The Nashville I Remember

[Baronakim]

As y'all seem to like aome of the recollections I have of Nashville whille I was growing up, I thought I would make a thread for it.  So many of y'all have moved here since the turn of the century, here are some of the  buildings that have vanished completely (There are a LOT of them) or have been renewed and are still with us.  I will try to make my commentary describe them, where they were, when they were demolished and what replaced them.  I think this is probably a good time for me to do this as I am on the farm waiting for Covid-19 to  pass, though I think it will threaten me for the rest of my days.  I had the thought that should I not survive this plague,  my memories I would like to share would go with it.  I'll start with the old railroad tressle in Inglewood since that is where I left off.  This is a photo from 1929  I found, but it had changed little through the 50s when I lived on Iverson Avenue across from the filling station.  You can clearely see the railroad siding on the right where they converted to highway in the late 50s.  You can see Hudson's filling station which also sold great sandwichs, a precursor of the modern convenience stores to come  You can see my post in the Inglewood  thread, so I'll skip across town to the West End  Avenue  area that was an important treat for a boy from the other side of the river.   Here is old photo  of the intersection at the corner of Centennial Park.  The Firestone Tire and Battery  still stands but went through a number of incarnations of drug store occupancies...Eckards, Riteaid  accompaied by photo finishing shops and an icecream shop.  It is too iconic to tear down (I hope)... keep fingers crossed.  I remember the apartment building on the corner being demolished years ago.  A oil change business is there now.   Of the other apartment buildings, they were torn down for a number of restaurants which changed idenity on a regular basis.  Down the street was one of the biggest losses IMO to the Vanderbilt area was demolished by greedy developers was the magnificent Farther Ryan High School, a marvelous example of English perpendicular architecture for a lousy Hampton hotel .  Of coures the remainder of the property was infilled with the Elliston 23 complex with decent density.  I'd rather have the high school back though.  Over on West End across from the park was a great venue I frequented often...the Hippodrome Roller Scating Rink, where I loved crack-the-whip.  I was a vry good speed skater bak in the early 60s.  in the 70s and early 80s I think, it was also a hot venue for wrestling with stars like Jackie Fargo.  It was demolished for the Holiday Inn, which itself has gone through at least 3 renovations.  How time flys when you are having fun?  Just a little west was the Old Woman's Home, a stately old building from about 1900, demolished in 1984 for the shopping center with the Honey Baked Ham store.   Of what remains in that block, I recall the most excellent bakery in the whole state...ever... Bokay's Bakery.  Run by a master backer from Austria, this old guy made scrumptious confections of exceptional quality.  The Krispy creme is excellent, but this bakery had true European goodies.  It was in the building where Patagonia is now I think.  Of all the buildings on West End across from Vanderbilt, the single story, old Packard  dealership has to have gone through more reuses than any other.  By the time I can recall it, Packard was extinct or nearly so and the building housed Rich Shwartz, a high end ladies clothing shop.  My mother practically lived in it we went so often.  It also had a furriers deartment; if you wanted mink...this was where Nashville's high society bought them (if they didn't fly up to 5th avenue in NY).  Many of you will remember it's resurrection as a Tower music store.  It was torn down to build the Homewood Suites now there.  Down West End another tragedy was the demolition of one of the old governor's mansions.  When the current mansion was built in 1938, this stately house was sold  to house a law firm that maintained it immaculately.  The interior wood  interior was a real jewel, but that did not keep it from being bulldozed for a Minnie Pearl's Fried Chicken store, which lasted only a few years.  It is ironic that the mansion was bulldozed in that the Catapillar building was built there.  Across from this was the dormitory complex designed by Edward Durell Stone at the corner of West End and 20st Avenue.  He may have been acclaimed as a "great" architect, but IMO he was grossely overated.  The dorms were really boring and when Vanderbilt built its first of many really nice doms facing West End, I rejoiced with a happy dance. The last item I have for you at the moment is the original Vanderbilt School of Medicine facing 21st Avenue.  I remenber it's lovely architecture befor godawful expansions complely covered up all the wonderful Gothic buildings all the way to the street.  I hope y'all will enjoy this trip down Memory Lane.    If you like , I will hop around other areas of the city, though I may borrow some of the photos from some of my previous posts as a fair number of y'all have joined in  only a year after I did a little of a year ago.  I think it would be good to have a specific thread  for such.   P.S.  This is a little different than the other thread I started "Old Nashville Treasures" in that these posts will specifically center around Nashville in my own lifetime.  I do plan more posts in "Old Nashville Treasures" that reach back well before my birth.  If you newcomers haven't been to that thread, there is a great deal of Nashville's historic Theaters, Department store, Printer's Alley, Bridges, the Arcade, etc. you may have missed.  I suspect that even a bunch of the older members of the forum may have missed most of my post "The River" as there is a very big gap in the photo scrolling which I think many thought the post had ended before seeing all the photos.  There is a lot of history on that thread, so you may want to take  a look at it.  I think my next post thatI  will cover there is the 6 square city blocks destroyed between Commerce and Union.  Enjoy.

 

Edited August 5, 2020 by Baronakim
spelling

[nashvylle]

love all these old photos

[Baronakim]

The heart of the city from the earliest settlement, the Nashville Courthouse square was drastically changed in my childhood.  Today it is an exemplary public space around our iconic Courthouse.  But I recall it when it was surrounded by blocks of Victorian Commercial buildings.

 

There was only one bridge, the old double barreled Woodland Street Bridge from Edgefield on the Northeast corner of the Square.  This prewar photo is pretty much what it looked like still in the early 50s  There was very little construction in Nashville after WW2 and the Korean War  squelched  new construction in downtown until the midfifties.    I remember the square from about 1952 because my Grandmother worked at Cain-Sloan and I would very often ride with my grandfather to pick her up after work.  The Old Woodland Street Bridge somewhat terrified me as it was very narrow and the paving had wood planking  over the paving where the tires were.  It made a noisy rattle driving over it.  As you can see,  the Square was quite small back then.   Here is a photo of the Courthouse after its completion just before WW2

The following 2 photos are of the grand Victorians on the east (riverside) of the Square.  The first causalty of the old buildings was the one at the right of both photos  It was demolished  about 1949 for parking and warehousing for the Everett Beasley Company which had occupied the southernmost of the four sections of surviving building.

 Besides the Iconic Nashville Courthouse, the only remaining building from the 19th century presently on the Square is The Ben West building. on the northwest corner.  The building was constructed as the Nashville City Market in 1937. The market moved on the late1950s, and after a rear addition for a jail, the building, it became the Municipal Safety Building. The building was later renamed the Ben West Municipal Building in honor of Nashville’s mayor from 1951-1963. It now houses Chancery Court, Circuit Court, and several Metro Government offices.  However, I remember going to the Square often on Saturdays for the Farmer's market.  Besides the indoor market, all around the Courthouse on the west and  east sides, farmers were parked in mule drawn wagons loaded with produce.  We had to park on the west and east sides where parking meters were placed.  They took pennies, about 2 cents an hour!  My grandfather never failed to take me up to see the Courthous e fountains

Major  changes began with construction of  a new bridge across the Cumberland, the Victory Memorial Bridge connecting in front of the City Market House.  Construction began with the demolition of this magnificant old four story Victoria n. 

 

As  you can see in this photo in early 1955 a few months before the opening of the new bridge,  the street off the old Woodland Street Bridge had an awkward bend.

At this time car ownership was exploding and parking was becoming a serious problem, so the solution was the demolition of all of the buildings on the south side of the square   'to realign the street and provide parking in front of the Courthouse.

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 In about 1957, it was determined that the old double truss Woodland Street Bridge had reached the end of its useful life. However, the new proposal to construct a new one matching the Victory Memorial Bridge entailed reusing the masonry piers of the old brid ge.  This new bridge managed to avoid destruction most of the remaining Victorians on the east side of the square, but this would not last for long.

   

During the reconstruction of the Woodland Street Bridge in the the early 60s, the building next to the bridge was demolished.  A couple of years later, more of the Square's east side  fell to the wrecking ball.  Everett Beasley's building was taken down leaving only 2 sections surviving of the old  Victorian.

 

The remaining building was demolished to construct the Gay street connector under the bridges in the early 70s.  But before that, next to fall was the the west side of the square for the construction of the new James Robertson Parkway in the early 60s in conjunction with a new city auditorium at the foot of Capitol hill.  This was the block on the north side of Charlotte Avenue as the new JR Parkway busted right through the  mid block.    

 

More demolition of the remaining west side of the Square  occurred in the early 70ss with the complete demolition o six square blocks, but I will cover that huge erasure of old Nashville in a separate post.  All the remained now was the north side Victorians

  

These remaining Victorians were demolished to buils a new facility for a metropolitan Criminal Justice Center which was itself torn down in 2018 for a newer facility and the city rejoiced. 

Here is the new facility which is set back from the street, a considerable improvement.

 

Well that brings us up  to present day.  My only wish now would be the teardown of the crappy one story buildings on the south side which house bondsman and law businesses.  They are so out of scale with the rest of the square.

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Edited August 7, 2020 by Baronakim
spelling & photo order

[Nashvillain]

^This is awesome! Thank you. Sad how many beautiful old buildings the city lost for roads and parking 

[Baronakim]

The Downtown Riverfront

One of the things you can't forget if you grew up here in Nashville is the riverfront between the Jefferson Street Bridge and the new KWV Bridge.  I purposely leave out the interstate bridges even though they define the inner loop of the city, they are outside the built up core of Nashville.  I will cover them in a future post about the interstate highway impacts on the city.  When you are little, as I was in the early 50s, you are aware of the river, but you largely are seeing it from the back seat of a moving car.  There was very little residential on either bank in the 1950s.  The 3 principal bridges downtown were the Woodland Street Bridge and the Shelby Street Bridge and maginally, the Jefferson Street Bridge as it was on the edge of the core downriver. 

After the old steamboats of the previous century no longer landed at Broad Street on the riverbanks proper, the concrete warehouse built at the foot of Broad (later calleld the Osborne-Hessey Warehouse) redefined the commerce  the river.   The building below the level of First Avenue was built to withstand the flooding of the Cumberland as seen in the first photograph back in 1939.  What i remember is from about 1957 when this photo was taken.  Even this was not high enough to operate in flooding as I recall a couple of high water floods that were above the street on Broad and flooded the Osbourne-Hessey main floor.  I think this was a major influence in the decision to demolish it for Riverfront Park.  I recall the demolition took a crapload of explosives over many months to clear the foundations.

On the East bank, the Nashville Barge Company and fuel companies took up the land.  Coal was  brought in by rail and barge by the Cassetty Coal Company and the Frank Alley Coal Company which mergered in 1964, located downriver over by the Jefferson Street Bridge.  Nashville Bridge had an office tower adjacent to the Shelby Street Bridge (now Siegenthaler Pedestrian Bridge).

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A curiosity in 1940, a few years before I was born, was the freezing over of the Cumberland River, an event that has not happened again in my 73 years on  Earth.  My mom heard about it and walked across.  A few who tried to drive across did not have a good result.  

One of the key diffences of the riverbank on the West bank was that there was no development on the riverbank when I grew up.  The terraced Riverfront Park would be years later.  The only thing of interest to a young boy was the shoddy Fort Nashborough replica that was a grade school must visit.  Just south of the fort was a huge electrical tower that dominated the area.  It was replaced with a cor-ten steel single pole several years after Riverfront Park opened.  It was still a massive pole, but more aestheticaly pleasing.  There was no Gay Street under the bridges.  Behind the old Victorians on the Suare was a thickly forested riverbank as can be seen in this photo below.

In 1956, the Mayor drove over the almost finished Victory Memorial Bridge.  Aagin you can see the dense growth on the steep bluff under the Woodland Street Bridge.  Not the L&C building under construction in the background. The banks down First avenue remained dirt and was a rough parking area until the construction of Riverfront Park in the early 80s  In the last photo you will note that the woodland Street Bridge was rebuilt to match the Victory memorial Bridge.  This was about 1960, though the photo dates from the early 70s.

Throughout the remainder of the 20th century, the West Bank remained a slowly decaying industrial area.  The Noashville Bridge Company was acquired by the Ingram family, who eventually moved the barge building operations to Ashland City.  By the mid 90s, the entire area was in full decay and ripe for redevelopment.  This would find fruition in a new stadium for the Tennessee Oilers, which thankfully were soon renamed the Tennessee Titans.

The riverfront area to the north of the Square was a hodgepodge of decaying industrial buildings with cofferdam cylinder barge dock facilities.  This area included the L&N railroad bridge built around 1916 and an abandoned power generation plant right behind the Old Market (Ben West Building) .  It remains in ruins off 414 Gay Street by the Greenway though its steel towers were removed in th early 2000s.  Down  towards the jefferson Street Bridge, old industrial buildings on the riverbank were converted to residential condominiums in the eary 2000s though they were badly damaged in the March 3rd 2020 tornado and whether they will be rebuilt, I do not know.   The riverfront site next to the railroad bridge is currently being developed as Watertower Condominiums.  The long roofed area north of it was converted as a roofed parking lot for the Riverfront Condominiums which escaped tornado damage in March  The condominums by the Jefferson Street Bridge were extensively damaged.  I hope that the brick smokestak remains if they are not to be rebuilt.

Returning to the riverfront at the Square, the Gay Street connector was built in the late 90s underneath the two bridges. a couple of interesting features are on this short street.  First the old stone abutments of the very first bridgeover the Cumberland River were discovered and cleared of overgrowth.    Just south of the Woodland Street Bridge is a staute of Timothy Demonbreum, an early founder of Nashville.  It faces a small ampitheatre which is interesting but is very seldom used because of its steepness (except by the homeless for sleeping).

 

Of course in the late 90s a great deal of change occurered on the East Bank.  The vast brownfield of the derilect industial buildings were swept away with the coming of pro football a new stadium and park was created, the old Shelby Street Bridge was converted into a pedestrian bridge as it was  being replaced with a spectacular new bridge to the east, the Korean War Veterans Bridge.  The bridge was fitted with LED lighting shortly after and regularly displays spectacular light shows.  The old Nashville Bridge Building was gutted and made into a great new ventue next to a new childrens park and marina. A sculpture was installed on the riverbank very prominently seen from the West bank, which had a terminal built for the Nashville Star.  There is more than I need to list as these places and events are well covered in threads on Nashville Urban Planet sufficiently.  The following photos showing current features show the great new vitality of the Nashville riverfront.

The John Siegenthaler Pedestrian Bridge with the Korean War Veterns Bridge beyond.

Cumberland Park by the Siegenthaler Pedestrian Bridge.

  

 I must apologise for covering the  huge projects of the last 20 years so scantily, but there is so much to cover.    One could write a full thread remembering so much about each individual project.  i'm afraid this must remain more of an overview rather than the detailed memories that deserve to be reported more fully.  There is still a great deal of work to be done in removing the West bank brownfield site of the PSC metal yards.  Hopefully we will have news that apalling eyesore will be sold and will disappear soon.  Hopefully the West Bank be rebuilt with new projects connecting to the Shelby Park and shelby Bottoms in the next decade.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Baronakim
spelling and grammar corrections

[bnacincy]

Great post....I particularly miss all the shopping on Church Street.

[Auntie Yock]

        

^^^^

This picture would've been from late 1956 or early 1957. You can see the L&C skyscraper under construction. About to become the tallest skyscraper in the entire Southeastern U.S. (which at that time meant taller than anything in Atlanta or Miami), and breaking the 27-year long state record held by the Sterick Building in Memphis (at 350').

Of course, it was also the only "real" skyscraper, as our other buildings at that time were all under 200 feet. It was more than double that at about 409'. The Nashville Trust, peaking out behind the east-side buildings on the Public Square, appeared to be the previous tallest office building at 193' (though the Union Station at about 200' and State Capitol at 198' slightly exceeded that).

[Baronakim]

It has taken me some time to locate  photograpghs of an area that I have wanted to share with most of the younger folks on the forum.  50 years ago I remember the gutting of downtown Nashville under the auspices of "Urban Renewal"  About 1/3 of Nashville was relentlessly demolished in a single decade from Capitol Hill at 6th Avenue N. down to the Courthouse at 3rd Avenue, leaving only the Morris Building and St. Mary's  Cathedral standing of our historic city buildings north of Union Street.  The most iconic we probably all still mourn are the  two well known hotels, the Andrew jackson and the Sam Davis.  I will begin with the demolition of the Andrew Jackson. for the construction of TPAC and the adjacent  beautiful Victorian  which was built on the site of the Felix Zollicoffer home.  This litte known building next to the hotel I remember housied the B.P.O.E Lodge, the building itself generally known as the Zollicoffer House.  When it was destroyed, the empty building still had hundreds of antique German steins, most dating from the 1800s, in the basement Rathskeller of the Lodge.  No one cared to bother to rescue them.  In a series of posts, I will try to document the wanton destruction of downtown shops, churches and other historic structures in the six city blocks bounded by Union Street and Charlotte Avenue from 3rd Avenue N. to Warmemorial Plaza at 6th Avenue N.

Here is a photo of the vast cleared area in progress  right after the Andrew Jackson Hotel Demolition in 1971.  The still standing ruin of the Zollicoffer House (B.P.O.E. Lodge) was built on the site of the 1840s home of the Civil War general felix Zollicoffer on 6th Avenue N.

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Here are photos  and postcards of the demolished buildings on 6th Avenue N.

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Here is the aftermath of the Andrew Jackson demolition

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Here is an areial view of the rear of the AndrewJjackson Hotel and the Cotton states Building otherwise known as the Tennessee Highway Department Building in the late 60s before the new State Highway office building was erected behind it iin about 1969 as you see in the first photo .

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This sad topic will be a rather massive serries of posts as I will document much more than the six city blocks between Union and Charlotte.  The area of destruction wraps around Capitol Hill into the historically black business districts lost with the construction of the new City Auditorium and James Robertson Parkway, a massive clearing which is still a boring wasteland of surface parking.  Bear with me; this is going to trake a little time to adequately cover the losses.    P.S....Many of you newer members may want to review some of my previous posts in this topic thread and in Old Nashville Treasures topic thread that show a lot of Nashville history you might enjoy.  Still photos from Nashville Metro Archives.  I will expound on the Andrew Jackson in an upcoming post on history of mid  20th century hotels in Nashville.

 

Edited November 25, 2020 by Baronakim
additional comments

[MLBrumby]

2 hours ago, Baronakim said:

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That's just a huge shame. And I've heard about the National Life buildings that were amazingly ornate, not to mention the site of the founding of the Grand Ole Opry.  Glad the Hermitage wasn't demolished. This photo causes me to wonder about the lobby of the Jackson Hotel. Seems we can find lots of photos of the outside but none of the lobby. Was it anything as nice as the Hermitage?

Also, in the photo above, there is a rather large mid-century (4-5 stories) building that fronts Union Street and sits in the same block as the Jackson and it has a parking deck behind it that stretches all the way over to Deaderick. What was in that building? 

[Auntie Yock]

8 hours ago, MLBrumby said:

That's just a huge shame. And I've heard about the National Life buildings that were amazingly ornate, not to mention the site of the founding of the Grand Ole Opry.  Glad the Hermitage wasn't demolished. This photo causes me to wonder about the lobby of the Jackson Hotel. Seems we can find lots of photos of the outside but none of the lobby. Was it anything as nice as the Hermitage?

Also, in the photo above, there is a rather large mid-century (4-5 stories) building that fronts Union Street and sits in the same block as the Jackson and it has a parking deck behind it that stretches all the way over to Deaderick. What was in that building? 

That would've been the Montgomery Ward Department Store at 5th & Union. I can't seem to locate any photos for it.

[smeagolsfree]

Not much thought of saving much of anything in those days. This would have been about the time the folks in Denver started  their historic preservation plan to save their historic buildings. A Tale of Two Cities I suppose.  Metro always tries to study other cities but never learns anything and the voters here are fickle wanting their cake and to eat it too. 

Nashville continues to be on the back side of things. The leaders here never seem to be able to wrap their minds around anything that is new rather it is saving something old or a progressive transit plan. The city seems to always be the laughing stock of other cities (lack of mask on Broadway & Transportainment, unfit mayors {Boner & Barry})but somehow seems to succeed despite itself. The conservative leadership of old was too liberal (Historic Preservation) and the liberal leadership has been too conservative on the issues that matter (building height, transportation, zoning etc.)

[CandyAisles]

@Baronakim I have some construction photos of the Sam Davis at the office if they haven't been thrown out during quarantine.  Found them in the Marr + Holman archives while doing research on the James Robertson.  I'll see if I can dig them up.

[markhollin]

The sad story of the Union Station Train Shed is chronicled in The Tennessean today.  I've captured some of the photos from its 100 year history (1901 to 2001). We can nostalgically think good of it, but for decades it was considered the city's biggest eyesore as it fell into greater and greater disrepair. I recall all kinds of proposals (one was that it could be converted into a modern arena--what a joke), but when it came down to it, no developer of the time had the money or intestinal fortitude to do the major upgrades/creative repurposing that could've/should've been done.  

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2020/11/27/nashville-history-union-station-train-shed-world-war-ii/6332351002/

1934, with Demonbreun Viaduct:

1977:  wear and tear becoming evident.

1979: This is how I remember seeing it for the first time when I moved here in early 80s.

1980:

1986:

1990:

1994:

1995:

1996 after the fire:

2000, while being used as parking lot under the decaying grid.

Taking it down later in 2001:

[MidTenn1]

^^^^^I caught a couple of train rides out of there (yeah, I'm that old). Once to San Francisco (actually Oakland) with my Mother to visit my Grandparents when I was 5 and once with my Nashville Grandmother to visit my Uncle in Savannah, GA. So, I've traveled across the USA twice on trains.

I do remember we lost my younger sister at the St. Louis station. Unfortunately we found her.

Edited November 27, 2020 by PHofKS

[nashvylle]

Like me in my awkward puberty phase, prettier on the inside than outside. 

[Baronakim]

My post showing the Andrew Jackson demolition a week or so ago was mainly to show  some of the most familiar buildings we lost in the six bloock "remewal" and the expansion of the Courthouse square to the South.    This post is to show the extent of the loss of  Old Nashville befrore TPAC and the banks and hotels which now occupy entire blocks.  I suppose the best way is to take a look at 6rd and 5th Avenues, , then 4th and 3rd Avenues, then the 3 major streets, Union, Deadrick and Charlotte..  Later posts will cover the black business district demolished for the Auditorium  and vicinity and the neighborhoods wiped clean for the James Robertson Parkway; then finally the demolition for the National Life (Snodgrass) Tower.

As we started on 6th Avene N. with the hotels, I will add in some odds and ends about it.  It's original name was High Street and the area next to the Capitaol was very ritzy.  Here is an old, old photo showing the street where the hotels would be built in the 1920s. Note the second home on the right survived  as the B.P.O.E. Lodge.

Here is a view looking up 6th  towards the Capitiol and another from the old WM square showing the Andrew jackson parking garage next to the B.P.O.E. Lodge over by Union.

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At the end of 6th at Charlotte, which was originally Cedar Street, this photo shows the old office building on the corner demolished  for the new Highway Department Bilding and which was a surface parking lot by the 1960s.  It has a great view down Charlotte to the Courthouse.  The domed spire of St. Marys is visable.

Here are a few views fown 6th at the AJH and in the other direction.

The North end of 5th Avenue N. is still graced by St. Mary's Cathedral on the east side of 5th.  Here is the corner in 1955 with the L&C Towere rising and some of the buildings beyond..

These are  not many photos I can locate of the West side of 5th as they were largely the side of Montgomery Ward Department store and its back parking garage between Union and Deadrick  The buildings  accross from St. Marys  faced mainly on Charlotte or Deadrick instead of 5th.  The same is true for the East side  of 5th across from Montgomery Ward...old two story businesses fronting on Deadrick  or Union which dated from  Victorian to 1930s eras. 

Across Union from Montgomerey Ward was another great Nashville Department store was Lovemans. Here is a photo in the late 50s  looking down 5th to the North showing the great shopping district in downtown blocks.  You can clearly see the Montgomery ward sign and the State Office building on Capitol Hill through the street decorations.

Edited December 1, 2020 by Baronakim
spelling and grammar corrections

[Nash_12South]

Seeing the Loveman's department store reminded me that they had a store at the intersection of White Bridge Rd/Harding until around 1976 (I looked up the date). I believe its was near where the new WhiteBridge Rd overpass alignment with Woodmont is today. My mom would drag me there.

[smeagolsfree]

Do you have a picture of the building that was on the corner of Elliston and 25th N where the Jiffy Lube sits now????

[MLBrumby]

Loveman's was a Chattanooga company. Old main store was converted to condos about 15 years ago. 

[Nicholson]

10 hours ago, smeagolsfree said:

Do you have a picture of the building that was on the corner of Elliston and 25th N where the Jiffy Lube sits now????

I remembered seeing that further up in Baronakim's post -

 

Here's hoping the old Firestone building doesn't get Jiffy Lube'd too.

[smeagolsfree]

Thanks, I missed it then. Another example of a beautiful building lost to a horrible 1980s project.

[Baronakim]

Continuing the 1970s "urban renewal" of 6 Nashville city blocks.   On to 4th Avenue N.     First the aerial view looking North  

Starting in the lower left corner are two buildings of enourmous loss...the Commerce Union Bank on the NW corner of 4th & Union and the magnificant American National Bank  on the  NE corner.  i can't sufficiently mourn the loss of these two landmark Nashville towers.

 

On the SE corner we see the old Royal Cigar store.

Further up north on 4th, we see an old two story on the SW corner of Deadrick.  Note on the SE corner is the parking deck for the First American National Bank.  On the NW corner we see a very old two story building from the early 20th century with the Colored YMCA B uilding beyond.. 

The Colored YMCA was originally built as the  Duncan Hotel built in 1889 by wealthy Nashville broker William M. Duncan. This massive brick building was trimmed in stone and occupied a fourth of the block on the southeast corner of Cherry and Cedar Street (now Fourth and Charlotte). An identifying cupola made the building very unique. The Duncan had four floors comprised of forty-five rooms originally booked for three to five dollars per night. Its location made it convenient to both business and entertainment, but after the panic of 1893, competition from new hotels and a shift in business and entertainment to Church Street made the Duncan's location less desirable to visitors. By 1916 the Duncan had closed its doors as a hotel, and the building was remodeled to be used as the new home for the Colored Y.M.C.A. and the Citizens Savings Bank and Trust. The Duncan Hotel building was razed in the early 1970s during downtown urban renewal.

Of the East side of this block there was the end of the large commercial building on Deaderick Street.  In this photo from 1925, we see it as Lowensteins next to the Transfer Station for the Street Trollies.  The buildings are mostly the same in the 1960s except that the Transfer Station was a surface parking lot.   The building with the vertical "Commercial" signage was a hotel demolished the folowing year for the construction of the Morris Memorial Building.

Here is one of the building we see to the left of the photo of the Duncan Hotel above.  In this one taken in the late 1960s,  we can also see part of the Morris Memorial Building.  It is visable in the 1924 photo

The Morris Memorial Building is the only survivor of the overwhelming demolition of the 1960s & 1970s at this end of 4th Avenue N.  Of the buildings on the West side of 4th Avenue N. there is little photographic  documentation except that of the corner building on the left and a photo of part of the same building looking east down Charlotte on the right side of the photo

 

Her,e I will cut the 4th Avenue North  photos as I will cover the area below Capitol Hill down to the Square in a post coving the demolition of the black business district for the City Auditorium construction.  Next I will cover the 3rd Avenue N.  and the demolition of the East side of the square on Union.

Edited December 3, 2020 by Baronakim
spelling

[MLBrumby]

Wow!  That explains a lot to me about where the "old" city went. Those two early 'towers' were absolute gems.  And I know about the National Life buildings that were destroyed.  [smh] Urban Renewal really did more harm than good.

[smeagolsfree]

1 hour ago, Baronakim said:

The Morris Memorial Building is the only survivor of the overwhelming demolition of the 1960s & 1970s at this end of 4th Avenue N.  Of the buildings on the West side of 4th Avenue N. there is little photographic  documentation except that of the corner building on the left and a photo of part of the same building looking east down Charlotte on the right side of the photo

The owners wanted to butcher that building by adding a glass tower atop it.

Just think if we had just half of these older buildings that have been torn down. 

[Auntie Yock]

22 hours ago, MLBrumby said:

Wow!  That explains a lot to me about where the "old" city went. Those two early 'towers' were absolute gems.  And I know about the National Life buildings that were destroyed.  [smh] Urban Renewal really did more harm than good.

Even the lesser buildings were irreplaceable gems.