Nineteenth Century Residences

Details

Listed in the National Register of Historic Places

The building at 104 Fifth Avenue is considered to be the oldest residential building in downtown Nashville, built circa 1820. Its two-story, symmetrical three-bay design in the Federal style was typical of middle-class urban residences. The adjoining building at 106 Fifth Avenue was constructed circa 1880. The lower floors of both buildings housed commercial establishments in the nineteenth century, including a cobbler shop and a drugstore, while the upper floors were for residential use. In a 1980s renovation, an eighteen-inch layer of silt and sand discovered in a sealed off basement provided evidence that the Cumberland River had indeed reached Fifth Avenue during the floods of the early nineteenth century.