HISTORY CORNER

WHY DID THE CITY OF BELLE MEADE INCORPORATE?

BY RIDLEY WILLS II

Many readers of The Contributor probably don’t know why the city of Belle Meade incorporated in 1938. Peggy Henry Joyce, whose father, Douglas Henry, was Belle Meade’s first mayor, told me there were two reasons. One was that most residents in the Belle Meade Park subdivisions, largely developed by Johson Bransford and Luke Lea, did not want commercial establishments on Belle Meade Boulevard. In the thirties, Mr. Cornett had a Pan Am service station on Harding Road near where the Belle Meade City Hall is today. He made known his interest in building a new service station on Belle Meade Boulevard. The other reason was that Henry C. Beck, an Atlanta real estate developer, intended to build Nashville’s first garden-style apartments in the heart of Belle Meade Park. Beck, whose company is now headquartered in Dallas, visited Nashville probably in the winter of 1937-38 to inspect the site. It was a triangular section of land on the north side of Harding Place and in the triangle between Jackson and Belle Meade boulevards just across the street from the Belle Meade Country Club. Beck had the financing, $700,000, from a New York City insurance company to finance the project. Belle Meade Park residents were livid about the possibility of having a filling station and a large apartment complex in Belle Meade Park. They called for a meeting to consider how to stop the projects. The first meeting was held on Feb. 10, 1938, at the Belle Meade Country Club. A second meeting was held on Feb. 25. At that meeting, chaired by Robert C. Webster, he appointed Harry H. Corson, Paul F. Eve M.D., Morton B. Howell, John F. Hunt, and Alfred D. Sharp to investigate the feasibility of incorporating as a city as the most effective means of halting the projects. Realizing how opposed most residents of Belle Meade Park seemed to be about his proposal. Mr. Beck backed off and, on Feb. 10, Henry C. Beck representative, Paul A. Rye, announced that the real estate company “thought it unwise to proceed with the project in this section.” Instead, Henry C. Beck & Co. purchased a larger piece of land, owned by Rogers Caldwell, at 920 Woodmont Boulevard just west of a branch of Brown’s Creek and built there a two-story apartment complex named Woodmont Terrace. It still remains today as Nashville’s oldest garden-style apartment complex. On Oct. 28, 1938, 270 residents of Belle Meade Park voted in favor of incorporation while 170 qualified voters voted against incorporation. One of the earliest actions taken by Belle Meade’s first three commissioners — Douglas Henry, Robert C. Cooney, and Alex B. Stevenson — was to pass an ordinance that no more than two families could live in a single residence and that no commercial businesses could be established in the City of Belle Meade.