When he was interviewed between periods of the clinching Game 4 of the Finals, the Fox interview shown on the scoreboard screen at the Brendan Byrne Arena, a full house of 19,040 Devils fans chanted, "Bettman sucks!"
"Let it be known," Bettman said to Fox (and Devils) announcer Mike Emrick, "that hockey fans are passionate!"
The Devils won the Cup, and stayed. On December 18, 1996, the Nashville Arena, now named the Bridgestone Arena, opened. On June 25, 1997, Bettman granted an expansion franchise to Nashville. On October 10, 1998, the Nashville Predators played their 1st game. Last season, they played their 1st Stanley Cup Finals, losing to the Pittsburgh Penguins in 6 games.
This Saturday, the Devils travel to Nashville, but only for 1 game, to play the Predators. All has been forgiven for the attempt to move the Devils there nearly 25 years ago.
Before You Go. Nashville is in the South. Not the Deep South, but the Mid-South. However, Tennessee rejoined the Union a long time ago, and you won't need to bring a passport or change your money.
If you were going to a baseball game, or an early-season football game, the heat might be an issue. But this will be early March, so even outside the arena, heat won't be a factor. What could be a factor is rain: The website of Nashville's main newspaper, The Tennessean, is predicting the mid-50s for the afternoon, and low 40s for night. They're predicting rain for the previous day, but not for game day. You should bring a Winter jacket, or a regular jacket if you're wearing a jersey in.
Nashville, like most (but not all) of Tennessee, is in the Central Time Zone, an hour behind us. Adjust your timepieces accordingly.
Tickets. The Predators averaged 17,445 fans per home game last season, a sellout -- not surprising, given how good they've been the last 3 seasons. Tickets might be hard to get.
Seats in the lower level, the 100 sections, go for $234 between the goals and $204 behind them. Seats in the upper level, the 300 sections, go for $52 and $42.
Getting There. It's 892 miles from Midtown Manhattan to downtown Nashville, and 881 miles from the Prudential Center to the Bridgestone Arena. So your first instinct would be to fly.
A round-trip nonstop flight could cost under $800. Nashville International Airport is 8 miles east of downtown, and the Number 18 bus can get you to downtown in under half an hour. (The airport was originally named Berry Field, after Colonel Harry S. Berry, the Tennessee administrator for the New Deal's Works Progress Administration.)
You can't take Amtrak: It doesn't serve Nashville. Greyhound can get you from New York to Nashville in a little under 30 hours, for $370 round-trip, although it could drop to as little as $241 with advanced purchase, although you'd have to change buses in Richmond. The Greyhound station is at 709 5th Avenue South, 5 blocks south of the arena.
If you do drive, it's far enough that you should get someone to go with you, to trade off, especially if one can sleep while the other drives. Get into New Jersey, take Interstate 78 West into Pennsylvania. At Harrisburg, get on Interstate 81 South, and take that down through Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia, into Tennessee, where it flows into Interstate 40 West. Take that halfway across Tennessee. Exit 210 is for downtown.
If all goes well, you should spend a little over an hour in New Jersey, 2 hours and 45 minutes in Pennsylvania, 15 minutes in Maryland, half an hour in West Virginia, 6 and a half hours in Virginia, and 2 hours and 45 minutes in Tennessee, for a total of 13 hours and 45 minutes. Given rest stops in Pennsylvania, one at each end of Virginia, and 1 in Tennessee, and we're talking about a trip of at least 17 hours -- each way.
Once In the City. Founded in 1779, and named for General Francis Nash, killed in the Battle of Brandywine outside Philadelphia in the War of the American Revolution, Nashville is in central Tennessee. It is the State capital, home to 684,000 people with a metropolitan area of about 1.9 million.
The State House, formerly featured on Tennessee license plates.
That statue of Andrew Jackson, Tennessee pioneer,
has copies in Washington across from the White House,
and in downtown New Orleans.
"White flight" hasn't hurt Nashville nearly as much as it's hurt Memphis or many other cities, North and South alike. As late as 1970, Nashville was 80 percent white; in 1990, 74 percent. Now, it's about 56 percent white, 28 percent black, 10 percent Hispanic, 4 percent Asian and 1 percent Native American.
The sales tax in Tennessee is 7 percent, and within Davidson County, including Nashville, 9.25 percent, even higher than New York's. ZIP Codes for the Nashville area start with the digits 370 to 374, and 384 and 385. The Area Code for Nashville is 615.
Address numbers on east-west streets increase away from the Cumberland River, and Broadway separates north from south. Interstate 480 serves as a bypass, rather than a beltway. The The Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority (NMTA) runs buses, with a $1.75 fare, and the Music City Star, a commuter rail service to the city's eastern suburbs, with a fare double that, $3.50.
The Music City Star, with Nissan Stadium,
home of the Titans, in the background
In 2005, Gaylord sold its stock, and in 2007 the arena was renamed the Sommet Center, after Sommet Group, a local company that oversaw software development and payroll services. But Sommet was a company built on fraud, its founder went to prison, and in 2010 locally-based tire company Bridgestone bought the naming rights, and holds them to this day.
The rink is laid out north-to-south, and the Predators shoot twice toward the south end.
Food. Memphis has a reputation as a city of fine Southern food, particularly barbecue. Nashville, less so: They're known for music first, and food, and everything else, somewhere down the line.
Delaware North runs the concessions. There's a Main Food Court behind Sections 101 and 102 at the north end. Nathan's hot dogs and Dunkin Donuts are served throughout the Arena. Other chains available including Whitt's Barbecue, Hunt Brothers Pizza, Popcornopolis, Nuts About Nashville, Christie Cookies (hopefully not named for a Governor of New Jersey or two) and Dippin Dots. They also serve Bacon On a Stick. The South.
Team History Displays. The Nashville Predators began as an NHL expansion team in 1998. Only the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Minnesota Wild, the Atlanta Thrashers-turned-new Winnipeg Jets, the Vegas Golden Knights, and the as-yet-unnamed-and-unstarted Seattle team are newer franchises.
The 2016-17 season was their 1st as Conference Champions. The 2017-18 season was their 1st as Division Champions, and their 1st as winners of he President's Trophy for best overall record in the regular season. They won the Division title again in 2019. They're still the only Tennessee-based team ever to have won a Finals game -- although the 1999-2000 Tennessee Titans came very close to at least sending Super Bowl XXXIV to overtime.
The Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame is located at the Arena. No Predators player has yet been inducted.
The recently retired Mike Fisher was once the Predators' Captain. He requested a trade to Nashville to make it easier on his wife, country superstar Carrie Underwood. If being the 2nd-most famous, and 2nd-best-paid, person in his own marriage (a rare thing for a male major league athlete) bothers him, he doesn't show it in public. Then again, this means that Carrie's married name is Carrie Fisher.
Stuff. The Nashville Predators Team Store is located on the east, 5th Avenue side of the Arena. The usual team-related gear can be found there.
As one of the NHL's newer teams, there are no NBA Finals DVD packages for the Predators, and books about them are few and far between. In time for the team's 10th Anniversary in 2008, Craig Leipold published Hockey Tonk: The Amazing Story of the Nashville Predators. I wouldn't say their story is "amazing," but as expansion franchises, go, and as Sun Belt hockey teams go, they've done okay.) Last year, Justin B. Bradford and Pete Weber (also no relation to Shea, or to professional bowling legends Dick and Pete Weber) collaborated on Nashville Predators: The Making of Smashville.
During the Game. A November 19, 2014 article on The Hockey News' website ranked the NHL teams' fan bases, and listed the Predators' fans 20th -- 1 place ahead of the Devils' fans. A slap to those of us who didn't want the Devils moved to Nashville?
Their explanation of the ranking: "Preds known for fun fan experience but don't sell out, have low Twitter following." I don't know if Twitter followers is a good gauge of fan interaction, but attendance is, and the Preds fill the Bridgestone Arena to 99 percent of capacity. So THN are lying about something.
Nashville people don't like Memphis people. And Tennessee people don't like Arkansas, Alabama, and Florida people -- a situation that is a holdover from college football rivalries. And Predators fans really don't like the Chicago Blackhawks and their fans. That's about as far as rivalries go there. They don't have a particular problem with New Jersey. So as long as you don't make any wiseguy remarks about this being a North vs. South game, you shouldn't face anything beyond the usual nonviolent "My team rocks, your team sucks" talk.
Why the Blackhawks? Apparently, during Playoff matchups, Chicagoans buy up a lot of online tickets, make the 475-mile trip, and make nuisances of themselves. Sort of like Ranger fans making the much shorter trip to the Prudential Center. Except the Hawk fans make it worse, by cheering throughout the National Anthem, even when the Preds bring in country music superstars, like Vince Gill, a season ticketholder from Day One.
So the Preds have "In Gold We Trust," asking fans to wear the mustard-yellow (it sure ain't "gold") jerseys, and sing the Anthem along with whoever's singing it, usually some country singer or other (if not always a big star). It works pretty well.
This game will not feature a promotion. The Predators have the Predators Dancers, and their own Ice Girls -- and they sell cheesecake calendars with pictures of both. Their mascot is Gnash the Sabretooth Tiger -- Nash, short for Nashville, with a G at the beginning, so he can gnash his sabre teeth.
The mustard-yellow jersey and the bright blue claws
take some of the intimidation factor away.
You might want to stay out of Section 303, behind the north goal. Or, rather, Cellblock 303. It's their version of the Section 233 Crazies at the Prudential Center and the Blue Seats at Madison Square Garden. After each opposing player is introduced, they yell, "...SUCKS!" Okay, fairly common, and not as witty as Detroit Red Wing fans shouting, "Who cares?" But when the opposing head coach is introduced, they close with, "And he sucks, too!" That is a little different.
And while we have, "If You Know the Rangers Suck," they have, "If you're crappy and you know it, ice the puck!" Their victory song is "I Like It, I Love It," by Tim McGraw (Tug's son, to we baseball fans).
Oh yeah, there's another hockey tradition they've co-opted, one they probably should have left alone. You know how Detroit fans like to throw an octopus onto the ice? Well, when the Wings came to town in the 2002 Playoffs, Nashville fans responded by throwing that Southern pescatory staple, the catfish, onto the ice. (It probably had nothing to do with the 1966 Lovin' Spoonful song "Nashville Cats," although the Bridgestone Arena was formerly home to the Nashville Kats of the Arena Football League.)
A Predators Ice Girl, clearly not enjoying her job on the evening
After the Game. If there was an NHL team in Memphis, Nashville fans wouldn't like them. And we know they don't like Chicago. But they've never been known to turn on New Jerseyans. Devils fans shouldn't get any hassling, as long as they aren't the ones to bring it on.
Being in downtown Nashville, there are plenty of places to go for a postgame libation. Just don't call it a "libation" when you're in one, or you might get some funny looks. Robert's Western World, at 416 Broadway, is a honky-tonk famed for cold beer, fried baloney sandwiches and live country bands. Across the street, Rippy's specializes in barbecue. And there are many others.
However, I could find no place in Nashville catering to fans of any Tri-State Area team: Not the Yankees, the Mets, the Giants, and so on... and certainly not the Devils. Besides, Charlie Daniels thinks we went down to Georgia. (Which hasn't had an NHL team since April 2011.)
If you visit Nashville during the European soccer season, which we are now in, the best place to watch your local club is Fleet Street Pub, 207 Printers Alley, off Church Street between 3rd and 4th Streets downtown.
Sidelights. On November 30, 2018, Thrillist published a list of "America's 25 Most Fun Cities," and Nashville came in 16th. Nashville is about music 1st, Tennessee State government 2nd, and sports 3rd. But it's a good sports town, even though it's never had an MLB or an NBA team.
* Nissan Stadium. Home of the Tennessee Titans since it opened in 1999, it was known as the Adelphia Coliseum until 2002, simply The Coliseum until 2006, LP Field until last June. The 69,000-seat horseshoe has seen the Titans win the AFC Championship in its inaugural season, and nearly win Super Bowl XXXIV, and Division titles in 2000 (the old AFC Central), 2002 and 2008 (the new AFC South). However, the Titans went from 2008 to 2016 without making the Playoffs, and from 2004 to 2016-17 without winning a Playoff game, before finally doing so last season.
Tennessee State University, a historically-black school in Nashville, is the stadium's collegiate tenant. The stadium also hosts the annual Music City Bowl. It hosts concerts, including the CMA Music Festival every June.
It's also been a soccer facility, including hosting the U.S. national team in a 1-0 loss to Morocco in a friendly on May 23, 2006; a 3-0 win over Trinidad and Tobago in a World Cup Qualifier on April 1, 2009; a 1-0 loss to Paraguay in a friendly on March 29, 2011; a 4-0 win over Guatemala in a friendly on July 3, 2015, a game riddled by operational and logistical issues, with the Twittersphere exploding with discussions of the stadium's inadequacy even before kickoff.
The U.S. women's team played a game of the She Believes Cup there, beating France 1-0 on March 6, 2016. And the U.S. men's team had a 1-1 draw with Panama in the CONCACAF Gold Cup on July 8, 2017. The U.S. women's team played a SheBelieves Cup match there on March 2, 2019, a 2-2 draw with England.) The Stadium hosted 2 games of the CONCACAF Gold Cup in 2017, and 1 more in 2019. And Nashville SC, an expansion team for Major League Soccer, plans to play the 2020 and 2021 seasons there.
The U.S. women's team played a game of the She Believes Cup there, beating France 1-0 on March 6, 2016. And the U.S. men's team had a 1-1 draw with Panama in the CONCACAF Gold Cup on July 8, 2017. The U.S. women's team played a SheBelieves Cup match there on March 2, 2019, a 2-2 draw with England.) The Stadium hosted 2 games of the CONCACAF Gold Cup in 2017, and 1 more in 2019. And Nashville SC, an expansion team for Major League Soccer, plans to play the 2020 and 2021 seasons there.
No problems were reported on any of those occasions. And so, it has been selected by the U.S. Soccer Federation as a finalist to be one of the host venues for the 2026 World Cup.
1 Titans Way, across the River from downtown.There's no bus service, but it is accessible from downtown by walking across the John Siegenthaler Pedestrian Bridge, which makes for a great visual on Titans gamedays.
* Vanderbilt University. If there was an "Ivy League" for Southern schools, this school, founded by 19th Century railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, would be one of them. It is superb academically, but those high standards have hurt it when recruiting athletes, who tend to go to less stringent schools, thus leaving Vandy, whose teams are called the Commodores after Cornelius' nickname, struggling within the Southeastern Conference in most sports. Their women's basketball team is an exception, but, even then, they are overshadowed by their neighbors in Knoxville, the University of Tennessee.
Dudley Field opened in 1922, but was demolished and replaced with Vanderbilt Stadium in 1981, although the playing surface is still called Dudley Field, for William F. Dudley, dean of the University's medical school and the founder of the precursor league to the SEC.
Vanderbilt's athletic complex
After leaving Houston following the 1996 season, the plan was for the Oilers to play at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis for 2 years, as the Tennessee Oilers, before moving to the new stadium in Nashville for 1999. But this was a public-relations disaster, as Memphians stayed away from Nashville's team in droves, heedless of the State's name on the team.
So after topping 32,000 in only 1 home game (the last, 50,677 seeing them beat the Pittsburgh Steelers to finish 8-8), and getting less than 18,000 in 2 of their games (the smallest NFL crowds since World War II, except for the Scab Year of 1987), Bud Adams took the hint, and swung a deal to play in Nashville a year early. Vanderbilt Stadium seated only 41,448 people, making it the smallest NFL stadium since the early 1960s, but they sold it out in 4 of their 8 games. The next year, they moved into what's now Nissan Stadium, and dropped the Oilers name to officially become the Tennessee Titans.
Vanderbilt Stadium is adjacent to Memorial Gymnasium, built in 1952 as a memorial to the servicemen and -women of World War II. It is unique in college basketball (although this was not he case when it opened) in that both teams' benches are behind one of the baskets. Other unusual touches, and its age (there are several Division I schools with older facilities still in use) have nicknamed it The Fenway Park of College Basketball. 210 25th Avenue South, about 2 miles west of downtown. Number 3 bus.
* First Tennessee Park and site of Sulphur Dell. The original home of Nashville baseball is its home once again. Sulphur Dell stood on the site from 1870 to 1969, but the original ballpark faced southwest, so the State House would be in view. This put the sun in the outfielders' eyes. Along with odors from a nearby dump wafting over, and the occasional flooding from the Cumberland River that forced some games to be moved to Vanderbilt University's field, this earned the stadium the nicknames "The Dump" and "Suffer Hell."
This wooden ballpark was demolished, and replaced with stadium of concrete and steel for the 1927 season. It seated 8,500 fans at its peak. But while the new park fixed the sun problem, it did nothing to get rid of the smell from the dump, and the shape of the plot of land forced a short right field fence with a terrace, much like Cincinnati's old Crosley Field and Houston's Minute Maid Park today. When the Yankees visited for an exhibition game, Babe Ruth refused to play his usual position of right field because of the little hill, and was moved to left field.
The Negro Leagues' Nashville Elite Giants (who are best remembered today as the Baltimore Elite Giants, and that's pronounced EE-light, not El-EET) played at Sulphur Dell from 1920 to 1928, winning a Pennant in 1921.
The National Association, the governing body of minor league baseball, ordered that all leagues under its governance be desegregated for the 1962 season. Rather than comply, the Southern Association folded. The Vols, who valued staying in business over white supremacy, were inactive for 1962, but started again in the South Atlantic League for 1963. But they lost money, and folded.
Like the aforementioned Crosley Field, Sulphur Dell was used as a police impound lot, before being demolished in 1969 and being used as parking for State government buildings.
First Tennessee Park, named for a bank, opened on the site in 2015, and the Nashville Sounds moved in. It seats 8,500 people, with grassy outfield seating pushing capacity to around 10,000. It has a view of downtown Nashville. And it copied the idea of a guitar-shaped scoreboard from Greer Stadium. Nashville SC, founded as a minor-league team, played the 2016, '17, '18 and '19 seasons there, but will move to Nissan Stadium for the 2020, its 1st MLS season, before moving into a soccer-specific stadium.
* Tom Wilson Park. Black businessman Thomas T. Wilson built a ballpark for the Elite Giants to use, and they did so from 1929 to 1934, before moving north. It seated 8,000 people, and was demolished sometime after 1946. 2nd Avenue S. and Chestnut Street, about a mile southeast of downtown. Bus 25.
* Herschel Greer Stadium. Named for the late former president of the Vols, this ballpark seats 10,300 people, with standing room pushing it to a possible 15,000, which made it one of the largest minor-league ballparks.
The stadium was easily identifiable by its nod to Nashville being "Music City": A guitar-shaped scoreboard. But as Camden Yards and a series of new ballparks, in both the majors and the minors, rewrote the rules for what a baseball stadium should be in the 1990s, Greer Stadium began to be seen as outdated, and so a new park was built.
The nearest Major League Baseball team is the Atlanta Braves, 246 miles away, with the Cincinnati Reds a little farther away at 272 miles. According to an April 24, 2014 article in The New York Times, baseball fandom in Nashville is set by TV watching: The 3 most popular teams are the Braves, the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, with some people rooting for the Braves and the Reds due to the comparative proximity.
The nearest NBA team is the Memphis Grizzlies, 213 miles away. But Nashvillians don't root for the Grizzlies, because of the inherent Intra-Tennessee rivalry. For those who care about the NBA at all, according to a May 23, 2014 article in The New York Times, they tend to divide their fandom among the "cool teams": The Chicago Jordans, the Miami Former LeBrons, the Cleveland Twice-Former LeBrons, and the Los Angeles LeBrons.
* Nashville Fairgrounds Stadium. Planned to open for the 2022 MLS season, this stadium will almost certainly get a corporate name shortly after opening. Nashville SC will play at this 27,500-seat stadium on the site of the Nashville Fairgrounds, 625 Smith Avenue, about 2 miles south of downtown. Bus 52 to Fairgrounds Station, then a half-mile's walk west on Walsh Road.
Until the MLS team begins play, the nearest Major League Soccer team is Atlanta United, 247 miles away.
Don't expect Nashville to get teams in MLB or the NBA: The metro area would rank 28th in population among NBA markets, and it would rank 31st, dead last, in baseball. Then again, assuming no changes -- and even if the Columbus Crew do get moved to Austin for 2019 -- Nashville would still rank 24th, or 25th if Miami begins play earlier or at the same time, among MLS markets.
* Tennessee State University. As with many of the South's historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Tennessee State was set up in a city that already had what was then an all-white school, Vanderbilt. Their teams are called the Tigers, and their women's track team the Tigerbelles. This team formed the bulk of the U.S. women's track teams at the Olympics in the 1950s and '60s, including Wilma Rudolph, winner of 3 Gold Medals in Rome in 1960.
TSU has won the National Championship of black college football 12 times: 1946, 1947, 1954, 1956, 1965, 1966, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1979, 1982 and 2013. In 1973, they were also NCAA College Division National Champions, what would later be called Division I-AA and is now the FCS, the Football Championship Subdivision. Their big names have included Pro Football Hall-of-Fame defensive ends Claude Humphrey and Richard Dent, 6-foot-9 Dallas Cowboys All-Pro defensive end Ed "Too Tall" Jones, and "Jefferson Street Joe" Gilliam, briefly the Pittsburgh Steelers' starting quarterback during a slump by Terry Bradshaw.
While they play 2 home games every season at the Titans' Nissan Stadium, their usual home field is the on-campus 10,000-seat William Jasper Hale Stadium, named for the school's 1st president. 3500 John A. Merritt Blvd., named for the man who coached both Jackson State (1952-62) and Tennessee State (from 1963 until his death in 1983). 3 miles west of downtown. Bus 60.
* Ryman Auditorium. If country music has a Yankee Stadium or a Madison Square Garden, this is it. The Mother Church of Country Music, a.k.a. the Carnegie Hall of the South, is easily the 2nd-most famous building in the State of Tennessee, behind Graceland, the Memphis home of Elvis Presley, who performed at the Ryman very early in his career, on October 2, 1954. After this show, he went across the street and did another show at another famous musical institution, this one long owned by an established country star, the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, at 417 Broadway.
Opened in 1892, it began hosting the weekly Grand Ole Opry ("grand old opera") radio show on Nashville radio station WSM in 1943 (though the show had been broadcast since 1925). The Auditorium seats 2,362 people, and with stars announced ahead of time, there were occasions when thousands had to be turned away.
"I never want another note of music played in that building," Acuff said. He had reason beyond his bitterness over the dressing room: He was a major stakeholder in Opryland USA. (He was a bit about the money: In 1948, he was the Republican nominee for Governor of Tennessee. He lost.) But he died in 1992, and, against heavy odds, the building survived him. Ed Gaylord of Gaylord Entertainment bought the building's parent company, and had it restored.
The Ryman reopened in 1994, with its main entrance moved from the west side on 5th Avenue to the east side on 4th Avenue, plus an addition that included, yes, suitable dressing rooms, and, for the first time in its 102-year history, air conditioning. In 2012, the original stage (all but a small portion of it, left for historical reasons) was replaced as part of new renovations.
* Nashville Municipal Auditorium. While Elvis had many recording sessions in Nashville, after 1954 he didn't give another concert in the city until July 1, 1973, a matinee and an evening show at the Municipal Auditorium.
Elvis also performed in Eastern Tennessee at the City Auditorium in Paris on March 7, 1955; and at the Civic Auditorium in Kingsport on September 22, 1955.
The Beatles never performed in Nashville as a unit, although individual members did so on their solo tours.
* Grand Ole Opry House. As with sports venues, the Opry decided in the 1960s to leave the city for the suburbs, and create a family atmosphere, even adding an amusement park. Opryland USA opened in 1972, and the Grand Ole Opry House in 1974. The oak circle from the Ryman stage was placed at center stage, and lead singers stand there.
When the Cumberland River flooded in 2010, my first concern should have been for the people -- and 31 people died, in 3 States -- but it was for the Ryman. Instead, it sustained only minor damage, while the Arena, the Stadium, and the new Opry House all got socked, especially the Opry House. It was able to reopen in 6 months, while the show was broadcast from the Ryman and other Nashville locations. 433 Opry Mills Drive, about 9 miles east of downtown. Number 34 bus.
* Museums. Nashville isn't all about country music, although within a few steps of the Ryman (and the Arena) are museums dedicated to Johnny Cash (119 3rd Avenue S.) and George Jones (128 2nd Avenue N.), and the music in general at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (222 5th Avenue S.).
The Tennessee State Museum depicts the State's history, including the Native American, colonial, early Statehood and Civil War periods. Its collection of Civil War memorabilia is one of the largest in the world. It shares a downtown building with the Tennessee Performing Arts Center -- a boring-looking 1981 building that replaced its former home, the much more appropriate 1929 War Memorial Building. 505 Deaderick Street, between 5th & 6th Avenues.
There are 3 Presidents with connections to Tennessee. Al Gore should have made it 4, and he made enough mistakes that, if he had done any one of them differently, his rightful victory would have been too big to get stolen from him. But, like the 3 who actually did get into the White House, he wasn't born in Tennessee, but rather in Washington, D.C., when his father, Albert Sr., was a Congressman. (Both father and son would serve Tennessee in each house of Congress.)
As for the other 3, 2 were born in North Carolina, and the other might have been: Andrew Jackson was born somewhere near the Carolina State Line, although no one is sure precisely where, and both North and South Carolina claim him. But the 7th President (serving from 1829 to 1837) and War of 1812 General nicknamed Old Hickory is best known, as far as his residences are concerned, for being one of the founding fathers of the State of Tennessee.
The Hermitage was a plantation he owned from 1804 until his death in 1845. On that property, he and his wife Rachel lived in a log cabin until the main house was completed in 1821. It burned in 1834, and he then had the current house built. Today, conspiracy theorists would have blamed Henry Clay or the Bank of the United States for the fire, even though Jackson himself didn't. (He did, however, blame his political opponents for the smears against both him and Rachel that gave her a heart attack that killed her between the 1828 election and the 1829 Inauguration.)
Aside from George Washington's Mount Vernon and Elvis' Graceland, it's the most-visited former private home in America. 4580 Rachels Lane, in the town of Hermitage, 12 miles east of downtown. It's on a section of the Cumberland River known as Old Hickory Lake. The Number 6 bus gets you to within a mile and a half, and the bus and the walk combined takes about an hour.
The State Capitol, which opened just before the Civil War in 1859, contains the tomb of James K. Polk, the 11th President (1845 to 1849), and his wife Sarah. The man who waged the Mexican-American War and gained us a huge chunk of our West, including all of California, he has been hailed as a visionary and assailed as a warmonger and a racist. He chose to serve only one term, and died just 3 months after leaving office, the shortest retirement of any ex-President. Sarah outlived him by 42 years, a record for a Presidential widow, and only Grover Cleveland's wife Frances, at 50 years, had a longer retirement from being First Lady. 600 Charlotte Avenue.
The other President with a Tennessee connection is Andrew Johnson, the 17th President, who succeeded to the office on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, and was impeached for a ridiculous reason: He fired his Secretary of War (also Lincoln's), Edwin Stanton, without the permission of the Senate. He believed that the law barring him from doing so was unconstitutional, and when the aforementioned President Cleveland challenged it in 1886, the Supreme Court said they were both right. For all the good it did Johnson: Surviving his Senate trial by 1 vote, he knew he couldn't get elected on his own in 1868, got back into the Senate in 1874 (welcomed by the men who had tried him with a standing ovation), and died the next year.
He was an unrepentant racist, making it odd that Lincoln would choose him for the Vice Presidency in 1864 (it was because he was the only Southern Senator who stayed loyal to the Union when his State seceded), and he remains a contender for the title of worst President ever. His hometown of Greenville, Tennessee is 250 miles east of Nashville. His museum is at 67 Gilland Street. (Charlotte, North Carolina is actually the closest major league city to Greenville, but it's not close.)
There's actually a 4th President with a minor connection to Nashville: In 2008, Barack Obama and John McCain had the 2nd of their 3 debates at the Black Box Theatre at Belmont University. Compton Avenue at Belmont Blvd., about 3 miles southwest of downtown. Number 2 bus.
Five of the six tallest buildings in Tennessee are in Nashville, only one in the larger city (but not larger metro area) of Memphis. The tallest went up in 1994, but has already changed names with one phone-service company buying out another: The South Central Bell Building, the BellSouth Building, and now the AT&T Building. At 617 feet high, its twin-spired roof has led to it being nicknamed the Batman Building. 333 Commerce Street.
Many music-themed movies have used Nashville as both a setting and a film location, including biopics of Elvis (Elvis, starring Kurt Russell), Patsy Cline (Sweet Dreams, starring Jessica Lange) and Loretta Lynn (Coal Miner's Daughter, starring Sissy Spacek). Each of these included the Ryman as a filming location. While the TV drama Nashville, soon to wrap up after 6 seasons (the 1st 4 on ABC, the last 2 on CMT), is filmed in Los Angeles, the 1975 film of the same title was filmed on location.
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Nashville is more than history and music, as important as those things are. It's also the home of an NHL team that is usually good, got very close to ultimate success last year, has developed quite a following among people you wouldn't think would take to hockey, and is now another good reason to visit this legendary city.
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