Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. At first, no one expected the building to last. The Tennessee Centennial Exposition, which was something like a World's Fair or Walt Disney World's Epcot, was held in Nashville. In it featured a full scale replica of the famous Parthenon from Greece, the Plaster Parthenon. This plaster Parthenon, which fit in with Nashville's ambition to be the Athens of the South, housed an art exhibition overy six months. One point eight million people visited the exposition, but small when compared with the twenty seven million who turned out for the Chicago World's Fair of eight three but huge for Nashville, which at the time had a population of a hundred thousand. As a ninety one newspaper put it, the general effect of the cream colored staff structure, with the brilliant colors and the freeze and gables so overshadowed all the other buildings that when the exposition was over, the people demanded its preservation, and it became a shrine to the residents and visitors of Nashville. But this shrine was not built for the long term. By nineteen eighteen, the building had disintegrated so badly that it had to be closed for safety reasons. However, thanks to popular demand, the city decided to rebuild it as a permanent concrete structure in ninety The Nashville Parthenon reopened to the public in ninety one. As with the Greek Parthenon, the columns on the Nashville structure are not completely straight, but have a slight convex curvature called enthesis that corrects for an optical illusion that makes straight lines of peercung cave at a distance. The structure is also full of friezes and carvings, and includes a replica of the famous Elgin marbles, now known as the Parthenon Marbles. These marble structures were part of the original Parthenon, but were removed by the British Earl of Elgin and sold to the British Museum m in eighteen sixteen. The entire transaction remains a point of dispute between Brittain and Greece, and while the original Parthenon is in a ruin, the Nashville version features the complete structure of builders made educated guesses to fill in the missing parts. At the time of its reopening in nineteen thirty one, the only thing missing from this replica Parthenon was a statue of the Greek goddess Athena. But after twenty years of small contributions from the public via a donation box at the site, plus some private funding, there was enough money to commission a forty two foot that's thirteen meter statue, the same size as the original. Tennessee's sculptor Alan Lechoir took eight years to finish the mass of work, which was unveiled in nineteen nine and features a spear that was crafted with McDonald's flagpole as the sturdy core. For twelve years, the statue stood in plain white gypsum cement, but in two thousand two it was gilded in real gold. Although some people have complained that the guilding makes it look gaudy, it's actually more historically accurate. The Nashville Parthenon still serves as the city's art museum, and its permanent collection is home to sixty three paintings of nineteenth and twenties century American artists donated by Nashville businessman and collector James Cowen. Today's episode was written by Katherine Whitbourne and produced by Lowell Berlante and Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts in my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. At first, no one expected the building to last. The Tennessee Centennial Exposition, which was something like a World's Fair or Walt Disney World's Epcot, was held in Nashville. In it featured a full scale replica of the famous Parthenon from Greece, the Plaster Parthenon. This plaster Parthenon, which fit in with Nashville's ambition to be the Athens of the South, housed an art exhibition overy six months. One point eight million people visited the exposition, but small when compared with the twenty seven million who turned out for the Chicago World's Fair of eight three but huge for Nashville, which at the time had a population of a hundred thousand. As a ninety one newspaper put it, the general effect of the cream colored staff structure, with the brilliant colors and the freeze and gables so overshadowed all the other buildings that when the exposition was over, the people demanded its preservation, and it became a shrine to the residents and visitors of Nashville. But this shrine was not built for the long term. By nineteen eighteen, the building had disintegrated so badly that it had to be closed for safety reasons. However, thanks to popular demand, the city decided to rebuild it as a permanent concrete structure in ninety The Nashville Parthenon reopened to the public in ninety one. As with the Greek Parthenon, the columns on the Nashville structure are not completely straight, but have a slight convex curvature called enthesis that corrects for an optical illusion that makes straight lines of peercung cave at a distance. The structure is also full of friezes and carvings, and includes a replica of the famous Elgin marbles, now known as the Parthenon Marbles. These marble structures were part of the original Parthenon, but were removed by the British Earl of Elgin and sold to the British Museum m in eighteen sixteen. The entire transaction remains a point of dispute between Brittain and Greece, and while the original Parthenon is in a ruin, the Nashville version features the complete structure of builders made educated guesses to fill in the missing parts. At the time of its reopening in nineteen thirty one, the only thing missing from this replica Parthenon was a statue of the Greek goddess Athena. But after twenty years of small contributions from the public via a donation box at the site, plus some private funding, there was enough money to commission a forty two foot that's thirteen meter statue, the same size as the original. Tennessee's sculptor Alan Lechoir took eight years to finish the mass of work, which was unveiled in nineteen nine and features a spear that was crafted with McDonald's flagpole as the sturdy core. For twelve years, the statue stood in plain white gypsum cement, but in two thousand two it was gilded in real gold. Although some people have complained that the guilding makes it look gaudy, it's actually more historically accurate. The Nashville Parthenon still serves as the city's art museum, and its permanent collection is home to sixty three paintings of nineteenth and twenties century American artists donated by Nashville businessman and collector James Cowen. Today's episode was written by Katherine Whitbourne and produced by Lowell Berlante and Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts in my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.