Davidson County · Middle Tennessee
Living in Germantown
Germantown is Nashville’s oldest platted residential neighborhood, a few blocks northwest of downtown, listed on the National Register since 1979 and protected by a full historic preservation overlay. It is the only close-in neighborhood with genuine nineteenth-century housing, now sitting alongside mill conversions and high-end new townhomes.
- County
- Davidson
- Historic district
- Jefferson St, 3rd Ave N, Taylor St, 8th Ave N
- Design review
- Historic Preservation overlay, six separate sub-zones
What’s actually there
- A National Register district of 18 city blocks, listed on August 1, 1979, with a period of significance from 1850 to 1924
- Italianate, Stick, Eastlake and Queen Anne housing on small urban lots
- The Werthan Mills conversion of an 1860s textile mill on Rosa L. Parks Boulevard
- A restaurant cluster unusually dense for the neighborhood’s size
- Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park and the Tennessee State Museum on the southern edge
The housing stock
Three kinds of housing, priced and regulated very differently. Restored single-family Victorians from roughly 1850 to 1924 on small urban lots. Loft conversions, above all Werthan Mills, built out of an 1860s textile mill in five separate phases between 2004 and 2013. And a steady supply of new attached city homes, two and three stories with rooftop terraces, in projects including Hanover Germantown, Tennyson Germantown and Six on Fourth. Smaller condominium projects searched by name include Madison Square, Summer Street Lofts and Morgan Park Place. I am deliberately not publishing median prices for Germantown: two credible sources disagree by more than fifty percent, because a handful of two million dollar townhome sales swing the number in a neighborhood this small. Ask me for the current figure and I will pull it properly.
Getting around
Roughly a mile and a half from 5th and Broadway, about five to eight minutes off-peak, and walkable to the Capitol and Bicentennial Mall in around ten minutes.
Things to do in Germantown
Places worth knowing before you decide whether you want to live here.
City House
Restaurant at 1222 4th Avenue North.
Rolf and Daughters
Restaurant at 700 Taylor Street.
Henrietta Red
Restaurant and oyster bar at 1200 4th Avenue North.
The Optimist
Seafood restaurant at 1400 Adams Street, with the Jacqueline outdoor bar.
Butchertown Hall
Restaurant and beer hall at 1416 4th Avenue North.
Von Elrod’s Beer Hall & Kitchen
Beer hall at 1004 4th Avenue North, beside the ballpark.
Bearded Iris Brewing
Brewery and taproom at 101 Van Buren Street.
The Cupcake Collection
1213 6th Avenue North. Mignon Francois opened it in 2008 and it has sold more than five million cupcakes since. The sweet potato cupcake is the one people drive here for. There is a second store in Lenox Village.
The Neuhoff District
1316 Adams Street, on the bluff over the Cumberland at the eastern edge of Germantown. Fourteen acres and about 914,000 square feet built into the old Neuhoff meatpacking plant, which ran from 1897 until Swift closed it in 1977. New City Properties, the firm behind Ponce City Market in Atlanta, redeveloped it and the district opened in 2024. Five original slaughterhouse buildings were kept and converted. Adams Street through it is a curbless shared street, so cars and people use the same surface.
The River Steps at Neuhoff
1314 Adams Street. A sunken outdoor amphitheater built in the footprint of two demolished slaughterhouse buildings, with the original stone and concrete retaining walls left in place. The free River Steps concert series runs the second Thursday of June, July, August and September, doors at 6 and music at 7.
Babychan
1313 Adams Street. Japanese-inspired restaurant with its own coffee bar and bakery counter, from the team behind Kisser. Restaurant Monday and Wednesday through Friday 10 to 2:30, weekends 10 to 3. Coffee and bakery from 8. Closed Tuesdays.
Fishmonger
1316 Adams Street, Suite 112. Seafood restaurant and raw bar, open since March 2025.
Close Company
1316 Adams Street, Suite 010. The Nashville cocktail bar from Death and Co. Sunday through Thursday 4 to midnight, Friday and Saturday until 2.
Cauponor and Charmers
Both at 1316 Adams Street, Suite 25, from the Peninsula team. Charmers is the bar off the River Steps, open since December 2025. Cauponor is a fourteen to sixteen seat tasting menu restaurant from chef Jake Howell, Tuesday through Thursday, reservations required. It soft opened in late July 2026, so several directories still list it as coming soon.
Monday Night Brewing, Preservation Co.
1308 Adams Street. A taproom with twenty four drafts plus cocktails and wine, and outdoor seating. There is no kitchen and outside food is allowed. Monday to Thursday noon to 10, Friday and Saturday to midnight, Sunday to 8.
Mas Tacos, Van Leeuwen and E+ROSE
The counter service row at Neuhoff. Mas Tacos Por Favor is the outpost of the East Nashville original. Van Leeuwen scoops classic and vegan ice cream at Suite 111, open since August 2025. E+ROSE does smoothies and bowls at 1320 Adams, weekdays from 7.
Sensa Padel
1321 Adams Street. Six outdoor padel courts, the first padel club in Tennessee, open since September 2024. Daily 7am to 11pm on paid reservations. No food or bar on site.
Sid Mashburn and Ann Mashburn
1316 Adams Street. The menswear and womenswear shops, Monday to Saturday 10 to 6, alongside Love Train Antiques and Home, a 6,000 square foot vintage dealer in the same building.
Nashville Farmers’ Market
Year-round market sheds and food hall on Rosa L. Parks Boulevard.
First Horizon Park
Home of the Nashville Sounds, with a season running into September.
Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park
State park and the Tennessee State Museum on the neighborhood’s southern edge.
Checked against each business as of August 18, 2026. Nashville loses restaurants faster than most cities, so if something here has closed since, tell me and I’ll get it corrected.
Buildings in Germantown, and which ones you can actually buy into
Here nobody searches by subdivision, they search by building. So the first thing each of these says is whether the units are individually owned and buyable or whether the whole tower belongs to one company, because several of them are marketed as condominiums and are not. Everything else is durable: what was built, when, and how many.
The Lofts at Werthan Mills
A condominium, in a cotton mill that has been standing since the 1870s.
- A genuine condominium. Metro’s parcel records show 91 separately owned units at 1400 Rosa L Parks Boulevard, held by individuals and family trusts.
- The complex is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Tennessee Manufacturing Company, a group of six buildings built between 1869 and 1953, listed June 25, 1999.
- The first mill building dates to around 1871 and the second to 1880 through 1882. At one point it was the largest of three cotton mills in Nashville, later Werthan Bag Company from 1928.
- Redevelopment began in 1998 and involved abrasive blasting of lead paint and asbestos abatement across hundreds of thousands of square feet, which is part of why the shell survived rather than the site being cleared.
Werthan Lofts IV and V
The later phases, a much larger condominium, and one that apartment sites routinely get backwards.
- A genuine condominium. Metro’s parcel records show 240 separately owned parcels across 1340, 1348, 1350 and 1352 Rosa L Parks Boulevard, including stacked flats and townhome units.
- Owners are individuals, trusts and small companies, with a separate common area parcel held by the owners’ association.
- Apartment listing sites carry 1350 Rosa L Parks as though it were a rental community. It is not. Those are individual owners leasing out units they bought.
- Phases four and five of the same Werthan mill redevelopment, so the buildings share the historic complex with the Lofts at Werthan Mills.
Evergreen at Werthan
A rental, and the easiest one in Nashville to mistake for a condominium, because of where it stands.
- A rental. One parcel at 1600 Rosa L Parks Boulevard, 92 units, one owner, and not a single unit in individual ownership.
- It sits on the Werthan campus surrounded by genuine condominiums at 1340 through 1400 Rosa L Parks. Address proximity is doing a lot of work here and it misleads people.
- Platted October 22, 2012.
- If you are shopping the Werthan buildings, the number to check is the street number, not the name.
Germantown Station
A small condominium in townhouse form, seventeen units with their own front doors.
- A genuine condominium. Metro’s parcel records show 18 parcels, being units 1 through 17 plus a common area held by the owners’ association.
- Addressed along two street frontages, 1415 to 1427 4th Avenue North and 401 to 413 Van Buren Street, with one street number per unit.
- That addressing tells you the form: attached townhouses, not a stacked mid-rise with a shared lobby.
- Small by design. Seventeen units means inventory here is rare rather than steady.
Modera Germantown
A rental, four hundred units, and the largest single residential building in the neighborhood.
- A rental. Two parcels on Adams Street under single ownership, 400 apartment homes, no individually owned units.
- Platted March 9, 2021 and developed by Mill Creek Residential. Preleasing opened March 2023 with first move-ins that May.
- Built amenities include three courtyards, a rooftop deck, an outdoor pool, a fitness center, a resident clubhouse, a game room, and a pet park with a pet spa.
- At 400 units it is larger than every for-sale building in Germantown combined, which shapes how the neighborhood feels without adding anything a buyer can purchase.
Neuhoff
A rental, in the old meat packing plant on the river, and the biggest thing built in Germantown in a generation.
- A rental. The parcels on Adams Street are held by single entities and there are no residential unit parcels, so nothing here is for sale to a buyer.
- An adaptive reuse of the Neuhoff meat packing plant: 542 apartments across two buildings of eight and nine stories, plus 448,000 square feet of office and retail.
- Roughly 900,000 square feet in total, developed by New City Properties with JP Morgan and Cousins Properties.
- Phase one includes a fourteen story office building over ground floor retail and The Curve, a restored run of buildings from the 1900s. A second office tower joins by sky bridge.
Towne Nashville
A rental on Garfield Street, and the amenities are unusually specific to this city.
- A rental. One parcel at 808 Garfield Street, 329 apartments, one owner, no individually owned units.
- Platted September 6, 2019 and developed by Quarterra Multifamily. Leasing opened June 2023. Units run 630 to 1,150 square feet.
- Built amenities include a six floor parking garage with electric vehicle charging, a music writing room, an acoustic stage courtyard with fire pits, a golf simulator, a skylounge, a dog run and work from home suites.
- A music writing room and an acoustic stage are built features, not promises, and they are a fair signal of who the building was designed for.
Schools
Metro Nashville Public Schools
Look up an address with the district →
Served by Metro Nashville Public Schools. The zoned school is set by address and Metro’s choice and magnet applications run on their own calendar alongside it. Confirm both for the specific address rather than the street.
I publish district and school zoning as published fact and nothing more. No ratings, no rankings, no comparisons. School zones are set by the district, assigned by address rather than by subdivision or city name, and they change. Confirm any address with the district itself, and evaluate the schools yourself against what matters to your family.
What a buyer needs to know here
Germantown has a preservation overlay, not a conservation overlay, and the difference is measured in tens of thousands of dollars. The Metropolitan Historic Zoning Commission reviews new construction, additions, demolition including partial demolition, relocation, signage, setbacks, and repairs and alterations to existing structures, which reaches as far as replacing siding or installing a fence. Windows are specific: double-hung, single-over-single sashes, and any muntins must be fully simulated and bonded to the glass, so snap-in vinyl grilles will fail review. Front porches may not be enclosed. New construction is generally held to one or two stories in residential areas, rising to four only along Rosa L. Parks Boulevard and Jefferson Street. Critically, the overlay is split into six zones and the rules are not the same across them, so the answer depends on which block you are on. Two more. Werthan is five phases with separate bylaws, so there is no single Werthan rule for anything, including rentals. And Germantown is not inside the Downtown Code, so the no-parking-required rule does not apply, but the historic lots are small and much of the older stock has no off-street parking at all. Verify parking with your feet, not with the listing.
Common questions
Can I replace the windows on a Germantown house?
Only with review, and only to the standard. Germantown sits under a preservation overlay, which reaches routine repairs as well as construction. Windows must be double-hung with single-over-single sashes, and any muntins have to be fully simulated and bonded to the glass, so the snap-in vinyl grilles most replacement quotes assume will not pass. Price this before you close, not after your contractor tells you.
Are the rules the same everywhere in Germantown?
No, and this catches people. The overlay is divided into six zones, including the National Register area, the Werthan complex, Rosa L. Parks Boulevard, Jefferson Street, East and North, and the standards differ between them. Height limits in particular change. The right question is never what the Germantown rules are, it is what the rules are on that specific block.
Can I short-term rent in Germantown?
Mostly no. Germantown’s base zoning is largely residential, and Metro does not issue new non-owner-occupied short-term rental permits in residential zoning. An existing permit does not transfer when a house sells, so any listing advertising grandfathered nightly income is selling you something that ends at closing. Owner-occupied permits are a separate category and are available if you genuinely live there, but not through an LLC or a trust. Check the exact parcel’s zoning first.
What is Werthan Mills?
A conversion of an 1860s textile mill on Rosa L. Parks Boulevard into lofts, done in five phases between roughly 2004 and 2013. The important detail is that the phases have separate bylaws, so rental rules, fees and reserves differ depending on which building you are buying in. Never accept a general answer about Werthan. Ask which phase.
Thinking about Germantown?
What are some of your must haves to make it a perfect home for you in this neighborhood?