Lower Broadway and upper Broadway are two different worlds on the same street, separated by a few blocks but functioning as entirely distinct environments.
Lower Broadway
Lower Broadway refers to the entertainment district between First and Fifth Avenues, the stretch most people mean when they say “Broadway Nashville.” This is the Honky Tonk Highway, the National Register of Historic Places district, the concentration of bars, honky-tonks, celebrity-branded megavenues, restaurants, and tourist attractions that draws millions of visitors per year. It runs from the Cumberland River at First Avenue up to Bridgestone Arena at Fifth Avenue.
Everything that defines Nashville’s party reputation is in this five-block stretch. Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, Robert’s Western World, Jason Aldean’s Kitchen + Rooftop Bar, Luke Bryan’s 32 Bridge, Garth Brooks’ Friends in Low Places, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Johnny Cash Museum, and the Fifth + Broadway complex are all within or immediately adjacent to this corridor. The street is closed to through traffic on weekend evenings during peak hours to accommodate the pedestrian volume.
Upper Broadway
Upper Broadway, moving west from Fifth Avenue toward Vanderbilt and beyond, is a completely different Nashville. This is the stretch where the city transitions from tourist infrastructure into the residential and institutional neighborhoods of Midtown. The density of bars drops immediately on the west side of Bridgestone Arena. The architecture shifts from 19th-century commercial buildings to mid-century office buildings and hotels.
As you continue west on Broadway from downtown, you pass through SoBro, then through the edge of the Gulch, then into Midtown proper around 12th to 20th Avenues. The bars in this section cater primarily to the Vanderbilt and local crowd rather than tourists. The atmosphere is substantially quieter. By the time you reach 21st Avenue and the Vanderbilt campus, Broadway looks like a university street, not a nightlife destination.
The Practical Implication
If someone tells you to meet them on Broadway without specifying a location, assume they mean Lower Broadway. That is the default referent. If a hotel says it is “near Broadway,” verify the specific block, because a hotel on Broadway near Fifth Avenue and a hotel on Broadway near 16th Avenue are wildly different experiences in terms of walkability to the entertainment district.
The most common tourist navigation error is Uber or taxi drivers who sometimes interpret “Broadway” broadly, occasionally dropping riders somewhere on the mile-long stretch rather than at the honky-tonk core. Tell your driver you want to go to Lower Broadway, or specify the Honky Tonk Highway, and name a specific bar or cross street as your destination.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Broadway (Nashville, Tennessee): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway(Nashville,Tennessee)
- Notes on Nashville, Complete Broadway Honky Tonk Guide: https://notesonnashville.com/live-music/honky-tonks-broadway-nashville-guide/