Historic home demolished despite stop order

The more than 200-year-old home, one of the earliest structures built in Nashville, formerly housed the museum honoring Jim Reeves — a country music singer who had hits throughout the 1950s and early ’60s, including “Four Walls,” and “Welcome to My World.”

Nashville codes officials issued a demolition permit Thursday. But hours later, at the behest of city preservation officials, they took it back and posted a stop-work order at the site, city officials said.

Robert Moore owns the 15-acre site and has it under option to The Home Depot for development. Moore’s attorney, Tom White, said the demolition team arrived at 5:30 p.m. Thursday and did not see the order.

Fred Zahn, with the Nashville Historic Zoning Commission, said he was on site from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, when he notified a person he believed to be a subcontractor of the stop order.

The city’s law director has pictures he says show a stop-work order on the structure by 4:30 p.m., according to a report by The Tennessean.

“There was absolutely no stop-work order on that property, period,” White said. “If it was up, it was not up there when we got there.”

He said the building was taken down in less than an hour-and-a-half.

“It’s a corpse,” said Stephen Brown, vice president of Tennessee Preservation Trust. “It was telling a story from 208 years ago. Hydraulics and machinery were used as a weapon to commit a crime. Due process has been violated.”

But to some neighbors in the area, the home was an eyesore that needed to come down. “There were homeless people living in there,” neighbor Laura Dennis said. “There were sleeping bags, clothes, food containers. You could see where fires had been set inside.”