These photos were taken on Monday, December 2, 2019 from 10am - 1pm. 

 

Base of Batman building:

 

 

 

 

Second Ave...this is where the original tourist district was in the 1980s and 1990s.  There wasn't much on Broadway until the mid-2000s:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The library was built around 2003:

 

 

This is the old Castner-Knott Department Store.  The small size of this store illustrates just how small-time Nashville was during the classic downtown department store era. 

 

From Wikipedia:

Quote

 

Castner Knott Company was a Nashville, Tennessee-based regional department store chain which operated stores in Kentucky and Alabama, along with Tennessee. The chain was in business for a century from 1898 to 1998, in its later years as a division of Mercantile Stores Company.

Castner Knott's historic flagship location on Nashville's Church Street closed in 1996, while the remaining stores were among those sold to Little Rock, Arkansas-based Dillard's, when it acquired Mercantile in 1998. The five high-volume mall stores (Bellevue Center, CoolSprings Galleria, Hickory Hollow Mall, The Mall at Green Hills and Rivergate Mall) in the greater Nashville area, where Dillard's already had locations, were sold to Saks Incorporated and rebranded as Proffitt's. The stores were then sold in 2001 to May Company, who, in turn, rebranded these locations as Hecht's. In 2006, those stores were converted to the Macy's name as a result of the May Company-Federated Department Stores merger. Macy's would eventually close the Bellevue Center and Hickory Hollow Mall locations, following the decline of those malls as a whole.

 

 

This small park is not actually a park - rather it is owned by the city (not the park board) and is the object of much controversy as the city might sell it to a developer.  Meanwhile, it is a big homeless hangout in large part because they use the public bathrooms directly across the street at the library.

 

 

Bike Share is no match for the scooters:

 

Not sure what this is going to be:

 

A tiny strip of surviving streetscape:

 

One of Nashville's very few prewar "skyscrapers":

 

SoBro

 

This stands on the site of the 1960s-era Greyhound Station and a strip club named Christie's Cabaret, made famous when Kid Rock punched the DJ:

 

 

 

Traffic Circle built around 2008:

 

Korean Vets Blvd -- this street was a former narrow street that was widened in 2008~ to connect 8th Ave. to a new bridge over the Cumberland River.  They tore down a lot of nondescript stuff to widen the street and prep the area for the gigantic convention center that was built after 2010.

 

District 1 police station:

 

Widened Korean Vets Blvd looking uphill toward its traffic circle interchange with 8th Ave.:

 

Future Sherwin-Williams World HQ site:

 

 

One of the handful of surviving brick buildings in SoBro:

 

New Sherwin-Williams World HQ site:

 

Look at these narrow-ass streets:

 

 

Narrow-ass streets:

 

 

 

 

Survivor:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I asked this guy and he said that the Hot Dog place is NOT COMING BACK.  That means...yuppies.

 

Did they close?  One of the last good camera stores in the United States?

 

Nope, they moved:

 

 

 

 

This is the street the 3-station light rail subway was going to travel under, had the transit tax passed.  The spot where I'm standing is pretty close to the portal.

 

Still fighting the good fight:

 

 

The huge convention center:

 

Narrow-ass streets:

 

Dude records an album called Nashville Skyline and then names the distillery something totally different.

 

Typical nondescript SoBro building at left:

 

Bob Dylan's place:

 

The new Greyhound Station:

 

 

Where the subway isn't being built, thanks to the Koch Brothers:

 

 

 

Back of Bob Dylan's place:

 

This thing was built around 2015:

 

Narrow-ass streets:

 

An indoor skate park:

 

Vape:

 

 

 

 

Survivor:

 

Probably becoming a top-dollar AirBnb:

 

Narrow-ass streets:

 

Pedal Wagon HQ? 

 

Jimmy Buffet:

 

 

Look at the utility pole:

 

Looks like someone refused to sell this corner lot.  Looks like it measures about 50x90:

 

This was all surface parking 3 years ago:

 

 

 

Narrow-ass streets:

 

 

 

Holdout:

 

 

 

 

One of the very, very few remaining small structures of any quality in SoBro:

 

 

Narrow-ass streets:

 

I am HODLING:

 

 

 

 

These look like they were built around 1995-2000...no doubt in danger of being bulldozed for something that requires a tower crane:

 

 

 

A survivor:

 

 

This tower was built before the 2007-08 crash:

 

Narrow-ass streets:

 

 

 

This hotel was built around 2005...another example of new construction that is in danger of being demolished for something much bigger:

 

 

 

 

 

The Schimmerhorn Symphony Hall was built around 2005-06.  The surface parking lot in the foreground was there then and somehow is still there now.  Whoever owns it is holding out for the truly huge money, since no doubt they've been offered merely big money for the past 15 years.

 

This is the above-mentioned parking lot...it is immediately behind the Broadway bars:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the site of the "old" convention center that was built around 1987:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can see Russia from my house:

 

Look at all of this fake authenticity...none of these bars - and for certain none of these signs - were here 10 years ago.  The damn place Nudies has billboards all over town declaring it a "Nashville Original" and "Nashville's #1 Bar" when the place is only 2 years old and indistinguishable from any of the other hedge fund-owned fake "honky tonks":

 

More fake, fake, fake:

 

 

 

 

We Bankrupt:

 

 

I am strongly against the use of "batman" to describe the AT&T building! ???

 

Not a fan of NashVegas, but I love a city with narrow ass streets.  Thin people look great on them!  HA.

Great pictures! Seems like such a weird city. I know their neighborhoods in particular have a lot of new infill but almost all of it blends in terribly with the surroundings. 

 

Also, I'm visiting Nashville next month for a few days; are there any historic neighborhoods worth photographing there besides parts of Downtown?

3 hours ago, Dblcut3 said:

Great pictures! Seems like such a weird city. I know their neighborhoods in particular have a lot of new infill but almost all of it blends in terribly with the surroundings. 

 

Also, I'm visiting Nashville next month for a few days; are there any historic neighborhoods worth photographing there besides parts of Downtown?

 

No, there just plain aren't any historic neighborhoods.  It was a small city until about 1950 and they tore down almost everything from the 1800s.  In fact, the majority of what as the residential part of the city in the later 1800s is what you're looking at here - the area now called SoBro.  Perhaps 5 houses from the 1800s still stand in an area that had several hundred. 

 

There is one old blue blood neighborhood worth driving around called Belle Meade, with a bunch of big houses from the early 1900s, but it's not "old south" like New Orleans' Garden District.  In fact it's not significantly different from any similar neighborhood in Ohio. 

 

I think the thing to see in Nashville now is the very harshness of the infill as seen in the context of nondescript 1940s-50s neighborhoods.  The city enacted form-based code around 2010 and it set off a giant money grab that you see all over the place but with particular intensity along the side streets of Charlotte Ave., which was a mostly-black neighborhood for over 50 years but was steam rolled by east and west coast yuppies after 2010.  It's far beyond any gentrification situation in Ohio by several orders of magnitude.  

 

Here is a link outlining The Nations, the oddly-named neighborhood along Charlotte Ave. that is probably the most hyper-gentrified neighborhood in the city, at least that I've seen:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Nations,+Nashville,+TN+37209/@36.1597306,-86.8518892,1747m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8864610d8f353257:0x44581d39d643d84f!8m2!3d36.1598746!4d-86.8490873

 

 

 

On 12/7/2019 at 7:21 PM, MyTwoSense said:

I am strongly against the use of "batman" to describe the AT&T building! ???

 

What about Batdance?  It is "music city", after all, and at this point a Prince-themed tower wouldn't be completely uncalled for.  

I'd say Minneapolis deserves that more

8 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

Here is a link outlining The Nations, the oddly-named neighborhood along Charlotte Ave. that is probably the most hyper-gentrified neighborhood in the city, at least that I've seen:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Nations,+Nashville,+TN+37209/@36.1597306,-86.8518892,1747m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8864610d8f353257:0x44581d39d643d84f!8m2!3d36.1598746!4d-86.8490873

 

 

 

 

I can't believe they have an FBC that does not require sidewalks but here we are. Also the ones that do have them only go to the mailbox on the street. What a fail.

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1597169,-86.8535275,3a,75y,174.57h,83.18t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJt9oLJQROZ7sX-q0DeA3Xg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

8 minutes ago, JYP said:

 

I can't believe they have an FBC that does not require sidewalks but here we are. Also the ones that do have them only go to the mailbox on the street. What a fail.

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1597169,-86.8535275,3a,75y,174.57h,83.18t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJt9oLJQROZ7sX-q0DeA3Xg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

Curbs and sidewalks are rarely seen anywhere in Nashville.  It's crazy.  Then, where they have been required for new construction, they stop and start abruptly. 

8 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

What about Batdance?  It is "music city", after all, and at this point a Prince-themed tower wouldn't be completely uncalled for.  

 

 

 

another sign of appalachia ups  — brooklyn bowl nashville opens in march — its the third outlet after one opened in vegas — 

 

https://www.brooklynbowl.com/blog/detail/brooklyn-bowl-nashville-set-to-open-its-doors-in-march-2020?utm_campaign=BrooklynBowlNYC&utm_content=1236036733&utm_medium=3178840&utm_source=Email&utm_term=SFMC