Greenwood Park

Preston Taylor opened the park on part of the 37 acres he had bought for Greenwood Cemetery. Admission was ten cents on ordinary days and twenty-five on holidays, and Taylor banned fighting, drinking and cursing. The grounds held a merry-go-round, a roller coaster, a skating rink, a baseball park, a theater, a zoo and a bandstand, and the Colored State Fair and Fourth of July celebrations met there. A suspicious fire destroyed the grandstand in 1910, and no one was charged. Taylor's widow ran the park after his death in 1931 until it closed in 1949.

What the plaque says

Greenwood Park At this location in 1905, Preston Taylor, a Nashville businessman, religious leader, and former slave, established the first park to serve Nashville's Negro community. Greenwood Recreational Park included a ball park, swimming pool, amusements, and picnic facilities. The park served as the site of the Negro state fair and Boy Scout summer camp. Greenwood preceded the city's public park for blacks by 7 years and remained opened until 1949.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Negley — 2.9 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.
• Ryman Auditorium — 3.3 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.
• National Museum of African American Music — 3.4 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 3.5 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.

More markers nearby

• George Woods — steps away
• Buchannan's Station — 0.6 mi
• Confederate Circle at Mount Olivet — 0.9 mi
• Walden College — 1.7 mi