Brentwood preserves local history in new pavilion
By KATE COIL
TT&C Assistant Editor
Officials in Brentwood have found a unique way to preserve an important piece of local history that was nearly lost.
Members of the Brentwood City Commission and Brentwood Historic Commission unveiled the new BrentVale Pavilion at the city’s Crockett Park to kick off the city’s BrentFest Summer Concert series. The unique structure takes parts of a historic cabin to make a new pavilion for use by the public.
The cabin was originally built in the 1830s by William Temple Sneed, son of early Brentwood pioneer James Sneed, near what is now Old Smyrna Road in Brentwood. He named the home BrentVale.
The Sneed family expanded the original cabin several times using local logs before selling it to Country Music Hall of Famer Larry Gatlin of the Gatlin Brothers in 1989. Gatlin and his wife, Janice, lived in the cabin before selling it to Roger and Barbara Mick in 1993.
The Micks donated the cabin to the city and in 1994 paid for it to be moved and rebuilt at Brentwood’s Crockett Park. During the new pavilion’s dedication ceremony, Assistant City Manager Jay Evans said the city and historic commission realized in 2022 that the cabin was deteriorating past the point of preservation.
“The chinking wasn’t done quite right,” Evans said. “Time was not on our side. We asked ourselves, ‘What do we do?’ Because we want to honor BrentVale. Joe Grosson [vice chair of the Brentwood Historic Commission] said ‘let’s make it a park pavilion shelter so we can have music events and make it a little bit of a destination.”
A statement from the Brentwood Historical Commission said an engineering inspection found that “a combination of foundation settling, and natural deterioration of the nearly 200-year-old log timbers, have rendered the building unrepairable and structurally unsafe.”
The Brentwood City Commission approved a $260,000 renovation project to take the remaining wood from the cabin and turn it into a new pavilion.
The city hired Homestead Timber Frames to build the pavilion and Majors Construction to oversee the entire project.
A new concrete foundation was poured between the existing chimneys in September 2024, and the pavilion was installed that October.
A month later, the 200-year-old timbers were moved to Spring Hill, where Tad Derrickson of TNTree converted them into siding. The pavilion was designed to resemble the look of a log cabin while also acting as a shelter for events like performances, weddings, and parties.
In addition to the renovation of the structure, the new pavilion also survived a close encounter with a vehicle that crashed near the construction site, coming to rest inches from the pavilion after taking out a stop sign and fencing at the park in September 2024.
Brentwood Mayor Nelson Andrews said the project shows how, despite the community’s growth, Brentwood still remembers its past.
“It says something about Brentwood’s commitment to history,” he said. “Some stuff here is an important part of the fabric of our community.”