Clarksville Historic Resources Survey Update

Introduction: "The Tennessee Historical Commission (THC) is the state's historic preservation agency, and one of its important programs is the architectural and historical inventory of the state's cultural resources. This inventory is a significant part of historic preservation and community planning since it provides basic data on the location, condition and architectural character of buildings and structures. Montgomery County was originally surveyed in 1981. Since that time numerous properties have been listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and mid-20th-century buildings have attained the fifty-year mark. In 2019, the THC awarded the City of Clarksville a federal historic preservation grant to fund a survey of downtown Clarksville. The inventory was conducted between May and September of 2020. This survey was completed by Thomason and Associates of Nashville, Tennessee (Contractor). The scope of the survey included updating the existing inventory from 1981 and identifying properties that have reached fifty years since their dates of construction. For this survey, the end date of 1969 reflects the fifty-year time period from 2019. To assist the Contractor with this survey, the Clarksville Planning Commission's GIS Department provided property maps identifying pre-1970 parcels based on Montgomery County tax records. This mapping enabled the Contractor to cross-reference city parcels with previously surveyed properties in the THC's inventory and revisit and re-evaluate National Register-listed properties. Montgomery County surveys were assigned numbers with the prefix 'MT' upon original survey in the 1980s. The Contractor, as instructed by THC survey director Peggy Nickell, assigned temporary numbers (beginning with 'TMT-1') to new surveys. The survey project paid particular attention to the development and transformation of downtown Clarksville in the years following World War II. Since its rise and decline as a port city for the Cumberland River Valley tobacco market. Clarksville downtown has been dramatically altered. A great number of historic warehouses and industrial buildings have been lost with the development of Riverside Drive, as well as hundreds of dwellings within the city core. Within the re-surveyed boundary, there were approximately 400 historic properties previously surveyed. Of that number, approximately 225 properties (56.25%) are no longer extant. The Contractor identified and surveyed 139 new properties that have attained the 50-years mark." Project funding was provided in part by a Historic Preservation Fund grant to the Tennessee Historical Commission, Department of Environment & Conservation, administered by the State, Tribal, Local Plans and Grants division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior (grant number P19AF00013).