Historic East Nashville - or Preservation Plus! Nowhere in Nashville will you find a living architectural picture book from the earliest times to the present. But wait there's more! Throw in diverse, creative examples of adaptive re-use and stunning contemporary infill and you have preservation with a twist, East Nashville style.

This "small town" within a city has been known to be, well, fiercely independent from the beginning. Probably because of obstacles to be overcome. There was that War, you know, that created isolation from the City of Nashville when the Woodland Bridge was destroyed. The worst urban fire in the state of Tennessee took place here in 1916, wiping out over 600 homes and making over 2500 folks homeless. A flood in 1932. A tornado in '33. The "largest Urban Renewal and Redevelopment Project in the United States" (so said the billboards) began in 1958 and lasted for 15 years. And taking an almost identical path from 65 years before, another tornado raged through in 1998.

Restoration of historic homes and buildings was just the first step. There's a whole lot more to the making of a neighborhood. Like that pink rabbit, East Nashville just keeps going and going and going--leading the way in historic preservation and setting the standard for urban redevelopment. Or as residents tend to say - it happened on the East Side first. People have been discovering East Nashville for a myriad of reasons since before there was a Nashville. Local notables and ordinary people have called it home. And so it's been since. It's now your turn to see what's special about this one-of-a-kind place, in the Candlelight Tour!