Longview

Longview, the house at 811 Caldwell Lane, has been standing since before the Civil War. It began as a one-story cottage and was updated and enlarged around 1880 in the Italianate style. Another revamping in 1906 added the front portico, which does not face the street. Besides being a home, Longview was used as a Confederate headquarters for General John Bell Hood before the 1864 Battle of Nashville; the building was even used as a church for part of the mid-twentieth century. Longview was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. The former mansion now is the property of David Lipscomb University, who purchased the property in 1999 and holds special events there.

Longview was built as a cottage for Henry Norvell and his wife Laura Sevier, sometime before the Civil War. Laura was the granddaughter of Nashville's John Sevier, the first governor of Tennessee; Sevier gifted the land to the couple. The four-room, one-story farmhouse had a one-story brick office outbuilding in the yard. Also in the yard was a stream and a stone springhouse in Gothic Revival architectural style.

During the Civil War, Confederate soldiers camped on the grounds of the Longview cottage. After the mid-December 1864 Battle of Nashville, the cottage was likely turned into a field hospital. For a couple weeks prior to the battle, Longview was the headquarters of Confederate General John Bell Hood. The soldiers cut most of the property's timber and cut roads through the property, leading to soil erosion. The property came to be known as "Hood's Waste."

The new owner of the cottage with fifty acres of land in 1878, James E. Caldwell, undertook the first renovation, adding a second story to the cottage with a gable roof by 1880 and expanding the footprint. The first Caldwell modifications remade the exterior as an Italianate style brick building. Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell had two young children when they bought Hood's Waste. Their third child was born there in January 1880. Caldwell was the one who gave the cottage the name Longview. During his ownership, he expanded the property to 1,500 acres.

The house was modified again by Caldwell in 1906. The Beaux Arts style mansion featured 22 rooms, 11 fireplaces, 14 crystal chandeliers and light fixtures, and a third-floor unfinished attic of exposed brick lit by 20 windows. The front of the seven-bay-wide main facade faces east, with an entrance portico two stories tall and supported by Ionic columns. The exterior was stuccoed and the small cellar had stone walls and a cement floor. The grand interiors included column supports, a parlor to the left of the main entrance, a huge formal dining room to the right, and a solarium straight ahead. A library to one side of the solarium held one of the two original fireplaces that remained in the house by the 1980s.

James E. Caldwell was one of the founders of the Bell Telephone System in the South. He wrote his memoirs in 1923 and included a few photos of the mansion (see the Google Books link below). Caldwell and his wife May Winston lived with their ten children at Longview (hence the need for all those extra rooms). Other short-term occupants of Longview were a sister of Mrs. Caldwell and a brother of Mr. Caldwell; Alexander Caldwell and Maggie Winston got married at Longview and lived with their siblings for a year or two. Another Winston sister made Longview her home for a while. Mr. Caldwell's mother also came to Longview and resided there for about twenty years.

Three of the four two-story front columns were replaced by fiberglass reproductions in the mid-twentieth century, but not much else had been changed when Longview was documented for the National Register nomination in the early 1980s. A remnant of the 1878-1880 remodeling remains: a one-story wraparound porch from the south end of the east (front) facade to the south (side) facade, facing the main road. The Caldwell family sold Longview in the early 1950s and it was used as a church for about eight years by the Franklin Road Church of Christ. Nicholas and Ruth De Palma owned Longview from 1960 to 1977, when the mansion was purchased by Mrs. Johnny Thompson. Lipscomb University purchased Longview in 1999. The private, Nashville-based university holds special events at Longview.

Caldwell, James E. Recollections of a Life Time. Nashville, TN. Baird-Ward Press, 1923.

Dennison, Shain. De Palma, Judy. NRHP Nomination of Longview, Nashville, Tennessee. National Register. Washington, DC. National Park Service, 1982.

Lipscomb University. Fall 2022 Lifelong Learning Kick-Off Reception, News & Events. August 1st, 2022. Accessed September 9th, 2022. https://www.lipscomb.edu/events/fall-2022-lifelong-learning-kick-reception.

McDonough, James L. Nashville: The Western Confederacy's Final Gamble. Edition First. Knoxville, TN. University of Tennessee Press, 2004.

Wilhoite, Vivian M. Property Record Card, 811 Caldwell Lane, Metropolitan Nashville & Davidson County, Assessor of Property. January 1st, 2022. Accessed September 9th, 2022. http://www.padctn.org/prc/#/search/1.