Falcon
Rest: Old, but Always NewI grew up watching Walt Disney on TV, and one thing he said always stayed with me:
"Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world."
When we finished the restoration of the Clay Faulkner's Victorian mansion and opened it to the public in 1993, I realized how profound Walt's promise really was.
Falcon Rest as a historic tourist attraction wasn't completed... it was just beginning. We started calling it "the Disneyland of Victorian restoration," because we'll never stop improving the experience we offer to our visitors. In fact, I'd say something changes for the better around here at least every 14 days.
So, if you think you know everything that Falcon Rest has to offer, you'd probably be surprised ... whether you were here last year, five years ago, or have just heard or read about this out-of-the-ordinary tour mansion in Tennessee.
| Things to look for in the months ahead ... |
A NEW HISTORY-BASED PLAY.
We started entertaining tour groups years ago with our Vaudeville-Style History Show, then added our interactive plays: the ever-popular "Murder at the Mansion" and a salute to the spirits said to inhabit Falcon Rest called "Ghost at the Mansion." This year, we'll introduce a fourth play, also interactive and taken from real local history, "The Honeymoon Ball of General John Hunt Morgan." The dashing Morgan, who took his troops further behind Union lines than any other Confederate general, spent his honeymoon in downtown McMinnville, just a few miles from Falcon Rest.
EVEN
MORE
MERCHANDISE AND FUN IN THE GIFT SHOP.
The gift shop we opened in 1995 soon outgrew
the mansion's smokehouse, and now our new 1,200-square-foot shop is
bulging at
the seams. We just have two rules for
selecting merchandise: it has to be from or about the Victorian era
or
before, and it has to be fun for our customers to look at, play with,
and buy. Every day brings shipments of new
items that
fit those requirements to a "t".
MUSEUM
ROOM FOR FALCON REST
MEMORABILIA.
A third requirement for the
Victorian Gift
Shop is to leave room for at least two busloads of customers to shop
comfortably at one time. With that in
mind, we plan to move our historic memorabilia from the shop to a room
in the
mansion's original food service area. That
will free up additional space for goodies in the gift
shop, plus
allow for a more informative, museum-style display of Falcon Rest's
historical
treasures.
EXPANDED
VICTORIAN
TEA ROOM MENUS.
Tour groups have been raving about Falcon
Rest's food for years, so when we moved into the new gift shop in 2000,
we
included a tea room to tempt the palates of both individual tourists
and locals. We've kept the selection
simple, because we
believe it's better to do just a few things exceptionally well than to
offer a
lot of mediocre choices. This year, we
plan to introduce more selections, from lite fare to decadent
desserts,
while continuing to make "exceptional" the rule.
CONTINUED
LANDSCAPING OF THE GROUNDS.
McMinnville is
known as "the nursery
capital of the world," and after years of improving buildings we have
begun to take advantage of our local resources to landscape the
mansion's
grounds. Last year's late freeze and
summer drought slowed down our plans, but we hope to resume an
aggressive effort this year to make Falcon Rest an outstanding
representative of the
world's
nursery capital.
No
matter how many improvements we make, one thing will never change:Falcon Rest will always be
"the Victorian mansion where history is fun."
Visit often and find out why.
931-668-4444
www.falconrest.com
falconrest@falconrest.com