At 1140 Columbia Avenue, a new two-story building is being built into the hillside next to the Carter House. It's 9,600 square feet, and it replaces the visitor center that opened in 1981. In its fall 2026 newsletter, the Tennessee Historical Commission says it expects the building to be finished and open "later this fall." The same newsletter calls Carter House the state's most visited historic site.
The house on Columbia Avenue is getting a museum as its new front door, and the battlefield around it keeps getting bigger one parcel at a time. This November, around the 162nd anniversary of the Battle of Franklin, is the last anniversary season to see the site the way it has worked for more than four decades.
What's going up beside the house
The new building is called the Herbert Harper Visitor Center. Harper lived in Franklin and served as executive director of the Tennessee Historical Commission from 1975 to 2006. The commission broke ground on March 28, 2025. According to the Williamson Herald's groundbreaking coverage, the building will have a gift shop, a multipurpose room, offices and a museum.
The project took a long time. Eric Jacobson, CEO of the Battle of Franklin Trust, told the Herald that a new visitor center was first discussed in 2013. One of the early problems was the old Boys and Girls Club gym that stood beside Carter House. It came down in 2016. At the groundbreaking, Jacobson gave a mid-2026 opening goal, timed to the Declaration of Independence's 250th anniversary. The state's newest timeline moves that to this fall. As of this writing, the Trust's own Harper Center page still describes the building as under construction.
The Trust says the building is meant to provide "a proper space for orientation" and a museum that will serve visitors "for the next 40-50 years." The state paid for the building. The Trust is responsible for the exhibits inside and is raising money for that work separately.
A museum that starts in 1776, not 1864
The scope of the exhibit is the biggest change. Inside the house, the story has always centered on one afternoon and evening, November 30, 1864. The new exhibit, "All Men Are Created Equal," covers local history from the American Revolution through the years after the Civil War. The Herald reports it will focus on how slavery, the war and abolition affected Franklin's Black community. Franklin Vice Mayor Jason Potts told the Herald the exhibit is "about telling that fuller story of Franklin's history."
The Trust lists three goals for the museum:
- Teach how the United States was founded, and how the young country split and headed toward civil war
- Teach about the war, what happened at Franklin, and how the war ended with slavery destroyed and the Union preserved
- Keep teaching future visitors why the Civil War was a "rebirth of freedom"
You can get a preview this year. Carter House already runs a 90-minute guided tour with the same name, "All Men Are Created Equal." It's built around the Declaration's 250th anniversary and connects the country's founding to the Civil War through the Carter family's home. Visit Franklin describes it as a tour not offered anywhere else in Tennessee. The Trust's Carter House page lists current tour days and tickets. If you take it before the museum opens, you'll get the same story in its earlier form.
The ground around it keeps growing
The new building is only part of the change. Along Columbia Avenue, land that once held modern businesses is being bought back as battlefield.
| When | What happened | Who reported it |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Franklin's Charge bought a 0.63-acre Columbia Avenue property, planning to remove the modern structures and later transfer the land to the City for Carter Hill Battlefield Park | American Battlefield Trust |
| August 2025 | Two adjacent tracts totaling about 1.5 acres, a few hundred feet south of Carter House, were saved | Franklin's Charge |
| Fall 2026 | Franklin's Charge received $1.25 million from Tennessee's Civil War Sites Preservation Fund to buy the roughly 1.247-acre Bernander Tract on the Franklin battlefield | Tennessee Historical Commission |
The American Battlefield Trust said taking down the vacant warehouses on the 2024 parcel would connect battlefield parcels that were already protected but separated. Taken together, the new building, the new exhibit and the new land turn Carter House from a single house on a busy road into a campus. The house sits at the center, the museum handles orientation, and more of the surrounding field is open to read.
Local history groups are moving too. The Franklin Civil War Round Table meets at 3 p.m. on the second Sunday of each month at Carnton's Fleming Center. According to the Round Table's page, it will move to the Harper Center "after New Year." That means November and December meetings stay at Carnton.
November 30, after dark
The Trust marks the anniversaries of the Battles of Spring Hill and Franklin on November 29 and 30 every year. This year that's the 162nd anniversary. The commemoration page lists 60-minute guided tours that cover what happened on those two evenings, at about the times it happened.
| Date | Site | Times | Ticket |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday, Nov. 29 | Rippa Villa and Spring Hill Battlefield, with Eric Jacobson | 2 p.m., about 90 minutes | $30, includes Volume 1 of his book on the Cheairs family; limited to 25, ages 10 and up |
| Sunday, Nov. 29 | Rippa Villa | 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. | $30 per tour |
| Monday, Nov. 30 | Carter House | 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. | $30 per tour |
| Monday, Nov. 30 | Carnton | 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. | $30 per tour |
Each evening tour is limited to 20 people, and tickets must be bought online in advance. The Trust asks people not to book Carter House and Carnton on the same night, since there isn't enough time to get between the two sites. Children under 6 are not admitted to the evening tours.
With six evening groups of 20, there are about 120 spots across the whole anniversary weekend. That is roughly the number of people who came to the groundbreaking in March 2025.
Planning a late-November visit
- Start with a daytime visit. As currently listed by the Trust, Carter House is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. The last tour starts at 4 p.m. Classic guided house tours are $22 for adults and $14 for ages 6 to 15, and you can buy tickets online or on site. The new building may change how visits work, so check the Carter House page before you go.
- Choose one site for the evening of November 30. The Carter House tour follows the fighting around the house. The Carnton tour follows the same night at a different property. Book one or the other.
- Add Spring Hill on Sunday the 29th. The 2 p.m. Rippa Villa tour visits that battlefield at the same time of day the events happened there.
- Put November 11 on the calendar too. Franklin's Veterans' Day Parade starts at 11 a.m. at West Main and Fifth Avenue and runs along Main Street to Bicentennial Park. A veterans' reception runs from 9 to 11 a.m. at the Williamson County Archives.
Bobbi Jo loves introducing people to the Franklin places that make this town feel like home, and Carter House is one of them. If you're hosting family over Thanksgiving weekend or thinking about where in Franklin you'd like to put down roots, Bobbi Jo Barnes is glad to share the local calendar and her favorite stops along Columbia Avenue. Let's find your way HOM. Contact Bobbi Jo for hands-on help today.
