The Doctor's Building is a six- story commercial building in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...

that was constructed in 1916 (some sources say 1910) and is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

. The building site was the former location of the home of

railroad magnate A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

Colonel

Edmund William Cole Colonel Edmund William "King" Cole (July 19, 1827 – May 25, 1899) was an American Confederate veteran and businessman. He was the president of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway, and the founder of the American National Bank. Ea ...

, with his home being the last 19th-century mansion on Church Street. A new building, known as "The Doctor's Building" was then constructed as a three-story building, with medical offices on the upper floors, and retail shops on the ground floor. A few years later (in either 1916 or 1921), it had three more stories added, increasing its size to . The design, by architect Edward Emmett Dougherty of the architectural firm "Dougherty and Gardner" was of the elaborate Beaux-Arts or

Renaissance Revival Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th-century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range of ...

style. The exterior is sheathed with glazed

architectural terracotta Architectural terracotta refers to a fired mixture of clay and water that can be used in a non-structural, semi-structural, or structural capacity on the exterior or interior of a building. Terracotta is an ancient building material that transla ...

, restored by Ludowici-Celadon in the 1980s.Christine M. Kreyling, Wesley Paine, Charles W. Warterfield, Susan Ford Wiltshire, ''Classical Nashville: Athens of the South'', Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996, p. 60 In the 1940s and 1950s, the building consisted of office space for many of the city's doctors and dentists.

References

Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee Renaissance Revival architecture in Tennessee Buildings and structures in Nashville, Tennessee National Register of Historic Places in Nashville, Tennessee Commercial buildings completed in 1910 {{DavidsonCountyTN-NRHP-stub