Wedgewood-Houston

Wedgewood-Houston, or WeHo as almost everyone calls it, sits just south of downtown Nashville, roughly bounded by Houston Street to the north, Wedgewood Avenue to the south, 8th Avenue South to the west, and Nolensville Pike to the east. The name comes straight from two of those streets. For much of the 20th century, this was a working industrial pocket filled with hosiery mills, warehouses, and factories. As Nashville's industrial landscape changed, artists and creative businesses began making use of the neighborhood's old industrial spaces, with galleries and studios helping shape the WeHo that exists today. Brick warehouses and loading docks still define many of the streets here, they just hold vastly different things now.

The art scene remains at the heart of the neighborhood. Zeitgeist, David Lusk, Julia Martin, and other galleries and studios are clustered within a few blocks, and the Wedgewood-Houston Art Crawl brings people into the neighborhood on the first Saturday of each month. Bastion helped put WeHo on Nashville's food map years ago, and the restaurant list has only grown since, with the neighborhood now home to several of the city's most sought-after tables.

WeHo is also changing faster than almost anywhere else in Nashville. The old May Hosiery mill complex now houses Soho House and Hermès, and it's worth pointing out that in 2015 I got a haircut at a barbershop in that same complex that had beers on tap, which tells you about as much about the last decade here as anything else could. One of the biggest recent additions is The Truth, a 4,400-capacity Live Nation venue on Chestnut Street. Its name references songwriter Harlan Howard's famous description of country music as “three chords and the truth.” Just south of the neighborhood, Geodis Park brings Nashville SC crowds into the area on match days.

WeHo's housing stock is a genuine mix. You'll find small early-century cottages and bungalows built for mill and factory workers, tall-and-skinny new construction and townhome pairs on subdivided lots, condos and lofts in converted industrial buildings, and newer apartment buildings going up as part of the larger redevelopment. That range is part of the appeal, but it also means comparable sales can be difficult to read. Two properties a block apart can be decades and several hundred thousand dollars removed from each other. Buyers should pay close attention to what's immediately next door and what's approved to be built there, because an old house or vacant lot in this neighborhood has not reached its final form yet.

It's also worth knowing that "WeHo" gets used loosely in listings. The core of the neighborhood is roughly between Houston Street and Wedgewood Avenue, but businesses and agents regularly apply the name to properties outside that, including parts of Chestnut Hill, the area along Nolensville Pike, and blocks closer to the Fairgrounds. That matters because this is a neighborhood that changes character quickly from block to block. Some streets are fully residential and quiet, while others sit next to restaurants, businesses, or ongoing construction. And then there's the train. The rail line cuts right through WeHo, and you can't really call yourself a Nashville resident until you've sat at one of these crossings for twenty minutes watching cars go by, or made the decision to speed off toward another crossing only to find that one blocked too. It's part of the deal here. Sidewalks are also inconsistent, portions of the area near Browns Creek have flood history worth checking, and school zoning varies by street, so anyone making a decision based on assignment should confirm the specific address with Metro Nashville Public Schools rather than assuming.

Day to day, WeHo splits the difference between urban and not. The core blocks are genuinely walkable and you can reach galleries, breweries, and a good number of restaurants on foot, but grocery runs and most daily errands still mean getting in the car. Downtown is just a few minutes away by car and both I-40 and I-65 are close, which is a large part of why the neighborhood has grown the way it has. The trade-offs are event traffic and public parking. Geodis Park brings large crowds on match days, the Fairgrounds hosts flea markets, races, and events throughout the year, and construction is a constant presence. Buyers comparing WeHo to East Nashville or the Gulch are weighing three different things. East Nashville is more established and more residential, the Gulch is more-or-less finished and priced accordingly, and WeHo is still in the middle of becoming whatever it's going to be.