Background
Adolphus Heiman was born in Potsdam, Prussia in 1809. His father was a building superintendent.
Adolphus Heiman was born in Potsdam, Prussia in 1809. His father was a building superintendent.
He emigrated to the United States in 1834, spent time in New York City and New Orleans, and settled in Nashville, Tennessee in 1837. From 1837 to 1841, Heiman built the First Baptist Church on Fifth Avenue, which was destroyed in 1940, and tombstones in the Old City Cemetery on Fourth Avenue South in Nashville. Heiman served in the Mexican–American War of 1846-1848, when he became a major.
In 1849, he was commissioned to build a Gothic Revival 250-bed state Hospital for the Insane.
He also designed the first suspension bridge in Tennessee over the Cumberland River. By the 1850s, he was widely known as "Nashville"s architect."
Heiman served in the Confederate States Army in the American of 1861-1865, where he was colonel in the Tenth Tennessee Regiment.
However, he was captured in 1862 and was a prisoner of war for six months. Heiman died in Jackson, Mississippi in 1862.
He was buried in the Confederate Circle of Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville in 1869.