East Nashville, where you are now, has been through more identity transformations in the past two decades than most American neighborhoods manage in a century. The streets east of the Cumberland were developed as middle-class residential suburbs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — the Victorian and Craftsman houses of Five Points and Lockeland Springs represent some of the city's most architecturally intact streetscapes. East Nashville declined significantly in the mid-twentieth century as suburban flight emptied it.
A tornado in 1998 caused substantial damage and paradoxically catalyzed revival, attracting artists and musicians who bought affordable historic houses in a neighborhood with genuine character. Through the 2000s, East Nashville developed a bohemian identity — independent restaurants, art galleries, a creative community that felt like an alternative to Music Row Nashville. That identity attracted more residents, then more investment, then gentrification pressure.
Housing costs have risen sharply, and communities of color that endured the decades of disinvestment have faced displacement. East Nashville is beloved and contested in equal measure.