In a booming Nashville economy, why are all these restaurants closing? New Nashville sports seasons are here, we’ll tell you the latest of who’s playing and when! We also discuss Nashville History from 1790-1800.
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History of Nashville From 1790-1800
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00:00 Hello everybody. This is the Nashville daily podcast. I'm Stuart Deming and I'm Erin Pennington. In a booming Nashville economy, Why are all these restaurants closing? New national sports seasons are here, and we'll tell you the latest of who's playing and when all this and your newest Nashville events right now on Nashville
00:17 Daily.
00:28 All right, Nashville, it is your Tuesday, which means you probably don't feel threatened by traffic because it's in the middle of the week, but you should make sure you turn on your Google maps because Stuart, why don't you give us some insights on you what the national traffic is. Is it good or bad?
00:47 It is terrible right now. It's like the apocalypse happened here in the city of Nashville and everyone's just trying to get around downtown and it's just, it's a mess. So just avoid traffic. And then we're going to talk about our tip of the day. So go do that instead. But take a Lyft or an Uber or even walk because traffic is so terrible right now.
01:10 And we'll tell you some events that are gonna make traffic even worse later today. We have two farmer's markets that are happening in Nashville. And these are farmer market farmer's markets that are outside of the normal one that's by bicentennial mall. We have one that's in East Nashville. It's a farmer's market that's on the corner of Woodland and fifth Avenue South. That's from 3:30 PM to 6:00 PM today. We have one on 12th South. And that is that severe park and severe actually has some the name severe has some history that we're going to talk about later today. But that farmer's market is from four to 7:00 PM and that's on 12 South severe park. You can find the links for this information in our bio. And of course, Stuart, we have an event at the Ryman, wouldn't, should know,
02:01 But the, you know, there's always an event at the Ryman. Happening tonight is the Nashville songwriters award at 7:30 PM. You could buy tickets for that@ryman.com. And in the intro, we talked about the Nashville sports season is here tonight. We also have a soccer game at first tendency in park. And it's the Nashville soccer club versus Birmingham legend FC as 7:00 PM. You can get tickets@nashvillesoccerclub.com. Single tickets. I think tickets are going for around $15, I think. Let me check actually. Yeah,
02:33 The Birmingham Legion F FC. And then we have an echo, another competing event tonight at 7:00 PM nowhere near the sound's stadium though. And that's the grand old Opry. And they are hosting Carly [inaudible]
02:49 Pierce and the Mavericks tonight at 7:00 PM. That's what we're talking about the other day. Yeah, we
02:55 Did a, that's the one thing I like about the opera is not only do they have weekend shows, but they also have Tuesday night shows. I feel like are the, those are more for the locals who are definitely here during the week and not on the weekend.
03:09 So tickets for tomorrow soccer game or starting off as $7 a piece for general admission all the way up to the website's not loading fast enough. I'm seeing $30. So I would say that's a really good price range for a ticket, seven to $30 a and plus if you want it like private stuff, you can probably get more expensive. But that's a great price for a soccer game. What else is happening at the Ryman? There's another event happening at the Ryman as well as the songwriters awards.
03:44 It looks like we have a snarky puppy coming at the Ryman. I'm gonna kinda confirm these events, but September 18th, September 18th. So we have, so we have some upcoming Wednesday. Okay. There we are. Ryman events, snarky puppy which I was, I was kind of looking amongst, I didn't know who they were. At the, at the Ryman auditorium, they have a three day, three day show and they're apparently a really big kind of jazz rock and blues jam band. It looks like they bring a slew of people to, to play on stage with him. And you know, anybody, I think that brings a three day show to the Ryman is really gonna be killing it and worth see. And so if you want to go see a show at the Ryman, definitely check out this, especially if you're wanting, you know, a really kind of loud and and fun show to go to. Not like a sit down quiet show. This is not going to be one of those the for sure. And then we have an event coming up, a steward though that we talked a little bit about yesterday, but go ahead and give us a refresher of what happened, what's happening at walk of fame park this weekend. Yes.
05:02 So a, you have the music city food and wine festival. It starting Friday around 6:00 PM going Sunday all day Saturday. They're having events and we covered that yesterday to learn more. It's music city wine. It's music city, food and wine festival.com. That's a tongue twister. That's a long website.
05:25 Yeah, it is a on the Rymans website just kind of confirming these events just because that's interesting.
05:35 It's only, it's only a Wednesday for this snarky puppy.
05:39 That's so interesting. So this is why we always like to confirm this because I was just on Google and, and, and Google says Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for the Ryman events. So we will have the official a rhyming events link in our show notes for snarky puppy at the Ryman Wednesday. We've seen this all the time since we've been looking up these events. You really have to double check everything.
06:14 And I, I would say like if you guys are looking up events, this is a problem that we've ran into is some websites are completely wrong. So you have to go to the main source of where you're trying to get that information. Because like a do six, one five, for example, they have some things that are events that are messed up. And then the Nashville downtown events page, they say, Hey, there's a predators game tonight. Even though there's not a predators game like during that time of the years. So I'm always go to the source. If you're looking for events to the venue source to see, well who is playing there, what sport activities happening. But that's one reason we like to bring you guys these events is because there's a lot happening in this city and it's, it's hard to really filter through everything happening.
07:00 It's, it's event city. It's no longer music city. It is event city and that's for sure. But Stuart, I'll tell you one thing that it's still not yet. And that's restaurant city, you know.
07:12 Yeah. [inaudible] there is a lot of restaurants in Nashville. The last I checked, there's over 5,100 restaurants in Nashville. We've talked to it a little bit about the restaurant industry here. We had Austin Smith on a as one of our guests for one of our very first episodes within like the first couple of weeks. But the restaurant industry is a really interesting thing here. And the the joke that Aaron was referring to is these two articles that are found on the Nashville business journal. And what are they? Aaron.
07:46 Okay. So we have one that is from the national business journal, popular national co coffee company to close one of its concepts. Basically bongo Java has closed another one of their locations. And he, it was kind of a, an open bakery and he plans to move this to Thompson lane and you know, basically not have a storefront anymore and be a wholesale bakery. And, and so there seems to be a lot of national kind of consumer restaurants, not like wholesale places, like they're starting with a bongo Java here, but a lot of Nashville restaurants that are opening up and then closing rather quickly. So that was one of them that was mentioned in the Nashville business journal. This was on September 10th that this one was announced. And then we have another one. This was a, a nation's restaurant that was closed after four years. This was also reported by the Nashville business journal. And so this restaurant had four years of business. Its name was a 51st kitchen and bar cert. Is this a place that you had visited or eaten at?
09:02 No, I dropped off a lot of passengers there. When I was driving for Lyft in Uber by, I've never personally ate there. I've heard really good things. I heard their food was really good. I heard that the atmosphere was one of the best in the nations, but unfortunately they're closing their doors. So Nashville business journal is actually saying attempts to contact the restaurant were unsuccessful. And as Aaron was saying, their [inaudible] Facebook page, literally he says, dear family and friends, 51st kitchen and bars now close the former staff. And then it breaks off. I can't really see what the rest of the article says.
09:38 Yeah. Attempts to arrest, contact the restaurant or unsuccessful. It says, you know, princess hot chicken. This is kind of later in the article referencing other closings that has happened. Talks about Prince's hot chicken announced it would not reopen its original location after a car crash. Longstanding the international market. This is a Belmont restaurant, shuttered its stores after 45 years of being business. But you know, that one's kind of mute because it's gonna open up right across the street because of Belmont reconstruction. Plans for that. Walberger restaurant in Nashville are still kind of questioned. It's been hanging up in the air for a few years. So, you know, Nashville is definitely playing this game of opening and closing a lot of restaurants. But you know, things like this where it takes one little thing to close a restaurant. You know, it may be a chef moved or maybe, you know somebody you know, one incident happened that really kind of burdened the finances of the restaurant, really takes a hit to that restaurant and kinda keeps it unable to keep going. You know. Do you think there's a pattern here? Is this something that's common of a, a, an emerging city like this or is this just common of the restaurant scene in general?
11:02 Oh, this is very common in the restaurant scene in general. A, a, a lot of people especially that I've worked with in the food industry they think they have the knowledge to run a business. They've been in food for 15, 20 years as a cook and they're like, Hey, I can do my own thing. I can make a really good quality product. Yes, they can make an incredible quality product, but people don't know how to run a business. People don't understand payroll. People don't understand taxes. Taxes can destroy your business faster than a blink of an eye. People don't understand that. You have to have a savings. You have to have a safety net in order to maintain your business. And so I think this is just a very common thing, especially I've seen up North. I had a friend who opened and closed the restaurants within literally a year of each other.
11:51 He opened the restaurant and they're doing a killing and then us gossip started happening in this small town and the gossip basically shut down this restaurant. And so word of mouth reviews can either make or break your restaurant. Word of mouth is the best form of advertisement that you can have. A, I was literally reading a book when I was in Colorado last week saying that in average award of what a word of dang, I can't remember what I just said. A word of mouth advertisement could potentially reach 300 people because you tell 10 friends, 10 friends tell 10 friends their 10 friends tell 10 friends and
12:34 Oh, and, and if you think about it, social media is an extension of our mouth nowadays, right? So absolute word of mouth you, you kind of have to include social media into word of mouth because you know, those are our thoughts and everything. They're going into our social media posts. They're going into our stories that are going into, you know, it is word of mouth on steroids pretty much. And that's, you know, that's Gary Vaynerchuk. If you follow him, that's kind of what he's brought to our attention is, you know, that is a business word of mouth now on his social media.
13:03 Oh, absolutely. And I think like a lot of these people that are going into the restaurant industry don't understand business. And I think that's ultimately if you don't, if you're not starting to see a profit in three to five years, you need to close your business. And that's what small business dot gov says. That's what like these really big business mentoring ship companies say like if you're not seeing a profit in three to five years, you need to close your business. Especially from the tax a tax standpoint. The IRS, you can only technically go negative on your taxes for three years in a row before the IRS starts really looking at you. And so it's just, it's a very interesting that all these Nashville restaurants are opening and closing. I think back in like 2016 they were saying that there was a restaurant opening every single day for six months here in the city of Nashville. And I think that was on the Tennessee and but how many of those restaurants are still in existence now? I don't have those sorts of Andy.
14:05 No. Yeah, we've got an article. If you guys want to kind of follow up on this and follow up on these stories to Tennessee and keeps a pretty close eye on who's opening and closing. We, we've linked some of those articles in our show notes for the Tennessee and keeping track of who's open and closed month by month. And they're kind of updating that every month. So we've got the latest month on there. And it seems like the Tennessee is, is keeping a close eye on it, but it's just very interesting, you know, because these are not just very small businesses that are closing their, their their doors, their restaurant doors. These are, you know, pretty well established restaurants sometimes and you know, restaurants that have done really well in the eyes of, you know, national consumers. So it's very interesting stuff. And we'll we'll kind of keep covering that and keep an eye on these national restaurants. But you know, we've got a tip of the day that we give out everyday explorers national tip of the day. And this is kinda gonna give a little bit of context to what we're talking about later. But sir, why don't you go ahead and introduce our Nashville tip of the day. If somebody were to have an ideal day in Nashville, they took off work just for this,
15:18 What would you tell them to do? Yeah, so a, a really cool thing that city of Nashville has is we are the Tennessee state Capitol. And so we became the capital, I believe in 1845 permanently or 1843 permanently. And the Tennessee state Capitol is completely free to visit. They have guided tours, a nine, 11 one and 3:00 PM, and you can visit the Capitol for free from nine to four Monday through Friday. And so our tip of the day is to go visit the Tennessee state Capitol, which is free to visit. And then afterwards go watch a soccer game at first Tennessee park and see the Nashville soccer club. So let me ask you this, are tourists free? Can you walk? Yes. Probably visit for every, but a tour tours are free. Yeah. So you can do, you can visit for free. And then they have free guided tours.
16:08 I think they max out at 15 per tour. I'm probably wrong on that number and maintain level 15 people. It may be less or more but they do max out on the guided tours and they're free as okay. That's awesome. That's really cool. There's tons of ways to spend a days in Nashville without really having to spend any money. Yeah. And you can get it in a soccer game ticket for $7. So you can go get a meal somewhere for cheap and then get a ticket for $7 and you could walk away having an entire day of activities for less than 20 bucks. Yeah. Which is
16:43 Absolutely incredible. Okay. So our creator of the date, like a yesterday, if you did not listen to our podcast you know, put that on your list to do right after this podcast. We talked a lot about Ken burns releasing his his documentary series that premiered yesterday on PBS. His,
17:04 You mean on Sunday or series? Yeah,
17:08 Yeah, yeah. And they're released on PBS. I think it was airing though
17:13 Monday yesterday. Yeah. It's probably hearing every single day. It's PBS.
17:18 Yeah. So there's lots of chances to catch it on PBS. But we're, we're featuring Ken burns on our, as our creator of the day to day because we like to feature Nashville creatives. But you know, I think technically Ken burns was probably in attendance when that thing premiered here in Nashville. Oh, absolutely. So, so Ken burns is going to be our creator of the day for really focusing his attention on Nashville, on country music, on Tennessee for that eight part documentary series, 16 hours completed video footage that's on PBS about the history of country music. So thank you, Ken burns for that and for being our creator of the day.
18:01 This episode of Nashville daily is brought to you by screened threads. Screened threads is a Nashville curious shop located in the historic marathon village. Use code Nashville daily to get 10% off your next song order. Their website is screened. The threads.com mentioned this ad in person and say Nashville daily to get 10% off your in-person order as well. Screen threads has some of the best candles. They have amazing tee shirts and they just came out with their Halloween theme t-shirt, which literally is a skeleton playing guitar and the amp is a pumpkin and it says Nashville. It looks great. It's a really cool design. So I would recommend if you're looking for all Halloween tee shirt, you can wear that as your Halloween costume.
18:41 That's awesome. Heck yeah. So you know, you can do more than your Christmas shopping there and your general national shopping. You can now do some of your Halloween decorating shopping there as well, which is really awesome. Okay. So we had an episode a couple of weeks ago where we talked about the history of the founding of Nashville. We talked about we talked about Donaldson, we talked about Robertson, we talked about everybody who basically came in and you know, kind of planted a flag in the ground and said, this is not national, but national Bureau at the time, we weren't national yet, but kind of a, you know, made that establishment of this is the place that we want to have a city. So now we are kind of getting into the next decade and we're, we're going to cover around 1790 ish. That's, that's pretty loose to 1800 and we're going to talk a lot about, you know, how national played a role in starting to build its city, right?
19:45 And how to establish itself, you know, kind of as a town and as a city. And then we're going to also look because Nashville as a, you know, later named Capitol helped establish statehood for Tennessee and or that name Tennessee came from. So we're excited to get all into that. Stuart, if anybody missed that first segment first of all, we're getting, encourage them to go back and listen to it. That episode is called who founded Nashville, who founded Nashville. And why don't you give just about a one minute summary as to how Nashville was, was founded. That way we can kind of use that as a reference when we're going back into kind of 1790s.
20:32 Yeah, of course. So you have two explorers that came from North Carolina. One was named John Donaldson and the other one was named James Robertson. They served underneath a guy named Francis national revolutionary war. Francis national was killed by the British and then John Donaldson and Robertson, they were exploring for the state of North Carolina. And they ended up finding a founding the city of Nashville in 1779, Christmas day. And a one came by river, one came by lands, and then that's how they found it. Nasha borough in 1779 and then in the 1780s, they changed it from Nashville borough to Nashville. And that brings us up into the 1790s.
21:13 All right, cool. So we're gonna kind of get into two things. One is the statehood of Tennessee when it was founded, because that was kind of important for this area at that time. And then we're going to move into Nashville and it's terrible city grid system because it all comes down to this time period, you know, so we knew it didn't make sense. We've talked about it on here. We were like, this makes no sense. Especially when I've visited New York for the first time. I was like, this makes sense. This makes perfect sense. And then when I came back to Nashville, I was like, I hate this grid system. Yeah. And we get to discover, you know, kind of what led to this grid system. But, but let's go into the statehood because this happened during this time. Tennessee became a state in 1796. But one thing you know, I, I learned from kind of doing this research was that Franklin actually tried to become a state instead of Tennessee.
22:16 Yes. So Franklin tried to become a state, I think it was in 1778 or so. No, a 17, 17, 17, 84 Franklin tried to become its own state and they called it Frank land. So this was actually before the city of Franklin was discovered this because the city of Franklin wasn't discovered as a city until 1799. And so they, they, they broke away. They were trying to eat people in East Tennessee. We're trying to break away from North Carolina to develop their own States. And it was called Frank land. And so North Carolina before this time, wasn't really paying attention to what was happening here in this territory of North Carolina. And so they, the East Tennessee tried to become their own state in North Carolina.
23:06 Well, I was like, so that's not happening. Well, apparently they did. So technically they did. But Franklin passed out of existence in 1788 so it didn't actually last too long as an independent state. And this is the, so this is the thing that, that we'll get into. This one. We talked about Tennessee applying for statehood is Franklin. You know, I, I believe they wore their own state, but not part of the United States, if that makes sense. They kind of declared statehood, but I don't think they were a part of United States.
23:46 So they weren't ratified into the United States constitution.
23:50 I don't believe so. But you know, the interesting thing is all of this with Frank land and everything. Remember we talked about a severe park where that farmer's market is gonna be tonight. Was that, that name came from John severe who was the newly named governor of that territory. Which is really cool how all that ties together today. We, we didn't really plan for this to happen, but everything in Nashville really ties together like that. But yeah, so interesting. National facts as we get into the statehood is, you know, Franklin used to be a, he used to be a, some kind of independent territory that that past outweigh basically in 17.
24:33 Yeah. If you actually a, there's a place in Franklin, I can't remember if you're where it is exactly in Franklin, but if you're driving, there's this sign that says the state of Franklin. And so that makes a lot more sense now. That Franklin tried to start their own state. It was probably somebody that's related to John's severe cause he ended up moving here to middle Tennessee, eventually from East Tennessee. We'll actually probably cover his life later on in the podcast, but that makes sense now when I'm driving. And Franklin one says the state of Franklin and I'm like, what the heck are you talking about? They're so stinky. Right, exactly.
25:09 Yeah. So it looks like w you know, what happened with, with Tennessee because this area was under pretty much the jurisdiction and protection and everything of North Carolina. But basically it says in 1789 ratified the U S constitution and seeded its Tennessee lands to the federal government. So North Carolina basically is like, we don't want to take care of this anymore. It's in the fans of the federal government. And basically it was now designated as territory of the United States, South of the river, Ohio or Southwest territory. It's crazy. Tennessee used to be the Southwest who would've known.
25:52 Yeah, that's crazy. And then basically what ended up happening is the United States create three districts in the area. So you have a two for East Tennessee and the Metro district on the Cumberland, which this is middle Tennessee, that's the Cumberland river. The Cumberland Valley each district had courts, militia and office holders. And then William blunt, blunt Zeiss A's name Blount, I think maybe govern the territory, had followed his appointment by George Washington. And basically he's the one who connected all of the territory as into like one area because they trying to protect from the Indian attention that were happening. And then in 1796, I think they approached the federal government and the state of Tennessee became the first is it on this website? Tennessee, the first federal territory to apply for statehood into Congress. So we were the 16th state to become a state. And we were the first one to apply for federal statehood.
26:55 Yeah. I, I'm guessing the other ones we'll have to go back and do research. The other ones happened basically because like maybe Carolina is split into North and South Carolina and maybe some of those other, other things were some territory split and pretty much automatically became new States, whether and, and Tennessee by contrast was basically federal government land that was not really in use at a group of people who wanted to back this as a state and then applied for statehood. So it's pretty interesting to, to see Tennessee's history when becoming a state. And the constitute constitutional convention actually did not happen in Nashville. This happened in Knoxville. And you know, Tennessee's had some interesting history with trying to find a capital because it wasn't autumn times. Yeah. It wasn't automatically here in Nashville. I believe that it kind of got thrown around between Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis. So it was a few places.
28:04 Yeah. So it was, it's been in Nashville twice now. It's permanently in Nashville. It was down in Murfreesboro at one point, which is literally Murphysboro is the most central city in the state of Tennessee. And it was in Knox County for a little bit. It went towards Shelby County once and there was only there for like two years. But we're going to give you guys more of the history later on in the podcast of all the places that the capital has actually been
28:30 Capital gets moved around almost as much as a James K. Polk body after it's,
28:34 Yeah, that's a good joke. That's a really good straight joke. Aaron and a J K Polk was the 11th president of the United States and his body has been moved three times since he's been dead. And there's talk that he's moved about. He's going to be moved to the fourth time down to Columbia, Tennessee. Oh my goodness. And it actually actually has to become a state law if his body needs to be moved again. I just like, just leave the dead guy alone. Stop moving. [inaudible]
29:08 Yeah. Ley okay. So now let's get into more of, of Nashville. We wanted to talk about how Nashville became a state because it happened, or sorry, Tennessee became a state because it was during that time. And a lot of it probably, you know, central around people moving into this Cumberland Valley in this territory. But you know, now we're getting into, Nashville has a really, you know, kind of establish itself as this is where people are, you know, gaining land. They're splitting it up. And they are, you know, kind of declaring that this is where people are going to settle. And that is happening around the late 1780s in the and the early 1790s, it says, by eight, 1787 we've got these sources listed in our show notes. If you want to kind of read along and study this for yourself by 1787 James Robertson had a title two third 33,000 acres much of it for his feet, locating land purchases, purchases for absentee speculators.
30:19 And wow, that's a lot of land. Yeah. So a, and I will mention this historian John Egerton points out that those who stayed and survived talking about the the Indian certain this time or their, their heirs of those killed were granted 640 acres. When North Carolina organized Davidson County as a political unit in 1784. Just gonna kind of pointed that out. You know, as we talk about this, if anybody's wondering, you know, were there any, was there any land that was given out to natives? But you know, this is an interesting area because none of this land was actually occupied in Nashville by native Americans. It was just, it was a hunting ground. People would seasonally coming here to hunt and then leave. So it wasn't really occupied by anybody.
31:15 Yeah. And you, in the 17 hundreds, you have the Cherokee Indians or native Americans that were starting to more occupy Southeast Tennessee. And they will come up here. And that's where those battle engagements would happen between James Robertson's men and the native Americans is cause I started settling in this area and the native Americans wanted to hold this land for as long as they can.
31:41 Yes. okay. So basically the, what was supposed to happen with Nashville's there was supposed to be nice even grid system. It's, it talks about this in the article that we're looking through. The survey gridded territory in two townships of six square miles and then into 36 sections each measuring one square mile or 640 acres. Some of these sections were then broken into more manageable halves in quarters. When you read that, you're like, Oh, they started with a well intention. That sounds like a big old grid to me. That's going to be divided up nice and evenly in blocks and miles and squares. But that is not exactly what happened. It weeks it says speculative gridding does not require finesse. So the, basically they were expecting, you know, to just throw this grid onto Nashville and it worked perfectly national through a few challenges in there. And one of them is nationals, not flat.
32:44 No, it's all flat in the hall. People, people that are coming here to run a the marathon that happens every year, they always say, they're like, wow, Nashville is not flat. That was one of the hardest marathons I've ever ran.
33:00 Yeah. It says the Mali plat, which I'm guessing is that kind of square grid, the finessed grid that we always probably see in larger cities like New York
33:11 [Inaudible] to Nashville. It was basically a guy, his name is Thomas Mali. And basically he's the one who set up this like square at public square that's in downtown now. He set up that great [inaudible] who developed the grid system for Nashville and how that was going to be planned out.
33:29 Yeah. And, and if anybody's wondering, Broadway is not where the public square was for Nashville. Broadway was called broad street and broach Broadway and broad street were not very occupied that as much because that's where it was a big Hill down there. And so, you know, they couldn't take care of a lot of mud and run off and everything. So that was not public square was up. There were live on the green is now, if you've been to live on the green, that's where national public square was.
33:57 And that's where the city of Nashville was founded. So the replica that's on Broadway or on first Avenue right now will for Nash borough, that's actually the third replica of foreign national borough and Fort national Bureau will, would have originally been and where public square park is now in downtown Nashville because a, that's called a French lick. And the reason for that is because of the bluff, the limestone bluff overlooks. So of course, when you're building a Fort in the 1780s, you want the highest vantage point in the city. So you can see, you could build your defenses and you can have a defensive strategy in case of a native American attack.
34:37 Yeah, exactly. And, and they were hoping to build something kind of like new Orleans has Jackson square where you could see the river and everything. They were kind of hoping to build something that similar w which, you know, they admit they didn't do something exactly like that, but they wanted to have that kind of field of the French quarters and Jackson square. And everything. But, you know, going back to the, the Molly plat of 1784 it says apply to checkerboard to Nashville without regard for the rolling terrain. Eh, you know, it's, that sounds like a Nashville thing to happen. But the location of the public square at the edge of the grid on a high bluff on the West bank, the Cumberland rather than the geographical center. So, you know, they wanted something high up, like you said, instead of at the very center, which, you know, I, I kind of wished that we still had a public square in that area. That would kind of cool because we don't really have that anymore. We don't have a public square.
35:41 It's technically a public square with quotations. But it's used for live concerts now. That's where the Davidson County city hall in courthouses, it's now a public square, like what you'd see in Europe where they do a lot of trading and like they have like these pop up farmer's markets and stuff. I wish it was used for that. That'd be amazing. And it's not really, it's not really the cultural or cultural hub of downtown Nashville. I would say the cultural hub now as a broad way. It's not like new Orleans with the French quarter and that, that's being the cultural hub and that's a public square. So it's, it's used now for the live on the green. It's used for different concerts series. Honestly, I think it would be a perfect tiller pad.
36:27 Oh, absolutely. They have helipads
36:30 Is like that in Ireland and it's just this green space that's used like as a soccer field. But when the helicopters landing, it just, everyone just moves away and the helicopter lands and then they go play soccer. So like I think it would be a perfect place for a helipad, but that's right there on a union street. Third Avenue it seems. So it's in between first Avenue, third Avenue, union street. And is that James Robertson on the backside of it?
36:54 I think so. I believe, I believe so. So the port of Nashville was located at the end of broad street, which is now Broadway in that lower broad area and connected to the market on the public square via market street, which is now second Avenue. Yeah, it says this correlation between port and market is National's first actual relationship and urban design technique. That was to become a hallmark, a hallmark of the cities urban form. Now it's just streets that connect that both have bars on them. Yeah. That's about the only correlation that they have now. Bars and restaurants on there and, and music. Yeah. Continuing to this article says another hallmark is how the grid was subdivided. So irregularly and this is, this is noted in here. Streets vary in width and length, often failing to connect in a coherent network, especially South of broad street blocks differ in size alleys. Alleys are inserted in consistently. They absolutely are. Platts just prior to the civil war reveal, the apparently arbitrary division of the blocks, the street frontage occupied by individual parcels follows no obvious formula or a mathematical and increments. Man. Oh man. Nashville, we were doing from the start with that.
38:20 Oh yeah. You think our transit plan got bad like in the last 20 years? No, they messed up transit all the way backward. The city of Nashville was down. It's just you guys, if you, if you're listening to this podcast, most likely you have driven downtown at some point. And it like, the question I always have is why is there not a turn lane at this road? This makes no sense that I'm sitting here and there's, I've been sitting here for 20 minutes trying to take a left hand turn. Why is there no turn lane? I don't wonder,
38:52 You know, this, this gets even better. Like I would if for, for if you're listening and you're like, I want to go read this article, just go read this article because it's kind of written maybe by somebody who understands the irony of this situation and writes it into here. He says, Nashville streets system is also distinguished of Bob. What cuts off calls accidental diagonals.
39:19 He was a, he was a historian. Cause if was a historian that plan like that did like studies on historic cities and roads.
39:29 I just love the word accidental diagonals because somebody planned this yet it was an accidental diagonal, which he described as the result of trying to accommodate a regular scheme. In a regular scheme, a prior stretch of road or the coming together of two desperate sections of urban layout.
39:52 Clean is like a Wedgewood street. Wedgwood yeah, Wedgewood Avenue that explains Franklin pike.
39:59 This. Yeah. This is the interesting part though. Says yeah, exactly. It says the prior stretches where the historic Pikes that were layered on top of the bison trails through the surrounding Hills and became the farmer to market roads into the city. I thought that was super interesting that a lot of those historic Pikes were old bison trails. That's pretty cool.
40:28 Wow. That's so cool. I didn't realize that these early founders of the city of Nashville use the bison trails to now complete their roads. And it makes sense cause these bison trails are already worn down because the heavy bison walking on them. So it makes sense to turn them into roads.
40:47 Yeah. I guess it saved them money doing that. Oh yeah, because they, yeah, they didn't have to like clear the streets or anything cause they were already already paths. So you know, that was something interesting because you know, they said, okay, let's do a grid. And then somebody said, no, let's use the bison trails. Like, see, you can really see like, you know, there's definitely no consensus for how this was going to be laid out and built.
41:14 And I, I assumed that bison trails, if I, if I know anything about wildlife, like deer, their trails are completely swervy and random and I assume Bisons are pretty much the same way. And that's how we got Nashville transit today is because we used the bison trails instead of actually making roads like they did in New York city.
41:36 Oh, Nashville a good start. So yeah, like Stuart said, if you're wondering, you know, why we have transit problems now we can pinpoint a time in history where it started off terribly and that was the very beginning of our city building. And that pretty much takes us into close to 1800. You know, it was still just a lot of Nashville building and forming and kind of laying out the city and its foundation just with the very basics like roads. Even if they did it terribly, they still did it. And this is bringing Nashville into 1800 start. Any final thoughts on, on this?
42:23 So one final thought that I have is this we're covering the timeframe from 1790 to 1800 in this episode and around 1800. The population of Nashville was around 345 people, about 130. Six of them were enslaved. So half of the population at 1800 here in the city of Nashville was free. Half of it wasn't slaved.
42:45 Interesting. And you know, one of the things that this article covers is Nashville. The, the Nashvillians at the time that didn't really come here for big industrial type work really Nashville and this territory was going to be used for more of what the land had to offer. So you know, that kind of fits in line with I guess what people were moving here for. But man nationals population conveyed comparatively as, as definitely increased. But
43:23 Yeah, we're right around too. Yeah, we're around around 2 million people right now here in the city of Nashville. So we have definitely gone up in numbers.
43:32 Yes, we have. All right. So thank you guys for tuning in to learn more about Nashville history. This is always super interesting stuff because a lot of it, you know, roots into, you know, how Nashville functions today, especially with traffic, we can see a very clear pattern into a how national track traffic has been affected throughout the years. And we'll continue to kind of monitor that as we bring you more history series.
43:58 Yeah. So this is the Nashville daily podcast. I'm steward Deming. Make sure to go follow us on Instagram at X PLR dot. Nash, our YouTube channel is the same where, where can people find us on Twitter, Aaron?
44:11 All right. So you can tweet us at X P L R underscore Nash. Give us a shout, say hi and let us know what you're doing in the city. Send to those pictures from these events that we've been talking about. And just let us know how you, how your day has been inside Nashville. Let us know if we can help you find anything or tell you anything about this city and we will our best to
44:31 Do so. So thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you Wednesday.