Gallery 202 (Clouston Hall)

Gallery 202 is a working fine-art gallery inside Clouston Hall, an 1821 Federal town home in downtown Franklin, Tennessee. The paintings hang in rooms that served as a Battle of Franklin field hospital.

Joseph Reiff designed the house around 1821 for Edward Clouston, and Presidents Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson are believed to have visited its political gatherings.

After the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864, the right side of the house was given over to surgery, chiefly amputations. Local telling assigns the hospital to the Missouri Regiment.

Owner Kelly Harwood points to bloodstains from the 1864 hospital, still visible on floorboards behind a jewelry cabinet, and to a burn in the foyer attributed to a cannonball strike.

The story goes that a daughter of the house, facing an arranged marriage, hanged herself from the entry-hall banister the night before her wedding. No name or date survives in any telling.

Owners, staff, and visitors report footsteps, moving objects, children’s laughter, and a woman in Civil War-era dress. Harwood describes a “vortex” above the cannonball burn.

Staff describe “Miss Ninny,” who appears as a floating glove, known by a missing finger. Historian Margie Thessin traced her to Ninny Cliffe, a Third Avenue resident who died at Clouston Hall.

The lore predates the gallery: resident Bunn Gray told the Miss Ninny stories across a 1964 to 2001 residency. Richel Albright put the haunting in print in a 2013 Franklin Home Page piece.

The gallery is free to visit at the corner of 2nd Avenue South and Church Street, and staff give free tours of Clouston Hall. It is a working business; visit as a customer.