Historic Edgefield Timeline

712 Fatherland Street / Once home to Jesse James in the 1800s.

The 1800s

Early 1800s: The area was rural but dotted with large estates, mansions, and country homes where Nashville’s wealthy could escape the pollution of the city.
1823-1889: The first bridge was built over the Cumberland River connecting East Nashville to Downtown. Doctors, attorneys, governors, educators, and entrepreneurs moved to homes in East Nashville. During the later 1800s, Edgefield was the most desirable neighborhood in Nashville.  Even Jesse James, the famous bank and train robber, lived here, at 712 Fatherland Street. Mule-drawn street cars provided transportation. 
1869: Edgefield was established as an independent city, and in 1880, it became part of the city of Nashville.
1886: The Woodland Street Bridge was built. Sawmills and factories sprang up on the east bank of the Cumberland. 

The 1900s

1909: The Shelby Street Bridge, now the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge, was built.
1916: The Great Fire swept through Edgefield destroying 648 buildings and leaving more than 3,000 homeless. Mansions and fine homes burned, as well as sawmills and industrial buildings. Later, East Park was built on part of the land cleared by the fire. The park included a pavilion for concerts.
1933: A tornado crossed the river from downtown and destroyed a path all the way to Inglewood.
1940s-1960s: Many large houses became boarding houses, duplexes, or apartments. Urban renewal and interstate construction took its toll on Victorian homes that had survived the fire and tornado.
Cayce Homes was built as the housing of the future.
1970s: A few “urban pioneers” discovered the wonderful old houses in East Nashville. One pioneer was Charlie Williams whose young family moved into a wreck of a house on Russell Street and restored it into a beautiful home.
1976: The Edgefield neighborhood association was organized by Charlie and Carol Williams and like-minded neighbors who worked to save historic homes from destruction.
1977: Edgefield became Nashville’s first residential National Historic Register neighborhood.
1978: Edgefield becomes the first Nashville Historic Preservation District with zoning in place to preserve the historic neighborhood.
1990s: Musicians, artists, and creative young couples, all looking for a good price on a fixer-upper, discovered the beautiful old homes in Edgefield.
1998: A terrible tornado cut through the neighborhood along a similar the path to the tornado of 1933.
1999: Following the tornado, the East Nashville community worked with representatives from the American Institute of Architects to produce a plan to guide the development of East Nashville.
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Home of Charlie and Carol Williams, two urban pioneers who restored the house and help forge a community of preservationists here in Edgefield.

Historical marker at Fatherland and 5th.

The 2000s

2000s: New restaurants, bars, and art galleries began to appear in Five Points. Crime decreased and gentrification accelerated. 
2014: Rapid growth in Nashville threatened the diversity and the residential, historic character of Historic Edgefield. A new plan, Nashville Next, was put in place to limit commercial development to the corridor streets on the periphery of Edgefield and preserve the residential character of the neighborhood.       
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