Thursday, September 18, 2008

More Centennial Park


Centennial Park, as I told you yesterday, is a 132-acre urban park about two miles west of downtown Nashville.  Formerly farmland, the area was a racetrack from 1884-1895 but became a park when chosen as site of the state's centennial celebration.  I took this photo from the portico of the Parthenon.  The Vanderbilt University campus is where the buildings are in this photo.  (The tree that was the subject of yesterday's photo is to the left of this photo, just out of view, although you can see a few of the branches.)

There used to be a lot more mature shade trees in Centennial Park, but the tornadoes that blew through Nashville in 1998 damaged or destroyed many of them.  A Vanderbilt university student, the storm's only fatality, was killed when one of the trees fell on him.  Since then, the park has been equipped with warning sirens.

In 2005, Centennial Park entered the hi-tech world when it became the first metro park to offer free wi-fi access to park patrons.

4 comments:

Steve Buser said...

I can appreciate the loss of trees. Seems like old oak trees are the target for all the storms around here. We were in Baton ROuge yesterday which got socked by Hurricane Gustav. You should have seem all the big oaks that had been cut up and were laying on the side of the road waiting to be hauled away.

Anonymous said...

Interesting that the loss of trees has resulted in sirens. I wonder if they will replant the trees that were lost. Some of those were probably nut trees and that food supply is gone forever if not replaced.

Halcyon said...

Looks like a lovely park. As much as I love my computer, it will stay at home if I plan on spending an afternoon outdoors.

Janet said...

Looks like a great place to play soccer or run with your dog. Seems it usually takes a tragedy before sirens are installed.