Nashville House Beloved by Elvis Threatened by the Wrecking Ball

MADISON, TN — A small stone house that was once the nerve center of the brain behind Elvis Presley's empire may be razed to make way for a car wash, but efforts to save it from the wrecking ball got a boost Thursday.

If Elvis was The King, Col. Tom Parker was his Cardinal Richelieu and the house at 1215 Gallatin Pike in Madison, east of downtown Nashville, was his Palais-Cardinal. It was the home of the Elvis Presley Fan Club, the headquarters of the lucrative Elvis memorabilia operation and the place where Parker, the rough-and-tumble manager who secured Presley's contract with RCA and who scheduled the critical early television appearances that made took his client from heartthrob to American legend, laid his head. And when Presley was in town, it was where Elvis himself would stay.

“When I was in high school, we used to drive by and look to see if the pink Cadillac was here,” current owner, attorney and long-time Madison resident Steve North told WKRN. “If it was here, we would know Elvis was off the road and in town.”

It wasn't terribly unusual to see big stars in Madison in the 1950s and 60s. The streetcar suburb was home to Ferlin Husky, Eddie Arnold and others, but none, of course, was bigger than the King, who would stay with Parker when he was in town to record at RCA's Music Row studios, relaxing in the basement wet bar.

Parker sold the house in 1992 and North bought it in 1997, the same year Parker died. It served as North's law office and he put it on the market four years ago.

“My preference was always to have somebody that could preserve the property, but after four years on the market, I’m convinced there’s nobody out there that wants it,” he told WPLN.

In 2015, Historic Nashville Inc. put the property on its annual Nashville Nine list of endangered property, but even that wasn't enough to smoke out a buyer who would save the home, so North agreed to sell it to Greg Heckmon, who wants to build a car wash which would, of course, require bulldozing the house, but also requires four variances from the Metro Board of Zoning Appeals.

Those variances were on the agenda for the January 5 meeting of the board, but North and Heckmon chose to defer their appeal two weeks. Metro Councilman Anthony Davis, whose district includes the property, told The Tennessean that while ostensibly the deferral allows for neighbors to weigh in on the effect of the variances, it also pries open the window for a preservation-minded buyer to emerge.

"... And it allows a little more time, in case there is a buyer out there that could possibly satisfy the community desire to preserve this building," he said, according to the newspaper. "...The car wash folks, the applicant, would have to be part of that because it's under contract."

North, though, wonders that if such a buyer exists, why they haven't come forward already.

“All of a sudden, I’ve had a bunch of people say, 'Oh, you know, it’d be a shame to tear it down. Let’s find a buyer,'" North said, according to The Tennessean. "My comment is basically, 'Where were you the last four years when it’s been on the market?'"

The deferral notwithstanding, North told WPLN the car-wash operators don't need the variances to operate, it's just that it would reduce the cost.

The Parker property is the latest chapter in an ongoing struggle as Nashville tries to balance its rapid growth and rising real estate prices with the desire to preserve the city's history, particularly the history that made Nashville Music City. In 2014, RCA Studio A on Music Row was primed to be the most famous casualty of a Music Row condo boom that reduced to rubble a host of beloved recording spaces, but an effort spearheaded by an amalgam of musicians and business and civic leaders, including Ben Folds, saved the studio. Late last year, demolition began on a building that once housed, among other things, the offices of Warner Bros. Records.

“Nashville hangs its hat on the fact that it’s Music City, USA,” Robbie Jones, an Historic Nashville board member, told The Tennessean. “And if we keep tearing down our music landmarks, how much longer can we claim to be Music City, USA with a straight face?”

But North, heartbroken though he is, is realistic. Not even Graceland was interested in the property, he told WKRN. If and when the place is bulldozed, North is entitled to the contents left behind by Parker, who he described as "a genius and a scoundrel," when the manager auctioned off memorabilia in 1992.

"I doubt he got rid of everything,” North told the news station. “I want to see what’s in the walls.”

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