Sylvan Park offers a beautiful setting with homes and businesses
that run the gamut from funky to upscale. Here, solid, 1920s clapboard homes
and the architectural flourishes on stone bungalows from the '30s and '40s
look right at home together. The Produce Place is the best spot this side of
Farmer's Market to get fresh, mouth-watering fruit and vegetables.
A handful of small restaurants, such as the warm-hearted Café Nonna,
have sprung up in recent years.
Further west, tucked into a loop of the Cumberland River, Cockrill Bend
is sort of Davidson County's closet. It stores all those necessary things
that people in other neighborhoods don't want in their back yards — prisons,
warehouses and industrial developments. The area was once owned by the
state of Tennessee, but the land has since been sold off to private industries
and to Metro, which built an industrial park there. It's still home to
several
correctional facilities for state inmates, the largest being Riverbend
Maximum Security Institution
Centennial Park. The park was the site of the Centennial Celebration for
the State of Tennessee. The Parthenon was built to symbolize Nashville's
reputation as "Athens of the South". It was rebuilt in the 1920s
as a permanent structure in Centennial Park.
In 1887 Tennesseans celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of statehood
by holding a magnificent Tennessee Centennial Exposition in what is now Centennial
Park. This photo shows what Centennial Park looked like at the height of
the Exposition. The buildings were meant to be temporary and were constructed
of wood with stucco exteriors and plaster interiors.
On May 1, 1897 President McKinley officially opened the Tennessee Centennial
Exposition in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. He pushed a button and sent
a signal along telegraph wires to start machinery on the exposition grounds.
The Tennessee Centennial Exposition also included amusements. There were
donkey and boat rides, a carnival midway, dancing girls, and a giant see-saw
that lifted visitors 200 feet into the air, offering a birds-eye view of
the grounds. Some visitors thought the ride to be dangerous, especially after
its power mechanism failed one night and left one hapless group of riders
stranded aloft overnight.
The Parthenon was the centerpiece of the Exposition. It was an exact replica
of the original built on the Grecian Acropolis in Athens in 447-432 BC. The
plans were furnished by the King of Greece for the Tennessean replica. The
Parthenon building remained long after the exposition closed and the grounds
became a public park. It was rebuilt as a more permanent structure in the
1920s.
This is the old Printers Alley, which runs behind the buildings facing
Third and Fourth Avenues. A long time ago there were many print shops
(including
famous Hatch Show Print) downtown in this area. It was also commonly
called the city's red light district, as there were many bars, gambling
houses
and such in this area as well. Nashville was well known in the late 1800s
for its numerous posh saloons and gambling houses. By the 1970s the Printers
Alley and surrounding area were run down and kind of seedy, home to many
bars and clubs. Today, the area has been restored and is filled with
music clubs, upscale restaurants, professional offices and stuff like
that.
We used to have a great theme park called Opryland. It has closed down now
and they are building a big mall at the site. It is to be called Opry Mills.
The Grand Old Opry still broadcasts from the Opry complex though. The Opryland
Hotel is HUGE and it is beautiful. They have three huge indoor gardens: The
Conservatory, The Cascades (with a huge indoor waterfall) and now the Delta
area is open. The Delta is so huge, they even have boat rides through the
middle of it. If you visit Nashville, be sure to check out the Opryland Hotel.
It is free to walk through the gardens.
For certain Nashvillians, this part of town is the center of the known universe.
In this relatively tiny slice of Nashville, you can find
a big-time university called Vanderbilt, an internationally known music
center called Music Row,
some intriguing businesses and a bunch of really nice, if sometimes really
expensive, places to live. Residents and visitors like it for its history — from
the Fugitives at Vanderbilt to Elvis on Music Row — hipness and homes.
The area is bounded by busy West End Avenue, Franklin Road on the east and
the noisy 440 Parkway on the south. At the heart of it is trendy Hillsboro
Village, once a more mainstream retail area and now a night-life and restaurant
mecca for Vanderbilt types, musicians, songwriters and the occasional gang
of tourists who have heard that Garth Brooks likes to eat breakfast at the
Pancake Pantry.
Much of the area has seen spectacular growth in property values, with the
restored older neighborhoods in Hillsboro-Belmont, West End and other neighborhoods
proving a popular destination for newcomers and long-time Nashvillians alike.
The newly formed 12South business district, which borders Belmont University
and the Belmont-Hillsboro neighborhood, has taken off in recent years, spawning
a crop of boutiques, restaurants and art galleries
