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Nashville Sites
Image 1 of 9: Statue of Owen Bradley playing piano, in the park that bears his name. Image courtesy of MHCF.
Statue of Owen Bradley playing piano, in the park that bears his name. Image courtesy of MHCF.
Owen Bradley’s Quonset Hut, late 1950s. Courtesy of MHC.
Formerly Church of the Advent, Episcopal, Ocean Way Nashville is an active recording studio owned and operated by Belmont University. Image courtesy of MHCF.
Country superstar Garth Brooks in the 1990s. Image courtesy of Country Music Hall of Fame© and Museum.
Current exterior of the Columbia Records and Studio A, now part of the Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business, 2018. Image courtesy of MHCF.
Elvis Aaron Presley on the cover of TV Guide, 1956. Presley recorded hundreds of songs in RCA Studio B. Image courtesy of Country Music Hall of Fame© and Museum.
Decca Records building, 2019. The space is currently leased as office space. Image courtesy of MHCF.
Webb Pierce in front of his original guitar-shaped pool, 1969. Image courtesy of Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum.
This map, from the Metro Planning Department, shows several neighborhoods to the south and west of downtown, including The Gulch, Music Row, Belmont-Hillsboro, and Vanderbilt. Image courtesy of MHC.
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Statue of Owen Bradley playing piano, in the park that bears his name. Image courtesy of MHCF.

Music Row Neighborhood

1 hr 30 min 1.9 mi 25 stops

Nashville’s Music Row—it is arguably the most concentrated creative center in the world. This less-than-two-square mile area houses all of the major components of the music industry. The area is also historic—once part of the sprawling antebellum estate of Judge Oliver Hayes. His daughter Adelicia Acklen built the Belmont Mansion in 1853. After her death, the estate was sub-divided and sold as plots for houses in the late nineteenth century. Many of the remaining historic homes you will pass today were built during this era. The center of the estate, including the mansion itself, was sold to Susan Heron and Ida Hood, who opened Belmont College for Young Women in 1890. In 1913, Belmont merged with Ward Seminary to become the Ward-Belmont School.

WSM, the famed radio station of the Grand Ole Opry, maintained their broadcasting center at Ward-Belmont from the 1920s to the 1940s. In 1951, the school became a co-ed, four-year college, which is today’s Belmont University. So what is Music Row? There are the physical boundaries from Music Square East to Music Square West and from Demonbreun Street to Wedgewood Avenue. Music Row is also shorthand for the music business.

First called “Record Row”—the name shifted to “Music Row” in the mid-1960s as the music industry scene exploded in Nashville. In the 1970s, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Avenues were made one-way streets and renamed Music Square East and West, respectively. It is ironic that of all the streets renamed, none were actually named Music Row. There are circles and squares, but no rows! We are pleased to give you a tour of the neighborhood that gave us the Nashville Sound and launched our reputation as Music City U.S.A. Some of these sites will actually be recorded in the very studios you’ll be seeing—so keep an ear out as we’ll let you know at the beginning of the stop. Hello! My name is Michael Janas, and I work at Belmont University in the audio engineering technology department. Begin the tour at Owen Bradley Park. You will have three stops here: Owen Bradley Park, Musica, and Buddy Killen Circle.

Tour Stops
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