“Align yourself with people of prominence in the Southland’s world of affairs,” the brochure promised. “Secure for yourself the protection and seclusion that this residential park affords.”

Early resident Dr. Paul Lamson, head of pharmacology at Vanderbilt, praised the location.

“Mrs. Lamson and I had felt for many years that this particular tract of land was one of the most attractive places in the very beautiful country which surrounds this city,” he wrote in a letter to R.D. Stanford dated February 11, 1937. “We had, however, no idea of how beautiful it is until you built your road and actually opened the hills.”

Lissa Luton Bradford, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Frank Luton, remembers her days on Stanford Drive fondly.

Wonderful place to grow up

“It was a wonderful place to grow up,” she said. “We moved to Stanford Drive in 1938, when I was six months old. My parents told me there were only five houses there at the time.”

Peggy Casparis Groos, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Horton Casparis, grew up across the road from Lissa.

“I must have been one-and-a-half or two when my father saw an advertisement for a lot to build on, at the top of the hills,” Peggy said. “He built the house in 1937, and I was about two when we moved there.”

The area had little development back then, she remembered. “In those days there were no other houses at all on top of the hill. It was open land all the way across the back of the hill to the Blackies’s house on Tyne Boulevard, friends of my parents.”

The neighbors pulled together to accommodate the challenges created by living somewhat secluded from town.

“When it came time to go to school, we had a choice because we were not in a school district. We could go to Parmer Elementary or Burton Elementary,” Lissa said. “In those days, Harding Place did not go all the way through to Granny White Pike, so going to Burton would have meant we had to go around through Castleman. So the parents got together and made a hook-up to take everybody to school at Parmer.”

Peggy said her brother Tony, about two-and-a-half years older than her, had buddies to play with on Stanford Drive, but in the early days she didn’t have anybody.

“The Lutons lived across the street from us, but I wasn’t allowed to cross the street. Lissa Luton and I would stand at the end of our driveways and talk to each other,” Peggy said.

“When Peggy and I got older, we had bicycles,” Lissa recalled. “From her yard, we could see and hear if any cars were coming from either direction. We would hop on our bikes, race down her driveway, fly across the road, and ride to the end of my driveway.”

Lissa remembers other exasperating youngsters would like to play tricks on residents. “We had some ‘bad boys’ as my mother called them, who lived on Stanford,” she said. “One boy had a pile of rocks in his yard, ready to throw at any car that came up the hill.”

The hilly terrain made Stanford Drive a sledding wonderland when it snowed.

“From where we were at the top, you could ride your sled all the way down North Stanford to Hillsboro Pike —one-and-a-tenth miles,” Lissa said. “The problem was, after the ride down you had to walk all the way back up.”

South Stanford was a bigger challenge. “You could try South Stanford, but it has that really deep curve,” she said. “Unless you knew what you were doing, you couldn’t make that turn.”

Best sledding driveway

Ann Boult Walling, who moved to Stanford Drive when she was in eighth grade, in 1953 or ’54, also recalls the snowy weather atop the hill. “We had the best sledding driveway in the country,” she said. “It was slick, straight down, and hilly. Lots of friends came over for sledding parties.”

The Boults’s home had stunning views. In her book Sunday Dinner: Coming of Age in the Segregated South, Ann described a moving sight:

“It was an elegant stone house atop a substantial hill that overlooked a large portion of Davidson County, including downtown Nashville. We stood in the dining room of the Stanford Drive house on Christmas night, 1961, and watched the Maxwell House Hotel burn in the center of town.”

In spite of the large lots and open land, neighbors typically knew and watched out for each other.

“Growing up there, even though the homes were far apart, everyone knew each other—mostly by their dogs,” Ann said. “The dogs roamed the neighborhood, and residents traded newspapers regularly as a dog frequently brought a neighbor’s paper back to its owners.”

Peggy remembers more than the family dog taking up residence at her house.

“We had a dog, chickens, and even a goat. At some point, Tony acquired a groundhog as a pet,” she said. “I can picture him riding his tricycle leading a parade: dog, goat, chickens, and groundhog following him around in a circle in the driveway.”

Some colorful characters kept the neighborhood lively, Lissa said.

“My dad was the first professionally trained psychiatrist in Tennessee, and the Luton Mental Health Center was named for him. He had a friend, also a psychiatrist, named Smiley Blanton who had grown up in Nashville and lived in New York,” she said.

When Smiley and his wife Margaret moved back to Nashville, they lived on Stanford Drive. They were most unusual, Lissa said. Both were very smart, and both wrote books.

“My mother would take us to visit for afternoon tea, which was always laid out perfectly,” she said. “Margaret had a parrot, and when we’d walk in the door the first thing we’d hear was the parrot saying ‘Hello.’ Margaret had taught the parrot to say all kinds of things.

“When they went back to New York, Margaret gave the parrot to the Children’s Museum and we’d go visit.”

Art lessons

Another neighbor, Barbour Pilcher, made a strong impression on young Lissa.

“Down below us were the Pilchers, Dr. Cobb Pilcher and his wife Barbour,” Lissa said. “She was an artist, and she gave art lessons in our backyard to anyone who was interested. She told us to bring our coloring books and crayons, and instructed us to color our pages however we wanted to do it.”

When the children were done, they asked Mrs. Pilcher to show them her page. “She turned over her page, and we sat in awe of what she had done,” she said. “It was magnificent, with every bit of the page colored in rich dark colors.” The youngsters were amazed at what she had created with simply crayons and a coloring book.

Having people come in to help around the house was woven into the fabric of daily life in those days, as Ann Boult Walling describes in detail in her book. Lissa and Peggy have their own tales.

All the former residents agree that the Stanford area was considered “out” from Nashville. West Wood preceded other early subdivisions like Tyne Meade and Harpeth Valley (developed in 1951) and larger areas such as Chickering Hills, Chickering Valley, Chickering Park, Chickering Estates, and Otter Creek Estates developed in the 1950s.

The Dr. Cobb Pilcher House, Deepwood, was constructed in 1936 at 5335 Stanford Drive.