February 15, 2022

Best Boutique Hotel on Broadway, Nashville

Broadway Street isn’t simply one of Nashville’s signature thoroughfares: It’s one of the most iconic main drags of any great American city. There’s no more exciting place to stay in Music City, and along this historic, honky-tonk-lined corridor you can’t do better, accommodations-wise, than The Union Station Nashville Yards: Our building ranks among the defining landmarks of Broadway, and a perfect distillation of its old-meets-new energy.

Broadway: Lifeblood of Music City

Originally simply called “Broad,” Broadway served as one of the very earliest west-east roads in Nashville. Its eastern end along the Cumberland River served the docks of the city’s foundational port. Fronted by all manner of shops and services, the street came to host the very first public high school in the city, constructed in 1875. 

Our grand neo-Romanesque Gilded Age building opened along Broadway in 1900 as a terminal for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, which had begun rolling a half-century before.

The Union Station Nashville Yards sits beside another long-standing landmark of Broadway: the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, which occupies the post office built during the Depression years as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) initiative.

It was around that same time that Jimmie Rodgers, the “Singing Brakeman,” began performing in establishments along Lower Broadway, ushering in its status as the “Honky Tonky Highway.” A multitude of honky tonks offering daily live music almost around the clock is still Broadway’s classic draw, and part of the fundamental framework cementing Nashville’s storied reputation as the world capital of country music. 

Alongside all the honky tonks, you’ll find plenty of shopping opportunities, not least among numerous western wear and music stores (including the famous Ernest Tubb’s Record Shop) and the mallscape of Fifth + Broadway. Admire other historic architecture such as the 1912-built Hume-Fogg High School with its famous Norman Gothic facade. Broadway’s home to the Bridgestone Arena, and the Ryman Auditorium—the “Mother Church of Country Music”—sits just off the thoroughfare. 

Some of the great museums of Music City, including the National Museum of African American Music and the Tennessee Sports Halls of Fame Museum, front Broadway; others, such as the Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline museums, are just a stone’s throw off it. And where Broadway meets the Cumberland at that history-drenched junction, you’ll find the lovely greenspace of Riverfront Park with its many sunny-day pleasures.

Stay on Broadway at The Union Station Nashville Yards

Now part of the dynamic Nashville Yards business and entertainment district, Union Station still evokes its rich railroad history in our spectacular exterior, vaulted lobby with stained-glass ceiling, and many interior furnishings while offering the utmost in modern luxury hospitality. Call our Marriott Autograph Collection hotel home while you explore the best of Broadway as well as The Gulch, Music Row, Midtown, and other must-visit Nashville neighborhoods.