Another icon doomed to die, unless…
Looks like another piece of Music Row will get bulldozed – along with all the history embedded in those bricks – unless people who care get involved. A developer is looking to tear down several more buildings along Nashville’s 16th Avenue to erect what’s called a ‘six-story boutique office building.’
Among the structures under threat: the Rhinestone Wedding Chapel, and Big Spark Music. But perhaps the most visible and well-known of the threatened businesses is Bobby’s Idle Hour. The 16th Avenue tavern has been the haunt of singers, songwriters, music biz workers, area residents and tourists for decades.
According to a story in The Tennessean (May 23, 2018) Warner/Chappell Music’s publishing building, the Ed Bruce Agency and the building that formerly housed the Creative Soul Music Academy and are also under threat.
Replace with office block
The plans to tear down the buildings and replace them with an office block have been proposed by Panattoni Development Co, who recently constructed the building that now houses SESAC and the Country Music Association at 35 Music Square East.
- Take a listen here to the poignant song, ‘Saying Goodbye to Sixteenth Avenue,’ written by David Dwortzan with vocals by Ron Wallace and video by Ruth Rosen.
Not so long ago, virtually all the buildings along 16th Avenue and parts of 17th Avenue housed recording studios, record label offices, songwriters’ rooms and video producers’ offices. The unassuming one- and two-story structures still looked like the residences they had once been, quirkily built and often unadorned by commercial signage.
But over the past few years, more than forty buildings along Music Row have been destroyed and replaced by apartment blocks and office buildings. A drive along 16th and then back along 17th Avenue shows that the demolition and construction continues, seemingly unabated.
Timely action saved RCA Studio A
Continue reading “Music Row is disappearing, brick by brick”