1897 The Centennial Exposition opens with the Parthenon as its centerpiece.
 
1900 Union Station opens.
 
1902 Centennial Park is acquired by the city, marking the beginning of Nashville's public park system.
 
1902 National Life Insurance Company is founded.
 
1903 The Arcade opens.
 
1904 The city's first Carnegie Library opens at the corner of 8th Avenue, North, and Union Street.
 
1904 Downtown street names are changed to numbered streets.
 
1904 Nashville's first skyscraper is constructed at the southeast corner of Fourth Avenue, North, and Church Street.
 
1904 The One-Cent Savings Bank, now Citizens Bank, opens.
 
1904 Lockeland Spring water wins a prize at the St. Louis Exposition.
 
1905 The African American community institutes a streetcar boycott to protest a new law requiring separation of          the races on electric streetcars.
 
1907 Tony Sudekum opens the first movie theater, The Dixie, on 5th Avenue, North, next to the Arcade.
 
1907 Theodore Roosevelt visits Nashville.
 
1908 Ex-Senator and Prohibitionist leader Edward Ward Carmack is shot on 7th Avenue, North, near Union          Street by his political adversaries.
 
1909 The college descended from Davidson Academy, Cumberland College, the University of Nashville, and          Peabody Normal College becomes George Peabody College for Teachers.
 
1909 Statewide Prohibition is passed over Governor Patterson's veto.
 
1910 The Marathon Motor Car is manufactured in Nashville.
 
1910 The Hermitage Hotel opens in downtown Nashville.
 
1910 The world's first night airplane flight takes off from Cumberland Park in Nashville.
 
1911 A Model T Ford climbs the steps of the Capitol to prove that the automobile could replace the horse.
 
1911 Nashvillian James C. Napier becomes Registrar of the U.S. Treasury.
 
1912 Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School, later Tennessee State University, opens.
 
1912 The Eighth Avenue Reservoir ruptures, flooding the South Nashville area nearby.
 
1912 Goo Goo Candy Bar is concocted.
 
1914 The National American Woman Suffrage Association meets in Nashville.
 
1916 East Nashville is devastated by fire.
 
1917 WORLD WAR I BEGINS
 
1918 The town of Old Hickory and a powder plant are built by DuPont.
 
1919 WORLD WAR I ENDS
 
1919 18TH (PROHIBITION) AMENDMENT IS RATIFIED.
 
1919 "Hampton Field" becomes Nashville's first airfield.
 
1920 Tennessee becomes the 36th and deciding state to vote for ratification of the 19th (Woman Suffrage)          Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
 
1920 The first Nashville symphony orchestra was organized.
 
1925 Grand Ole Opry begins.
 
1925 The War Memorial Building is constructed to expand state office space.
 
1927 The city buys 131 acres in West Nashville for the first airport, McConnell Field.
 
1927 Percy Warner Park, Tennessee's largest municipal park, is established.
 
1929 BLACK TUESDAY, THE GREAT DEPRESSION BEGINS.
 
1931 The Parthenon reopens in its permanent form.
 
1933 ROOSEVELT ANNOUNCES THE NEW DEAL.
 
1933 A tornado wreaks havoc on East Nashville.
 
1937 The present Davidson County Courthouse is completed and opened.
 
1937 Nashvillian William Edmondson becomes the first African American to be given a one-man show at the          Museum of Modern Art in New York.
 
1937 American Airlines lands the first plane in the new airport.
 
1938 The Nashville Housing Authority is created.
 
1941 WORLD WAR II BEGINS WITH ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR.
 
1941 Buses replace electric streetcars.
 
1941 The first Iroquois Steeplechase is run.
 
1943 Cornelia Fort becomes the first woman pilot to die on war duty in American history.
 
1943 The Grand Ole Opry moves to Ryman Auditorium.
 
1945 World War II ends.
 
1945 Three WSM engineers open "Castle Studio," the first recording studio, in the Tulane Hotel.
 
1945 The Children's Museum, now the Cumberland Science Museum, opens on Rutledge Hill.
 
1946 Walter Sharp leads the founding of the Nashville Symphony.
 
1949 The Capitol Hill Redevelopment Project is approved as the nation's first urban renewal project.
 
1950 Capital Records becomes the first major company to locate its director of country music in Nashville.