Crieve Hall Neighborhood in Nashville

There are approximately 2,000 homes included in the boundaries defined by the Crieve Hall Neighborhood Association that extend from Blackman Road to the North, Ellington Agricultural Center and Seven Mile Creek to the East, Broadwell and Baxter in the South and the railroad tracks to the West. There are many people who consider their homes within Crieve Hall’s rolling hills that live outside the association’s designated boundaries.

Crieve Hall is considered by many as a classic Nashville neighborhood of mostly brick ranch homes on larger than average lots. There are a couple of smaller subdivisions within the neighborhood with newer 2-story construction that some consider part of the larger neighborhood.

Location

Found in Middle Tennessee in Davidson County of Nashville. It is about 9 miles south of downtown Nashville and 2 miles north of Brentwood. The area is very accessible with easy access to Franklin Pike, Interstate 65 and Harding Place.

Crieve Hall Schools

There are a number of schools located in and around Crieve Hall. There is Crieve Hall Elementary, Overton High School and Croft Design.

Crieve Hall History

The Crieve Hall Neighborhood receives its name from a large mansion that once stood upon a hill at what is presently Barrymore Drive at Brevity Lane in the community. It had been owned by Herbert Farrell, a wealthy steel magnate who came to Nashville to wed Helen Ritchie Cheek. Cheek was the daughter of one of the owners of a coffee company with the brand name Maxwell House. The coffee company was sold in 1928 to a company later to become General Foods.

The Farrells had originally purchased an estate on the site named Overton Hall in 1925. They made extensive changes and expanded the home with imported paneled rooms, chandeliers, mantles, tapestries, statutes and furniture from across Europe and made it into an opulent Tudor style estate home. The couple renamed the estate Crieve Hall after Crieve County located in Northern Ireland, the ancestral home of Mr. Farrell.

Crieve Hall when completed had formal English gardens, a large reflecting pool and wrought iron gate with gold accents. There were pastures for riding Tennessee Walking Horses and a dairy behind the house. A nine car garage held the most expensive automobiles of the day. The estate was staffed with year around cooks, gardeners, housekeepers, groomsmen and others.

In the late 1940’s Mr. Farrell was deceased and Mrs. Farrell tried to sell the property unsuccessfully. By the early 1950’s Mrs. Farrell had the contents of the house sold at auction and the land sold to developers. Eventually the mansion was completely torn down. Developers subdivided the property and built the hundreds and hundreds of existing homes, including those on other nearby estates that are no longer present.

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