712 Neelys Bend Historic Signficance
The Robert Chadwell House, on Neelys Bend Road in Madison, a suburb of Nashville, Davidson County, Tennessee, is nominated under National Register criterion C for its architectural significance to Davidson County. The Robert Chadwell House, built ca. 1874, is an excellent example of Italianate period architecture. While there are many examples in Nashville of urban residential architecture from the Italianate period, there are only a few rural examples. Unlike its rural contemporaries, which are more vernacular interpretations of Italianate influence, the Chadwell house formally embodies the distinctive earmarks of an Italian Villa. The house has architectural integrity, . although it received a rear two-story addition and porch enlargement during a ca. 1890, sensitively-designed expansion.
The Chadwell house was built ca. 1874 on land Robert Chadwell received from B.F. Foster. Chadwell bought 100 acres of a 210-acre tract in 1873 and was deeded the remaining land in 1874. The original tract, located on a stretch of land between Neeley's Bend Road and the Cumberland River, was one of several farms on the northeastern outskirts of Nashville. Foster had purchased the land in 1836 from John Trimble who, after selling the farm to Foster, became involved in politics as a state representative and U.S. senator.
By 1880 Chadwell had a large farm operation, cultivating over half the land in corn and wheat and raising about 150-180 poultry, 40 sheep, 40 hogs, and several cows with the help of a few farm laborers. Prior to farming, Chadwell was a Davidon County Revenue Collector.
Robert Chadwell, from North Carolina, married Mary Ann Burge, of Tennessee, in 1845. They had four children, Thomas, John, Love, and Henry. The farm was eventually divided equally among the children. Thomas, the eldest, willed his quarter interest in the property to his youngest brother, Henry, upon his death in 1906.
In the same year Henry bought the other half of the property from his other brother and sister. He farmed the land until 1913 when he and his wife gave 150 of the 210 acres and the house, three barns, and a dairy to a trust company in payment of a debt.
The trust company divided the land into 37 tracts of which 11 tracts, about 47 acres, were bought by G.A. and Mamie Maxwell in 1914. In 1928 Magie Chapman Pickett bought 33 of the 47 acres, including the house.
Her daughter, Alice Pickett, sold the house and property in 1973 to the Nashville's Boys Club, who sold it to the Metro Baptist Church of Nashville in 1978. One year later Don and Betty Nixon bought the house and 1.95 acres on which it sits.
The other rural examples of Italianate period architecture in Davidson County differ from the Chadwell house primarily in their forms and degree and interpretation of Italianate detailing. From the early years of the Italianate period, ca. 1850s, are the Currey House, a small, one-story cottage with a three-bay rectangular front section, small recessed corner porch, gable roof and rear ell, and Two Rivers (NR 1972) and Clover Bottom (NR 1975), highly ornate brick mansions.
The Ezell and Washington-Draughn houses each are L-shaped, two-story brick structures with modest ornamentation and more heavy appearance. A frame L-shaped example is a house on Old Harding Road with plainer, later, and more vernacular detailing.
There remain several evolved houses which feature Italianate detailing in combination with earlier architectural elements. Grassmere (NR 1984) is a two-story brick Federal style house with an Italianate front porch. On Old Harding Road is a one-story frame house with both Greek Revival and Italianate detailing. Combining those two periods in a more unusual manner is the one-and-a-half-story frame house on Morton Hill Road, featuring an elaborate facade-length classical portico, paired gable-end chimneys, and round-arched Italianate windows and entranceway on the facade. Farview, although two stories and frame, is asymmetrically arranged, incorporating an earlier house, and featuring two two-story gabled porticoes.
In contrast, the Chadwell house features a central pavilion, a corner porch with typical Italianate arched brackets and chamfered posts; and formally executed round-arched windows with decorative surrounds, a one-story bay window, and bracket and panel decoration. It represents a more "high style" farmhouse. And it does not resemble its urban counterparts, which range from modest to massive and plain to ornate.
More architecturally kin to the Chadwell house are the house on Humphreys Street, a formal, two-story Italian Villa in brick, and the restrained one-story Italian Villa brick Baltz House. However, these houses have not retained rural settings; development from the early twentieth century engulfs both.
Historical Description
The Robert Chadwell House, or Idlewild, as it is commonly known, located on Neelys Bend Road in Davidson County, Tennessee, is an excellent example of an Italian Villa farmhouse. Built ca. 1874, the two-story, frame house sits atop a gentle rise alongside a curving, predominantly rural road in Madison, a suburban community in northeastern Nashville.
The house and its outbuildings are located on a 1.95-acre tract that was part of a 210-acre farm. Although much of the original farm land is under separate ownership, it has been sparsely developed. Due to the lack of development and because the land around the house slopes downward, the new development does not visually intrude upon the Chadwell house's rural setting. Also, the two-acre lot sufficiently provides integrity of setting.
The Italian Villa-styled house, two stories, weatherboarded, and gable-roofed, is irregularly shaped, has a stone foundation, and features a central gabled pavilion flanked by a wrap around corner porch on one side and a bay window on the other.
Facade openings, five bays wide on the front section, consists of a large round-arched entranceway with pointed-arch surround in the pavilion, a recessed four-panel, single-leaf door and round-arched transom, and tall round-arched, 4/4 light windows. The windows have decorative pointed-arch surrounds with flared drip sills, except for the paired windows of the pavilion's upper story which have round-arched hoods that are joined by a pointed-arch decorative panel,and the three windows of the one-story bay window which have decorativewood panels above each.
A sixth bay on the facade, recessed from the main elevation and created through an 1890s two-story addition to the rear, is located at the endof the wraparound porch. The porch, originally two bays wide andending flush with the corner of the house, was expanded to wrap aroundthe northeastern corner and provide entrance into the 1890s addition.
The original porch design was duplicated for the expansion, as were thenew door and second-story window designs. The porch, three bays wide on the front and three bays deep from the corner, has square chamfered posts, visually joined by decorative molded, arched brackets. Porch roof brackets are arranged singly across a deep porch frieze band, below built-in gutters.
Wide corner boards, a round vent in the pavilion gable, and wide roofeaves and trim band further ornament the house. The medium-pitched gable roof is broken by a low hip section over the northwest side of the house, above the facade's bay window, and by three interior and one rear, gable-end brick chimneys.
The east side elevation of the house is in two sections. The front section, one room deep and part of the original house, has no structural openings. The rear section, from the 1890s expansion and gable-roofed, is also one-room deep. It has cut-off corners with two rectangular 4/4 light windows on each story.
This section's rear elevation, or south wall, is three bays wide and has a plain one-story L-shaped veranda with slender square posts and a rail balustrade. Half-glazed, double-leaf doors enter the house's central hall and a single-leaf door with rectangular transom leads to the first floor room of the addition. Tall rectangular 4/4 light windows are located one in the center bay of the first story and one each at the left and right bays of the second story.
Also seen from the rear is the rear wall of the house's original two-story ell. Its first story is concealed by an early twentieth century shed-roofed kitchen addition. An original 4/4 light rectangular window and a non-original small rectangular 6/6 light window flank the gable-end chimney above.
On the house's west side elevation the ell is flush with the side of the front section of the house. Two rectangular 4/4 light windows are located on each story of the ell, and like windows are found, one on each story and offset from the center, on the front section.
The interior of the house has a central hall plan with front parlors and an ell. There are eleven rooms with two central halls, one on each story. An open well staircase is located in the rear of the central hall between the 1890s addition and the ell. Its plain design features a square newel post and three square balusters per tread.
The interior finishes of the ca. 1874 section of the house are original. These include heavy, wide molding around windows and doors and on two large segmental-arched openings from the hall to the parlors; heavy, tall baseboards; four-panel doors with divided-light transoms; pine flooring; and mantels, except for the early twentieth century mantel in the south parlor. In the 1890s section of the house the woodwork, less heavy and wide, and the mantels appear original to that period.
Alterations to the interior primarily consist of the addition in 1934 of a bathroom under the staircase and a bathroom carved out of an upstairs bedroom; and in 1980, conversion of that bedroom into a bath and installation of built-in closets with six-panel doors to flank bedroom chimneys. These alterations, done in a sensitive manner, do not greatly detract from the house's architectural integrity.
Outbuildings include a contributing ca. 1870s two-room, board and batten building with a central stone chimney, stone foundation, metal roof, 4/4 light rectangular windows, and two single-leaf doors on its west elevation; a contributing four-stall, shed-roofed, board and batten carriage house from the latter part of the nineteenth century;and a 1980s noncontributing, although compatibly-designed, gazebo.
Attribution:
Content curated by Brian Copeland
Source curated and edited from National Register of Historic Places, October 9, 1989