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 its intersection with Haywood Lane, north on Nolensville Road. Right on Taylor and then left on Goins. Left on Nolensville, then back to the beginning.
Cranes: 0
Abandoned scooters: 0 (though one spotted in use)
The stretch of Nolensville Road south of Edmondson Pike is short on traffic lights. That’s no doubt welcome to the legion of commuters who use the route to commute into downtown. Steep ridges line Nolensville here as it follows the valleys cut by creeks — some, like Sevenmile, still extant; others buried under the road or converted to sewers only occasionally peeking above the ground. It swoops and cambers gently and largely uninterrupted.
Given the paucity of sidewalks and an almost total lack of signaled crosswalks, it is clear why the good people at local advocacy group Walk Bike Nashville focus so much time on Nolensville — particularly since there is a relatively high number of pedestrians, either making their entire trip via boot-leather or, at the least, shuffling down to the bus stops.
Haywood Lane screams down a hill — topped by Art Pancake’s massive campus from which a shockingly comprehensive equipment rental empire is run — to a stoplight near a Bank of America and a CVS. There’s a Salvadoran market and restaurant nearby, and a Thai restaurant. Sulav International Market has a Kurdish name and Kurdish signage, but promises (in Spanish) plenty of products aimed at folks from Mexico and Central America as well. It also has a European Union flag, so maybe there are products from, say, Malta or Latvia too. Sulav shares its strip with a vape store (of course) and a cash-advance storefront (even more regrettably).
What there isn’t in this amalgam of international commerce is a damn crosswalk. Or a sidewalk of notable length. Crossing Nolensville here requires a perilous game of real-life, high-stakes Frogger but on the east side of the street, the reward: the stunning turquoise edifice of Taqueria Mexico Tennessee and the equally intense orange of Tennessee Quick Cash. There’s also the rather sedate-by-comparison kelly green of an O’Reilly Auto Parts.
Walk a Mile: South Nolensville Road and Lake Providence
At the corner of Nolensville and Taylor Road, Genesis Fresh Produce (clever slogan: “Quality From the Beginning”) occupies a quirkily shaped building that appears to have been designed by three committees operating over a period of decades. Nevertheless, Genesis has a beautiful selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, evinced by its very pleasing Instagram page. Somewhere nearby somebody is baking something, the smell wafting up Taylor.
There is no transition between Nolensville and Taylor. The change is abrupt and dramatic. The busyness and business of Nolensville give way immediately to a road that might as well be in Pegram. Taylor is heavily shaded with rich, verdant undergrowth creeping into the right of way. It is shockingly quiet after the bustle of Nolensville. And it climbs straight up a hill.
Where there are houses — there used to be more, as indicated by the stubby driveways to nothing that appear on occasion — none bear the splashy paint jobs of Nolensville’s commerce. Instead, it’s simple neutral-colored clapboard for the most part, again more suited for more rural environs.
Alas, there is a bit of suburban creep. After the overgrowth of the trees gives a bit at the summit of the hill, a brick house more associated with a doughnut county sits on a sizable lot, also more associated with a doughnut county. The homeowner, trying to beat the looming June heat, is wrapping up what must have been a monumental mowing job.
Across from the detritus of spring cleaning left in the ditch — a tube television, no-longer-in-style furniture — a rocky outcropping of a vacant lot seems to have not been vacant all that long. A relatively kempt shed is against the back property line, and the grass and weeds have yet to take over. A glimpse of what could be coming is just up the street.
On Old Goins Road, things are not old. They are new. They are tall. They are skinny. And there are more coming. On Goins (current Goins?) there’s more of the same, though some existing stock survives. On the northern side of the road, there’s no construction, old or new. The dense underbrush hides what lies beneath, which could be anything from a steep drop to … just more undergrowth. No doubt the ticks would be pleased if anyone ventured a look-see. In any event, the property is owned by a developer who received zoning approval for 99 multifamily units in 2020. No building permits have been pulled, and the only visible resident is a buck rabbit, undisturbed by the curious human. Across from the wee feeding mammal is Nu-Style Beauty & Barber.
Truist Bank has a branch at Goins and Nolensville with a truly unnecessary number of parking spaces — unless everybody in the county is banking there simultaneously. Officially the property is owned by 3NB LLC. Truist merged with SunTrust, which consumed Third National in 1986. Why bother updating the paperwork in a world where bank mergers are more and more common?
Just to the northwest, the inestimable K&S World Market neighbors a rather stereotypical run of businesses: used cars, used tires, used cars, barbershop. There’s a new cocina opening where there was once a soul-food joint near the intersection of Nolensville and Providence Heights (like many streets in the area, a dead end).
The old — and these days rarely used — name for the area was Lake Providence, which took its name from Lake Providence Missionary Baptist Church, still meeting on Nolensville, but two-and-a-half miles south after the road becomes a pike.
After emancipation, many formerly enslaved people started farms and dairies in the area and had taken to meeting and reading the gospel in each other’s homes. According to the church, suddenly, a man named the Rev. Larry Thompson arrived and organized the congregation, first meeting under an oak tree and then building the small church. Assured his fledgling congregation would survive, he resigned and went to Indian Territory to preach the Good News there.
The church lent its name to the community (there is no actual lake extant — though, of course, there could have been in the time before paving). Its members gave their names to many of the roads in the area. These days, the former location of Lake Providence Missionary Baptist is noted with a historical marker. The property itself is home to a car dealership (of course).
A little farther south is a Christian community newer to Nashville than the Baptists but with a much longer legacy, denominationally speaking. Debre Keranio Medhanialem Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is the local congregation of the largest branch of Oriental Orthodoxy, distinct from both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Incredibly, this is the second time Walk a Mile will include a brief explanation of the Christological controversy that dates back to the Council of Chalcedon in 451. In short, Oriental Orthodox churches are miaphysite, believing that Jesus’ humanity and divinity are united in a single nature.
Monophysite churches, which bind to the decision at Chalcedon, believe that the divine and human natures of Jesus are separate but united in a single body. So tenuous is the difference — both sides agree that there’s not much space between them — that every once in a while, the two sides discuss coming up with some kind of unifying theology. This has been going on for almost 1,800 years, but who knows? A solution could be moments away.
To the south and on the west side of the street, charter school power player Valor has a campus nearly rivaling the scope of the Pancake realm. Valor even has a crosswalk and a signal. Unfortunately, the signal, during these non-school times, is perpetually flashing yellow — so it’s another edition of bipedal Frogger to make the crossing.
On a plinth no longer holding its street light: a piece of cardboard riddled with the careful penmanship of an HVAC worker marking duct lengths and vent locations for some project. Nearby: a supermercado with a rad luchador-themed neon sign advertising Modelo. Also nearby, a sign marking the home of Squire and Lucinda Pratt. The Pratts were obviously beloved by their children (who paid for the sign). The 1940 census tells us Squire was a farm operator and Lucinda was a housekeeper.
Across the street, 1st Chance Auto & Repair welcomes drivers with a plastic palm tree and a building adorned in a livery looking suspiciously like the flag of Norway, for some reason.
Truly, this stretch of Nolensville offers something for everybody. But crosswalks for none.
