Nashville Civic Design Center

The Historic Germantown Neighborhood, Nashville, TNGary GastonAssociate Design DirectorNashville CIvic Design Center

The Historic Germantown Neighborhood is located just to the north of Downtown Nash-ville. It comprises an area of approximately 18 city blocks, bounded by Jefferson Street on the south, Hume Street on the north, Eighth Avenue on the west and Third Avenue on the east. Germantown’s streets are an extension of the downtown street grid. Its north/south streets are numbered, while most of its east/west streets are named after US Presidents.

Germantown contains a surprising housing diversity for such a compact neighborhood. There exists a broad range in both type and size of homes, including single-family, town-homes and condos. Germantown also con-tains a fairly large number of rental units for a neighborhood of its size. Many of the larger homes in Germantown have garage apartments, which offer homeowners sup-plemental income, while providing needed affordable housing options for residents who might otherwise not be able to afford to live in the area.

Neighborhood amenities include several res-taurants; a drug store and grocery; meat, fish, produce and flower wholesalers; and numerous churches of various denominations. While the State Bicentennial Park is adjacent to Germantown to the south, the neighborhood’s green space is Morgan Park, a two-city block space that separates Germantown from the adjacent Salemtown neighborhood to the north.

History – The Beginning

The area of North Nashville where Germantown is lo-cated was first home to the wild animals that were drawn to the sulfur spring and salt lick located close to where

Map showing Historic Germantown Neighborhood area as well as existing buildings (gray), recent (red) and planned (yellow) projects.

the neighborhood now stands, and later to the Native Americans that hunted them. The first map of Nashville, drawn by land surveyor David McGavock in 1796, shows this section of North Nashville as originally part of 960 acres granted to McGavock’s brother James. During the first half of the ninetieth century the McGavocks began to sell parcels of property and the area began its trans-formation from agricultural to residential. Many of the families moving into the neighborhood around this time were German (thus the name Germantown) and in-

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1908 Figure Ground of the Historic Germantown Neighborhood. Note the area is largely residential with several clusters of industry along the river, as well as the centrally located Werthan Bag Com-plex.

cluded skilled craftsmen, tradesmen and business peo-ple. Germantown was incorporated into the Nashville city limits in 1865 as the Ninth Ward and experienced its greatest period of growth. Butchery emerged as an im-portant cottage industry in the area, leading to the forma-tion of packing houses in the early twentieth century. This also gave rise to the area’s nickname of the time, Butchertown. By the end of the eighteenth century the Germantown Neighborhood was remarkably diverse, ethnically, economically and architecturally. Germantown reached its peak in the years immediately before World War I, with meat packaging (Neuhoff) and textile produc-tion (Werthan Bag Co.) becoming the area’s largest em-ployers.

The Change

Around this same general time, several different factors begin to emerge that would play a significant role in the neighborhood’s downturn. The War would prove to be the first, as anti-German sentiments that swept the coun-try, a hostile environment was created for people of German ancestry. As a result residents began to dis-

2000 Figure Ground. Note most of the homes have been replaced with large structures and surface parking lots. The Metro Water Treatment Plant is clearly visible to the top right.

perse throughout the city in an attempt to assimilate into the larger population. With the exodus, empty homes of the once well-maintained and stately neighborhood were subdivided and rented, or became boarding homes. Furthermore, the successes of Neuhoff and Werthan as employment centers (and their resulting exponential growth) in an area without a resident population began to set a precedent for the industrial nature of the area that would follow in later decades.

Another important factor, common to most urban neigh-borhoods in the US at the time, was the rise of popularity of streetcars (and later dominance of automobiles). As Nashville’s suburbs grew, the popularity of its inner-city neighborhoods inversely declined.

By the 1950s these factors had deprived the area of much of its former glory. However, a new series of set-backs were looming for the neighborhood. The first was a mass rezoning of the area to industrial use (previously it was zoned for residential only). It was during this time that a large number of the historic homes were lost as they were cleared for warehouses, machine shops and other heavy-commercial and industrial uses.

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The 1960s brought the Federal Government’s policy of Urban Renewal and the Interstates. Urban Renewal cleared slum housing around Capitol Hill, pushing it fur-ther northward, while the interstates sliced through North Nashville, cutting off the connectivity between German-town and its surrounding neighborhoods.

The Comeback

It wasn’t until the 1970’s, when interest in historic pres ervation and inner-city living began to flourish across the country that the promise of neighborhood revitalization would start to emerge for Germantown.

In the late 1970s a small group of socially charged Nashvillians began to purchase property and renovate homes throughout Germantown. These early urban pio-neers played a critical role in stabilizing the neighbor-hood. They purchased homes in disrepair to spare them from demolition, while buying available vacant property, which they later sold to other arrivals and developers

Historic aerial view of the Germantown Neighborhood. Note the Werthan Bag Complex in the foreground, Jefferson Street Bridge (upper right), and the Neuhoff Meat Packing Plant (upper left).

who were interested in building. Early residents had to routinely deal with open prostitution and drug dealing in the streets, but their dedication would prove to be the driving force behind the neighborhood’s slow climb back from the brink.

Another positive event for the neighborhood occurred in 1979 when Germantown was listed as a district on The National Register of Historic Places. The application described Germantown as “one of the most architectur-ally and socially heterogeneous neighborhoods in Nash-ville.” It was also during this general period when the City’s community development program, administered by the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA), began a series of public infrastructure im-provements designed to make the neighborhood more attractive to investment. These included brick sidewalks, pedestrian lighting, and low interest historic home rehab

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loans. Zero interest façade loans were also made avail-able to urban business pioneers and helped with the establishment of some of the first popular restaurants.

In 1980, the small resident population of Germantown took the ingenious step of creating Oktoberfest. The festival, which celebrates food music and dance of the neighborhood’s German heritage, has since become an enormously popular annual event, attracting thousands each year. Oktoberfest also includes a tour of the his-toric homes in Germantown, which has become a major fundraiser for the Historic Germantown Neighborhood Association.

In the 1980s a potentially devastating plan to build an auto-emissions testing facility in the heart of German-town was thwarted by neighborhood activists who led a well-organized public protest of the facility’s construction. The city relented and stepped in to acquire the property. Later the city would offer this land to developers for the construction of new single-family residences. This event

Examples of historic homes that have been renovated within the neighborhood.

is often credited as one of the major turning points for the neighborhood’s revitalization.

In 1989 plans announced by Governor McWherter of the construction of the 19-acre Bicentennial Mall (opened in 1996), to be located on industrial blocks immediately adjacent to the south was a coup for the neighborhood. As a part of the plan, MDHA created the Phillips-Jackson Redevelopment District in 1993 (encompassing all of Germantown). The creation of Phillips-Jackson was a critical step in the next level of redevelopment for the neighborhood. As a part of the redevelopment district, design guidelines were created and each project pro-posed had to undergo a design review and abide by a more stringent set of land use requirements. In addition, the neighborhood also became eligible to receive Tax Increment Financing (TIF). TIF was important in secur-ing a grocery store and pharmacy for the neighborhood, and instrumental in filling the financing gaps of some

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An example of a typical street in Germantown. These homes were built after the neighborhood defeated an auto-emissions facility pro-posed for the site. Note the on-street parking, landscape buffer and brick sidewalks.

larger scale residential developments that otherwise would not have been realized.

After the neighborhood prevented the construction of the auto-emissions facility, MDHA acquired the property, where it sat vacant for many years. Andree Lequire, a Germantown resident, along with business partner Scott Chambers, created Germantown Partners (GTP) in 1996 and approached MDHA with a proposal for the property that included single-family homes on 16 lots. The land, an entire block along 5th Avenue North, was deeded to the Germantown Partners by MDHA in 1997. Nashville’s zoning practices at the time were entirely geared to-wards conventional “suburban” housing development, which was not appropriate for urban neighborhoods (and therefore required many variances). For instance, minimum lot widths were a mandated 50 feet, and the depth of lots could be no more than four times its width. The lots sizes that GTP proposed for the site were from 32 to 36 feet wide and were all 175 feet deep. GTP worked closely with the Planning Department, MDHA, Public Works, and the Nashville Electric Service to bring the plans to fruition. GTP broke ground on the first three homes in November of 1997, and priced them for $95 per SF; the homes quickly sold. Construction finished in 2001, with the last home selling for approximately $135 per SF. The importance of the redevelopment of this block for Germantown cannot be overstated. The homes were the first new single-family construction built in Germantown in decades. They were built at a time when urban infill was still a new concept for Nashville, and they were able to prove that there was a strong de-mand for city living. They also proved to be a test case for the Metro Planning Department, which used the suc-cess of GTP’s homes as a model in rewriting the zoning code for Nashville’s historic urban neighborhoods. In 1998 Metro rezoned Germantown from an industrial to mixed-use neighborhood designation.

In 2002 the Historic Germantown Neighborhood Asso-ciation requested that the nonprofit Nashville Civic De-sign Center (NCDC) study the area to help create a vi-sion plan for the future. In 2002 the Metropolitan Plan-ning Department created a Detailed Neighborhood De-sign Plan for Germantown. These plans are tools for neighborhoods that provide a greater level of detailed guidance for future planning. They include suggestions for policy and zoning changes that help guide anticipated growth. Germantown is also prominently featured in the NCDC’s 2005 publication The Plan of Nashville: Ave-nues to a Great City. All of these planning efforts were essential in building interest and momentum in the neighborhood’s resurgence.

Beginning in the early 2000s, several urban infill pro-jects, consisting primarily of single-family homes on va-cant infill lots, and residential condo developments on larger vacant parcels, were constructed throughout the neighborhood. Adaptive reuse of the old Werthan Bag Co. building’s conversion into loft condos also began around this time. Around this same time the Historic Germantown Neighborhood Association began working extensively with the Metro Parks Department in develop-ing plans to renovate Morgan Park, the historic site of the city’s botanical garden. As a part of this renovation, a greenway extension is being constructed that will con-nect Germantown to the city’s overall greenway network, which when completed, will provide over 26 miles of con-tinuous trails.

Innovative examples of infill housing, such as this tri-plex, exist throughout the neighborhood.

In 2007, the Historic Germantown Neighborhood Asso-ciation began work on a streetscape master plan en-compassing the area of Germantown and East German-town (8th Avenue to the Cumberland River). The plan consists of three phases to be completed over the course of five to ten years. The Association is in the process of writing grants and working with public agen-cies in helping to secure funding for the plan’s imple-

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mentation. The Neighborhood Association was able to hire a local firm to conduct the master plan with income generated from its annual Home Tour held during Okto-berfest.

In 2007, the Association also began working with the Nashville Historical Commission on creating Historic Zoning and Conservation Overlays for the neighborhood. These overlays are tools that can be utilized to preserve the historic character and architectural significance of a neighborhood.

Germantown can now be viewed as entering the height of its redevelopment. Over the past several years the neighborhood has seen tremendous growth in property values as more projects are built and more residents arrive. With these new residents comes more demand for shops and services, which in turn serves to drive fur-ther development. The past year has also seen the be-ginning of a critical shift in the manner in which redevel-opment occurs in Germantown. Up until this point, infill developments have been constructed on property that has largely sat vacant for many years. The neighbor-hood is now seeing a trend towards industrial/heavy-commercial property owners selling their property to de-velopers and relocating outside of the neighborhood. This is a direct reversal of the past when residents left because of the close proximity of industry. The industrial uses are now leaving the neighborhood, making room for even more residents, shops and businesses.

The cycle of redevelopment has come full circle since Germantown’s prior heyday in the early 1900s. It has been almost 30 years since the group of committed ac-tivists rediscovered the lost neighborhood of German-town and stepped in to save it. Germantown is flourish-ing and with its current pace, it will soon out-rival its ven-erable past.

Germantown & BeyondAdaptive reuse of Industry - It is poignant that the two large relics of Germantown’s industrial past, the Werthan Bag Co Building and the Neuhoff Meat Packing Plant have followed reasonably similar paths throughout their existence. Both were closed in the late 1970s, and after sitting vacant were acquired in the late 1990s by vision-aries who saw their amazing potential for redevelop-ment. Their sheer size and proximity within the neigh-borhood, closely links their revitalization to the overall success of Germantown’s.

The Werthan Mills project, when completed, will consist of 283 lofts (approximately 500 residents). The complex consists of multiple buildings, which were constructed at various times beginning in 1871. Core Development worked closely with the Germantown neighborhood to create designs that embrace the character of the historic buildings. Most of the structures were covered in lead-

based paint that required extensive environmental abatement prior to development. The development fea-tures the historic wood windows, brick walls and maple floors original to the building. In addition, Werthan will have one of the largest green roofs of any residential structure in Nashville, and is listed on the National Reg-ister of Historic Places.

Above: The Historic Werthan Bag building has been converted info lofts. Below: Aerial view of Neuhoff

The Neuhoff complex lies on approximately 16 acres of property that fronts 800 linear feet along the Cumberland River. The importance of Neuhoff, which is technically located in East Germantown, is in its ability to link the Cumberland River to Germantown, thus creating one Germantown Neighborhood stretching from 8th Avenue to the River. Owners, siblings Stephen McRedmond and Anita Sheridan, envision a mixed-use arts and music cultural center. The project will consist of a complete redevelopment of the massive existing structures on the site, as well as multiple buildings of new construction. Between 800 and 1,000 units are estimated for the total build-out.

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Not to be overlooked in a case study of Germantown is the impact of its revitalization on surrounding neighbor-hoods. The successes in Germantown offered an ex-ample to city leaders and progressive developers of the value of urban redevelopment in creating safe neighbor-hoods and helping to rebuild the tax base. MDHA in-vested public funds into the nearby Hope Gardens Neighborhood, which helped it attract investment from the private market and developers. The adjoining Sa-lemtown and Historic Buena Vista Neighborhoods have also witnessed substantial redevelopment as the suc-cesses of Germantown propagate outward. German-town provides a perfect example of a neighborhood’s redevelopment, an example that everyone now knows can be achieved.

Pioneers in Urban HousingMixed-use development arrives in Nashville – Ger-mantown Lofts – One of Nashville’s first mixed-use de-velopments was built in Germantown (2002). This tradi-tionally styled building is home to a popular restaurant and office space on the ground level, with six loft condos above. It proved that mixed-use development was vi-able for the neighborhood, and as a result numerous other mixed-use projects are now being constructed throughout the neighborhood. Germantown Lofts was the first application in Nashville of a pervious paving sur-face for the building’s parking lot, while the roof utilized a white reflective material to reduce solar heat gain.

Mixed-use development with commercial spaces on the ground level and residential above.

Innovative Single-Family Design, a solution to con-cerns about density – Germantown Court consists of eight single-family homes built on two vacant lots. Four of the homes face the street and four surround a com-mon courtyard in the middle of the site. The houses blend well with the architectural style and rhythm of the existing historic homes along the block, while allowing much higher densities than normal single-family home construction.

Courtyard-style housing blends seamlessly with the historic homes along the street.

LEEDing the Way - Ger-mantown developers Law-rence Brothers Inc. (made up of brothers Skip, Fred and Bill) began building single-family homes in Germantown in 2003. Their early involvement with the non-profit Cumberland River Compact led to their partici-pation in The Southface Institute’s EarthCraft pro-gram for green building. The program serves as a blueprint for healthy, com-fortable homes that reduce utility bills and protect the environment. As a result of their involvement with Southface, Lawrence Bros. have built 100% EarthCraft and Energy Star certified homes since 2005.

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Began in 2004, Morgan Park Place is a two block devel-opment located along the southern border of Morgan Park. The project brought together two development groups, one made up of Lawrence Bros. and the other, business partners Tony Werthan and Todd Zeitlin (each group owned a separate parcel of land). The develop-ment team thought it would make more sense to create a cohesive design for the entire site rather than pursuing each block independently. The group hired an architect, after hosting a design competition, and construction be-gan in 2005. When complete, the development will con-sist of a mix of housing types and uses, including ap-proximately 70 townhomes, lofts and flats. Phase I of Morgan Park Place is EarthCraft and Energy Star certi-fied, while Phase II is on track to receive a Gold LEED Certification. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (or LEED) is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high per-formance green buildings. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing per-formance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor envi-ronmental quality.

Morgan Park Place, recipient of the 2007 Governor’s Environ-mental Stewardship Award.

The contemporarily styled Morgan Park Place develop-ment has brought residents to the area, added activity to the previously under-utilized park, and set a new stan-dard across the city for environmentally sustainable practices in residential development. Morgan Park Place has also received the Cumberland River Com-pact’s Tributarian Award, and the prestigious 2007 Gov-ernor’s Environmental Stewardship Award.

This report was originally published in the Cumberland Region To-morrow’s Quality Growth Toolbox, with the title, “Creating a Variety of Housing Choice Case Study: The Historic Germantown Neigh-borhood, Nashille, TN” (located in the Housing Chapter)

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