WeHo Happy Hour

Hi, I’m Jake Wesley Rogers, and I will be your guide today on the WeHo Happy Hour tour on Nashville Sites. The song “Tennessee Whiskey” was originally recorded by David Allan Coe during country music’s outlaw era in the 1970s and 1980s. It has been covered numerous times by other artists such as country legend George Jones in 1983, and southern rock superstar Chris Stapleton in 2015. World famous distilleries such as Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey and George Dickel Whisky are not in Nashville, but Nashville has emerged as a prime location for alcohol production. On our Wedgewood-Houston Happy Hour tour, we will visit two distilleries, a brewery, cidery, and a few upscale bars.

The area we are exploring is named Wedgewood-Houston—lovingly dubbed “WeHo” by locals. Bordered by Wedgewood Avenue to the south and Houston Street to the north, the area is just blocks away from downtown. Many parts of this area feel “new,” but its history actually dates back over 200 years.

Captain John Rains arrived in 1779 with Nashville founders James Robertson and John Donelson. In 1784, Rains purchased 640 acres of the Wedgewood-Houston area at the corner of Rains and Merritt Avenues. On nearby St. Cloud Hill, Fort Negley was completed in 1862—the largest inland stone fortification built during the Civil War. In 2019, Fort Negley was designated a "Site of Memory" by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, as part of its Slave Route Project.

Since the Civil War, Wedgewood-Houston has featured a mix of businesses and homes, and its residents remain racially and ethnically diverse. This area was the site of Davidson County’s first public high school in 1917. The area also maintains deep ties to its northeastern neighbor in what is called the Gulch—a railroad and commercial hub until the 1970s. Wedgewood-Houston has seen it all. Many of the area’s former industrial buildings are the perfect sites for studios, breweries and coffee shops. There are commercial art galleries, pop ups, maker spaces, artist run collectives, and open studios. For more, check out their monthly art crawl called Arts and Music at Wedgewood-Houston. This artistic creativity is complemented by local alcohol businesses, producing an eclectic yet hip vibe here in Wedgewood-Houston.

Perhaps the site that best embodies the WeHo vibe is our tour’s first stop: Flamingo Cocktail Club and Falcon Coffee Bar. If you choose to drink along this tour, please do so responsibly and use a designated driver or ride share service.

Begin the tour at Houston Street entrance of Flamingo Cocktail Club and Falcon Coffee Bar. Falcon can be reached using this entrance. To reach Flamingo during operating hours, please use the path located on the side of the building to enter the building’s pink rear.