File Name	shades_pill_0002.tif
Title	Pillars
Alternate Title	Home of Major John H. Bills, Bolivar
Date	1936
Genre	Photographs
Description	This black and white photograph shows the front porch of a house screened by trees and bushes. The porch has four white one-story white columns above the front steps and two more widely spaced columns on either side that hold a porch roof that stretches across the whole front of the house.
Historical note	John Houston Bills, a close friend and contemporary of President James K. Polk, added a wing and a second story to this house in the small town of Bolivar, Tennessee, which is located in lower West Tennessee, surrounded by plantation lands. He also designed the home's formal garden, remnants of which are visible today. During the Civil War, to which he was heartily opposed, he had cordial relations with Union officers passing through and occupying the town, even as his son-in-law, Marshall Polk, a nephew of James K. and Sarah Childress Polk, served with Confederate forces. He built a small cottage behind The Pillars, for his daughter Evalina Bills Polk, so that she could stay close to her family while her husband was away at war.
Subject	Bills, John Houston, 1800-1871 -- Homes and haunts; Architecture, Domestic
Theme	Holding Fast to Beauty
Story	Sarah Childress Polk
Geographic Location	United States--Tennessee--Bolivar
Rights	Images reproduced on this website are intended for individual, educational use only. For research inquiries about specific objects or requests for high resolution images, contact the Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art.
Credit line	History of Homes and Gardens of Tennessee, Courtesy Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Musuem of Art
Type	Still image
Format	image/jp2
Contributing Institution	Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art
Digital Publisher	Digital Initiatives, James E. Walker Library, Middle Tennessee State University
Source	Garden Study Club of Nashville, Parthenon Press
Archival file	shades11/shades_pill_0002.tif