Before Cheekwood became one of Nashville’s best-known cultural landmarks, it was the country estate of Leslie and Mabel Cheek.
The fortune behind the estate was closely tied to Maxwell House Coffee. Leslie Cheek was an investor in the Cheek-Neal Coffee Company, which produced the nationally known brand before the business was sold in 1928. The following year, Leslie and Mabel Cheek began building the estate that would become Cheekwood.
Designed by architect and landscape architect Bryant Fleming, the estate was conceived after the Cheek family traveled through England with Fleming in 1929. Inspired by the great English country houses they encountered, the family brought architectural pieces and furnishings back to Tennessee—including fireplace surrounds, doors, chandeliers and paneling that would become part of the finished home. Construction began in 1929, and the family moved into Cheekwood around Thanksgiving of 1932.
The estate was part of what is now known as the American Country Place Era, when wealthy American families created expansive country residences influenced by centuries-old European estates. At Cheekwood, that vision extended beyond the mansion itself. Fleming designed the house and landscape as one composition, pairing formal gardens, sculpture, mature plantings and carefully preserved views of the surrounding Tennessee landscape.
The Cheeks used the estate as both a private family home and a place for elaborate entertaining. After Leslie Cheek Sr. died in 1935, Mabel remained at Cheekwood until 1944, when she transferred the property to their daughter, Huldah Cheek Sharp. Huldah and her husband, Walter Sharp, later offered the estate for use as a public garden and fine arts center. Cheekwood officially opened to the public on May 31, 1960.
Today, the 55-acre estate remains a botanical garden, arboretum and museum, but much of Fleming’s original vision survives—including the historic mansion, Swan Lawn, Reflecting Pool and Martin Boxwood Garden. The mansion’s period rooms have also been restored using family inventories, photographs, receipts, oral histories and even microscopic analysis of original paint layers to return portions of the house to their documented 1932 appearance.
The photographs below document Cheekwood during its transition from private estate to public cultural institution, including views of the mansion, gardens, interiors and surrounding buildings from the late 1950s through the early 1970s.
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