Dawn on Lower Broad, Nashville

On a recent trip home to Nashville, we got up-and-out before dawn to cruise Nashville’s Lower Broad. I wanted to see the neon and what had become of my favorite old buildings along this four-block stretch that is the nation’s newest hotspot.

Hub of Nashville

This stretch of Broadway, down by the Cumberland River docks, used to be all about the business of living. Throughout the 1800s, grand bank buildings, hardware stores, grocers, clothing shops, and warehouses went up on Broadway to serve the boomtown. Ornate churches, Union Station, and Hume-Fogg High School came up too. And in the Great Depression, Federal assistance programs built the Post Office. For many years, Broadway was a hub of Nashville.

Then came music

The Grand Ole Opry moved into the Ryman Auditorium in 1943. The country music radio shows still broadcast nationwide every Friday and Saturday on WSM 650. Lower Broadway filled with honky tonks. Tootsies Orchid Lounge harbored country music legends who’d just finished performing at the Ryman and slipped through the alley into the bar’s backdoor for a night cap. Record stores, boot companies, sequined clothing shops, poster printers, restaurants, and tourist trinket shops popped up in Lower Broad’s empty warehouses and shuttered bank buildings. Music-star wannabes wandered over from the Greyhound station with their guitars to busk and be discovered along the busy Lower Broad sidewalks.

Demise:  Abandoned to “Urban Renewal”

In 1974, the Grand Ole Opry moved out of the Ryman and Lower Broad began her descent. A fight raged over whether to demolish the Ryman Auditorium. Adult bookstores, smoke shops, and liquor stores filled the growing number of abandoned buildings. Lower Broad became a dirty, dangerous place to be. I remember riding with my grandfather to pick up my aunt from work at the South Central Bell building around the corner on Second Avenue. The area was creepy, dark and cave-like between the big buildings. We’d wait with the doors locked and the windows barely cracked. I wish now that I’d asked him about his memories of the area and made some photographs. It’s just vague memories now.

In the 1990s, Lower Broad began to turn around. People began to recognize the value of the area’s history. Some buildings were saved. Many were not…destroyed in fires or “urban renewal” projects. Here’s hoping their pre-country-music neon histories are remembered.

Thank you for reading

Select photos are available on Etsy.

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Carol Fletcher is a traveling, dog-loving, coffee-addicted, Nashville born-and-raised photographer living in Chicago. To see more photo essays and projects, please visit www.carolfletcher.com.