Second Avenue Commercial District, Nashville — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Second Avenue Commercial District?

The street itself is the landmark. A run of late-nineteenth-century brick commercial buildings along Second Avenue North earned the whole stretch its place on the National Register of Historic Places, and that intact wall of Victorian storefronts is what visitors come to walk. Music museums crowd the blocks nearby.

The Johnny Cash Museum, the George Jones Museum, and the Patsy Cline Museum all sit within a few minutes of the corner where the district meets Broadway.

What is the history of Second Avenue Commercial District?

This was Nashville's wholesale row. The brick warehouses along Second Avenue North rose in the decades after the Civil War to trade the goods that came up the Cumberland by steamboat, and the block-long stretch between Brandon Street and Broadway kept that mercantile character intact long after the river traffic faded. The record made it official.

Federal listing on the National Register of Historic Places came in 1972, recognising the district's unbroken line of Victorian commercial fronts.

Where is Second Avenue Commercial District?

The district follows Second Avenue North through the core of downtown Nashville, a single block-deep strip running from Brandon Street south to Broadway a step back from the west bank of the Cumberland.