Miles House

Constructed around 1860, this red brick house behind the low stone wall at the corner of Woodland and S. 7th streets is known as the Miles House. The private home in the Nashville suburb of Edgefield later became a girls' school in the 1870s. The suburb became part of Nashville in 1880. For much of the first half of the twentieth century, the house was the home of the Miles family, including a local judge. A fire in 1977 damaged the roof in the central entrance bay tower and much of the interior woodwork. In 1979, the Miles House was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The building now houses the Miller Law Offices.

A bridge over the Cumberland River connected Nashville to the land east of the river in 1850. The bridge was destroyed in February 1862 by orders of the Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnson during evacuation of the city. The suspension bridge was rebuilt from 1865 to 1866. The eastern side of the river was known as Edgefield and became a prosperous residential area. Edgefield became part of the city of Nashville in 1880. After a huge fire in 1916 destroyed hundreds of buildings, the area began to decline. One of the oldest Victorian houses that survived the 1916 fire is the Miles House.

The Edgefield Seminary for Young Ladies was established in 1867 and was located in the Miles House from about 1870 to 1879. The private school was run by Mr. and Mrs. Henri Weber. Mrs. Weber was the school's principal while her husband was Professor of Music. Mr. Weber was a teacher in his native Germany before emigrating to America. Mrs. Weber, the former Margaret Isabella Walker, was a North Carolina native. Assistants taught many of the classes in the school. By 1875, there were 40 pupils and six teachers; the school grossed $1,200 that year. Mr. Weber died in 1879 and the school (renamed Edgefield Female Seminary) ran into financial difficulties. The school soon consolidated with a larger private school for girls in Nashville, Ward Seminary; Ward had opened in September 1865. Mrs. Weber became a Ward Seminary faculty member. The Webers' son, Henri Carleton Weber, was born in Nashville in 1860; at that time, the Weber family lived in the boarding house of Eliza P. Ford in Nashville's Sixth Ward and Henri Sr. (age 50) worked as a music teacher. Henri Jr. later served as superintendent of schools for the city for 24 years; a brother and sister also became teachers in Nashville.

J.W. Lovell, a Nashville riverboat operator, was an early owner of the Miles House, according to the National Register nomination. A "river captain" named J.W. Lovell resided on Woodland between Minnick and Tulip in 1865, but this was a couple blocks to the east of the Miles House. Captain J.W. Lovell and his family operated the Lovell Line of steamboats on the Cumberland River. They were in competition with the Ryman Line into the early twentieth century, run by Captains Ryman and Tyner. The National Register nomination research found Lovell residing in the house in 1884.

The house's name comes from a more recent owner, Roy A. Miles. Miles retired from being a Nashville Circuit Court Judge by the 1970s. In 1920, the house at 631 Woodland was owned by Roy A.'s father and was the home of fifteen people. Patterson S. Miles (age 59) worked as a salesman at a seed store; his wife was named Jennie (58). Four of their children, aged 21 (Roy) to 30, shared the house, along with a daughter-in-law, grandchildren, several boarders, and an African-American woman who worked as a cook. By 1927, Roy A. was an attorney and still lived in the Woodland St. house.

The Miles House was modified to contain nine apartments by the mid-1970s, before the 1977 fire. The new owner, Charles Williams, had plans in the late 1970s to carefully restore the mansion. The Miles House is across the street from the Edgefield Historic District, listed in the National Register and the first designated by the city of Nashville in 1978. The Miles House became a National Register listing soon after, in early 1979.

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