The name comes from the people who built it. In the 1840s and 1850s, German immigrants escaping economic hardship in Central Europe began buying parcels of land north of Nashville’s city center from the McGavock family, who had purchased the area back in 1786. As German-born residents accumulated in the neighborhood, brought their trades, built their churches, and established their businesses, the area became known informally as Germantown. The name was formalized when the neighborhood was established as a district in the 1850s.
The Germans who made it
The immigration wave that created the neighborhood was part of a broader mid-19th century phenomenon. Political upheaval and economic crisis in the German states pushed hundreds of thousands of people to America between the 1840s and the 1880s. Nashville, still growing as a regional commercial center, offered real opportunity. German immigrants arrived as butchers, bakers, brewers, cabinetmakers, merchants, and Catholic clergy.
The butchering trade was particularly significant. Many German immigrants worked as butchers, a profession they brought from Europe, and they operated slaughterhouses and meat stalls in the neighborhood’s back lots. This eventually fed into the large packing houses that would define the industrial edge of Germantown for decades, including the Neuhoff meatpacking plant that operated for much of the 20th century and has now been converted into the Neuhoff Residences.
The commercial success of German-born merchants was visible on the Nashville retail landscape. Names like Zugermann, Zickler, Ratterman, Buddeke, and Grossholz were prominent in downtown Nashville’s commercial district, and these families lived in Germantown. The Catholic Church of the Assumption, built in 1859 now the second-oldest standing Catholic church in Nashville held services in German. The German Methodist Church, founded in 1854 on what is now Second Avenue North, also served the community’s spiritual life in their native language.
John Buddeke built Germantown’s first mansion in 1840, and his decision to host Catholic worship in his home directly led to the construction of the Church of the Assumption. George Dickel, whose whiskey brand still bears his name, was among the prominent residents. E.B. Stahlman, publisher of The Nashville Banner, lived in the neighborhood.
The end of Germantown as a German neighborhood
World War I effectively dismantled the German identity of the neighborhood. Anti-German sentiment swept the United States after 1917, and it was intense enough that Nashville newspapers ran stories about German sabotage of water supplies. German families in the neighborhood instructed their older members to stop speaking German, even at home. Dachshunds were viewed with suspicion. The cultural and linguistic markers that made the community distinctly German were shed rapidly.
Germantown also became more racially diverse than its early history suggests. After the Civil War, freed slaves settled in the neighborhood in part because of a reputation whether fully deserved or not for German immigrant tolerance toward Black residents. The historical marker at the site explicitly notes that the neighborhood became one of Nashville’s most diverse areas because of this influx.
By the mid-20th century, Germantown was declining economically, the German-American identity was gone, and many structures were being condemned. The neighborhood hit its nadir before a revitalization effort began in the 1970s, culminating in its listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The name survived all of it. It is one of those historical labels that outlasted the conditions that created it by more than a century. Today, the German heritage is honored mainly through the annual Nashville Oktoberfest, held on the second Saturday in October, which began in 1980 as a “homecoming” event organized by the Catholic Church of the Assumption and Monroe Street United Methodist Church. The event has grown into one of the most popular annual celebrations in Middle Tennessee.
Sources
- Historical marker at Hope Gardens, Jefferson Street, Nashville: https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=207840
- Nashville Historical Newsletter, “The Rebirth of Germantown” (December 2021): https://nashvillehistoricalnewsletter.com/2021/10/20/the-rebirth-of-germantown/
- The Cauble Group, “A Brief History of Germantown in Nashville, TN”: https://www.tylercauble.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-germantown-in-nashville-tn
- Germantown Inn, “History”: https://germantowninn.com/history/
- Wikipedia, “Germantown Historic District”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GermantownHistoricDistrict