Tennessee Performing Arts Center

The Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC) is located in the James K. Polk Cultural Center at 505 Deaderick Street in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. It occupies a city block between 5th and 6th Avenues North and Deaderick and Union Streets. The cultural center adjoins the 18-story James K. Polk State Office Building. History In the early 1800s, the site was where the fourth mayor of Nashville, Joseph T. Elliston, lived with his wife Louisa and their son William R. Elliston until they moved to Burlington, their plantation in mid-town Nashville. The idea for a large-scale performing arts facility developed in 1972 when Martha Rivers Ingram was appointed to the advisory board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. She proposed a similar center for her home city of Nashville. Ingram's proposal involved a public-private partnership that would operate within a state-owned facility. Her idea met with considerable resistance, but she persevered, for eight years and throughout the terms of three governors. The result is the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, a three-theater facility located beneath a state office building across the street from the Tennessee State Capitol. In 1980, TPAC opened as the state's premier theater venue. Among its operations, TPAC presents a series of touring Broadway shows and special engagements, and administers a comprehensive education program.