Nashville Public Square Park

Public Square Park is defined by a large, two and a half acre oval lawn set directly against the limestone facade of the nineteen thirty-seven Metro Courthouse. This civic space overlooks the Cumberland River on the same bluffs where Thomas Molloy first platted Nashville's original public square in seventeen eighty-four. While today it serves as a gathering place for concerts and festivals, the site has held a volatile history, ranging from a nineteenth-century slave market to a twentieth-century red-light district.