The Village That Stayed

Walk the older streets of Old Hickory Village and you are walking a plan drawn in 1918. DuPont built two settlements about a half-mile southeast of the powder plant. West of Hadley Avenue stood the Temporary Village, later taken down in the 1920s and 1930s. East of Hadley Avenue stood the Permanent Village, reserved for foremen, supervisors, and other managers: more substantial pine houses in ten named types, many with Colonial Revival or Bungalow influence, set on a rectangular grid. Only Riverside Drive followed the bluff above the Cumberland.

That permanent village is the neighborhood that survived. On May 24, 1985, the Old Hickory Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It follows the original 1918 boundaries — Hadley Avenue and Jones Street, Eighth Street, Riverside Drive, and Fifteenth Street — and includes 316 buildings, among them 276 contributing houses and the First Presbyterian Church. The temporary streets are gone. These, on purpose, were built to stay.

Full story coming in the first issue of The Old Hickory Citizen.