Creating Places: A Citizen Observer's Look at Nashville's Built Environment


Writer's Note: William Williams' interest in the manmade environment dates to 1970, at which point the then-young Williams started a collection of postcards of city skylines. The collection now numbers 1,000-plus cards. Among the writer's specific interests are exterior building design, city district planning, demographics, signage, mixed-use development, mass transit and green/sustainable construction and living. Williams began his Creating Places column with The City Paper in February 2005. The column in its original form was discontinued in September 2008 and reinvented via this blog in November 2008. Creating Places can be found on the home page of the website of The City Paper, at which Williams has worked in various capacities since October 2000.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Creating Places: Vintage grit

This stretch of Clinton Street (pictured at left) in North Nashville — and home to the stellar Marathon Music Works space —represents some of the best old-school industrial building grittiness and density that our city offers. Sadly, Nashville has so few of these type structures left. Since, say, the 1970s, the urban core has seen many of these masonry buildings leveled and replaced by bland vinyl or metal siding warehouse structures (this SoBro-based eyesore, at lower left, home to Sherwin Williams and located on Seventh Avenue South is of particular ugliness). Since 2000,there have been very few cool industrial buildings constructed within Nashville's urban core. One exception is the structure that houses the district energy system facility Constellation NewEnergy Inc. maintains on Rolling Mill Hill. Thermal Engineering Group Inc. designed the building (below) and did a strong job.
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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 1, 2012 at 8:52 AM

    The energy system building on Rolling Mill Hill is very nice. Love the brick! Very nicely done.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nashville HistoryApril 2, 2012 at 12:54 AM

    This Bell South building at Gallatin Pike and Douglas is one of several around town that look more like a church than a structure built to house telephone equipment.

    http://170.190.30.53/WebproNashville/PictureView.asp?IMG=image/52000/768001.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMay 3, 2012 at 2:02 PM

    I like the building on Houston Street between brown street and the railroad tracks. not sure of its history or current use.

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