gaillard — a writer in residence at the University of South Alabama and an award-winning author who has chronicled the South in eloquent and important ways.
Mitchell says that, just as he saw in 1968, there is a spark of optimism.
"They say every movement needs a martyr," Mitchell says. "In that case, it seems like it was necessary at the time.
"I think King’s death, for a while, made America a better place. It reached those who weren’t easily reached. Lessons were learned.
"I think, in Nashville, much progress was made."
The students of the 1960s are the parents and the grandparents of today. The kids they raise walk out of schools and hold rallies for their own causes.
Gay rights. Women’s equality. Gun control.
"We’ve been waiting for the young people to get fired up," Carpenter says, a satisfaction in her voice. "We’ve got to pass this baton."
It is a different fight, driven by the same spirit.
Dissent.
Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 and jbliss@tennessean.com or on Twitter @jlbliss.
First quarter 2018 real estate trends for Davidson, Williamson, Rutherford and Sumner counties, as compiled by Chandler Reports.
Chandler Reports has been publishing Real Estate Market Data since 1968. That year, Chandler began collecting residential sales information for the Chandler Residential Report, considered the authoritative source for residential real estate sales information. Over the next three decades, the publications have been continually refined, enhanced and expanded, growing to include lot sales data, new residential construction and absorption information, and commercial sales. In 1987, Chandler Reports began one of the first on–line real estate market data services in the country, and is a nationally recognized leader in the industry. In 2004, Chandler Reports was purchased by The Daily News Publishing Co. In 2007, Chandler introduced RegionPlus, including property research for Nashville and Middle Tennessee. Visit online at chandlerreports.com.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – Inside a home in North Nashville, a group of mothers share an experience. They share pain, and they share with each other because they have nowhere else to turn.
"I just wish they would just put down the guns," Catina Gooch said.
LaToya Thomas lost her son to gun violence in February. (Photo: WKRN)
"Put the guns down, put the guns down – it’s not worth it,” LaTonya Thomas added. "We have all lost a child, and it’s to gun violence."
They call themselves Mothers Over Murders. They embrace, console and meet twice a month.
Gooch’s story is one these moms have heard too many times.
"The doctor came in and he was like, he didn’t make it, he didn’t make it," recalled Gooch.
Her son Jonathan was killed in August 2017.
Catina Gooch’s son was killed in Aug. 2017. (Photo: WKRN)
Gooch clearly remembers her reaction after learning from a doctor her son had been killed.
"What? No. He’s just playing. Jonathan’s okay. He’s okay," she said.
Her tears and anguish put a face to the pain gun violence continues to cause. These moms must now visit their sons at cemeteries.
"This is not supposed to be my life," Stacy Hall, the group’s executive director, said. "My son is supposed to be here. My son was not supposed to be shot and left on the side of the road."
Their stories are their therapy in this close-knit group. But their hope is their experience will educate others that each death is no doubt needless, and completely avoidable.
Stacy Hall is the group’s executive director. (Photo: WKRN)
"You have loved ones you leave behind, it’s painful on both sides," said Thomas, whose son was killed in February.
"They’re all senseless deaths, they’re all unexpected," Hall added.
For more information on Mothers Over Murders or Nashville Peacemakers, click here.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Patrons at the iconic Bluebird Cafe in Nashville got a big surprise Saturday night when singer Taylor Swift dropped in during country singer Craig Wiseman’s set, The Tennessean reported.
Ahead of National Child Abuse Prevention Month, there’s been a surprising dark side to the growth in population in Middle Tennessee.
"With the increase in population, unfortunately we do see an increase in child abuse," said June Turner, CEO of the Nashville Children’s Alliance. "So we’ve got to be ready as an agency to move forward and to be there for the kids and families who need us."
The Alliance is part of the city’s Child Protective Investigative Team, and works closely with Metro Police, the Dept. of Children’s Services, and the Office of the District Attorney General.
From 2016 to 2017, the agency reported a two-percent increase in forensic interviews and a 55-percent increase in therapy sessions.
"We want to think it doesn’t happen in our neighborhoods, churches, our families" said Turner. "Child abuse happens across the spectrum."
Turner said exposure to social media is a big part of the problem.
"We can help with those trends," said Turner. "Knowing how to support children when they come forward."
For the child advocacy center, that comes with therapy, and ultimately, time.
"That’s why we’re here," said Turner. "We want to give children that chance to put this in the past, to talk through it, to then be able to have good and productive lives as they move forward."
The non-profit is funded by state and federal grants, donations, and special events, like its upcoming walk on April 7th.
To register go to the website and Go to "Events" tab.
NASHVILLE, TN — Metro Police say they suspect foul play in the disappearance of a 46-year-old woman 10 days ago.
Letitia Lane has not been seen since March 10. On March 12, a co-worker called her phone after she didn’t show up for work at the AT&T Building. The co-worker heard a woman crying and a rustling noise before the phone disconnected. Lane is the mother of three children.
On March 16, Lane’s ex-boyfriend, 49-year-old James Alfonzo "Fuzz" Vaughn, was shot and killed during a stand-off with Clarksville Police at an apartment complex. Police had learned Vaughn was staying a friend at the complex and had gone to ask him about Lane’s disappearance. Vaughn was the last person seen with Lane.
Vaughn was convicted of murder in 1996 following a deadly shooting at a Gallatin restaurant in 1995. In 2006, the Supreme Court of Tennessee reversed the conviction because of ineffective counsel and Vaughn was released pending a new trial.
Lane’s family has hired a private investigator and set up a GoFundMe page to aid in the effort to find her.
Police are searching for Vaughn’s vehicles. He owned a purple 2005 Honda VT1300 motorcycle with Tennessee license plate 575ZA8 and a 2014 Chevy Silverado with Tennessee license plate T84-02L.
Savannah Yarborough’s vintage bed is framed by Herman Miller lamps. Photographed by Caroline Sharpnack for Lonny.
Rugs and furniture pieces help divide the open space into styled vignettes.
Photographed by Caroline Sharpnack for Lonny.
Have you ever seen a room and felt like it was a collection of all things cool you could ever want in your life? Well take a step into the home of Savannah Yarborough. The Nashville-based fashion designer has a jaw-dropping pad that feels like a livable vintage store that you would buy out if you had the option. The open space flows organically with beautifully styled nooks and vignettes to create intimacy within the space. When Yarborough defined her decor style as "collected eclectic," we just nodded our heads in agreement.
As the designer behind AtelierSavas, Yarborough has made a business selling bespoke leather jackets and handbags sourced from hides and furs from around the world. Influenced by her Southern roots and studies in London at Central Saint Martins, the creative’s creates unique looks that blends her killer style with the spirit of her clients. However when it comes to her home, the look is all her own.
"I believe that you shouldn’t buy anything that you don’t absolutely love," shares Yarborough. "I am particular about pieces that are welcomed into my space and don’t usually make fleeting purchases. I don’t always have the perfect spot for something that I love, but if it’s that good, it makes its own spot."
While she may be selective, clearly the designer has found plenty of amazing finds. Brick wall and deep indigo paint provide the backdrop for her bedroom and a few sectioned off nooks in the largest room of her apartment. Each space has its own style with a wide collection of cool vintage decor pieces and plenty of plants.
"I don’t have rooms per se, but I really love my ‘formal living area’ in the mornings. I spend a lot of time in the yellow chairs, thinking and solving the worlds problems," Yarborough says. "It gets the best light, and you can hear the city coming to life in the mornings."
Breaking up a large open space can be tricky, but the designer relies on her historic building’s bones and some strategic styling to pull it off.
"My space has large beams, which really serve the purpose of defining spaces," explains Yarborough. "It’s important to define these spaces with rugs and other large pieces which can make them feel a bit more separated."
Savannah kicking back in a vintage floral swivel chair.
Photographed by Caroline Sharpnack for Lonny.
A cool styling idea we are definitely going to steal? Using a vintage A-frame shelf to break up a room and let the decor be displayed on both sides.
"None of my ‘rooms’ were really planned, but as time goes on, each item moves around until I find the spot it was meant to be in," she says.
A few key pieces in her main room that stand out include a gorgeous mustard Rove Concepts sectional and of course, her incredible vintage deco bed frame flanked by Herman Miller lamps and wild rugs.
"My bed was originally natural polished bamboo, and I painted it with gold metallic paint to give it a new life," she adds.
A cool seating area filled with all of the designer’s vintage finds.
Photographed by Caroline Sharpnack for Lonny.
Yarborough’s bright kitchen featuring Southern Lights Electric pendants.
Photographed by Caroline Sharpnack for Lonny.
While this cool room might have some incredible vintage faux blooms, it’s hard to ignore the plethora of plants throughout Yarborough’s home.
When asked what the greens in her space meant to her, the designer replied, "Life! Living downtown in an over 100-year-old warehouse, the air quality needs to be purified. Since I spend a lot of time indoors, it helps to have my own personal yard." She adds, "Also, it gives me something to take care of, which I really enjoy."
With such a historic home, there definitely had to be a few changes to the space to give it a modern feel. "I worked with Adam at Southern Lights Electric to design my amber glass pendants with gold wiring in my kitchen and I installed a new kitchen with wooden countertops and a farmhouse sink to update the ‘dated loft’ look," Yarborough explains.
"This building has such an awesome creative history — tenants over the last 30 years have added and changed apartments, making them interesting and sometimes a bit weird! My apartment was actually a photography studio for awhile, hence the round wall behind my bed," she says. "It’s a wonderful place to live and work, and I can’t imagine where else I would live in Nashville."
A look into AtelierSavas’s glam rock space. Photographed by Caroline Sharpnack for Lonny.
One of the perks of her location? Yarborough’s store AtelierSavas is just on the floor below. Between her incredible custom jackets, moody draped walls, chandeliers, and gold Milo Baughman shelves, the space is a total glam rock haven.
"I love it! I keep a really separated lifestyle, and don’t take any work up to my house," the designer explains. "Even my leather jackets stay down in the shop. It is so convenient that I find it difficult to ever leave the property! It’s so nice being able to pop upstairs for lunch or an afternoon nap!"
A search continued in Tennessee on Saturday for a Nashville firefighter who has been missing since early Monday.
Search warrants for two residences were executed Friday in an effort to find Jesse Reed, 32, whose vehicle plunged into the Tennessee River in Waverly, authorities told the Tennessean.
Reed’s wife, who was a passenger, escaped from the vehicle and was found alive in a nearby ditch, Fox 17 Nashville reported.
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Why Reed, or his body, have not been found yet has left authorities baffled.
“The car was empty," Deputy Rob Edwards with the Humphreys County Sheriff’s Office said. "The windows were rolled down, which was weird. That was strange."
Locations searched Friday were residences where Reed reportedly has lived — one in Humphreys County and the other in Cheatham County.
An official from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation told the Tennessean that the investigation was “active and ongoing.”
Humphreys County Sherriff Chris Davis said he believed it would be “irresponsible” to not “exhaust all means possible” to locate Reed.
"We have no evidence to indicate that he is not still in this water," said Davis, adding that the water search efforts would continue this weekend. "I would like to ask for the continued prayer for the fast recovery and the closure of this situation for the family."
William Swann, the Nashville Fire Department’s interim director and chief, thanked the community for the search efforts in a Facebook post.
Before his disappearance, Reed had risked his life to save strangers, Fox 17 Nashville reported. Fire Department performance evaluations said Reed “performs his duties with exceptional professionalism.”
The Nashville Fire Department told the station that dive teams continue to search the Tennessee River for Reed, deploying underwater sonar and rovers, as well as drones and helicopters.
The Hendersonville Fire Department also sent four divers to help in the search, the report said.
