Germantown is what Nashville looks like when it is not trying to perform Nashville. There are no bachelorette sashes here, no pedal taverns, no cover bands playing Florida Georgia Line through a PA stack. The people you pass on the brick sidewalks are walking dogs, pushing strollers, or heading somewhere specific for dinner. The neighborhood is just over a mile north of Broadway, but the psychic distance is much greater.
The vibe is quietly residential with a serious food scene layered over it. This is not a neighborhood that announces itself. There are no neon signs or rooftop bars designed for Instagram. The restaurants are in converted warehouses and restored brick buildings, and most of them take reservations and expect you to sit down for a full meal. The bars are places people go to drink, not to be seen drinking. The coffee shops are places people go to work and have actual conversations.
Part of what shapes the vibe is the architecture. Walking through Germantown means moving through buildings from the 1840s to the 2020s without jarring transitions the neighborhood’s historic district designation has kept the worst of Nashville’s development impulses in check. The brick sidewalks slow you down physically. The tree canopy, which earned the neighborhood an official arboretum designation from the Nashville Tree Foundation for its more than 100 species, makes the streets feel different in every season.
The residents skew toward young professionals, couples, and families who wanted to be close to downtown without living in it. There is a loose cosmopolitanism here Germantown has some of Nashville’s best sushi, a South Asian prix fixe restaurant, an Italianate trattoria, and a beer hall modeled on Oktoberfest. The neighborhood does not feel specifically country, which is unusual for Nashville.
The energy changes by the hour. On a weekday morning, Steadfast Coffee and Barista Parlor fill with people on laptops, and the streets are quiet enough to notice the birdsong. On a Friday or Saturday evening, the wait for a table at Henrietta Red or Rolf and Daughters stretches long and the neighborhood feels like what it is: one of the best places to eat in Tennessee. On a summer weekend when the Nashville Sounds are playing at First Horizon Park, there is a cheerful background noise of families and baseball fans moving through the streets that mixes well with the neighborhood’s usual register.
The Oktoberfest held every second Saturday in October has been a neighborhood institution since 1980 and draws crowds from across the city. It is one of the few large events in Nashville that feels clearly rooted in a specific neighborhood’s history rather than manufactured for tourist consumption.
If you are visiting Nashville and want to experience the city as Nashvillians actually use it not performing its greatest hits for outsiders Germantown is the right place to go.
Sources
- NASHtoday, “Your guide to Germantown in Nashville, TN”: https://nashtoday.6amcity.com/city-guide/live/neighborhood-guide-germantown
- Acrestate, “Guide to Germantown Neighborhood in Nashville, TN”: https://www.acrestate.com/guide/guide-to-germantown-neighborhood-in-nashville-tn/
- Frommers, “Neighborhoods in Brief in Nashville”: https://www.frommers.com/destinations/nashville/getting-to-know/neighborhoods-in-brief/
- Historic Germantown Neighborhood Association: http://www.historicgermantown.org/