Kleiner's Blog

Driving from the suburbs of Nashville Tennessee up Interstate 24 is a harrowing and uncomfortable experience. With a suggested speed limit of 70 and an observed speed limit of at least 80, the rows and rows of chain restaurants, big box stores and malls blend into a blur of late capitalism as they are slowly replaced by the (almost) familiar blur of urban density.

Pulling into Centennial Park, the show piece of the Nashville Parks and Recreation system is like docking a spaceship in a foreign world. With the nearby campus of Vanderbilt University looming and the imposing skyscraper visage of city skyline in the distance, the parking lot next to Lake Wanatuga is seriously odd to consider while sitting in it.

Odder still is the famous Nashville Parthenon, here looming above as if it were sitting on the old Athenian Agora. This Parthenon is an exact replica of that other Parthenon you know back before time, acid rain and target practice hungry Romans laid waste to it. Even the replica of the Elgin marbles are cast from the Elgin marbles themselves.

The Parthenon was built of wood, plaster and brick as the showpiece of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition held in 1897. This particular structure was chosen because Nashville had come to be known as “The Athens of The South”. In 1920 the Parthenon was refit with the sleek concrete shell you see today and it is a heck of a thing to see.

As the sun set on Centennial Park and the skyscrapers began to light up in the distance, my brother and I wandered the paved shores of the “lake”. (By the way – when your lake has adequate aeration and no stream feeding it – it looks a lot better…) The green and leaf and branch contrast of the park to the gray and neon and plastic feel of the city seemed only to highlight the definition and purpose of the Urban Park concept.

No park – No Parthenon – No beauty. Centennial Park is the kind of place that reminds you why the green spaces of cities are so important and the manner in which this one is tended to can teach a lesson or two as well. I leave you with a song about the Nashville Parthenon by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone.