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Nashville History Corner
How Clifton Avenue got its name
BY RIDLEY WILLS II
Clifton Avenue runs west from Charlotte Avenue at 20th Avenue South. Did you ever wonder how the street got its name? It was not named for Clifton in Wayne County, Tennessee. Instead, it was named for another Clifton, a village on a high bluff on the south side of the Cumberland River in what is today West Nashville between Thirty-eighth and Forty-eighth Avenues North. A map of the town was recorded in the Davidson County Courthouse on April 13, 1858.
Map of the City of Nashville and vicinity (1879) TENNESSEE STATE LIBRARY & ARCHIVES
On the west, the town was bordered by the lands of Dr. J. R. Hudson; on the east by the acreages of Beal Bosley and Matthew Barrow; on the north by the Cumberland River and on the south by the land of Widow Ellen Robertson and the Charlotte Turnpike. The town probably got its name because it was on a high bluff.
On the town’s waterfront, there was a boat landing connected by Clifton Avenue to the Charlotte Pike. A dozen or more ever-lasting springs provided the townspeople with water. There was a burying ground on the southwest corner of the present 40th Avenue North and Centennial Boulevard. By the time New Town was founded in 1887, Clifton was a thriving village with churches, a one-room school and numerous families. New Town became the town of West Nashville which absorbed Clifton. Lots in West Nashville came on sale in May 1887.
Among the prominent Davidson County citizens who purchased lots along Charlotte Pike were General William Hicks Jackson, Colonel E. W. Cole. Colonel A. S. Colyar, and Mr. T. D. Fite, secretary of the West Nashville Land Development Company. Perhaps the most prominent person to live in West Nashville was Methodist - Episcopal Church South Bishop Robert K. Hargrove, president of the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust. He built a 16-room, three-story house on the southside of Charlotte Pike in 1888.
The residential and industrial town of West Nashville was annexed by the City of Nashville in 1906. A year later, a 10acre Richland Park was dedicated. Today, West Nashville is almost forgotten and its predecessor village of Clifton completely forgotten.
