By Mark Price
The Charlotte Observer
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A grandiose century-old state penitentiary that served as a setting for films such as “The Green Mile” and “Walk the Line” was heavily damaged by the fatal tornado that hit Nashville early Tuesday.
The Tennessee Department of Correction posted multiple videos revealing parts of the famous castle-like site were leveled as the storm rolled through its back compound.
Commissioner Tony Parker of the Tennessee Department of Correction toured the site and noted some of the massive prison walls and an entire brick radio tower were now gone. Photos also show the main building minus most of its windows, doors and part of the pitched roof.
Prisoners are not kept at the site, built in 1898, but it remains state owned and operated.
“This tornado knocked down a section of the old wall for this facility and that wall is probably ... a foot and a half thick. And it tossed those stones probably 40 foot in front and just torn down a section of about 40 yards of wall when it went through the back part of the Tennessee State Prison,” Parker says in the video.
“This building has been here a long time. ... Obviously, nature can come and in a few seconds change a landscape. I’m just so thankful no one was hurt here last night,” he says.
A film Website devoted to the old correctional facility says it was “decimated” by the storm, which state officials say left 24 people dead across four counties.
“The Victorian architecture is ruined irreparably,” the site posted March 2. “The weight of the loss of this building will be felt for many as it was a tie to their past, in darkness or light.”
The website says the prison’s cells were vacated by inmates in 1992. It has been used as the setting for a variety of movies, TV shows and country music videos since the 1970s, the site says.
Among the best known films are Robert Altman’s “Nashville” and Robert Redford’s “The Last Castle,” the Website says.
Movie-Locations.com reports the prison, near uptown Nashville, was also used in the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line” and was depicted as being located in Louisiana in the 1999 Tom Hanks’ film “The Green Mile.”
———
©2020 The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)