History: Magnolias by the Law School
Magnolia 2-656 along 21st Ave.S. near the Law School in 2020. One of the original gateposts is also visible. Photo by Steve Baskauf under a CC BY license.
Margaret Branscomb, wife of the new Chancellor Harvie Branscomb after the WWII, was a keen contributor to the campus’s environment. The “circle of magnolias” that surrounds the campus was her brainchild. She suggested the idea while she was president of the Vanderbilt Garden Club in 1954. “I think that the Garden Club must have been the only group that cared what the campus looked like. A busy city street ran across the campus, and it was exposed on all sides to city traffic. … I was impressed by seeing so many beautiful magnolia trees in Nashville, and thought of the noise and dust a think row of magnolias would lessen, to say nothing of the campus being so open to the public view.”1
The circle of magnolias did with trees what Edward Stone’s 1947 campus plan did with buildings. Chancellor Branscomb presided over a massive building campaign based on Stone’s plan that placed new buildings around the perimeter of the campus.2 The screen of trees and buildings helped to create the distinctive and peaceful environment in the center of Vanderbilt campus that often surprises visitors to the urban campus.
The Board of Trust and the Buildings and Grounds Department enthusiastically supported the magnolia plan. But the success of the project depended on the sustained effort of the Garden Club and a few individuals. Some trees originated in nurseries and others were gifts of individuals. Jack Lynn of the Buildings and Grounds Department propagated and planted many magnolias from seed during his 27 years with the department, watering the saplings by hand when necessary. In at least one case, extrordinary measures were take to keep the project on track. When the law school was under construction, the magnolias along 21st Avenue were dug up and moved to the chancellor’s residence where Mrs. Branscomb tended them for a year. When trees died, they were dug up and replaced.3 This magnolia tree may have been one of the ones tended by Margaret Branscomb.
After ten years, the screen of magnolias was effectively complete.
Return to the historical tree tour page for magnolia 2-656.
1 Hogge, Sharon. 1998. The Real Dirt: A History of the Vanderbilt Garden Club for Campus Beautification, The Vanderbilt Garden Club, Nashville, p. 40.
2 McGaw, Robert A. 1978. The Vanderbilt Campus: A Pictoral History, Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, p. 83.
3 Hogge, 1998, pp. 41-43.