A TENNESSEE TREASURE

For nearly 115 years, The Hermitage Hotel has been Nashville's holiday mainstay

- ALLISON DUKE BUDSLICK

AS A STUDENT AT VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY IN THE 1930s, my grandmother, Marion Truett Duke, danced in the Grand Ballroom of The Hermitage Hotel. She found joy there during the throes of the Great Depression, with a full dance card hanging from her wrist.

It's easy to imagine how she felt twirling around, thanks to her college line-a-day journal and a box of love letters-items she kept close at hand even in her golden years.

Decades later, I spun around the hotel as a child before Nutcracker performances at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, attended work events there as a young professional, marked milestone birthdays with overnight stays with my mother and sister, and celebrated my wedding night. These days, I enjoy afternoon tea in the lobby with my daughter, Bea, who is ushering in our family's seventh generation in Nashville.

Today's bustling city is a far cry from that of my childhood in the 1990s, when Nashville felt like a small town. Everyone seemed to know everybody. No one dared to run to the store without their face on. Tourism hung its hat on Music Valley, about 20 minutes from the city's center and home to the now-shuttered Opryland USA theme park. In those days, downtown was devoid of celebrityowned honky-tonks, swarms of bachelorette parties, and the sea of cranes constructing countless high-rises. With nary a visitor in sight, the surrounding neighborhoods were very different from today's hip enclaves. Music and Southern hospitality we had in spades, but you didn't come here for much else.