Adolphus Heiman

Adolphus Heiman
Born 1809
Potsdam, Germany
Died 1862
Jackson, Mississippi
Resting place
 Mount Olivet Cemetery
Residence Nashville, Tennessee
Nationality Prussian-American
Occupation Architect

Adolphus Heiman (1809–1862) was a Prussian-born American architect.[1][2][3][4][5]

Biography

Early life

Adolphus Heiman was born in Potsdam, Prussia in 1809.[1][4][5] His father was a building superintendent.[3] He emigrated to the United States in 1834, spent time in New York City and New Orleans, and settled in Nashville, Tennessee in 1837.[1][3][5]

Career

From 1837 to 1841, he built the First Baptist Church on Fifth Avenue, which was destroyed in 1940, and tombstones in the Old City Cemetery on Fourth Avenue South in Nashville.[1][2]

He fought in the Mexican–American War of 1846-1848, when he became a Major.[1][3][4]

In 1849, he was commissioned to build a Gothic Revival 250-bed state Hospital for the Insane.[1][3][5] He also designed the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Seven Dolors (now known as St. Mary's Catholic Church), the now-demolished Italianate-style Adelphi Theater, the Greek Revival-style Medical Department and the Gothic Revival-style Literary Department at the University of Nashville, and the Italianate-style Belmont Mansion.[1][3][5][6] He also designed the Giles County Courthouse in Pulaski, Tennessee, St. John's College in Little Rock, Arkansas and the Arkansas Masonic School, and the First Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama.[1][7] He also designed the first suspension bridge in Tennessee over the Cumberland River.[1][8] By the 1850s, he was widely known as "Nashville's architect."[2]

Civil War

He fought in the Confederate States Army in the American Civil War of 1861-1865, where he was colonel in the Tenth Tennessee Regiment.[1][3][4][9][10] However, he was captured in 1862 and was a prisoner of war for six months.[1]

Death

He died in Jackson, Mississippi in 1862.[1] He was buried in the Confederate Circle of Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville in 1869.[1]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12 The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 The Nashville City Cemetery Association
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Nashville Public Television: Nashville Architects
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Myers E. Brown, II, Tennessee's Confederates, Arcadia Publishing, 2011, p. 81
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Christine Kreyling (ed.), Classical Nashville: Athens of the South, Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996, pp. 48-51
  6. ↑ A. W. F. Edwards, Nashville Interiors: 1866 To 1922, Arcadia Publishing, 1999, p. 11
  7. ↑ Robert S. Gamble, Historic Architecture in Alabama: A Guide to Styles and Types, 1810-1930, Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 2001, p. 84
  8. ↑ The Suspension Bridge at Nashville
  9. ↑ Thomas Lawrence Connelly, Army of the Heartland: The Army of Tennessee, 1861-1862, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1 Sep 2001, p. 38
  10. ↑ Helen P. Trimpi, Crimson Confederates: Harvard Men Who Fought for the South, Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 2010, p. 204