Steven HoskinsAt the Corner of Them and Now:A Social History of Downtown Nashville in the 20

Centuryas seen from maps of the corner of 7

and Drexel StreetsOn 12 August 1990, a warm Sunday afternoon, at the corner of 7

and Drexel, acrowd gathered to see the unveiling of a new Tennessee Historical Marker. The memoryof the state’s first Catholic secondary school for African-Americans, ImmaculateMother’s Academy, was finally being honored.

Long gone from the site and thememory of Nashvillians, this important piece of Nashville’s history was getting its due.In the crowd that day were dignitaries of state, representatives of the Catholic church,alumni/ae of the school, managers from the Sears, Roebuck and Co. store now on thesight and interested people from the neighborhood, currently a mixture of warehouse businesses and the disenfranchised and homeless of the city. What those gathered theredidn’t know was that the Sears, Roebuck and Co. store to their immediate east would beclosed almost a year to the day later. Ten years hence, those homeless anddisenfranchised would make their address within the walls of its very spacious 170,000square foot building.This is a quick cultural history of downtown, Nashville, TN told from the historicdrawings of the Sanborn Map Company.

The maps were produced between 1867-1970for the purpose of creating fire districts for an insurance company. The maps drawn between those dates for the city of Nashville are now available online and give an

Nashville Banner (Nashville, TN), 12 August 1990.

The Sanborn Maps have proven an invaluable historical reference tool. They are large-scale planscontaining data that was used to estimate the potential insurance risk for urban structures. The maps arenow available in digital form on-line athttp://80-sanborn.umi.com. I accessed them through the on-linedatabase available at the MTSU Walker Library site.

interesting glimpse into that history that show a downtown that was in course genteel,culturally diverse, commercially viable and eventually abandoned.The Sanborn Map of 1897 shows the address at Central and Stevenson (now 7

and Drexel) still being occupied by “Mile End.”

Quietly nestled between what was thenLee Avenue, later Lafayette Street, and the train tracks at the Southwest end of downtown Nashville, it had quiet neighbors. The Foster family, one of the signers of the Nashborough Compact in 1780,

had settled the land over a century previous and lived at“Mile End” peaceably since. Feeling the effects of Reconstruction as did many of theelite families of Nashville, the map reflects that the family had sold off land to survive. Now they were surrounded by homesteads and land they had parceled out for gardens andfarms to their neighbors. By 1897, the Crittenton Mission Home for Colored Girls wasnext door and a Christian Church was in the next block. The family home was situatedon a city-block size track of land that reflected what Nashville had become during theReconstruction period: A slowly integrating community of neighborhoods that was ableto keep its dignity mostly intact and the coming tide of commerce at bay in surrounding burrows. Nashville changed drastically in the next fifteen years and the maps reflect this.The Sanborn Map of 1914

shows a very different scene from 1897 and obviouslychanging neighborhood. Mile End was now home to Immaculate Mother Academy, anAfrican-American secondary school run by the Roman Catholic Church. The land was purchased anonymously in 1905 for $25,000 by the famous Roman Catholic nun, Sister

Digital Sanborn Maps, Nashville, TN 1897, sheet 131 [database on-line]; available from 80-sanborn.umi.com. See attached.

Cumberland Compact, May 1, 1780. [database on-line]; available fromwww.rootsweb.com/~tndavids/cumbrcom.htm.I accessed this document through the TNGENWEB site.

Digital Sanborn Maps, Nashville, TN 1914, sheet 167 [database on-line]; available from 80-sanborn.umi.com. See attached.

Katharine Drexel. When the family found out to whom they had sold the property, theymade every effort to retract the sale including buying the property back at full price andmaking a sizeable donation to a local Catholic charity. The sister and the local bishopstoutly refused and established the Industrial School for colored girls which by 1914 had become known as Immaculate Mother. The School razed the existing buildings and builttwo new buildings on the site, a convent and a school building. The Crittenton Homewas still across the street but most of the land in the neighborhood used for food production was now occupied by homes. Central Street had been renamed DrexelAvenue in honor the patron. Nashville was becoming more urban as homes were being built on top of homes on single land parcels.Immaculate Mother Academy became so famous a work that it and its very largeland tract was listed on the 1919 AAA Blue Book map

as the Industrial School. Theinteresting thing is that it would recognized as a driving landmark as one approached thecity from the southeast on Murfreesboro Pike. It was recognizable enough to be listedwith the few other icons on the map:the State Capitol, the School for the Blind, Fort Negley, and the Tennessee State Fair Grounds. Immaculate Mother would add HolyFamily Parish church within its boundaries in 1919, the addition noted in the SanbornMap of 1951.

The 1951 map also reflects the changing pattern of urban commercialization thatwas increasingly becoming Nashville. Gone from the surrounding neighborhood is theCrittenton Home. Replacing it was the Borden Creamery, Janitors Supply Headquarters,

The Automobile Blue Book Pub. Co., Nashville, Tenn

, public domain

[database on-line]; available fromwww.lib.utexas.edu, the Castaneda map collection. This map is one in a series of road maps produced byAAA from ca. 1908-1920 for the newly booming automobile business. They were supported by oilcompany ads. Poor sales would not meant the maps would not last through the 1920’s. See attached.

Digital Sanborn Maps, Nashville, TN 1951, sheet 67 [database on-line]; available from 80-sanborn.umi.com. See attached.