The Symbolism Of Threes: Triangles in the Cumberland Homesteads

The triangle intersection at Highways 127 and 68, in from of the Homestead Tower.

They’re redoing the intersection of US 127 and TN 68, beside the Homestead Tower and Homestead Elementary. It’s all a mess and likely will be for a while.

They’ve been looking to rework that intersection for some time now, more than 20 years. The plan presented then would have eliminated the large triangle created by the Y, the legs that create the intersection. That’s a big deal.

The triangle intersections are a feature of the Cumberland Homesteads, baked into the community’s design no less than the stone-clad houses that define the area, but more subtly. Many still exist but some have fallen victim to progress.

Homesteads historian Charles Tollett said that as many as 26 triangle intersections were built before the Homesteads project was completed. The triangles aren’t on original plans but Tollett and others are fairly certain that architect William Macy Stanton was the driver behind the triangles.

“(Stanton’s) style was reflected in the use of triangles at intersections,” said Tollett. “The reasons were both aesthetic and practical (think roundabout for today). Traffic (then) was slower and lighter and many stops were avoided by the use of triangles. The bold use of stop signs and such did not fit the ideas of Stanton to build a community that was distinctive and exemplary.”

By my count, 12 triangles still exist, including large ones at the state park and 127, and at Deep Draw and US 70 East. The triangle at Highland Lane and Deep Draw doesn’t really function like one now, and the triangle at Old Mail Road and Pigeon Ridge has been modified and functions as a hybrid Y-intersection and T-intersection

It’s the big triangle, the one at US 127 and TN 68, the one in front of the tower, that really gets people’s attention. The reconstruction will close off the leg in front of the tower, creating a parking area for the tower museum while moving the entirety of the intersection to the other leg of the triangle, complete with traffic signals.

That triangle has been a feature of the Cumberland Homesteads since the beginning, back in the 1930s, when the only roads through the area were Highways 28, 68 and 127, and along with the tower serves as a gateway of sorts to the community. It’s certainly symbolic of the area’s biggest roads coming together, another function of triangles — bringing two together as one.

Back in 2004 the state highway department announced plans to redo the intersection, plans that would eliminate the triangle. Reaction was swift, and effective. My mother, Sandy, was quoted in a Tennessean story at the time that she’d chain herself to a tree in the triangle to keep bulldozers at bay. She meant it.

The state retreated in 2004 and said they’d work up new plans to keep the triangle. Seventeen years later, in 2021, the state announced new plans for the intersection that keep the triangle.

I can’t help but think that triangles were also chosen for the intersections for their symbolic value. Triangles represent threes such as the Holy Trinity but also mind, body and spirit, and man, woman and child — notable in a community such as the Homesteads.

And in shape psychology, triangles represent the “dynamics of motion … indicating adventure, intensity and getting somewhere,” which would certainly be characteristics of the original Homesteaders. They moved their young families away from what they knew as home, to create a new community and a new life. The work was hard; the life was hard. But Homesteaders knew a better life would be their reward.

Some Homestead houses have a triangle above the main fireplace, a triangle formed by wood beams. I don’t think the triangles are structural — I think they’re decorative, and perhaps symbolic, like the intersections? I don’t know but a family could make the triangles symbolize whatever they wanted.

I’ll miss the big triangle as a working intersection. A lot of my life has been going around the leg in front of the tower — to church, to the park, to points beyond, and back.

It’ll be weird to have a traffic signal out here. If architect Stanton thought stop signs were audacious, he’d be flipping out over traffic signals.