The Gulch Layover: Nashville's Union Station
Part of the full Nashville From BNA: Broadway and the Ryman
The Gulch, the strip of old rail land south of Broadway in Nashville, holds two things worth a few free hours: Union Station’s stained-glass lobby at 1001 Broadway and the Station Inn, which has played bluegrass out of a stone shed on 12th Avenue South since 1974.
Union Station’s stained-glass ceiling at 1001 Broadway
The terminal at 1001 Broadway went up between 1898 and 1900, grey stone in late-Victorian Romanesque Revival with turrets and a clock tower, more castle than station from the street. By the 1890s more than thirty rail lines and over a hundred trains a day were running through the yards behind it. The last passenger train left in 1979, the building emptied out and decayed for seven years, and it reopened as a hotel in 1986.
The reason to walk in is overhead: a barrel vault of stained glass 65 feet up, with three crystal chandeliers hanging under it and a gallery running around the room at first-floor level. Below that are Italian marble floors, three limestone fireplaces, and bas-relief panels of trains and boats and coaches set into the walls. A $15.5 million restoration finished the whole room in 2016. It functions as a hotel lobby, so the door is open and nobody charges anything to stand in it and look up.
The Station Inn’s bluegrass room among the condo towers
Number 402 on 12th Avenue South is a squat stone building with almost no windows, and it has been a bluegrass and roots listening room since 1974, which means it predates every tower now standing over it by a quarter century or more. Bill Monroe played here. So did Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs and Dolly Parton, in a room of plastic-topped tables that sells thin-crust pizza, beer, and chips and salsa, and not much else.
Sunday night is the open jam, 8pm, no cover: a ring of chairs goes out on the floor and anybody who turns up with an instrument can sit into it, beginners alongside session players who record for a living the rest of the week. It is the one night of the week the room costs nothing to enter, and people arrive around half past seven for a seat, which is also the reason there is no floor space for a suitcase once the circle is out.
Everything around the Inn was a freight switching yard for the Louisville and Nashville and the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis railways until the trains stopped in 1979. It sat as parking lots for two decades, went into redevelopment from 2001, and in February 2009 became the first neighborhood in the American South certified as a LEED green neighborhood. The grid of restaurants and shops between 11th and 12th Avenues is what came out of that, and it is walkable end to end in about ten minutes.
The airport bus loads downtown, not in the Gulch
WeGo Route 18 is the only public transit out to Nashville International Airport (BNA), and it starts from Bay 14 on the Fourth Avenue side of WeGo Central, roughly twenty minutes on foot northeast of 12th Avenue South. The fare is $2, buses leave every 30 minutes from 5:50am until 11:15pm, and the ride is 34 to 40 minutes, longer in the afternoon rush. Two hours from the Gulch to the gate is comfortable; ninety minutes is tight.
An evening works better here than an afternoon, which is the opposite of most of the city. If your free hours land in daylight instead, the full Nashville layover guide puts them on Lower Broadway and in the museums three blocks northeast of Union Station.
Frequently asked questions
What should I do during a layover in the Gulch in Nashville?
Two stops carry it. Union Station at 1001 Broadway is a 1900 railway terminal turned hotel, and its lobby, with a 65-foot barrel-vaulted stained-glass ceiling, three crystal chandeliers and Italian marble underfoot, is free to walk into. The Station Inn at 402 12th Avenue South has run bluegrass out of a low stone building since 1974, with a free jam on Sunday nights from 8pm. Between them, the Gulch is a compact grid of restaurants built on what was a rail yard until 1979.
Is the Station Inn's Sunday jam really free?
Yes. The venue deliberately does not charge a cover for the Sunday night jam, which starts at 8pm with a circle of chairs on the floor that anyone with an instrument can sit into. Arrive around 7:30 if you want a seat rather than a wall to lean on. Ticketed shows on other nights are a different matter and sell out regularly.
Can you walk into the Union Station lobby without staying there?
Yes, it operates as a hotel and the lobby is a public room. The stained-glass ceiling went up with the building in 1900 and came through a $15.5 million restoration finished in 2016, along with the limestone fireplaces and the bas-relief panels of transport scenes around the gallery. Ordinary hotel-lobby manners apply, which is to say nobody minds you looking and somebody will mind a suitcase parked in the middle of it.
How do you get from the Gulch to Nashville International Airport?
There is no direct link. WeGo Route 18 to BNA leaves from Bay 14 on the Fourth Avenue side of WeGo Central, about twenty minutes on foot northeast from 12th Avenue South, and costs $2. Buses go every 30 minutes from 5:50am to 11:15pm and the ride takes 34 to 40 minutes, more in the afternoon rush.