Layla’s Honky Tonk, Broadway Historic District

Today’s Broadway is a magnet for visitors from around the world—lined with celebrity bars, neon lights, and hopeful singers performing all day and night long. But Broadway hasn’t always been the center of country music. For much of Nashville’s history, it was a typical downtown street with shops, restaurants, banks, schools, and residential homes.

A few bars and tourist-friendly businesses began popping up after the Grand Ole Opry moved into the Ryman Auditorium in 1943—including Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, which first opened as a bar called Mom’s in 1960, quickly becoming a favorite hangout for Opry performers before and after their sets. Tootsie’s later found its way onto the silver screen in Coal Miner’s Daughter from 1980. The film—which earned Sissy Spacek an Academy Award for Best Actress—tells the story of Loretta Lynn, a girl from Appalachia who rose to become the “Queen of Country Music.”

Like many urban areas, downtown Nashville experienced a period of economic decline during the 1970s and 1980s. That’s when Ellwest Studio Theater—now Layla’s Honky Tonk—opened as Lower Broadway’s first adult cinema. It was followed by other X-rated venues like Adult World Theater (now The Stage), Swinger’s World (now Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row), The Wheel (now Hank Williams Jr.’s Boogie Bar), and Playhouse Cinema (now the Mellow Mushroom). Though a few reputable businesses held on, Lower Broadway became known more for its after-hours activity than family-friendly entertainment.

These theaters turned the area into a lightning rod for debates about morality, city image, and urban redevelopment. By 1990, Ellwest and other adult theaters closed as part of a larger effort by city leaders to revitalize downtown. The transformation is complete, though the tourism industry presents the city with a new set of problems. 

Still, what was once Nashville’s seedy side has become a world-famous stage for country music–even if it comes with a side of bachelorettes and party buses! For more on Broadway, music, and downtown entertainment–check out our other tours on Nashville Sites. 

From here, keep walking up Broadway and turn RIGHT onto Rep. John Lewis Way. You won’t be able to miss the Mother Church of Country Music on your right. Stop at the historical marker to listen to the next tour stop.