Nashville News Blog

Too bad for any local news stations that tossed out vast quantities of archival footage from the city's past. As Nashville Public Television has proved, there's gold in them thar vaults. The station's Memories of Nashville docs have been pledge-drive blockbusters, and Channel 8 blows dust off the scrapbooks again with Nashville: The 20th Century in Photographs, premiering 7 p.m. tonight on NPT.

Using stills from a number of sources--the Tennessean photo archive, the Tennessee State Library Archives, the Library of Congress--NPT documentarian Justin Harvey sets the wayback machine for 1897 and the Tennessee Centennial celebration. Billed as Volume 1, tonight's episode covers the early 20th century through World War I and the Depression years.

The money shots in the trailer above include Depression-era 5th Avenue, complete with flivvers, horse-drawn wagons and what look like gaslights, and one of the electric street cars that used to run through the downtown shopping district. If this doesn't satisfy your sweet tooth for musty memorabilia, fear not: NPT's Memories of Opryland repeats tonight at 10:30 p.m.