dragonfly

WKDA was the first top 40 station in Nashville. I have a hard time separating Elvis from my idea of top 40 because starting in summer '55 he was ruling the airwaves and 45 rpm singles, which according to a wiki page outsold 78 rpm records in 1954 and after. Also when my family moved from Atlanta to Nashville in summer '55 was exactly when he broke onto the airwaves with "Don't Be Cruel" and a cover of the R&B "Houndog". The wiki page says top 40 was the outgrowth of the 45 single but the term 'top 40' didn't come into use until '60. Note we are talking AM here with 3 minutes the usual song length. I started listening pretty regularly in '57 when I was 7, and my dad listened to WMAK which could have been referred to as easy listening or adult contemporary in today's terms. We had one table top tube radio which I would abscond with and put it on my window sill tuned to WKDA. My dad would come into the room and change it to WMAK. Then in the early '60's WMAK went top 40 and my dad referred that as "they've gone to the dogs". WMAK soon surpassed WKDA in ratings but I stayed loyal to WKDA until high school when I realized my friends were right, their D.J. 's didn't have the pizzazz by comparison. Meanwhile WKDA started up an FM station and I don't remember their early format but interestingly enough they tried the "underground" format starting early '70 that had been happening around the country (e.g. WGLD in Chicago) which was actually an anti-format for hippies, in other words free-form (based on hippie D.J. choice) anti-45 rock on 33 r.p.m. album cuts. But all these stations painfully found out you can't make money off hippies and WKDA-FM was one of the last to try it and one of the first to bail probably after only a few months. What came next, outside the top-40 world was AOR, album oriented rock, stations creating huge playlists, (in other words no free-form) but later on based on consulting firms playlists to take advantage of the classic rock explosion, some of which had been staples of the "FM underground" movement such as J. Hendrix, Cream and Santana (each of which lobbed one into top 40 also). Wow didn't mean to take up so much space on this but is it not the case that WKDA is AM but WKDF is FM? here is the wiki top=40 page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_40

You probably never got your weather outlook from the building. The letter lighting would progress up for warming trend, progress down for cooling. Blue for clear or dry, red for rain or precipitation. It was the tallest building in the southeast for 4 years until the Bank of Georgia building went up in '61. So far as the south including Texas, taller was the art deco Gulf building in Houston at 37 stories and the Eperson building equal in height to L&C with 32 stories, both built in '29. You should read the Wiki entry for the Gulf building, which it says was one of the most expensive private restoration projects in history. quote: "The structure was already a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPMorgan_Chase_Building_(Houston) (1st looking ESE) West Houston - downtown southern segment upper left, Texas Medical Center upper right, West Loop foreground. (2nd looking ENE) NASA B27 fleet out for a rare photo op, downtown in the distance, West Loop foreground . I think these aircraft are to keep the astronauts' flying skills in practice.

So I'm not in TN any more but I lived in Nashville 3 times between the ages of 5 and 25. The only family over that way is a brother who moved to Chatt from GA with his wife 5 years ago. So here is the Nashville metro population schedule back when it as about the size of Knoxville: 1970: 550,000 1980: 850,000 1990: 1,050,000 So Nashville grew pretty quickly all the way back to the '60's, but visiting and looking from afar I can tell you the pace of development picked up in the mid '80's as the coveted 1M point was approached, it was really noticeable when I visited there in '87 what had already been completed along West End, including the first real high rise outside of downtown at 19 stories. And then after 1990 the McMansions started proliferation all over the SW part of town. I had a friend in Austin who visited there ca. 1990 and he came back blown away by those huge new houses built in the hilly neighborhoods. Soon after there was a moderate housing bust, but when I visited in '94 there was an unemployment rate of 3% in Nashville and restaurants were having a hard time finding workers as they are now. So bottom line is Knoxville I think is on the cusp of major growth. Isn't the metro pop. about 850,000 now? Within 5 years Knox will be like Nashville with its mid '80's boom. It is already the largest Appalachian metro and close to other nice geographically similar cities, Asheville with its retirement boom and the influx of wealth that brings, and Chattanooga with its tourist and industry boom. And of course the tourist boom of East TN mountains and Knoxville, Maryville and Gatlinburg right there plus a huge university. The combination of attributes is unbeatable. That whole region will benefit more and more from tourists from the 3 boom towns of Nashville, Charlotte and Atlanta a half days drive away. There is no way Knoxville will not boom big time. I'll be watching from Houston.

OK not lyin', when I saw that old photo I was looking at the two roads coming off Harding from the bottom and my memory got to jog a little. I moved away the last time in '75 after 3 separate periods living in Nashville, to Austin for graduate school. So at first I'm thinking why are there two roads, and which one is Woodmont. Then it all came back, before reading the above from billgregg. Oh that's right there is a companion street to Woodmont who's biggest claim to notability is the lining up with White Bridge and is pretty short. It was such an anomalous wacko alignment that everybody knew Kenner Av because of the wacko factor. And after about 10 seconds the Kenner moniker popped into mind after 43 years, seriously. OK back to the old photo, to the left of the big intersection was that small building you see fronting Harding which was a branch of First American National bank, a local bank. BTW "First American" was a reference to Ben Franklin in that Nashville banking lore if you didn't know that. It is significant to me because when 16 (in '66) I was playing in a popular little top 40 kind of band and needed a saxophone to replace my grandad's 1916 Conn, traded in. My dad co-signed a note at that branch for me, and they wanted me to open a savings account there which I did, my first bank account. I easily paid off that horn in 1 year. I bought it (a King Super 20) at Miller Music, which was in a strip of two story old buildings where the Polk building is now on Deaderick. From the age of 14, never needed an allowance, with plenty of work in that little band and the next one ( a 7 piece with Paul Worley, guitar) because rock bands were not as ubiquitous then as they were say 6 years later when the hippie era was in full swing. (Although swingin wasn't a term used so much at that point.) BTW during that last Nashville lifetime, a friend Dean Traython lived on Kenner and with a partner in '73 founded a tavern in Hillsboro Village, The Villager. Pretty good for a couple of 23 yo hippies. In that Kenner house he introduced me one night to Robin Trower, one of my guitar favorites since, who still tours. Sorry a little carried away by rambling narrative but when I looked up Thayer VA Hospital, found out that it existed before the establishment of the VA, on this website: https://barbarawhitaker.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/nashville-and-middle-tennessee-during-the-war-years/ That website will also tell you what kind of war materiel came out of Nashville during WW2. I had thought the DuPont plant made gunpowder during the war but maybe that was only during WW1 if you guys can clear that up for me. You guys should go join up that FB page on Nashville I mentioned and read through it, a huge amount of historical anecdotes there, several OPs by yours truly. What I wouldn't give for that old Conn of Grandaddy's now.

A little after the discussion for this but someone on FB posted this to the I Grew Up in Nashville, TN group. I had posted about my day as a free 11 year old exploring Belle Meade Plaza on their opening day late summer 1961. This photo shows the railroad at the exact location of the rail disaster. Also you can see those barracks that were a fixture next to White Bridge Rd. and as a kid I thought they would be there forever. So this photo is probably '61~'62 since the center is in the photo. I have forgotten the reason for those barracks being there.

Not 21st or Broadway or West End or Vanderbilt. Not sure but it is possibly reversed. From several years back 3 tower cranes visible.

Two state office buildings that I can make out, the Polk and Snodgrass buildings on the far left and neither of them are 'mid rise'. If someone can identify midrise (say 16 and fewer stories) state office buildings, OK I'm interested. The Vanderbilt contingent includes the 4 dormitories to the far right, two of which (where I lived one year) are soon to be imploded, and a couple of years after, the other two taken down. They and the low rise quadrangle to their left are the VU total contingent. OK. if you say so. I don't live there so say whatever you want if you want to somehow ridicule. For the past two years straight they have been in the top five markets for number of hotel rooms under construction, along with NYC, L.A. Seattle, and the 5th one escapes me, maybe Orlando. That means an "amenity arms race", as you can read here: https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2018/07/02/nashville-hotels-amenity-arms-race-omni-westin-bobby-thompson/730942002/

Yes those 20+ acres plus the athletic fields are what I'm saying. That's where people lived. And the owners were forced out.

Not sure what you mean by "Density" or "Diversity". Nashville got the hills, the top 15 research university among 7 universities in a 49 mile radius, the classical and neo-classical architecture, the dozens of antebellum mansions, the food, the 14.5 million visitors in 2017. I looked for Charlotte tourism figures for 2017 and could not find the visitor numbers. Below is a freely shared photo by a U-P contributor to the Nashville board.

I hope they pay dearly. I'm a VU grad and for more than two decades after graduation I refused to donate to them because of what they participated in back in the '60's which was to buy properties from the city after eminent domain takeover. Many square blocks of housing stock and trees were levelled. "And it happened along West End Avenue, where Vanderbilt University teamed with the government to purchase and clear about 100 acres that the university now uses for sports fields and parking". <---Nashville Scene -----> https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/article/13006140/a-city-swept-clean A few years ago I encountered another reason to stop giving to them and that was the expulsion of 12 Christian student organizations from campus. And I'm no committed Christian either.

I did not know of this accident until a couple of decades ago. At the spot where Belle Meade Plaza was erected in 1960 was a meadow on a slight knoll with trees along the back and the tracks just beyond, that we used to pass by on Harding Rd from 1956 (when we moved from Love Circle to West Meade Farms) until the site was developed. I think I found out about it because of the historically monumental disaster that it was. I was blown away to find this out in my 40's , 20 years after leaving Nashville for the last time; and when reading about it thought back to that slight knoll not knowing if that had been the scene. And now I find out that it was the spot and more details that I didn't know. Am feeling very humbled and reverent right now. A lot of things about growing up at the time I did in Nashville have had a deep effect on yours truly.

That very spot had a large yellow brick 2 story house on it in 1955 when we moved from Atlanta and I was 5 yo. It was torn down right after we moved to a duplex on Love Circle and I remember it because my mother went to a yard sale there, probably in preparation to vacate for the next use. Imagine if we had been told that there would be a 20 story tower there some day. The tallest building in Nashville had 11 stories at that time. (the duplex was actually a house with a mother-in-law apt upstairs where the landlady lived - which is still there)

Electrical energy is measured in kW-h. The energy cost reservoir to wellhead on average would be calculated by assuming an 8 KW motor, say 10 strokes per minute or 600 strokes per hour. At 2 gallons crude per stroke average that is 1200 gallons per KW-hr energy to get it out of the ground, or .0075 KW-h per gallon crude in this example which may or may not be average. To say that it costs several kW-h to move a gallon of fuel to the pump seems quite extreme and I would be interested to see how it was arrived at

I have to jump in here. I can answer this one much better than a lot of people because the energy sector paid my salary for a long time as a designer of automation equipment and devices for the energy sector in Houston. Almost every old wives tale about the sector can be answered by one fact. Which is the fact of the shear size and scope of the world hydrocarbon energy market sector. Almost everything you read about the sector in the popular press is incorrect, as is the assertion that the sector recieves tangible subsidies from the U.S. government beyond the use of eminent domain in pipeline development, or licensing of public lands for exploration and production, which actually brings cash to the government instead of costs. I want the contributor to post about those subisdies and it is interesting how contributor dodged the obligation to elaborate. The fact of the shear size of the sector renders any proposed tangible subsidy to be almost worthless by comparison. Imagine an elephant hoping for some ants to eat, that is the absurdity of government tax subsidies for the sector. And the fact of the monstrous presence of foreign based major vertically integrated companies doing business in this coountry raises all kinds of questions about the contributor's assertions. Does contributor believe that U.S. subsidies are going to BP or Citgo, based outside the U.S.? I've been in Texas since '75, Houston since '89 and I've, never heard, among all of the people here that I've known, any talk of the government coming in to help their employer. I've never heard of anyone in the job market assert that maybe it would be better to work for Conoco-Phillips than BP because the job would be more secure working for a company with its hands in the public till. OK I must mention that as an electrical engineer, nobody wanted to see electric vehicles come into wide use more than yours truly. I recieved a BEEE from Vanderbilt and we had some guys in one class there that actually electrified a Carmen Ghia with lead acid batteries. I recieved the MSEE from UT Austin and remember reading about the Tesla development I think it was more than 15 years ago. But after 45 years of watching this endeavor turn up failure after failure, and my cautious optimism about Tesla, I have abandoned any hope for this. All you have to do is read some of the technical papers on the effort to heat or cool the vehicle cabin and you will see that it is pretty bleak. Expensive batteries with a lifetime of 6 years and costing $thousands to replace. Running AC in Houston from battery, or heating the cabin from battery power in upstate NY. Running out of charge on a trip with no way to replenish. But maybe the most relevant reality from the Tesla experience is the behavior of the founder and the reactions of the major stakholders to the current situation which does not look good at all - read up here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/business/tesla-elon-musk.html Below is the BP U.S. headquarters in the Houston Energy Corridor about 17 miles west of downtown. x

tsk tsk now. I have no memories until the day after and don't believe that's a guilt reaction. I can tell I'm gonna have to post the whole story but I have to go to FB and look for it on a thread with some Nashville buds.

Profuse thanks for this photo. So in 1959 my dad had been working for L&C for 4 years; he started in August 1955, when we moved from Atlanta b/c of his new job. I was 5 y/o in '55. I remember nothing about the construction of the tower but I remember much about the excitement in the city as the building was completed in 1957 and was the tallest in the Southeast until the Bank of Georgia topped out in '61 with maybe 1 more story and many more feet. My dad a few years later advanced to group insurance VP reporting directly to CEO Guilford Dudley. The company name lower in the photo is on the old building which they kept and into that old building the WLAC-TV studios moved and it also was where the first computer at the company was installed. Which I'm pretty sure was a Sperry-Univac, but not 100% positive on that - going on some really old memories, let's say 95%. The floor plan of the first 6~7 stories of the tower is square, and my dad had an office from which he looked down on the roof of that section. Anyone know the history on why the building has the L-shaped footprint on the remaining floors? On the corner across Church St. from the tower is where the Maxwell House was, which burned in 1961 and is visible in the photo - interesting to me definitely because I remember nothing of the hotel until the day after it burned. On that site, Third National Bank in '67 completed the 20 story building there which was the second tallest in the city until '68 When National Life built the tallest in the city which I see referred to as the Snodgrass tower <- (never uttered or written that name until now as I live in Houston). I will tell the story sometime on here on how I was at the smoking ruins of the Maxwell House and got yelled at by the police the morning after the fire. Interesting tidbit: my sister studied at Peabody and in '71 took part in the Vanderbilt-in-Denmark exchange program. Guilford Dudley had been appointed by Nixon as ambassador to Denmark, and he invited all of the VU and Peabody students to a reception at the embassy. My sister told him who her dad was and the ambassador was quite intrigued. Vanderbilt and Peabody merged in the late '70's but the two schools were joined at the hip long before and shared many programs. A student at either school could register for any course at the other with proper prerequisites. The VU marching band was mostly comprised of Peabody students in those days. Univac was one of the 7 dwarfs of the computer world in the late '50's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC Guilford Dudley Jr.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilford_Dudley_(ambassador) The buliding that surpassed the L&C Tower to be the tallest in the Southeast in 1961: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Park_Tower_(Atlanta)

I think Carmichael I (two towers closer to town) opened in '67. Carmichael II opened in fall '70, this I'm sure of since I moved into there and was the first resident of my room. The first pair has two elevators each, and the second pair three narrower elevators each, so that the lower redundancy in the first towers has probably been a real headache that the university has wanted solved. They will bite the dust first to make way for the new dorms. The two complexes were joined by tunnel under 24th Ave accessible by the public, but all of the remaining campus is connected by tunnels to distribute heat, cooling water, communications and power, inaccessible except by maintenance and particularly motivated and clever students including yours truly. When Carmichael II opened, many of my friends covered the walls of the connecting tunnel with art and prose and signed their names. The graffiti stayed intact for decades. One of the more memorable, by a friend and future VU English instructor: "I dig outer space and rock music" signed, __ __ Carmichael I has single standalone rooms and suites with common room. Carmichael II is all suites with single and double rooms, the common room including kitchenette. I'm kinda sorry to see them go based on my having lived there. However as a kid I had thought that if the two complexes had been planned at the outset, they should have been connected at the top by a dining facility 14 stories up across 24th. Maybe now they will consider putting a dining room across 24th, it looks like a pedestrian bridge is planned so they can close off access to the tunnel.

"... unlike anything in the current Nashville skyline " except like the rest of the skyline it would conform to the flat top 30~31 story canon. I don't get why these developers don't do something really different for Nashville, like build a 34 story building. You would think it would be good for marketing. Like imagine this: "Our offices are on the 33rd and 34th floors".