Nashville Arcade, historic site in Nashville, Tennessee
The Nashville Arcade is a covered shopping center in downtown Nashville built in 1902, featuring long corridors lined with shops on both sides. The building showcases a glass roof, green and white Italian-style facades, and a second floor with decorative ironwork and an open steel frame structure.
The Nashville Arcade was designed in 1902 by Daniel Franklin Carter Buntin and built by the Edgefield and Nashville Company, creating Nashville's first covered shopping center. The building played a significant role in the civil rights movement when students gathered there in 1960 before protesting segregation at nearby lunch counters.
The Nashville Arcade sits at the heart of the Arts District and hosts local artists and small galleries throughout its spaces. The first Saturday Art Crawl brings the corridors to life with exhibitions and creators meeting visitors in a relaxed setting.
The Arcade is easily walkable from downtown and located on Fifth Avenue, a main street in the city center. The open glass roof design provides natural lighting throughout the corridors, keeping the space bright and welcoming regardless of the time of day.
The second floor contains a steel frame structure designed by the Nashville Bridge Company, a firm better known for building ships and bridges than commercial buildings. This unusual partnership shows how local industries were creatively used to construct this landmark.
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