URBAN
DESIGN POLICY /
BRIEFS
The Plan
of Nashville Timeline
1714 Frenchman Charles Charleveille opens trading post north of the French Lick Creek (flowing near a natural salt lick and sulphur spring; also called Lick Branch), near what is now Jefferson Street, to conduct business with Chickasaw, Cherokee, Choctaw and Creek tribes that use area as hunting ground.
1768 First survey of land near Lick Branch by Thomas Hutchins.
1769 Timothy Demonbreun arrives at the French Lick and establishes trading operation; legend has it that he occasionally took refuge in a cave in a limestone bluff along the Cumberland River that is today visible from Shelby Bottoms.
1779 On Christmas Day, James Robertson crosses the frozen Cumberland River with fellow settlers, pack horses, sheep and cattle, to establish a settlement at the French Lick.
1780 On April 24, the party led by John Donelson--and including free Negroes and as well as slaves-- concludes its 1,000-mile river journey to Fort Nashborough, named after North Carolina Revolutionar War General Francis Nash.
1784 North Carolina Legislature creates Davidson County; name of its largest settlement changes from Nashborough to Nashville.
1784 Surveyor Thomas Molloy draws original plat for the town: 200 one-acre lots with four acres reserved for a public square on the bluffs overlooking the river. The square’s initial civic architecture was punitive: a one-story log jail with a whipping post and pillory out front, paid for by the sale of the lots.
1784 Nashville’s first physician, Dr. James White, hits town. According to a memoir by Felix Robertson, son of founder James, White was given to “occasional sprees of drinking,” when he would dress up in buckskin and march through the streets with a gourd of whiskey, compelling all whom he met to drink with him.
1786 Davidson Academy founded by Reverend Thomas Craighead, a Presbyterian minister, at a site on Gallatin Road that is now the location of Spring Hill cemetery. The academy is subsequently chartered as Cumberland College in 1806, later becomes the University of Nashville, and eventually fathers Peabody College.
1787 Real estate assessed and taxed at one dollar per acre.
1789 Methodists erect the public square’s first architecture in solid masonry, a stone church which also serves as courthouse and public meeting place until the first courthouse is built in 1802.
1794 Wagon road is established between Nashville and Knoxville.
1794 Robert Renfro, an enterprising and quasi-independent slave, receives a license to sell whiskey at “Black Bob’s Tavern” on the public square. Andrew Jackson and other men of prominence patronize his tavern and rooming house. In 1813, perhaps be cause of too much imbibing, Jackson and six other men wielding guns and knives, swords and sticks engage in a bloody fight in the square; the future president is shot in the shoulder and almost bleeds to death.
1796 Tennessee admitted to the Union.
1804 State authorizes turnpike construction. Like many initiatives of the state legislature, however, the authorization does not include a funding mechanism. It is only in 1834 that bonds are issued for radial turnpikes to Gallatin, Franklin, Columbia, Murfreesboro, Shelbyville; the turnpikes are completed in 1842.
1806 Nashville incorporated as a town.
1807 Bank of Nashville established.
1807 Nashville’s first volunteer fire-fighting force formed; first paid department organized in 1860.
1809 Tennessee General Assembly authorizes Nashville’s mayor and alderman to raise money through a lottery for the purpose of bringing water to town.
1819 First steamboat docks at the Nashville wharf; last commercial steamboat taken out of service in 1933.
1822 City Cemetery dedicated; most of the bodies that had occupied graves in a burying ground near the Sulphur Spring, as well as many from private family graveyards, are moved to the new location, including that of city founder James Robertson.
1823 Nashville’s first bridge over Cumberland River completed in the location of what is now the Victory Memorial bridge; prior to this ferries used to cross the river.
1824 Music publishing begins in Nashville with the “Western Harmony,” a hymn book and instructions for singing.
1825 Philip Lindsley becomes president of the University of Nashville, after turning down the presidency of Princeton University. Some historians credit him with describing Nashville as the “Athens of the West” in speeches as early as 1840. As European settlers drive west across the continent, the term is changed to “Athens of the South,” which becomes the city’s official moniker when used by Governor Bob Taylor in his speech opening the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in 1897.
1828 Andrew Jackson elected 7th President of the United States. Elected in 1828; inaugurated in 1829; served two terms.
1833 Nashville’s waterworks inaugurated with reservoir on Rolling Mill Hill and pumping station on lower river bluff.
1838 Cherokees pass through Nashville on the Trail of Tears
1843 Tennessee General Assembly names Nashville permanent State Capital; four acres on what was originally called Cedar Knob are acquired for a capitol building.
1844 James K. Polk elected as 11th President of the USA.
1850 Cholera epidemic kills 911 in Nashville.
1850 First locomotive engine arrives in Nashville--by boat. The Nashville & Chattanooga’s first trip is to Antioch in 1851; three years later the line reaches Chattanooga. The Louisville & Nashville line links those two cities in 1859, just in time for the Union Army to take it over; the 185.5-mile trip takes nine hours. By 1861 five lines enter the city.
1851 Lighting of Nashville’s first gas lamp, on Market Street (now Second Avenue North) at the Public Square. Natural gas piped from Texas is first used in Nashville in 1946.
1851 First Presbyterian Church designed in the Egyptian Revival style by William Strickland completed; in 1955 the congregation moves to a new church in the suburbs and the Downtown Presbyterian congregation is organized.
1853 Governor Andrew Johnson overcomes stiff opposition to pass legislation for direct taxation to support the state’s public schools. Nashville’s first public school--named for Alfred Hume, who had developed a plan for the school system modeled on that of Boston--opens on February 26, 1855.
1859 State Capitol designed by Philadelphia architect William Strickland finished; the cornerstone had been laid on July 4, 1845. Labor force included convicts and slaves. Strickland died in 1854 and was buried within the Capitol’s walls; his son Francis oversaw completion of the building.
1862 In February the city is occupied by Union forces. The first dress parade of the troops takes place on the public square, where residents watch from windows and balconies as soldiers from Ohio drill. On March 3, Andrew Johnson is named military governor of Tennessee. The Battle of Nashville in December 1864 is the last major conflict of the Civil War.
1862 Union soldiers bring baseball to Nashville, playing in a field north of the Capitol near the sulphur spring. In 1866 the first game between organized teams is played on the field; the first professional baseball game is played on the same field in 1885. In 1901, Athletic Park (later Sulphur Dell) stadium is constructed next to sulphur spring (on what is now Fourth Avenue North) as home of the Tennessee Volunteers professional baseball team. The last game is played there in 1963.
1865 Andrew Johnson becomes 17th President upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; in 1868 he survives impeachment by one vote.
1866 First mule-drawn streetcar route in Nashville opens between downtown and the University of Nashville to the south; in 1872 the cars reach to the suburb of Edgefield, in 1880 to Vanderbilt University. Electric trolleys begin service in 1888.
1866 Fisk University founded for the education of emancipated slaves and named for General Clinton B Fisk, the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau. In 1871 the Jubilee Singers begin a national tour to raise money for their school; Jubilee Hall, the first building in the United States erected for the higher education of African Americans, is completed in 1876.
1869 Mount Ararat Cemetery established for African Americans.
1870 From the 1870s through the 1920s, Nashville is the traveling salesman capital of the South; the numerous wholesale grocery warehouses are a big draw, as are insurance companies and religious publishers.
1871 Tennessee Manufacturing Company built 1871. Became Werthan Bag in 1928. Listed in National Register 1999.
1873 Liquor trade is big--$5 million--business; four distilleries produce 100,000 barrels of booze and the city has 62 saloons and 17 wholesale dealers in wine and spirits.
1873 Vanderbilt University established.
1876 Meharry Medical College founded.
1876 Nashville Banner newspaper established; last issue February 20, 1998.
1877 First telephone call made in Nashville; on the receiving end is the city’s grandest dame, the widow of President James K. Polk.
1877 Cornerstone for Nashville Customs House laid by President Rutherford B. Hayes; his visit is the first south of the Mason-Dixon line by a U.S. president since Abraham Lincoln went to Richmond after its fall during the Civil War. In 1976 the building is declared surplus by the federal government and given to the city.
1880 Nashville annexes the city of Edgefield, which had been incorporated in 1869.
1880 The highlight of the Nashville Centennial Exposition is the dedication of the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson by sculptor Clark Mills on the east side of Capitol Hill.
1881 Tennessee legislature passes the South’s first Jim Crow law enabling the segregation of passengers in railroad cars. Nashville sees its first electric light.
1886 2nd Woodland Street Bridge constructed, replacing the suspension bridge of 1853, which was burned by retreating Confedderate soldiers in 1862.
1887 Belmont Mansion and Acklen estate, established in 1853, purchased to for Belmont Junior College for Girls.
1888 First of 15 locks and dams constructed on the Cumberland River by the Nashville District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to aid steamboat commerce. The old locks were dismantled after the construction of the Cheatham and Old Hickory locks and dams.
1889 First poll tax for voting instituted by Tennessee legislature in an attempt to disenfranchise blacks.
1889 New waterworks for Nashville. Omohundro Pumping Station takes the city’s water from the Cumberland; downtown reservoir relocates to former site of Union Fort Casino on 8th Avenue; capacity is 51 million gallons. In
1912 reservoir ruptures, releasing 25 million gallons into surrounding neighborhoods; miraculously, no one is killed.
1889 The Ladies’ Hermitage Association acquires The Hermitage from the state and begins preserving it as a public shrine.
1890 Nashville General Hospital built on river bluffs; site selected to take advantage of the proximity to the medical school across the street on Rutledge Hill.
1890 Bruton & Condon Snuff Company erects a building on Harrison Street, the beginning of the tobacco complex in the area north of the Capitol; the company subsequently becomes American Tobacco in 1900 and then United States Tobacco.
1892 Union Gospel Tabernacle (Ryman) completed.
1892 Lick Branch Creek disappears from sight, enclosed in brick sewer; the creek had been channelized in 1889 to enable water and sewage to flow more easily into the Cumberland River.
1896 First automobile arrives in Nashville; cars built in Nashville 1910-1914 by Southern Motor Works, later called Marathon Motorworks.
1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition, with first Nashville Parthenon as its fine arts pavilion and the site’s centerpiece; total attendance: 1,786,711.
1901 Polk Place, former residence of President and Mrs. James K. Polk, demolished. Polk died in 1849, leaving the estate bounded by Union and Church Streets and 8th and 9th Avenues to his widow for her lifetime, then to be offered to the State of Tennessee for the governor’s residence. When Mrs. Polk dies in 1891 the State declines to pay the $22,000 asked by the Polk heirs.
1900 Union Station
built by L&N line, which dominates Nashville’s rail service;
six percent of the city’s work force employed in railroad industry.
After the decline of travel by rail, the station suffers from neglect
and decay; in 1986 the building is
renovated into a hotel.
1901 Nashville Mayor James Marshall Head asks the city council to appropriate money to bury utility lines underground; they refuse.
1901 Watkins Park, city’s first, transferred to the new Parks Board; land was given to the city in 1870 by Samuel Watkins, who had quarried stone for the State Capitol nearby. Centennial Park established in 1902.
1902 Life & Casualty Insurance Company established.
1903 Nashville Arcade opens on May 20.
1904 Carnegie Library opens downtown after a donation by industrialist/philanthropist Andrew Carnegie of $100,000 for con- struction; in 1963 the building is demolished and replaced with the Ben West Library. Carnegie libraries in North and East Nashville are still standing.
1904 Downtown streets changed from names to numbers.
1905 Boycott of streetcars by African Americans to protest Jim Crow segregation of accommodations; Reverend Preston Taylor, James Napier and Richard Boyd form a private transportation company. Because the city levies a privilege tax on the system, and the African Americans could circulate only a small number of vehicles, the protest fails within a year.
1905 First National Bank Building, at 12 stories Nashville’s first skyscraper, constructed on corner of Fourth Avenue North and Church Street.
1905 City Sewer Department established
1905 Last stage coach line discontinues service.1907 Tony Sudekum opens first movie theater next to the Arcade on 5th Avenue North.
1910 Hermitage Hotel opens at corner of Sixth Avenue and Union Street;
1912 GooGoo Clusters--caramel, marshmallow, peanuts and milk chocolate--invented by William H. Campbell of Nashville and manufactured there by Standard Candy Company. Slogan: “Go Get a GooGoo . . . It’s good!”
1920 Tennessee’s vote to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives women all over the country the right to vote. The Hermitage Hotel served as headquarters for both suffragist and anti-suffragist groups, whose members converged on Nashville to lobby the Tennessee legislature.
1912 Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State Normal School for Negroes opens its doors; in 1922 the school becomes a college, in 1951 a university. The institution is renamed Tennessee State University in 1971 and merges with UT-Nashville in 1979. Establishes a downtown campus in 1980.
1912 Shelby Park
opens on July 4; originally operated as a private amusement park by
a company which went bankrupt in 1903, the park is named to honor John Shelby,
a physician, state senator and postmaster who owned much land within
the bend of the river that inscribes East Nashville. The city’s
first municipal golf course is built on adjacent 50-acre tract acquired
in the 1920s.
1914 Peabody College moves from Rutledge Hill to site across 21st Avenue from
Vanderbilt University that had once housed Roger Williams University, an institution founded
for the education of former slaves whose buildings were subsequently damaged
by fire and then abandoned. Peabody campus is modeled after the University
of Virginia, designed by Thomas Jefferson.
1916 On March 22,
fire in East Nashville destroys over 600 buildings and leaves 3,000
homeless. East Park constructed on a burned-out site with an elaborate
Beaux Arts bandshell by architect Donald Southgate; bandshell demolished
in 1956 for ball fields.
1916 City adopts building code.
1918 DuPont builds Old Hickory Powder Plant to supply gunpowder for World War I; after peace declared, production shifts to rayon.
1920 First Nashville Symphony organized. Plays in Ryman, then Vendome Theater; moves to War Memorial in 1925.
1920 Work begins to replace temporary Nashville Parthenon of wood and stucco with a permanent concrete version; the new building is finished in 1931. Restoration of this structure completed in 2001.
1925 Tennessee War Memorial built to honor dead of World War I.
1925 WSM--”We Shield Millions”--radio, owned and licensed to National Life and Accident, goes on the air and the Grand Ole Opry soon follows.
1926-27 Major floods along the Cumberland; the river floods parts of downtown again in 1937.
1928 First airport opens to public; McConnell Field, located on the present site of McCabe Golf Course; operated until 1939.
1927 A promotional brochure by the Illinois Central Railroad proclaims that Nashville is one of the two largest commercial fertilizer manufacturing centers in the United States, and one of the two biggest hardwood floor markets in the world; the city also has factories turning out 10,000 pairs of shoes a day.
1929 A national city planning survey finds Nashville “notably lacking in city planning, zoning and subdivision control”; in 1931 the Nashville Planning Commission created.
1930 Local banking and brokerage firm of Caldwell and Company declares bankruptcy on November 14; in response, 120 banks across the South go under. By 1931 armies of transients are camping on the Cumberland’s banks and roaming the streets looking for work.
1933 Tornado tears through East Nashville, taking a path remarkably similar to the tornado of 1998.
1934 TVA formed by Congress.
1936 City Hall and Market House, as well as the 1855 Davidson County Courthouse designed by William Strickland’s son, Francis, demolished to make way for the current Metro Courthouse.
1937 Federal government constructs Cheatham Place (for whites) and Andrew Jackson (for African Americans) as first public housing in Nashville. Nashville Housing Authority created to administer these projects in 1939.
1937 Nashville sculptor William Edmonson first African American given a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
1937 American Airlines lands first commercial plane at Berry Field, which was named for Col. Harry S. Berry, a World War I pilot and the state WPA administrator. A new terminal is built in 1961, the first year of jet service. In 1987 another new terminal is constructed, and the name is changed to Nashville International Airport--but the initials on the luggage tags are still BNA.
1940 Nashville Housing Authority designates over 90 percent of the housing between Capitol Hill and railroad trestle to the north as unfit or substandard, paving the way for the Capitol Hill Redevelopment Plan; this urban renewal project, which eliminated six historic African American churches, was the first in the nation to receive Congressional approval in 1949.
1940 Cumberland River freezes solid.
1941 Buses replace electric streetcars.
1950 Music City USA term coined by Nashville DJ WSM’s David Cobb
1951 Z. Alexander Looby and Robert Lillard elected to the City Council, the first African Americans to win seats in that body since 1911.
1952 Scarritt College becomes the first racially integrated private school in Tennessee. Two years later, when the newspapers publishes graduation photographs that include two African Americans sporting their mortar boards, the administration receives phone calls from irate Nashvillians yelling that the school can’t mix the races. The president’s secretary calmly replies: “We've already done it.”
1954 Farmers Market moves from 1937 City Market building opposite the Metro Courthouse to Jackson Street north of the Capitol; the old market is now the Ben West building and houses Metro traffic courts.
1956 Owen Bradley knocks out floor of an old house and brings the first music enterprise to what would become Music Row; subsequent now-historic recordings issue from Bradley’s quonset hut and RCA’s Studio B.
1957 Life and Casualty Tower, the tallest building in the Southeast, opens for business.
1957 Public school desegregation begins on September 9 with the Nashville Plan, a gradualist approach allowing one grade per year to be desegregated beginning with the first grade. In the early morning hours of September 10, a wing of the Hattie Cotton School in East Nashville is demolished by blast of dynamite.
1959 Construction of Briley Parkway begins.
1960 Pro tests against whites-only lunch counters begin at downtown department stores, five-and-dime stores and bus terminals; boycotts by black shoppers follow. On April 19 a crowd of over 3,000 march from Fisk University to the steps of the court house, following the bombing of black leader Alexander Looby’s house; there they hear Mayor Ben West throw his support behind demands for the integration of the city’s lunch counters.
1960 Grandstand at Tennessee State Fair Grounds burns; hosted first State Fair in 1907.
1960 One half of all American recordings come from Nashville.
1961 Maxwell House burns on Christmas Day; hotel was built by John Overton and opened in 1869. Brand of coffee named after the hotel went into production in 1900.
1962 Interstate arrives in Davidson County with the construction of a segment of I-40 near the Cheatham County line; cynics note the apparent coincidence that Governor Frank Clement has a home in Dickson.
1963 Central Loop General Neighborhood Plan by Clark and Rapuano for Nashville Housing Authority. The urban renewal plan for Nashville.
1963 Construction began on Percy Priest Dam; completed 1968, finalizing control of the currents of the Cumberland River. Old Hickory Dam began operating in 1957.
1963 Metro Government established, one of the first combinations of city and county governments in the nation.
1963 Harding Mall becomes 1st shopping center in Tennessee. Soon followed by 100 Oaks Mall, named for the 100 Oaks Thompson mansion demolished for its construction.
1966 Metro Historical Commission formed to preserve Nashville’s architectural heritage.
1966 The Hermitage (1835) of Andrew Jackson becomes first building in Davidson County on the National Register of Historic Places.
1967 Davidson County voters approve liquor by the drink.
1967 Country Music Hall of Fame--inspired by the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City--debuts on Music Row on the former site of the Tony Rose Park playground.
1967 Construction of Ellington Parkway begins.
1969 Nashville leading city in the world in the number of electrically heated homes, courtesy of TVA’s cheap rates.
1970 All 12 grades of the public school system are officially integrated, but the vast majority of students still attend schools pre dominantly of their own race. Busing to achieve integration begins in
1971; in that same year seven new private schools are organized.
1972 Opryland USA theme park opens.
1973 First building in Metro Center office park placed atop a former landfill; in 2002 Watkins College of Art and Design occupies abandoned Cineplex; the Watkins Institute had held its first classes on Church Street in 1889.
1974 Parking lot constructed in front of the Metro Courthouse, replacing public square; last of historic 19th century buildings surrounding square razed.
1974 Legislative Plaza replaces War Memorial gardens; renovations to repair leaks to state offices and parking garage below com mence in 2004.
1977 Conserving a Heritage published by the Metro Historical Commission, drawing attention to Nashville’s historic neighbor hoods; creates ethic to preserve districts and neighborhoods as well as individual buildings.
1978 Nashville Sounds debut in Greer Stadium; professional baseball returns to Nashville.
1978 Edgefield first Nashville neighborhood to receive protection of historic zoning overlay.
1978 AMTRAK ends passenger rail service to Nashville.
1979 Vanderbilt University and Peabody College merge.
1981 Tennessee Performing Arts Center opens downtown in the James K. Polk Building, which also houses the Tennessee State Museum and state offices.
1983 Riverfront Park dedicated on July 10, replacing large TVA tower and the Nashville wharf at the foot of Broadway.
1985 I-440 construction begins; the limited access highway linking I-40 west of the city with I-65 and I-24 to the south is completed after neighborhood activists force changes to its design.
1988 First Southern Festival of Books in downtown Nashville.
1991 Construction of 840 Loop begins with the SE segment; fierce battles over the road’s design and right-of-way in Southwest Williamson County only resolved when Gerald Nicely becomes TDOT Commissioner in 2001; Nicely also suspends plans for the equally controversial NW segment of 840.
1991 Father Ryan High School moves from Elliston Place to Franklin Road, one of a number of private schools to seek greener pastures in the newer suburbs.
1991 Center City Plan is the first Subarea Plan for the city; updated in 1997.
1992 Sudekum Building--an Art Deco landmark on Church Street--detonated for surface parking; Cumberland Apartments are later constructed on the site.
1993 Tennessee Bicentennial Capitol Mall and State Capitol Area Masterplan is accepted by the Building Commission. The centerpiece is the proposed 17 acre urban park. Followed in 1997 by the Bicentennial Mall Urban Masterplan.
1994 BellSouth building rears its “Batman” profile over the Nashville skyline, joining the L&C tower as an icon for the city.
1994 Zoning in the central core changed to permit residential construction.
1994 Ryman Auditorium reopens after renovation; threatened by demolition after Grand Ole Opry migrated to the Opryland complex in the Pennington Bend suburbs in 1974, the historic building was saved by a national preservation campaign. In 2001 the Ryman named a National Historic Landmark. Groundbreaking for Shelby Bottoms Greenway.
1996 Bicentennial Mall opens to public on May 31; with the new Farmers’ Market, which debuted on Mall’s western flank in 1995, propels redevelopment in Germantown and Hope Gardens neighborhoods.
1996 The Nashville Arena opens with a Christmas concert by Amy Grant; in 1998 the professional hockey team the Predators leap onto the ice of what is now the Gaylord Entertainment Center.
1997 Opryland Theme Park closes; replaced by Opry Mills Mall in 2000.
1997 The Plan for SoBro is published by the Nashville Scene, the result of a design charrette that focused on the area south of Broadway to the interstate.
1998 Tornado hits downtown and East Nashville. The massive destruction of homes and trees spurs the
1999 Re-Leaf campaign and RU/DATE plan for East Nashville, and initiates renovations
1999 Coliseum football stadium welcomes the Tennessee Titans (formerly Houston Oilers); construction necessitates relocation of industrial uses on the East Bank. In their first year in their new home the Titans emerge as AFC champs.
2000 Mayor Bill Purcell announces the foundation of the Nashville Civic Design Center
2001 USA Today names Nashville nation's most sprawling metropolitan region with population of 1 million or more.
2001 Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and the downtown Nashville Public Library open to the public.
2001 Union Station train shed dismantled after decades of neglect; site used for surface parking. With shed gone, Union Station loses its designation as a National Historic Landmark in 2003.
2001 Nashville Rescue Mission relocates to the old Sears building on Lafayette Street. Mission’s former quarters in 1914 Spanish-style building, which housed the exclusive Centennial Club for ladies until 1960, demolished in 2000 for surface parking after a suspicious fire.
2003 Construction begins on Schermerhorn Symphony Center.
2004 Construction begins on new public square park--with parking garage below--in front of Metro Courthouse; renovation of courthouse commenced in 2003 after Mayor and Metro Council took up temporary quarters in the former Ben West Library.
2004 Gateway Bridge restores vehicular connection between East Nashville and SoBro, lost when the Shelby Street Bridge closed in 1998; Shelby reopened as pedestrian bridge in 2003.
2004 Thermal Plant, which had burned Nashville’s garbage to heat and cool many downtown buildings demolished--to the cheers of environmentalists.
2005 The Plan of Nashville is published by the Nashville Civic Design Center
An edited version
of this timeline appears in
The Plan of Nashville: Avenues to a Great City.
Vanderbilt University Press (Nashville) 2005.