Richland Hall

This three-story, red brick building was constructed in 1894 and part of a business district for the recently-formed town of West Nashville. The ground floor was a store while the upper floors held a meeting hall and lodge rooms. Masonic Lodge No. 612, established in 1899, met in the lodge room for many years before moving four blocks away on Charlotte. One can still see the masonic symbol on the front of the third story of Richland Hall, which was added to the National Register in 1983. The building now houses Global Education Center - West, a nonprofit multicultural arts center.

A group of industrialists led by Henry M. Pierce of Buffalo, New York joined together in 1887 to fund a new town about three miles west of downtown Nashville. The town, called West Nashville, was meant to be industrial, taking advantage of local resources of iron, hardwood, and coal. The first neighborhood in the new street grid was the Richland Park neighborhood. A row of brick homes was built on Park Avenue, south of the park.

Richland Hall was built in West Nashville in its early days of development, on Charlotte Ave. across the street (north of) from Richland Park, in the new business district. The contractor was James A. Bowling & Sons; Bowling had purchased the first lot in West Nashville in the late 1880s.

The first floor was leased out as a store by the Nashville Land Improvement Company. A public meeting hall took up the second floor. Richland Hall was used as a meeting place for a number of organizations in the third-floor lodge rooms. The building cost nearly $5,000 to build but was sold for only $4,200 in 1912. In 1912, Woodmen of the World's Cherry camp No. 9 was one of the groups that met at Richland Hall.

The brick for Richland Hall was made in Nashville by Fulcher and Dyas. The front, facing Charlotte Ave., features brick corbeling, bracketed stone lintels, and terra cotta panels. Brick buttressing separates the three bays. The main entrance is recessed with cast iron fluted columns and decorative carved limestone. The parapet hides the flat roof. There used to be a broken pediment with a central finial atop the central bay, above former lettering that read "RICHLAND HALL." A one-story rear addition was built in the 1930s or early 1940s; the concrete block addition replaced an earlier wood frame shed or barn. A door on the west side, facing 49th Ave. N., has been bricked in, as well as two round windows.

Richland Hall was owned by the Johnson family by the early 1980s. While the interior had undergone many changes, including a renovation in the early 1980s, the exterior retained enough of the original appearance to list the building in the National Register. Richland Hall also is significant to the history of the development of the planned community of West Nashville. Several dance studios are now in Richland Hall (Global Education Center - West), plus a recording studio, multicultural library, and offices. The Center also uses the building next door at 4820 Charlotte and has a second (South) location at 2195 Nolensville Pike.

Brown, Robin. NRHP Nomination of Richland Hall, Nashville, Tennessee. National Register. Washington, DC. National Park Service, 1983.

Clarke, Ida Clyde. All About Nashville: For the Stranger Within Her Gates. Nashville, TN. Marshall & Bruce Co., 1912.

CuriousBM. West Nashville Lodge 612 F&AM, Waymarking. September 18th, 2016. Accessed September 26th, 2022. https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMT3EZ_West_Nashville_Lodge_612_FAM.

Manta. West Nashville Lodge 612 F & AM, Fraternal Organizationa. January 1st, 2022. Accessed September 26th, 2022. https://www.manta.com/c/mm083gd/west-nashville-lodge-612-f-am.

Thompson, E. D. More Nashville Nostalgia. Edition First. Nashville, TN. Westview Publishing Company, Inc., 2004.