Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art
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| Cheekwood | |
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| U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
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| Location: | 1200 Forest Park Dr. Nashville, Tennessee |
| Built/Founded: | 1929 |
| Architect: | Bryant Fleming |
| Added to NRHP: | August 23, 2000 |
| NRHP Reference#: | 00000993 |
Cheekwood is a privately funded 55 acre estate on the western edge of Nashville, Tennessee that houses the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art. Formerly the residence of Nashville's Cheek family, the 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m²) Georgian-style mansion was opened as a museum in 1960.
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[edit] The house that coffee built
Christopher Cheek founded a wholesale grocery business in Nashville in the 1880s. His son, Leslie Cheek, joined him as a partner, and by 1915 was president of the family-owned company. Leslie's wife, Mabel Wood, was a member of a prominent Clarksville family. Meanwhile, Joel Cheek, Leslie's cousin, had developed an acclaimed blend of coffee that was marketed through Nashville's finest hotel, the Maxwell House Hotel. Legend has it that Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the blend "Good to the last drop," which is still a registered trademark for the product. Cheek's extended family, including Leslie and Mabel Cheek, were investors. In 1928, the Postum Cereals Company (now General Foods) purchased Maxwell House's parent company, Cheek-Neal Coffee, for more than $40 million.
With their income secured by the proceeds from the sale, Leslie Cheek bought 100 acres (0.40 km²) of what was then woodland in West Nashville for a country estate. He hired New York residential and landscape architect, Bryant Fleming, and gave him control over every detail - from landscaping to interior furnishings. The result was a limestone mansion and extensive formal gardens inspired by the grand English manors of the 18th century. Fleming's masterpiece, Cheekwood, was completed in 1932.
Leslie and Mabel Cheek and their daughter, Huldah Cheek Sharp, lived at Cheekwood until the 1950s when it was offered as a site for a botanical garden and art museum.
The development of the property was spearheaded by the Exchange Club of Nashville, the Horticultural Society of Middle Tennessee and many other civic groups. The Nashville Museum of Art donated its permanent collections and proceeds from the sale of its building to the effort. The new Cheekwood museum opened to the public in 1960.
[edit] Art museum
Cheekwood’s art collection was founded in 1959 upon the holdings of the former Nashville Museum of Art. The core holdings include broad collections of American art; American and British decorative arts; contemporary art, especially outdoor sculpture acquired for the Woodland Sculpture Trail.
Cheekwood’s American art collection includes 600 paintings and 5,000 prints, drawings and photographs. The collection, assembled in the 1980s and early 1990’s through a multi-million dollar bequest, spans the history of American art. Its strength centers on The Eight. Other strengths include the world's largest collection of sculptures of William Edmondson, photographs by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, and a vast variety of post-Second World War prints. Recently, the Museum has pursued a consciously focused acquisition process, having added paintings by James Hamilton, William Bradford, and new contemporary sculpture for the Trail.
The core holdings of the decorative arts collection include the third-largest Worcester porcelain in the United States, and a 650-piece silver collection, spanning the 18th-20th centuries.
The Cheek Mansion is itself considered part of the collection. The renovation restored much of the original building, revealing authentic features (wood and marble floors that had been carpeted), and conserving historical architectural motifs, such as the illusionist murals that line the main corridor.
The Contemporary Art collection, housed in the galleries created out of the estate’s original garage and stables, is small but of high quality, including paintings by Larry Rivers, Andy Warhol, Robert Ryman, and Red Grooms. Additionally, seven small galleries were created in the old horse stable stalls to enable Cheekwood to display installation art.
The Carrell Woodland Sculpture Trail, a collection of fifteen sculptures by international artists, extends the contemporary art collection into nature, focusing on a kind of intimate, outdoor art not commonly found in American museums.
[edit] Botanical garden
Extending across the grounds from the Museum of Art, the Botanical Garden encompasses the entire 55 acre site with an emphasis on display, education, and study. The plant collections include boxwood, conifer, crape myrtle, daffodil, daylily, dogwood, fern, herb, holly, hosta, hydrangea, Japanese maple, magnolia, Southeastern US natives, redbud, and trillium.
Visitors to Cheekwood will enjoy many styles of garden design. An avenue of crape myrtles leads into the Robertson Ellis Color Garden where sweeping curves of colorful flowers border a sloping lawn with a beautiful view of the distant hills. As visitors exit this garden, they pass under eight curved aches covered with colorful vines and planted with a variety of annuals and perennials. Next visitors will enter the Japanese Garden. This is a quiet place for rest and meditation, a refuge from the outside world. The Wills Perennial garden displays new and traditional perennials and includes a steep limestone wall that provides habitat and background for this colorful, full-sun garden. The Martin Boxwood Garden was designed and built by landscape architect Bryant Fleming in the late 1920’s with terraced gardens and extensive plantings of boxwood. This formal garden invites the visitor to be transported to a different era. The Howe Wildflower garden, spectacular in the spring, is a woodland wildflower garden that was originally at the East Nashville home of Cora Howe. This garden was moved to Cheekwood in 1968 along with its stone tool shed, rock wall, and garden ornaments. As visitors move through the gardens, they will next encounter the Burr Terrace Garden. This is an enclosed cottage garden on three levels with many pastel colored perennials, annuals, and shrubs. Exiting the Burr Terrace Garden, visitors will enter the Carell Dogwood Garden. This garden displays many variations in branching patterns, bark, leaf, berry, and the showy bracts characteristic of dogwoods. The Herb Study Garden displays many plants to be touched and smelled, in addition to plants that can be used for cooking, fragrance, dyes, fibers, and cosmetics. Finally, guests will come to the Turner Seasons Garden. This garden focuses on the seasonal aspect of gardens in Tennessee. It features a series of garden rooms, each highlighting a different season with plant collections of special interest
The gardens and collections not only serve to educate, but also to please each visitor’s sense of aesthetic. The gardens are an important horticultural resource for the entire region.
[edit] Other attractions
In addition to the Museum and the Botanical Garden, Cheekwood operates a gift shop, and a restaurant called the Pineapple Room which overlooks the greenery of the elegant west lawn.
