Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. At first, no one
Speaker 1: expected the building to last. The Tennessee Centennial Exposition, which
Speaker 1: was something like a World's Fair or Walt Disney World's Epcot,
Speaker 1: was held in Nashville. In it featured a full scale
Speaker 1: replica of the famous Parthenon from Greece, the Plaster Parthenon.
Speaker 1: This plaster Parthenon, which fit in with Nashville's ambition to
Speaker 1: be the Athens of the South, housed an art exhibition
Speaker 1: overy six months. One point eight million people visited the exposition,
Speaker 1: but small when compared with the twenty seven million who
Speaker 1: turned out for the Chicago World's Fair of eight three
Speaker 1: but huge for Nashville, which at the time had a
Speaker 1: population of a hundred thousand. As a ninety one newspaper
Speaker 1: put it, the general effect of the cream colored staff structure,
Speaker 1: with the brilliant colors and the freeze and gables so
Speaker 1: overshadowed all the other buildings that when the exposition was over,
Speaker 1: the people demanded its preservation, and it became a shrine
Speaker 1: to the residents and visitors of Nashville. But this shrine
Speaker 1: was not built for the long term. By nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: the building had disintegrated so badly that it had to
Speaker 1: be closed for safety reasons. However, thanks to popular demand,
Speaker 1: the city decided to rebuild it as a permanent concrete
Speaker 1: structure in ninety The Nashville Parthenon reopened to the public
Speaker 1: in ninety one. As with the Greek Parthenon, the columns
Speaker 1: on the Nashville structure are not completely straight, but have
Speaker 1: a slight convex curvature called enthesis that corrects for an
Speaker 1: optical illusion that makes straight lines of peercung cave at
Speaker 1: a distance. The structure is also full of friezes and carvings,
Speaker 1: and includes a replica of the famous Elgin marbles, now
Speaker 1: known as the Parthenon Marbles. These marble structures were part
Speaker 1: of the original Parthenon, but were removed by the British
Speaker 1: Earl of Elgin and sold to the British Museum m
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixteen. The entire transaction remains a point of
Speaker 1: dispute between Brittain and Greece, and while the original Parthenon
Speaker 1: is in a ruin, the Nashville version features the complete
Speaker 1: structure of builders made educated guesses to fill in the
Speaker 1: missing parts. At the time of its reopening in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one, the only thing missing from this replica Parthenon
Speaker 1: was a statue of the Greek goddess Athena. But after
Speaker 1: twenty years of small contributions from the public via a
Speaker 1: donation box at the site, plus some private funding, there
Speaker 1: was enough money to commission a forty two foot that's
Speaker 1: thirteen meter statue, the same size as the original. Tennessee's
Speaker 1: sculptor Alan Lechoir took eight years to finish the mass
Speaker 1: of work, which was unveiled in nineteen nine and features
Speaker 1: a spear that was crafted with McDonald's flagpole as the
Speaker 1: sturdy core. For twelve years, the statue stood in plain
Speaker 1: white gypsum cement, but in two thousand two it was
Speaker 1: gilded in real gold. Although some people have complained that
Speaker 1: the guilding makes it look gaudy, it's actually more historically accurate.
Speaker 1: The Nashville Parthenon still serves as the city's art museum,
Speaker 1: and its permanent collection is home to sixty three paintings
Speaker 1: of nineteenth and twenties century American artists donated by Nashville
Speaker 1: businessman and collector James Cowen. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: Katherine Whitbourne and produced by Lowell Berlante and Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. For more podcasts in my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.