These two neighborhoods represent opposite answers to the question of what Nashville can be. They’re about three miles apart, but the distance in character is much larger.
Geography First
East Nashville sits across the Cumberland River from downtown. You cross water to get there, either on the pedestrian bridge or one of the road bridges. The distance is one mile from downtown to Five Points, the central hub of East Nashville. The Gulch is immediately southwest of downtown, you can walk to it from Broadway in ten to fifteen minutes without ever needing to cross a river or think about it. In geographic terms, The Gulch is a downtown neighborhood. East Nashville is a destination.
What Each Neighborhood Actually Is
The Gulch was a rail yard and industrial zone. Starting in the 2000s, developers converted it into one of Nashville’s most deliberately designed urban neighborhoods: LEED-certified, high-density, filled with high-rise condos and apartments, upscale boutiques, and restaurants calibrated to expense-account dining and hotel guests. It’s polished to a specific finish. The “What Lifts You” wings mural on 11th Avenue South is one of Nashville’s most photographed spots. SoHo House opened here. There are valet parking situations.
East Nashville developed organically over a century. The housing stock ranges from Craftsman bungalows built in 1910 to skinny new-construction townhouses squeezed onto former lots. The neighborhood attracted musicians and artists when it was cheap, and those early residents built a culture that persists, or at least traces of it persist alongside the higher rents. Five Points is where the bar and restaurant density is highest. Lockeland Springs, a few blocks further in, is quieter and residential. The overall sensibility is independent, deliberately un-curated, and skeptical of the city’s tourist-facing identity.
The Food
Both neighborhoods have excellent restaurants, but the food culture is different. The Gulch’s best restaurants, 404 Kitchen, Otaku Ramen, aim at a specific upscale urban customer and price accordingly. East Nashville’s best restaurants, Lockeland Table, The Wild Cow, the brunch spots near Five Points, reward regulars and risk more. East Nashville has produced more James Beard nominees per square mile. The Gulch has better hotel room service.
Who Lives There
The Gulch is populated primarily by single young professionals and couples who moved to Nashville for jobs, want urban amenities, and are willing to pay for them. Community identity in the traditional sense is thin. The Gulch is where you live when Nashville is one of your career stops rather than your home.
East Nashville has a more mixed population, longtime residents, musicians, young professionals who identified with the neighborhood before the rents rose, and newer arrivals who sought out the culture and are now changing it. The displacement pressure is real: a 2025 report from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition identified Nashville as the most intensely gentrifying city in America for the 2010-2020 period, and East Nashville is central to that story.
The Short Version
The Gulch is what a city builds when it decides to become a destination. East Nashville is what happens when artists and musicians move somewhere cheap and eventually make it worth paying for.
Sources
- Nashville Guru, Moving to Nashville Guide: nashvilleguru.com
- Frommers, “Neighborhoods in Brief in Nashville”: frommers.com
- Save Our Nashville Neighborhoods, citing NCRC 2025 report: sonninc.org/gentrification
- GIS Geography, Nashville Neighborhood Map: gisgeography.com/nashville-neighborhood-map/