Antique Archaeology - Nashville

We love to watch the television show Antique Archaeology and last year we drove to LeClaire, Iowa to see their original store and do a little geocaching along the way.  I did a blog post about it here.

 



They have a second store in Nashville, Tennessee and I added a visit there to my list of things to do on our recent trip to Nashville.  I did a blog post about some of that trip last week. 

 

The Nashville store is housed in the former Marathon Automobile plant.  The building itself is a gorgeous two and three story affair made of rustic red brick and galvanized gutters, with original logos and artwork on its face.  Marathon Motor Works was in existence for only a few short years, but during that time they were well known for their unusual practice of engineering and building every car and its components completely in house.  Along the way they developed a reputation for creating cars that were durable and of good quality.  Unfortunately, due to poor management and financial decisions, the company rapidly fell into decline and ceased to exist.  To read more about this short lived innovator, go here.

 

The building itself is a beautiful choice for Antique Archaeology's second location.  It's several blocks off the main drag and we actually drove thru a residential area to get there.  The street and parking lot were lined with cars and there was a steady flow of people going in and out of the store.

Inside was packed, floor to ceiling, with items of all kinds.  Since we are avid fans of the show, we saw several things in the store that we had seen purchased on the show.  Prices are a bit high and we saw more people browsing than actually buying.   There are also many Antique Archaeology souvenir items for sale, like books, tee shirts, mugs etc. 

For anyone who likes to browse antique shops and poke through signs and bikes, vintage clothing, Civil War memorabilia, lighters, lamps, and all things rusty, well then this is the place for you.

My favorite item was the vintage gas pump.  I liked the size, the red color and the rusted exterior of it.

 

We didn't buy anything, but it was great fun to go through the store and check everything out.  Afterwards we grabbed a geocache outside the building called Nashville Pickers.  It was a quick and easy geocache and now we've found a geocache at both locations.

Next up is a blog post about The Country Music Hall of Fame, so please come back.