In the 1930s, architect John H. Parmelee introduced “fire-safe” houses to Nashville. Constructed of masonry, these dwellings were often designed with modernist features such as flat concrete roofs, concrete structural systems, metal frame windows, tile floors, and stucco walls. Completed in 1937, the first example – dubbed the “1940 Streamlined Model Home” – still stands on Brush Hill Road near the Cumberland River in Inglewood. In 1937, Parmelee designed three fire-safe houses in Nashville’s upscale neighborhoods of Green Hills and Belle Meade; however, these no longer exist.
Around 1936, Paul and Julia Holbrook of Inglewood commissioned John H. Parmelee to design their new house in the River Bluff area of Inglewood’s Jackson Park neighborhood, known at the time as the “Belle Meade of East Nashville.” The “unusual modern type” home was the first of its type in Nashville and featured all concrete construction and was all electric, except for the gas heating furnace. An advertisement for the June 1937 open house described it as Nashville’s first completely firesafe and “modernistic” home that used the newest ideas such as Coloroc cement floor tiles, with a different color in each room; rock wood wall insulation; built in electric appliances and vacuum cleaner; conduits for all electric wiring; and Modernistic Chromium Steel hardware fitting, said to be the first time used in Nashville.
The Streamlined Model House is perhaps Nashville’s earliest example of Streamline Moderne domestic architecture, a subset of Art Deco architecture that was fashionable throughout the U.S. in the 1930s. This modern style exhibited a machine aesthetic focused on functional efficiency, mass production, and a more abstract aesthetic inspired by the Bauhaus School in Germany and contemporary International style “white architecture” of Europe. The style is characterized by horizontal orientation, asymmetrical facades, rounded edges, corner windows, flat roofs, rooftop terraces with metal railings, chrome-plated hardware, circular port windows, horizontal bands of metal-framed casement windows, curved canopies, smooth wall surfaces, white exterior walls, and the use of new or experimental materials.
The two-story house was constructed with Laubhelmer Concrete Blocks and precast Laubhelmer reinforced concrete floor joists, floor slabs, and roof slab, all fabricated in Nashville. The only wood in the house was utilized in the doors and door frames. The fenestra all-steel windows were outfitted with custom venetian blinds created by the Nashville Window Shade Company and colorful awnings created by the Nashville Tent & Awning Company. The house had a special rooftop penthouse and “roof garden” terrace, featuring Coloroc cement floor tiles and aluminum railing. The lower floor contained a basement garage.
John H. Parmelee
A native of Knoxville, John Horace Parmelee (1894-1962) came from a distinguished family of architects. His father Martin Egbert Parmelee (1852-1945) of Knoxville was an architect, contractor, and builder originally from Wisconsin. Upon relocating to Knoxville in 1888, Martin E. Parmelee formed a partnership with the noted architect George F. Barber (1854-1915) before opening his own studio. He designed apartments, churches, academic buildings, and residences throughout the South.
John E. Parmelee’s older brother Egbert Dean Parmelee (1888-1976) was a noted architect who studied in Chicago and Philadelphia under Paul Philippe Cret and worked with Daniel H. Burnham and Cass Gilbert. The father and older son operated M.E. Parmelee & Son Architects in Knoxville from 1909 to 1926, before E. Dean Parmelee opened his own studio in New York and later Miami. In 1910, John H. Parmelee’s sister Ruth Eunice Parmelee (1877-1964) worked in the firm as a draftswoman.
From 1914 to 1915, John H. Parmelee attended the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where he served as the assistant director of the UT Orchestra . When he registered for the draft in June 1917, he listed his occupation as an “architect” working in his father’s studio on Market Square. Parmelee served in the U.S. Army as an instructor in Panoramic Drawing and Field Art in the 114th Field Artillery Regiment, commanded by Tennessee’s Colonel Luke Lea (1879-1945), a notable attorney, politician, and newspaper publisher. Rising to the rank of Battalion Sergeant-Major, Parmelee was best known for capturing 16 German soldiersduring the Battle of Saint-Mihiel in France on September 18, 1918, and for marching them to avmilitary police unit. This achievement earned him a Distinguished Service Medal and an award for Exceptional Service from General John J. Pershing, and much media attention upon his return to Knoxville in March 1919, and throughout the rest of his life, including a posthumous Silver Star from President John F. Kennedy in 1962.
After the war ended, John H. Parmelee followed in his older brother’s footsteps and moved to Chicago to continue his education. He took architecture classes at the Atelier Puckey, a member of the Society of Beaux Arts Architects in Chicago, and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts from 1919 to 1921. (Atelier Puckey classmate Arthur Guy Mayger would later design the ornate Tennessee Theater in Knoxville and Alabama Theater in Birmingham.)
In 1921, Parmelee moved from Knoxville to Nashville where he worked as a Sunday cartoonist for The Tennessean. His front-page cartoons were syndicated in newspapers nationwide. He soon left the newspaper and in June 1923 opened a Nashville branch studio of M.E. Parmelee & Sons Architects with his father based in Knoxville and his older brother based in New York. His Nashville branch office was associated with architects Thomas F. Dunn and A.J. Bodker of New York, both of whom Parmelee had worked with previously. In addition, Parmelee studied with John Russell Pope, a preeminent American architect, in New York.
In 1924, Parmelee married his first wife Elizabeth Cobb Stanton (1879-1937), a widow fifteen years his senior and member of a prominent family in Neely’s Bend, a rural riverside community near Madison. Parmelee lived on Hill’s Island with his wife’s family until 1929, when he bought land on Madison Boulevard where he built a stucco French Provincial-style “artistic house,” which also served as his home architectural studio. He primary studio was in the downtown Nashville Bank & Trust Building.
In the late 1920s and 1930s, Parmelee focused on traditional Colonial Revival-style residential estates for well-to-do clients in Nashville, Belle Meade, and Brentwood. Later he designed schools, industrial parks, apartments, shopping centers, churches, and municipal buildings. Parmelee designed in just about every fashionable style, from Neoclassical and Spanish Colonial to Mid-Century Modern. In the 1940s and 1950s, he utilized Streamline Moderne, a rarely utilized architectural style in Nashville. Many of his Modernist designs featured Crab Orchard sandstone and innovative materials such as split-block, which he used for a Ranch “Model Home” in Murfreesboro.
In 1947, Parmelee designed a concrete, fire-safe, rental house adjacent to his own home on Madison Boulevard. The small Modernist house featured a flat, concrete roof with concrete joists, colored concrete floor, metal-framed windows, and a concrete bridge in the back yard. (Metro demolished this house after the 2010 flood.) The same year, he remodeled the Maxwell House Hotel, a famous mid-nineteenth century landmark in downtown Nashville, with Streamline Moderne street-level facades and neon signage.
In 1948, Parmelee joined the America Association of Architects. Three years later, he moved to the Donelson community and relocated his architectural studio to Berry Hill in the same building as Modernist architect Bruce Draper (1927-2018), a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright. Parmelee and Draper worked together on the design of a Modernist addition to the First Baptist Church in Madison. After his death in 1962, Parmelee was buried in the Nashville National Cemetery in Madison.
Paul and Julia Holbrook
John H. Parmelee’s fire-safe “Streamlined Model Home” was commissioned by Paul Holbrook (1909-1982), an attorney with an office in the downtown Nashville Bank & Trust Building, and his wife Julia Mae Kemp Holbrook (1909-1958), whom he had married in 1933. A graduate of the Columbia Military Academy and the YMCA Law School, Holbrook practiced with Rust, Gray, Finger, Holbrook, and Gray. In 1934, Paul Holbrook ran as a Democrat for the Tennessee House of Representatives, but later withdrew. In 1957, he also ran as judge for Nashville’s Fourth Circuit Domestic Relations Court but lost the race. On New Year’s Eve in 1958, his wife Julia Mae died. By 1960, Paul Holbrook had married his second wife Wilma and moved a few houses away to 3628 Brush Hill Road; they divorced in 1963. (When Paul Holbrook died in 1982, he bequeathed his $1.9 million estate to the Paul Holbrook Charitable Trust.)
The Marina family owned the Streamlined Model Home on Brush Hill Road from around 1959 until 1987, when it was sold to the current owner Gerald G. Carter, who occupies the home with his wife Melissa M. Maines-Carter. Members of the Inglewood Neighborhood Association’s Historic Survey Committee documented the home in 2010 as part of a survey of historic places worthy of preservation. The home was subsequently listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016 as a contributing resource within the Jackson Park Historic District. The home was enlarged in 2019 with a two-story rear addition, deck, and in-ground swimming pool.
In Tennessee, examples of Streamline Moderne buildings from the 1930s include the Greyhound Bus Terminals in Jackson and Waverly, the R.L. Coulston & Sons Building in Covington, the Belle Meade Movie Theater in Nashville, the Naval Reserve Training Center in Nashville, and various roadside service stations. Streamline Moderne houses in Tennessee are few and far between.
Bibliography
Cram, Winston. “Fireproof Home Ready After Old House Burns,” Tennessean, June 12, 1947.
Herndon, Joseph L. “Architects in Tennessee until 1930: A Dictionary,” Master’s Thesis, Columbia University, New York, 1975.
Koyl, George S., ed. “John Horace Parmelee,” American Architects Directory. R.R. Bowker Company, New York, 1955:421.
Jones, Robbie D., Cheryl Bretz, Bill Bretz, Holly Barnett, Lance Wagner, and Crystal Jones. “Inglewood Neighborhood Association Historic Survey & Preservation Planning Project: Management Summary,” Tennessee Historical Commission Historic Preservation Planning Grant Application, 2010.
Jones, Robbie D. “Inglewood–Nashville’s Newest Preservation Battleground,” East Nashvillian, November 2010.
Knoxville News-Sentinel. “He Captured 16 Huns in Dugout: Sergt. John Parmelee Then Marched His Prisoners Back to Military Police,” Knoxville News-Sentinel, November 23, 1918.
Loggins, Kirk. “His ‘Surprising’ Estate May Elude Widow,” The Tennessean, December 9, 1984.
Loggins, Kirk. “Charities Awarded One-Third of Estate: Prenuptial Pact Voided,” The Tennessean, November 20, 1985.
Nashville Banner. “Obituary: Mrs. J.H. Parmelee,” Nashville Banner, June 14, 1937.
Nashville Banner. “Miss Julia Mae Kemp Weds Paul Holbrook,” Nashville Banner, August 25, 1933.
Nashville Banner. “Obituary: Mrs. Paul Holbrook,” Nashville Banner, January 1, 1959.
Nashville Banner. “Parmelee Opens Suburban Office,” Nashville Banner, November 10, 1929.
Nashville Banner. “Paul Holbrook Enters Race for Judgeship,” Nashville Banner, March 22, 1957.
Nashville City Directories, 1922-1960.
Neely, Jack. “The Drummer Boy of East Glenwood,” Knoxville Metropulse, 2001, republished by The Family Parmelee, March 1, 2020, Electronic Document, accessed November 24, 2023, https://www.thefamilyparmelee.com/x05-1319.html.
Tennessee Death Records, 1908-1965.
The Tennessean. “Paul Holbrook: In House Race,” The Tennessean, June 24, 1934.
Truett, John. “Paul Holbrook,” John Truett Family Tree. Ancestry.com Website, accessed November 24, 2023, https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/78389507/person/352216185384/facts.
U.S. Population Census, Davidson County, Tennessee, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940.
U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918.
