Once a month, reporter and resident historian J.R. Lind will pick an area in the city to examine while accompanied by a photographer. With his column Walk a Mile, he’ll walk a one-mile stretch of that area, exploring the neighborhood’s history and character, its developments, its current homes and businesses, and what makes it a unique part of Nashville. If you have a suggestion for a future Walk a Mile, email editor@nashvillescene.com.
The Route: From Tom Joy Park, north on Jones, then left on Trinity and right on Overby. Follow Overby through the curve as it becomes Duke, then left on Sultana and left on Trinity. Turn right on Lischey while watching for precipitous drops from the sidewalk, and then left on Edwin to the start.
Abandoned scooters: 0
Cranes: 1
Abandoned Pontiac minivans: 1
Walk a Mile: Joywood
It’s a bright March morning at Tom Joy Park, drawing a smattering of perambulators to its perimeter, despite the temperature being a little on the fresh side. It’s not nearly as cold as the snowy Saturday prior, but not nearly as warm as the Friday before that either.
Nevertheless, it’s a pleasant day for a walk for folks trying to force the spring. The early-blooming trees — redbuds mostly, but one expeditious dogwood too — are doing their part.
Tom Joy Park features a pleasant pavilion and a small playground and massive, open and flat space. Sure, it lacks the amenities and historic attractions (and trees for that matter) of Nashville’s E ticket parks, but it certainly does the trick of being a basic neighborhood park.
The neighborhood here is officially the Tom Joy Neighborhood and has been since 2006, per some signage at Jones Avenue and Edwin Street. But according to Metro Planning and property records, it still has its original name — Joywood, which frankly is adorable. The neighborhood association, the park and the elementary school all bear the name of Tom Joy, who founded the still-extant Joy’s Flowers, now on Gallatin Avenue, in 1877.
In 1882, the Joy family bought 91 acres here for an estate and for greenhouses for the family business. Tom Joy died in 1935, and his heirs gave the land for a school late that year. The gift, as these types of gifts often are, was saddled with covenants. For one, the school had to be named for Tom Joy. And it had to be used for a school in perpetuity — not unusual, but a little bit of a pain in the ass, as the school board has learned a handful of times over the years when trying to abandon property donated decades earlier.
But the Joys’ preconditions had an insidious requirement as well — that the school “be used solely for white children … nor will any part of said property ever be used for education of any persons other than white children.”
Racial covenants were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1948 and then outlawed legislatively by the Fair Housing Act in 1968, so of course that portion of the agreement is a dead letter. In any event, the former Tom Joy Elementary is now a Head Start program, and today, students of color make up 83 percent of the student population at the current Tom Joy Elementary, which is farther north on Jones Avenue.
There’s a mix of new, renovated and original homes on the streets marking the park’s perimeter, but they all seem to have one thing in common: Their yards are chockablock with clover — appropriate enough, given that we’re taking our walk on March 17. But this clover isn’t quite showing its shamrocks yet, just the purple orbs of their early bloom.
Commuter traffic speeds down Trinity Lane past the orange-painted cinder blocks of TNT Appliances, toward the ever-present standstill where Interstate 24 takes in Interstate 65. The sidewalks along Trinity are relatively new and wide, but the addition of a bike lane has pushed them into what were the margins of the yards of the older homes along the thoroughfare, so a line of utility poles makes a slalom course for the sidewalk user.
St. Teresa Holiness Science Church (or “St. Theresa Holiness Science Organization,” according to property records) sits on a sprawling campus at Trinity and Overby Road. It is the oldest remaining congregation of the denomination that was founded in Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1970s. This branch took over the property from Bethel Church of the Nazarene, now on Broadmoor two miles to the northeast as the crow flies.
Like the neighborhood surrounding the park, the homes on Overby are a mishmash of eras. There’s even a modular home serving as a recording studio. After passing Prince Avenue, Overby curves sharply west and becomes Duke Street — yes, there’s a Queen Avenue nearby as well, but no Marquis or Count or Earl or Elector. There are well-maintained little clapboard houses here — original stock — brightly repainted in neutral colors. And then there are the looming new-builds in weird dark colors. A newly constructed house at 333 Duke is “coming soon,” per a sign in the yard. (Yes, there’s a website.)
Across the street is another recently completed house; the construction workers’ port-a-potty is still in the yard, much to the delight of the neighbors, surely. Next to it is a field of stakes marking new lot lines. Twelve lots — six facing Duke, six facing Prince — where there were once six. It’s obvious what’s coming, given what’s already present in this neighborhood and similar ones around town. Meanwhile, there is for some reason (possibly hoops?) a milk crate nailed eight feet up on a utility pole.
Duke makes a long and steady climb uphill past some ancient but still budding oaks toward its intersection with Sultana. A small crowd huddled in light jackets is drinking coffee on the porch at Crema as other caffeinators bustle in and out. The coffee shop at 226 Duke is a neighborhood gathering place. But how many of its patrons know that for a period in the late 1990s, the property was owned by the United States government, seized in a forfeiture related to the operation of an illegal gambling operation?
Parking is at a premium around here. Maybe not at 9 a.m., but at some time. Orange traffic cones are standard in the verges of property, home owners protecting their precious street parking from outsiders. “NO TRESPASSING” signs dot rock walls and chain-link fences as Sultana rises to meet Trinity. There appears to be no one unwelcome parking at the moment, though there is a suspiciously clean pair of socks lying in the muddy shoulder of the road.
East Nashville Beer Works, the brewery operated by former Metro Councilmember Anthony Davis, is empty at this hour. (It has plenty of on-site parking, by the way.) The joint has become something of an informal headquarters for the younger, more progressive Nashville Democrats than, say, the older crowd that gathers at John A’s near Opry Mills or that frequents the union halls of West Nashville. There is indeed a campaign sign for Sara Beth Myers, who is challenging incumbent Glenn Funk for the Democratic nomination for Davidson County district attorney.
Next door, a strip mall. Between it and the Community Market (where live bait is available for some reason) is what has to be the most aesthetically pleasing abandoned pay phone in all of Metrodom. There are little nooks for the phone at car level on each side of the structure, which is well constructed of narrow bricks painted bright-white. The body of the pay phones are present on both sides. On the market side, the cord is even still attached. Neither side actually has a receiver.
Some utility is ongoing at Trinity and Lischey Avenue. NDOT workers are adding a solar panel to a pedestrian crossing sign. In an adjacent lot, trench work and pumping and concrete mixing is underway. There’s a lot of building — or more precisely, site prep for future building — on this block. On the east side of the street, a sign warns that the sidewalk ends, and does it ever. After the abrupt conclusion of the concrete, the ground falls away several feet into a narrow ditch.
It’s quiet at the Head Start at the original Tom Joy School. No laughing children dashing about in the way that only 4-year-olds can. It’s just an anchorage for school buses with MNPS closed for spring break.
Hammering is underway at the century-old home across Edwin Street. Dogs are being walked. People are strolling.
Morning is cometh to Joywood.
