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The Tennessee Titans, previously known as the Houston Oilers, moved to the city of Nashville&nbsp;because Owner Bud Adams had a dispute with the city of Houston. The stadium opened in 1999 despite being hit by a tornado mid-construction.&nbsp;Many wondered how the transition would work out.The first season was a success as the team went undefeated at home!&nbsp;As of the beginning of the 2015 season,&nbsp;the Titans hold a home record of 45-27 during the regular season and 2-2 during the playoffs. As well as football team success, the team has also had financial success, as every game since its construction has been a sell out crowd, and to obtain season tickets, one must be put on a waiting list with no definite promises.In addition to the Tennessee Titans home games, the stadium also plays host to a number of other events. The Tennessee State Tigers&nbsp;from the NCAA host their opponents on the turf, per an agreement made with the city of Nashville and the state of Tennessee. One of the more important venues to be played in regards to football&nbsp;is the annual Music City Bowl. While the stadium mainly hosts athletic competitions, one of the more renowned events to hold the stage is the CMA Music Festival, which gathers country music fans from across the country.

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The home field of the Tennessee Titans from 1999-Present. It is owned by the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. It was constructed from May 3rd, 1997- August 27th, 1999. The total cost was $412 million dollars and has a capacity of 69,143. 

Nissan Stadium

Starting at Nissan Stadium, drive to historical antebellum homes and sites connected to 20th-century firefighting, civil rights, and LGBTQ+ rights, all on the east side of the Cumberland River, across from downtown Nashville.

James McGavock, the grandson of an Irish immigrant, was given 320 acres of land in the Nashville area by his father, David McGavock. James built a mansion on his land that he called Fountain Blue as a country home. James died around one year later, in 1841; an acquaintance, Samuel Earthman, shot and killed him due to a dispute. The property was split into four tracts for James' children; his daughter, Lucinda, inherited the mansion on 94 acres. In 1842, Lucinda married Jeremiah George Harris, local Newspaper editor of the Union. Their son, Joseph, was born in 1843. Mr. Harris wrote in 1844 to his friend, James K. Polk (the soon-to-be U.S. president), of construction taking place at Fountain Blue. The house was more than doubled i size; the prior Federal style was replaced with a more up-to-date Greek Revival style. The original portion of the mansion is seen as two-thirds of the north elevation. The two southern rooms were added at this time, on a foundation of machine-cut limestone, a new innovation of that era. The main entrance was shifted from the north to the south side. The second Harris child, Lucie, was born in 1846; Lucinda died one year later.Fountain Blue remained unoccupied during the Civil War while Jeremiah Harris served in the Union Navy and son Joseph was a Confederate soldier in Knoxville. Daughter Lucie lived in the North during the war. Joseph died in Europe in 1865; Lucie returned to live at Fountain Blue. In 1868, she married a professor of surgery at the University of Nashville, Dr. Van Sinderin Lindsley. More work was done on Fountain Blue by the Lindsleys, including adding projecting bays and a portico on the east side and a two-story porch on the south; these changes, plus arches over some doorways, gave the house more of an Italianate style. Dr. Lindsley died in 1885 and Lucie soon started to sell off portions of the property. Lucie sold the house in 1891 to Wesley Emmett Gatewood and moved to live with an offspring in New York.Fountain Blue was the Gatewood home from 1891 to 1905. By the 1890s, a streetcar line a block from the house connected the rapidly developing suburb to Nashville. While Alonzo C. Webb purchased Fountain Blue in 1905, he lived elsewhere in the neighborhood (309 Wilburn St.) and sold a lot on a corner of the property to the superintendent of Nashville Public Schools, Professor J.J. Keys. While building a new home on the lot, Keys and his wife lived in Fountain Blue until 1913. The house was subdivided to include multiple apartments beginning in 1915; exterior changes were made to enclose the second-floor porch and to install a modern Craftsman-style entrance facing Meridian St. Mr. Webb moved into a part of Fountain Blue in 1928 but rented out the apartments. Heirs of Mr. Webb rented out the apartments after his death in 1939. Nearby Ray of Hope Community Church bought Fountain Blue in 2003 and renovated the house to restore the pre-apartments configuration. The house became their Better Tomorrows Adult Education Center. A Birmingham, Alabama-based brewery has announced plans to convert Fountain Blue into a craft brew pub by late 2023.

The two-story, brick house behind the chain-link fence at 908 Meridian St. is the McGavock-Gatewood-Webb House, built around 1840 and enlarged in the mid-1840s and the 1870s. Also known as Fountain Blue, the home remained the property of later generations of the McGavock family until 1891 and was the Gatewood family home until 1905. The Webb family divided the house into rental apartments in the 1910s. The McGavock-Gatewood-Webb House became a National Register of Historic Places listing in 2007. The building was bought by the church across the street in 2003 but was later purchased by local developers John Rochford and Ed Cooper. There is a confirmed plan to turn the house into a craft beer bar by late 2023.

McGavock-Gatewood-Webb House (Fountain Blue)

A bridge over the Cumberland River connected Nashville to the land east of the river in 1850. The bridge was destroyed in February 1862 by orders of the Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnson during evacuation of the city. The suspension bridge was rebuilt from 1865 to 1866. The eastern side of the river was known as Edgefield and became a prosperous residential area. Edgefield became part of the city of Nashville in 1880. After a huge fire in 1916 destroyed hundreds of buildings, the area began to decline. One of the oldest Victorian houses that survived the 1916 fire is the Miles House.The Edgefield Seminary for Young Ladies was established in 1867 and was located in the Miles House from about 1870 to 1879. The private school was run by Mr. and Mrs. Henri Weber. Mrs. Weber was the school's principal while her husband was Professor of Music. Mr. Weber was a teacher in his native Germany before emigrating to America. Mrs. Weber, the former Margaret Isabella Walker, was a North Carolina native. Assistants taught many of the classes in the school. By 1875, there were 40 pupils and six teachers; the school grossed $1,200 that year. Mr. Weber died in 1879 and the school (renamed Edgefield Female Seminary) ran into financial difficulties. The school soon consolidated with a larger private school for girls in Nashville, Ward Seminary; Ward had opened in September 1865. Mrs. Weber became a Ward Seminary faculty member. The Webers' son, Henri Carleton Weber, was born in Nashville in 1860; at that time, the Weber family lived in the boarding house of Eliza P. Ford in Nashville's Sixth Ward and Henri Sr. (age 50) worked as a music teacher. Henri Jr. later served as superintendent of schools for the city for 24 years; a brother and sister also became teachers in Nashville.J.W. Lovell, a Nashville riverboat operator, was an early owner of the Miles House, according to the National Register nomination. A "river captain" named J.W. Lovell resided on Woodland between Minnick and Tulip in 1865, but this was a couple blocks to the east of the Miles House. Captain J.W. Lovell and his family operated the Lovell Line of steamboats on the Cumberland River. They were in competition with the Ryman Line into the early twentieth century, run by Captains Ryman and Tyner. The National Register nomination research found Lovell residing in the house in 1884.The house's name comes from a more recent owner, Roy A. Miles. Miles retired from being a Nashville Circuit Court Judge by the 1970s. In 1920, the house at 631 Woodland was owned by Roy A.'s father and was the home of fifteen people. Patterson S. Miles (age 59) worked as a salesman at a seed store; his wife was named Jennie (58). Four of their children, aged 21 (Roy) to 30, shared the house, along with a daughter-in-law, grandchildren, several boarders, and an African-American woman who worked as a cook. By 1927, Roy A. was an attorney and still lived in the Woodland St. house.The Miles House was modified to contain nine apartments by the mid-1970s, before the 1977 fire. The new owner, Charles Williams, had plans in the late 1970s to carefully restore the mansion. The Miles House is across the street from the Edgefield Historic District, listed in the National Register and the first designated by the city of Nashville in 1978. The Miles House became a National Register listing soon after, in early 1979.

Constructed around 1860, this red brick house behind the low stone wall at the corner of Woodland and S. 7th streets is known as the Miles House. The private home in the Nashville suburb of Edgefield later became a girls' school in the 1870s. The suburb became part of Nashville in 1880. For much of the first half of the twentieth century, the house was the home of the Miles family, including a local judge. A fire in 1977 damaged the roof in the central entrance bay tower and much of the interior woodwork. In 1979, the Miles House was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The building now houses the Miller Law Offices.

Miles House

After the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling was made on May 17, 1954, &nbsp;Civil Rights Attorney Alexander Looby and Avon Williams requested the Nashville Board of Education desegregate Nashville public school.

Superintendents in the Nashville school system responded to Looby and Williams, and they said they would review the Supreme Court ruling and wait for instructions. Mayor of Nashville Ben West said, “our people are law-abiding citizens. We have no other thought except to conform to the law of the land.”

After it was apparent that public schools in Nashville weren’t going to be desegregated, Civil Rights Attorney Alexander Looby, Avon Williams and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed a class-action lawsuit, Robert W. Kelly, et al. v. Nashville Board of Education, on September 23, 1955. Alfred Z. Kelly, the plaintiff of the case was a barber whose 14-year-old son Robert wasn’t allowed to attend East High School when he applied to enroll. In turn, Robert Kelly had to ride the bus to the Black high school near Fisk University. This bus ride took him across the river to attend Pearl High School, while East High School was within walking distance of their home.

In his decision for the plaintiffs, Federal District Court Judge Williams E. Miller gave the Nashville Board of Education six months to create a plan that conformed with the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. The Nashville Board of Education offered a plan that would begin the desegregation of public schools starting with the first grade in the upcoming fall semester. Similar to school boards in other cities, the Nashville Board of Education moved slowly in the process of integrating their schools, many of which remained either predominantly Black or white for the next decade.

New superintendent W.H. Oliver worked with the school board to implement their desegregation plan which&nbsp;started with children in the first grade in 1957 with the goal of having all twelve grades integrated by 1968. The judge ordered the plan to proceed and integration of first&nbsp;grade classes started on September 9, 1957. White supremacists, led by the Ku Klux Klan, the White Citizens Council and the Tennessee Federation for Constitutional Government, who protested desegregation pushed back against the plans to desegregate, but Nashville began desegregation on September 9, 1957.

East High School began desegregation in 1965, and two years later in 1967 Black students who had been enrolled at East High School graduated. The Robert W. Kelly, et al. v. Nashville Board of Education case became Tennessee’s longest concerning school desegregation when it was settled in 1998.&nbsp;

East High School in Nashville, Tennessee opened in 1932 during the Great Depression and enrolled only white students in its first decades. When Robert Kelly was denied enrollment at East High School because he was Black, civil rights activists supported a class-action lawsuit against the Nashville school board to compel them to comply with the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board. Robert W. Kelly, et al. v. Nashville Board of Education was filed on September 23, 1955. Although the school board did not immediately end segregation and many neighborhood schools reflected patterns of racial segregation, the case sparked desegregation plans for the whole city of Nashville.



East High School and the Robert W. Kelly, v. Nashville Board of Education (1955) 

The City of Nashville appropriated funds in 1913 to build two new fire stations in the suburbs. Locals east of the Cumberland River near Five Points formed the Lockeland Improvement League and were successful in landing one of the stations for their area. The J.B. Richardson Engine Company No. 14 officially went into service on October 1, 1914. The first fire chief at the new station was A.A. Rozetta. The Colonial Revival style station still serves the Lockeland Springs area of Nashville. The architect of the two-story building with a combination hipped and gable roof was James Yeaman, Nashville City Architect. The fire station was one of the first in Nashville to try to blend into a residential neighborhood instead of being a distinctive landmark.The north (Holly St.) side is the main facade, with a driveway leading to the vehicular entrance. Two-story fluted tin columns support a pedimented gable with a second-story balcony above the driveway. The vehicular doorway to Engine Company No. 14 was built for motorized fire engines, since horses were being phased out. Earlier fire stations built for horse-drawn wagons were modified later for the new technology. Since fire trucks were smaller in the 1910s, many of today's fire trucks don't fit through the Holly St. Fire Hall opening. The engine company has adapted by using smaller trucks.A hipped-roof addition was built onto the back of the fire hall in 1938, adjacent to S. 16th St. A flat-roofed, L-shaped second addition was built of brick onto the rear to hold kitchen space and additional storage lockers. At the far rear corner of the lot, at S. 16th St. at the alley, a one-story brick building was constructed next to the fire hall in the twentieth century for use as community meeting space. The Lockeland Springs Neighborhood Association was one of the groups that held meetings in the detached building by the early 1980s, when Fred Davis was fire chief at Holly St. Since the 1980s, a new addition connected the rear of the station to the formerly detached building, along the S. 16th St. sidewalk.The station's namesake, J.B. Richardson, was a local businessman with a wholesale shoe and boot company. Richardson purchased the nearby Lockeland Mansion as a country home around 1890; he died in 1913, a year before this new fire hall opened. In 1922, the city was gifted a lot next to the fire station (along Holly St.) by local residents. Bass Park was established on the lot. Locals were instrumental in keeping the Holly St. Fire Hall open whenever proposals to close it were made.The Nashville tornado of March 3rd, 2020 tore the roof off the building and broke many of the windows. To add insult to injury, the outset of the covid-19 epidemic soon after the storm disrupted efforts to rebuild. In the meantime, the building was boarded up and covered in tarps while the firemen found other space for their temporary home. Local residents, firemen, and the Mayor of Nashville celebrated with a ribbon-cutting on the repaired fire station in late July 2021.

The Holly Street Fire Hall has stood here since 1914 featuring a design intended to blend into the residential neighborhood with its red brick facade and columned wraparound porch, The building was originally known as the Eastland Fire Station and then as J.B. Richardson Engine Company No. 14. Holly Street Fire Hall suffered extensive damage from the March 2020 tornado that hit Nashville. Thankfully, it was able to be repaired and the grand re-opening ceremony took place in late July 2021. The building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The 100+-year-old building is the oldest fire station still in use in Nashville.

Holly Street Fire Hall

Campbell was represented by Nashville attorney Abby Rubenfeld, an LGBTQ+ community leader, in 1996 in the Tennessee Supreme Court case Penny Campbell v. Don Sundquist. Sundquist was a former Congressman and served as the&nbsp;Governor of Tennessee from 1995 to 2003. In the case, the&nbsp;state Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to criminalize homosexual acts and sex that occurred in private. As a result, the state decriminalized homosexual acts between consenting adults in private.

Will Campbell, Penny’s father, was a&nbsp;pastor and supporter of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Penny Campbell was also progressive on matters of racial equality and similar to other leaders of the gay rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s, she learned from the strategies used by the Black freedom struggle. In 1987,&nbsp;Campbell led the Tennessee delegation to the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. She also organized Nashville’s first Pride event in 1988.&nbsp;

Campbell protested the Presidential Commission on the HIV Epidemic’s ineffectiveness when they visited the Vanderbilt campus. Campbell earned a bachelor of science from Peabody College in 1977 and a master of divinity at Vanderbilt University in 1989. Campbell went on to be Director of Residential Services at Park Center as an advocate for mental health services and affordable housing. The women’s shelter ran by Park Center was renamed the Campbell House in her honor when she passed in 2014.

The marker was the result of efforts led by MTSU history professor Pippa Holloway and Nashville attorney Abby Rubenfeld with the support of Bonnie Campbell and Webb Campbell, Penny’s siblings.&nbsp;The marker was the first marker in the state of Tennessee approved by the Nashville Metro Historical Commission to commemorate&nbsp;the work of an LGBTQ+ rights activist.

Penny Campbell was an LGBTQ+ activist who organized Nashville's first Pride event in 1988 and became the lead plaintiff in the 1996 Supreme Court case that decriminalized homosexual acts in Tennessee. The marker was dedicated on December 9, 2017, and is at the location of Campbell’s former residence. Campbell passed away at age 61 in 2014 and the marker was dedicated thanks to the efforts of historians, activists, and family members. 

Penny Campbell Historical Marker

The Weakley brothers - Samuel and Robert - emigrated from Virginia to Tennessee in the late eighteenth century. In 1801, Samuel Weakley bought a 500-acre tract east of Nashville, next to his brother's 615 acres. Samuel's property extended to the Cumberland River, nearby to the east. The brick house was built for Samuel at an unknown date but was most likely added in the 1820s, based on Samuel's work history - he was hired as Davidson County surveyor in 1823 - and known residence elsewhere in Tennessee on the 1820 census. The house was originally a two-story, Federal style home, with two rooms over two rooms on each side of a central hall. Samuel owned 34 enslaved persons by 1832 when he died during a surveying trip. His brother, Robert purchased Samuel's property; Samuel's widow, Sarah moved to Alabama with her eight children. Robert Weakley's home on his 615 acres was named Lockeland and has not survived. Robert Weakley served in the state legislature eight times and one term as a U.S. Congressman. He ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Tennessee. Robert passed away in 1845; when his real estate was divided in 1851, the 500-acre tract was inherited in pieces by his heirs. The tract with the Samuel Weakley mansion was later sold to Ezekiel Truett.Ezekiel Truett was born in 1812 and moved from his native New Bern, North Carolina to Hickman County, Tennessee with his father. Ezekiel married Winnie Adams in 1832; their five children were born between 1834 and 1847. In 1855, Ezekiel purchased Fairfax Hall on a 36-acre tract. He founded Rosebank Nursery in Nashville on Union Street; it is thought that Ezekiel cultivated roses on the property. He died in April 1872. The modifications to the house including the two-story front portico and Ionic columns have been estimated to date to the 1870s. Window and door openings were modified from rectangular to arched, in keeping with Italianate style. It is possible that the modifications were done after Ezekiel's death. The family plants business later became Truett's Sons &amp; Morgan, operated by Laban A. and William Truett plus Irby Morgan and located on Porter Pike by 1880.Sheffield Clark, Jr. and his sister inherited the mansion in 33; he later bought out his sister's share. Mr. Clark was in the wholesale hardware business. Sheffield added the two one-story side wings in 1936 to 1937; the Classical Revival design is compatible with the rest of the house. To connect the wings to the house, a window behind each end chimney was converted into a door. Mrs. Clark first planted a formal flower garden on the west side of the house in 1937. Also in 1937, a log cabin of unknown date was moved from nearby Inglewood School and placed adjacent to the garden. Behind the main house, a one-story frame garage/ office structure was built in 1937. Both of these outbuildings are part of the National Register nomination for architectural significance; a tenant house several hundred feet south of the house built in 1940 and used as servants' quarters is not a contributing historical building. The lone remaining barn on the property, built in 1940 and 500 feet from the house also was not considered part of the historic nomination. When the house was documented for listing in the National Register in 1988, the family of Sheffield Clark, Jr. still resided in Fairfax Hall.

This two-story brick house with tall columns is known both as the Weakley-Truett-Clark House and Fairfax Hall. The home was built around 1820 by a member of the Weakley family who was a surveyor and the property later passed to his brother who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The front columns and two-story portico were added when the house style was modified around 1870 by Ezekiel Truett. Truett operated a large nursery for plants; his roses gave the street its name. After the property was inherited by Sheffield Clark in the 1930s, he added two one-story wings and bathrooms. The house was renovated and restored by the Teloh/ Lott family in the early 1990s and again after 1998 tornado damage. The Lotts still owned the house in 2021, which was listed in the National Register in 1989.

Weakley-Truett-Clark House (Fairfax Hall)

According to family records, seven U.S. presidents have visited Riverwood: Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and William H. Taft. The property was purchased in 1795 by Philip Phillips, a land speculator. Alexander James Porter, an Irish immigrant, and wealthy linen merchant, bought the property in 1798 and built a brick two-story house. The floor plan included four rooms on each floor, with each room 16 by 16 feet and a central fireplace. The property passed to Alexander's son, James Porter. A new house was built 20 feet away in the 1830s and was called Tammany Wood; the house had a footprint of about 53 by 38 feet and fireplaces on end walls. A room on the first floor of the older house became the kitchen for the new residence; the rest of the older house reportedly became quarters for enslaved people. James died in 1853. Both houses were renovated and were joined into one large, Greek Revival style mansion in the 1850s by James' only son, Alexander Porter. The tall Corinthian wooden columns and a twenty-foot addition date to the 1850s.The Cooper family owned Riverwood from 1859 to the 1980s. William Frierson Cooper, an attorney. reportedly named the property Riverwood after his 1859 purchase; the property included only 851 of the original 2,500 acres. William F. served as Chief Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court from 1878 to 1886. After Judge Cooper died in 1909, the property was divided into five tracts; his brother Duncan Brown Cooper inherited the tract containing the mansion. Duncan was a veteran of the Civil War and had been a colonel in the Confederate cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest. At one point, Duncan owned a Nashville newspaper, the American. He and a colleague, Edward "Ned" Carmack later became bitter rivals in the newspaper business and in politics. Duncan and Carmack exchanged gunfire in downtown Nashville in 1908 and Carmack was killed. Duncan was convicted of second-degree murder but later was given a pardon by the governor.When Duncan died in 1922, the property passed to his daughter Sarah. Sarah later became the wife of Dr. Lucius Burch, the Vanderbilt School of Medicine dean. The mansion underwent interior renovations in the 1920s for plumbing upgrades and additional bathrooms. The Burch family became well-known for throwing wonderful parties at Riverwood. Once you were added to the guest list for their lavish Christmas dinner parties, you were said to be invited for life. Dr. Burch passed away in 1959, and Sarah sold off parts of the property, retaining eight acres. The surrounding residential subdivision, dating to the 1960s, was named Burchwood Gardens and was once part of Riverwood.Lucius Burch, Jr. was born at Riverwood and became an attorney and civil rights activist. Burch is known for volunteering to represent Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in an effort to overturn an injunction against marching for civil rights in Memphis. After Sarah (known to her friends as "Miss Sadie") died in 1975 at age 98, the next owner was Lucia Burch Doggrel, the great-granddaughter of Duncan B. Cooper. The mansion was mainly empty for two decades. In the meantime, the house was damaged by vandals while owners planned for a renovation that didn't happen. In the late 1990s, Joseph and Jackie Glynn purchased Riverwood and the mansion was finally restored to become an events venue. Three investors - Debbie Sutton, Matt Wilson, and Steven R. Shelton - bought the property in 2015. Riverwood continues to host weddings, fundraisers, and corporate events.

This historic Nashville property connects four distinct periods of development of the house that also reflect the larger community. The property's first owners of European descent developed a two-story stone home in the 1790s and made their fortune as traders. By the 1830s, the growth of the plantation economy in this region can also be seen in this location and by the 1850s Riverwood was a substantial 2,500-acre plantation. Most of the land was sold in the years that followed similar to other vast plantations. During the 1920s, the historic mansion was renovated and became the science of lavish dinner parties. The Cooper family owned Riverwood from the 1850s to the 1970s, and the property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. Riverwood Mansion has been one of Nashville's most popular sites for weddings and other events since the 1990s, on its remaining eight acres. It also is known locally for a legendary spirit known as the Lady in Gray, who reportedly has been glimpsed by many people over the years.

East of Downtown Nashville Historical Driving Tour

Nissan Stadium

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