Posted by Randall on March 27, 2004 at 23:31:28:I recently acquired several pieces of cast-iron which were removed during demolition in 1975 of the Morgan-Reeves building in Nashville and thought I would share some historical information.
In researching this building I found it was listed in the Gov't HABS survey in 1970 and a number of pages of documents, drawings, plans, as well as photographs appear in the Library of Congress holdings.
From what I learned, the building was designed by architects Warren and Moore, and erected in 1856 by Samuel Dold Morgan who was associated with the first railroad charter in that state, and numerous cotton gins and mills. Morgan was also involved with the building of the State Capital and hiring the architect for that- William Strickland.Morgan erected this 4 story Italinate styled building at 208-210 Public Square for his dry-goods store, and according to HABS documents it was thought to be the first such building there to use extensive cast iron after the major fires there in 1856.
In searching Cornell's on-line library I found a number of references to Morgan, several of them being ads in various magazines for employees dated Jan 17 1851 as "The Nashville Manufacturing Company" (Chartered by the State of Tennessee) which the ads stated was looking for machinists, founders etc for the production of locomotives, steam engines etc.
I am interested in reading more of the history, so I will continue looking.
I am curious how this building wound up being demolished despite the HABS survey and it's fairly obvious significance. The individual from whom I purchased the iron from had bought and removed the facade- at least the iron elements anyway, and had been selling them off piece by piece over the years.I bought the last two of the 34" long Corinthian window brackets, and the last four of the two different styled acanthus leaves measuring 10"x14" removed from the rooftop cornice brackets.
I also bought a box of odd Corinthian capital parts that came from the ground floor pilasters, not enough to form an entire capital but one of each element which could potentially be reproduced to form a complete capitalI have a few photos here and will add more as well as some of the text from the documents;
http://www.lostnewyorkcity.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=82
Randall
Webdirector of
LostNewYorkCity
A photographic history essay.