NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Nashville’s Germantown neighborhood is a unique marriage between trendy new buildings and the old-school feel of original 1800's architecture.

Being on the corner of Monroe Street and 7th Avenue is like taking a step back in time.

"[From the] 1830s to 1850s, a huge German population came and settled here," Scott Harootyan with the Historic Germantown Neighborhood Association said.

One of those settlers was John Buddeke and his wife Mary Jane, who built Germantown's first mansion in 1840.

"It was seminal to the neighborhood because Mr. Buddeke was German Catholic. He had a chapel in the house for the use of his family," historian Bill Hollings said.

Hollings said so many neighbors started going to his home church that they needed more space, and Buddeke convinced the bishop to build a Catholic church. The Catholic Church of the Assumption came in 1859 — Germantown's first official place of worship.

"It's technically got components of the first Catholic church of Nashville. The first one was on Capitol Hill," Hollings said. "It burned, and the bricks were salvaged and they used those to build the front part of Assumption Church."

The church has survived a lot, including multiple wars and major weather events like tornadoes in March 2020.

After several restoration projects, the church still stands tall serves as a sort of architectural centerpiece of Germantown.

"The Church of Assumption, kind of the Gothic revival style, [is] just absolutely beautiful," Harootyan said.

Harootyan said that though he's studied the styles of several buildings in the neighborhood, he can't pinpoint a main theme.

"If you look along this block, you'll see Queen Anne, Victorian styles, the Italianate, Gothic revival, cottage-style homes," Harootyan told News 2. "It's just a really interesting mix."

The mix comes from two main causes: the progression of time and the level of income of Germantown residents. With time, the neighborhood has become a melting pot of architectural design. Additionally, developments are going up fast, with new houses and apartments adding their own design elements to the mix.

"If you asked people 30 years ago what Germantown was going to be like, very few would have any idea it was going to be like this," Hollings said.

"As industry boomed here with the Neuhoff and Worthen, it became a little bit more on the warehouse side, so we're seeing a lot more of the industrial influence," Harootyan said. "So now what we have is a mix of these old historical homes with the new warehouse aesthetic."

Germantown is a neighborhood that continues to write its own story — marrying the old and the new.

"It's just kind of this ever-evolving life of the actual architecture itself that corresponds with the neighborhood and the people that move through it," Harootyan said.

News Source : https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/on-tour-middle-tn/germantown-architecture/