Dr. L.G. Noel and the Urban Farm

After four years of bloody battles, the Civil War ended on April 9, 1865. For most of the war, John Shute was the owner of Sunnyside. Following the war, he gifted the property to his daughter, Jeanette, and her husband Stephen Childress. As staunch supporters of the Confederacy, they renamed the property “Lee Monte” for General Robert E. Lee. They also increased the property’s size from ~40 to ~140 acres. Just five years later, they sold the estate to Joseph Spence in 1870. Things did not go well for Spence either. In 1882, the property was auctioned off to a local dentist named Dr. Llewellyn Noel.

Under Noel’s leadership, the house—which was 70 years old at the time—was brought into the modern age with amenities such as electricity, plumbing, and telephones. Renamed “Idlewild,” Noel managed the main 25-acres as an urban farm with chickens, horses, and dairy cows. But as farming gave way to suburbanization, Dr. Noel sub-divided more than 110-acres, which were sold as residential lots that make up part of today’s 12th South neighborhood. 

Dr. Noel graduated from the University of Nashville Medical School and completed his studies in dentistry at Philadelphia Dental College in 1872. After graduation, Noel opened a dental practice in downtown Nashville. His office was next to McKendree Methodist Church where he was a longtime member. He was chair of dental pathology at Vanderbilt from 1905 to 1926. Noel married Nannie Folwell in 1888, and they had eight children!

Tragically, Nannie died at the age of 36. Now a young widower, Dr. Noel remarried Augusta Jonnard in 1902. Augusta was an accomplished pianist, and she used the house for music lessons, recitals, and social gatherings. Dr. Noel died in 1927, and funeral services were held here. In many ways, we can thank Dr. Noel and his family for modernizing the home and creating the current scope of today’s Sevier Park.

Continue clockwise around the house to the next interpretive panel.