During our recent visit to Nashville, we stayed at the renovated Union Train Station in Nashville Yards.  It is very conveniently located a few blocks up Broadway from all the popular honky-tonk country music bars and clubs.

Union Station is beautifully restored and repurposed. The ornate ceiling features 128 panels of original curved glass manufactured by The Luminous Prism Company (a competitor of Tiffany Glass). Bas relief sculptures surround the Grand Lobby illustrating the history of transportation from the beginning of time until 1900 when the building opened to the public.

The seven-story hotel is now a Marriott Autograph Collection property. If you go, be aware they have first-floor rooms with an enclosed patio that would not be my choice. Ask for a larger room with a view. Rooms are varied in size and some are small. Suites are located along the fifth-floor balcony level and have ceiling heights of 18-22’.

My husband is a train fanatic, and he enjoyed having a view of the tracks and watching freight trains come and go.  Sadly, Nashville is no longer a stop for passenger trains.  

Another Historic Property Saved

A nice bar and restaurant are on-site and a chamber quartet was playing in the expansive lobby. Slated for destruction, a “Save Our Station” effort was successful. Nashville’s train station reopened as a boutique hotel in 1986 and is now listed as one of the Historic Hotels of America. I suggest visitors stop by the front desk and pick up a brochure for a self-guided tour. It’s a good overview of this beautiful National Register of Historic Places site.

My favorite trivia fact: To entertain travelers, baby alligators were imported from Florida and placed in two pools located on track level. The baby gators spent the winter inside the warm train station in a temporary lobby pool. I just wonder what they did when those baby gators reached adolescence?