West Meade

Nashville's West Meade mansion was built in 1886 for Supreme Court Justice Howell Jackson and his wife, Mary, daughter of Confederate General William G. Harding. Some of the land where West Meade was built was part of Belle Meade plantation and a gift from Mary's father who owned the vast Belle Meade plantation. The surrounding land was subdivided and developed in the 1950s as the West Meade and Hillwood neighborhoods. West Meade mansion became a National Register of Historic Places listing in 1975. There is a historical marker by the highway in front of the property which is a private home set back from the road.

Mary Elizabeth Harding of Belle Meade married attorney Howell Edmunds Jackson (1832 - 1895) in 1874. Judge Jackson was recently widowed and the father of four children: Henry, Mary, William H., and Howell. He and Mary went on to have several more children: Elizabeth, Louise, and Harding A. Judge Jackson practiced in Jackson and Memphis, Tennessee and served for four years in the Tennessee State Assembly beginning in 1878. He became a U.S. Senator in 1881 but his term was cut short when President Grover Cleveland appointed him to the U.S. Circuit Court for the Western District of Tennessee in 1886.

When Mary E. Harding and her sister Selene divided their father's Belle Meade property, Selene and her husband, General William Hicks Jackson, received the portion with the Belle Meade mansion. Three thousand acres of the western part of Belle Meade became Mary's property and was called West Meade. Judge Jackson had the red brick home built on West Meade in 1886 at a reported cost of nearly $13,000. The sisters' homes were about a mile apart along Harding Road; Belle Meade is also a Clio entry.

West Meade is constructed of red brick on a foundation of local limestone. The mansion contained nine rooms on the first floor, eleven rooms on the second floor, and a ballroom on the third floor; there is a full basement. A widows walk tops the roof - a feature inspired by sea captain's wives watching out to sea for their husband's return. The original section had red cedar floors. Two original outbuildings were still standing in the 1970s - a stone milkhouse and a brick smokehouse; a greenhouse has not survived. Low stone walls near the road date to the 1880s.

One special visitor to West Meade was U.S. President Grover Cleveland, who dined at the mansion in mid-October 1887 at a luncheon in his honor. President and Mrs. Cleveland stayed two nights at the neighboring Belle Meade mansion. Judge Jackson was in failing health by the early 1890s; he became an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1893 after being nominated by President Benjamin Harrison. His health worsened rapidly after traveling to Washington D.C. for his legal duties and he died at age 63 at West Meade in August 1895. U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft also visited West Meade. Mary Harding Jackson died in 1913 and West Meade was inherited by her family. Selene Harding Jackson sold Belle Meade in 1906, ending the Harding family's ownership of the historic core of Belle Meade, known for being a thoroughbred farm.

Harding A. Jackson and two other men developed 1,750 acres of the property in 1944 as West Meade Farms Inc. Five hundred acres were given to create Percy Warner Park; the fifty acres including West Meade mansion were sold to Mrs. Foskette Rose Brown. Mrs. Brown still owned West Meade in the 1970s. West Meade was sold for approximately $1.5 million in 1997 to self-made millionaire Tom Black. Black invested a great deal of money in the house and grounds and sold the property ten years later for reportedly over $5 million.

Anonymous. "Untitled article re: Cleveland visit to Tennessee." The Milan Exchange (Milan, TN) October 22nd, 1887. 4-4.

Anonymous. "Howell E. Jackson Dead." The Comet (Johnson City) August 15th, 1895. 1-1.

Anonymous. "Justice Jackson's Funeral." The Bolivar Bulletin (Bolivar, TN) August 16th, 1895. 1-1.

Doss, John. Best Bike Rides Nashville. Where to Ride. Guilford, CT. Morris Book Publishing, 2014.

Lawson, Richard. "Big home sale: Historic West Meade Mansion fetches $5.1 million." Nashville Post (Nashville) September 6th, 2007. Home sec.

Wilkins, Connie. NRHP nomination of West Meade, Nashville, Tennessee. National Register. Washington, DC. National Park Service, 1974.