East Nashville

The story of East Nashville

East Nashville grew up as Edgefield, a Victorian streetcar suburb across the Cumberland — and it has survived more than any neighborhood should: the Great Fire of 1916 that took 600 buildings, tornadoes in 1933, 1998 and 2020, and every wave rebuilt the place more colorful than before. Artists and musicians moved into the cheap bungalows in the 1990s, and the neighborhood answered with walls: today the stretch from Five Points down Main Street holds Nashville's densest run of murals, from Kim Radford's Dolly at The 5 Spot to the Eastside Murals leopards. Locals give directions by paint here — 'turn at the tentacles' is a real sentence.