Davidson County · Middle Tennessee
Living in The Nations
The Nations is the west Nashville neighborhood between Charlotte Avenue and the Cumberland River, where the north and south avenues carry state names and the whole grid used to work at the Ford glass plant. It is now one of the most heavily rebuilt neighborhoods in the county, with 1940s worker cottages standing next to tall-and-skinny infill on the same block.
- County
- Davidson
- Distance to downtown Nashville
- ~4 miles
- Character
- Old industrial grid, rebuilt hard since 2015
- Design review
- None. No historic or conservation overlay
What’s actually there
- A street grid of numbered avenues named for states, Indiana, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Alabama and New York among them
- 51st Avenue North and Centennial Boulevard as the commercial spine
- The Guido van Helten mural wrapping the old grain silos at Silo Bend, a portrait of a longtime resident
- An industrial past: the Ford glass plant announced in 1955 brought 2,500 jobs, and grain silos and fuel storage sat among the houses
- A proposed Nations Urban Design Overlay covering roughly 400 acres, which would allow up to seven stories along parts of the corridor
- Richland Creek Greenway and McCabe Park on the southern side
The housing stock
Two housing stocks on the same street. The original layer is 1940s and 1950s clapboard and cinder block worker cottages built for people at the plants. On top of it sits a decade of tall-and-skinny infill, much of it built as a Horizontal Property Regime rather than a conventional subdivision, which changes what you own and what you maintain. Redfin’s Urbandale and Nations area figure was $620,000 in October 2025, and that label blends in the neighboring Urbandale pocket rather than describing the Nations alone. Ask for the comparable sales on the specific avenue instead.
Getting around
About four miles to downtown, ten to fifteen minutes off-peak by Charlotte Avenue or I-40. Sylvan Park is across Charlotte to the south, and the Charlotte Pike retail at Nashville West is a few minutes west.
Things to do in The Nations
Places worth knowing before you decide whether you want to live here.
Frothy Monkey
1400 51st Avenue North, in the old Belle Meade Hosiery Mill building. The all-day café most people meet at.
The silo mural
Guido van Helten’s portrait wrapping the grain silos at 51st and Centennial, painted on the Silo Bend site and visible from Centennial Boulevard.
Nicky’s Coal Fired
Coal-fired pizza at 5026 Centennial Boulevard.
White Bison Coffee
5202 Centennial Boulevard, Suite 102, right by the silos.
51st Deli
1314 51st Avenue North, home of the sandwich called the West Nasty.
The Centennial
Neighborhood bar at 5115 Centennial Boulevard.
McCabe Golf Course and McCabe Park
100 46th Avenue North, 27 public holes plus the park and greenway access.
Richland Creek Greenway
Trailhead at 4601 Murphy Road, 4.1 paved miles along the creek.
Hattie B’s Hot Chicken
5209 Charlotte Pike, on the Charlotte Pike edge of the neighborhood.
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.
Subdivisions and named developments in The Nations
Once you are actually looking, you stop searching by city and start searching by subdivision. These are the names that come up, and what is true about each one that will still be true in three years. No prices, no dues, no days on market, because those change and this page would go stale telling you about them.
Plan of West Nashville No. 1
The founding 1887 plat, and the reason every street here is named for a state.
- Recorded May 18, 1887. This is the original town plat of West Nashville, not a modern subdivision, and it is why the neighborhood is a grid rather than a set of cul-de-sacs.
- About 559 parcels still carry a West Nashville Plan 1 legal description, laid out in numbered blocks running past 200.
- The original lots were platted 25 and 35 feet wide and uniformly 150 feet deep. That 150 foot depth is unchanged after nearly 140 years.
- Which explains the infill. A 50 foot homesite here is two original lots, so splitting one back into two is a return to the platted line rather than a variance, and that is the mechanism behind every tall-skinny you see.
Plans of West Nashville No. 2 and No. 3
The early 1890s extensions of the same grid, on the same lot module.
- Plan 3 recorded April 2, 1892. Plan 2 carries a placeholder date in Metro’s records rather than a real one, and its plat book position places it around 1891 to 1892.
- About 170 parcels carry a West Nashville Plan 2 legal description.
- Same 25 and 35 foot widths on 150 foot depths as the 1887 plat, so the grain of the neighborhood does not change as you cross from one plat to the next.
- The Clifton Subdivision of County Lands, recorded around 1898, extended the same pattern again.
The West Nashville Urban Design Overlay
The newest and most consequential thing governing what can be built here, and it is barely a year old.
- Adopted as ordinance BL2025-831, effective August 29, 2025, under case 2025UD-002-001.
- An Urban Design Overlay sets standards for how buildings meet the street, which is a different instrument from a historic or conservation overlay. It shapes new construction rather than reviewing changes to old buildings.
- The Nations also sits inside Metro’s citywide Urban Zoning Overlay, adopted as ordinance BL2000-476 effective December 2, 2000.
- Base zoning across the core blocks is RM40-A-NS, with RS3.75 and a range of mixed use districts along the corridors. If you are buying here to build, the overlay and the base zoning both apply and they are not the same document.
Historic Preston Taylor Homes
A 2000s redevelopment platted directly onto the 1890s Clifton blocks.
- Phase 2 recorded October 24, 2001, with a Phase 1 revision on November 20, 2001, a Clifton Plan block resubdivision in January 2003 and a Phase 2 resubdivision in April 2004.
- Built in the HOPE VI era of public housing redevelopment.
- The plats sit on top of the historic Clifton Plan blocks, so the modern layout is recorded over a nineteenth century one.
- The word Historic is part of the recorded plat name itself, not a description someone added later.
Broadstone Nations and Modera Nations
The large rental blocks on Centennial Boulevard and 54th, and they are rentals, not for sale.
- Broadstone Nations sits at 4717 and 4731 Centennial Boulevard with 345 dwelling units recorded and a 6.18 acre common area, under SP zoning.
- Modera Nations was recorded December 20, 2023 across two lots on 54th Avenue North, 5.27 acres and 3.86 acres, also SP zoning.
- SP zoning means a Specific Plan, a site-specific district negotiated for that parcel. What is permitted there is written into that plan rather than into a standard zoning district.
- Several smaller named developments sit nearby, including Nations Park, Haven at Nations and Cottages of the Nations, most of them small unit counts with a recorded common area.
Schools
Metro Nashville Public Schools
Look up an address with the district →
Served by Metro Nashville Public Schools. Assignment follows the address, and the choice and magnet application runs separately from it. Confirm both for the specific address in the district’s own Zone Finder.
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
Three things decide a purchase here. First, zoning is genuinely in motion. There is no historic or conservation overlay, so nothing reviews what goes up next door, and Metro has been working through a proposed Nations Urban Design Overlay covering roughly 400 acres that would permit heights up to about seven stories along parts of the corridor. Buy knowing that the block can change, and check where the proposal stands the week you write. Second, the ground has an industrial history. Grain, fuel, chemical storage and auto salvage all operated here, so on a teardown lot or any parcel with a commercial past, a Phase One environmental review is a reasonable ask rather than a paranoid one. Third, flood. The 2010 flood hit this neighborhood hard along the river and Richland Creek. Pull the FEMA panel and Metro’s flood tool on the exact parcel, and pay attention to how the lot drains rather than only to the map.
Common questions
Why is it called The Nations?
Nobody has a confirmed answer, and I would rather tell you that than repeat the story. The version you will hear involves a treaty oak and the Chickasaw, and reporting by the Nashville Scene concluded that story is probably after the fact. What is real is the grid: the north and south avenues are named for states, which is where the sense of a collection of nations comes from, and the neighborhood grew up around the plants that employed everyone in it.
Is The Nations still a good buy?
It depends what you are buying. The land pricing already reflects a decade of redevelopment, so the easy money is gone. What is still there is location, four miles from downtown with real restaurants and a greenway, and a zoning picture that may allow more than the current house does. If you are buying new infill, understand the Horizontal Property Regime structure before you sign, because it is not a condo and it is not a normal subdivision.
What is the silo mural?
A portrait by the Australian artist Guido van Helten wrapped around the old grain silos at 51st and Centennial, on the Silo Bend site. The face on it is a longtime resident of the neighborhood, which is the part people usually do not know. It is the most photographed thing in west Nashville and it is a two minute walk from the coffee at 5202 Centennial.
Thinking about The Nations?
What are some of your must haves to make it a perfect home for you in this neighborhood?