During my visit to Tennessee, Maggie and I visited The Hermitage, the stately home of President Andrew Jackson.
I was overwhelmed with awesome, and my only regret is not visiting in costume. The mansion was built between 1819 and 1821, and boasts almost complete original furnishings, wallpapers, and layouts....which is most definitely why the rooms are only visible through thick plexiglass doors. Read all about it here:
https://www.thehermitage.com/ or better yet, VISIT! It was a truly amazing place, with beautiful grounds...and now for pictures :-) :
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| Is this dining room not incredible!? |
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| One of Jackson's carriages, on display in the museum. |
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| The back porch was just asking to be promenaded upon by appropriately attired ladies, but instead is got us, girls in skinny jeans, boots, with scarves and pamphlets. /le sigh |
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| Is this holly? It was a whole tree. I thought holly was a bush...? |
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| The "family" room, connected to the parlour. See the reflection? that's the plexiglass door. |
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| Maggie and I are boot sisters. |
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| This room was off the dining room - a staging area for the footmen to receive and ready dishes to be served. (Downton Abbey is a great informant on these customs) |
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| Cotton. Real cotton that I picked in the little cotton patch on the grounds. I've never even seen raw cotton before. It was fascinating. |
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| The table in the dining room. Oh, how kind of you to invite me to dinner, Mr. President. Why yes, I would love to. |
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| Maggie and myself. |
...and in the same day we also visited downtown Nashville and the beautiful Union Station, built between 1898 and 1900. It is now a luxury (and I do mean luxury) hotel, but you can still check out the incredible lobby, full of art nouveau goodness. More on Union Station, Nashville:
https://www.unionstationhotelnashville.com/about-us/history
And pics...
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| The vaulted glass ceiling in the lobby. |
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| Ginormoid clocks at both ends. |
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| Maggie in a comfy lobby chair |
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| A lamp in the lobby. Yep, just a lamp :-) |
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| Outside the front doors. |
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| Behind us, in that car park, used to be the train platforms, a whole mess of them, and the space was covered with a 4-storey high canopy, which unfortunately burned down in the 1990s. |
That's all, folks. Next ... Historic Locust Grove, Kentucky...
