Yesterday I drove the streets of Iroquois Estates, Meadowlake, and Williamsburg Estates doing research for a client and as usual I innocently meandered into a blazing controversy. These interconnected neighborhoods sit right in the heart of Brentwood yet all have old school huge expansive lawns and the homes are very well kept. As a student of history, I always stop to read historical markers and love Middle Tennessee’s stack stone fences. The marker and fence pictured below are right beside Boxwood Hall Mansion.

 

Bear in mind that this site is less than a few hundred yards from the recently proposed (and vehemently opposed) humongous “Streets of Brentwood” mixed use development that recently threw in the towel. Streets of Brentwood was to be located on 17 acres of land at the corner of Maryland Way and Franklin Pike.

The character of the neighborhood will never be replicated again. We have reached a time when there is no more cheap, freely developable land that lays well and hasn’t already had a subdivision or something else built upon it. My prediction is that we will continue to see the value of these type homes rise more so than other comparable homes. You are seeing the same thing in other mid-century neighborhoods in Davidson County too (West Meade, Crieve Hall, Forest Hills). You just will not see 1 acre lots ever again.

Of course this is just what groups like Preserve Brentwood TN want and try to preserve in their organization that basically shouts at the top of their lungs Halt! and NIMBY. I applaud them for their efforts and they have likely curbed this development for the time being. This is what I was referring to when I mentioned that I had stumbled into a “blazing controversy”. People of this persuasion are the ones that have this sign in their yard.

This opposition to higher density is why I think the values of the existing resident’s property will continue to be valuable. Will they be always successful? Probably not. The area’s activists have reached a critical mass of organization and their opposition will ever be part of any developer’s plans. This tension is likely to help maintain the quality of future projects. And yes there will be future development projects because the greater Nashville area will continue to expand and many will want to live in Brentwood.

Now to backtrack.

Tension and change are interweaved in the very fabric of the built environment of the Iroquois Estates area. Hundreds of years before the current government was established here, Native Americans found the flat rolling, well-watered plain attractive to permanent settlement too. Backtracking to the Historic Marker near Boxwood Hall mansion, my mind imagined the Natives discovering this beautiful area and setting down roots that lasted hundreds of years. When they were putting in the roads in the 1960’s, workers discovered mounds and graves covered with flat rocks, known as Stone Box Graves.

Archeologists have little idea why the Mississippian Culture native to this area disappeared–I have a personal idea that it was European disease spread by marginal contact on the various coasts of Virginia, Carolina, and Gulf area–but by the time settlers poured over the Appalachians and moved west, this beautiful land was largely depopulated. However, the area’s natural beauty and good water attracted these early explorers and convinced them that this was a good area to settle. These permanent settlers took over and a new chapter of the area came into being. Certainly the current controversy over new development and denser building pales into consideration when an entire group of people were pushed west from land they lived on for hundreds of years. This new era was when Boxwood Hall was built, pictured below.

 

Right down from Boxwood Hall is a street named Lake Court and houses on that street edge a nice, several acre lake. This lake originally was dammed up to provide water to Boxwood Hall and other early structures and homes in the area. You can see part of the lake from the cul-de-sac on this street.

 

This area, steeped in history, will continue to evolve and change. It is very interesting that the land has been deemed interesting, usable, and beautiful enough to sustain human interest for nearly a thousand years. Just as the original Native Americans could barely envision the well laid out and organized farms that their area evolved into in the early days of settlement, today’s residents who oppose denser development would be surprised to see this area 200 years from now. Let’s hope that the evolution remains peaceful and that the collision of different interests will result in a built environment that respects the history and the natural beauty of this land.