The Park’s Last New Building Went Up in 1963. The Next One Opens Today.
Centennial Park has been public ground since 1902, and in all that time Nashville has been remarkably reluctant to build anything on it. The last new structure went up in 1963 — a low, flat-roofed clubhouse on the park's north side, put there for croquet.
This morning, both ends of that long pause close at once. At 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 29, Metro Parks and the Centennial Park Conservancy cut the ribbon on a new event pavilion overlooking Lake Watauga — the first building constructed in the park in 63 years — and a few hundred feet away, that 1963 croquet clubhouse reopens as Croquet Cafe, the first permanent sit-down food service the park has ever had.
A cafe that works for the park
Croquet Cafe sits at 2530 Park Plaza with indoor seating, covered tables outside, and a lawn beside it made for spreading a blanket. The menu leans deliberately light and portable: salads, paninis, wraps, picnic boxes, locally roasted coffee, baked goods, handcrafted smoothies, soft-serve and grab-and-go items, with vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options throughout. Joseph Bogan and Crystal De Luna-Bogan, the couple behind the Grilled Cheeserie, advised on the concept and the menu.
The genuinely unusual part is who owns it. The cafe is run by the Conservancy in partnership with Metro Parks as a nonprofit, which means the margin on a sandwich goes back into the park — grounds work, the ongoing revitalization, and the permanent, never-finished job of maintaining the Parthenon. More than $1.7 million in philanthropic support built it, from the Frist Foundation, the Dettwiller Foundation, the Sandra Schatten Foundation, the Joe C. Davis Foundation, the Marlene and Spencer Hays Foundation, and the Tennessee Historical Commission.
The bigger building is the one on the water
The event pavilion at 2545 Park Plaza is the larger gesture: 6,465 square feet on the north bank of Lake Watauga, replacing the open shelter that stood there for decades. It holds more than 400 people seated for a banquet and up to 1,250 standing, and it was designed to absorb the programming the park already does and could never properly house — Big Band Dances, festivals, concerts, lectures, children's programs, nonprofit fundraisers and private events. Ground broke in 2025. Lead gifts came from the Dettwiller Foundation, the HCA Healthcare Foundation, the Hays Foundation, the Sandra Schatten Foundation and Vanderbilt University.
Both projects belong to the third phase of a revitalization Metro Parks and the Conservancy have been working through for years — more than $30 million between them so far. The same phase rebuilt pedestrian paths, vehicle entrances and parking on the north side, which is the least romantic and most useful part of the whole thing.
Why a cafe in this particular park is a bigger deal than it sounds
Centennial Park exists because, in 1897, Nashville decided not to throw something away.
The Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition ran on these grounds from May 1 to Oct. 30 of that year and drew roughly 1.8 million visitors — to a full-scale replica of the Parthenon made of plaster, wood and brick, whose cornerstone had been laid on Oct. 8, 1895, the first building of the fair to break ground. Everything at a world's fair is supposed to come down afterward. When the gates closed, the exposition's leadership argued instead that the Parthenon and the grounds around it should be kept as a public park — an argument generally credited with starting Nashville's city park movement outright. The park was established in 1902.
The land had already lived several lives: a farm bought by John Cockrill in 1783, state fairgrounds after the Civil War, then a racetrack called West Side Park from 1884 to 1895. The plaster Parthenon did what plaster does, and by 1920 the city had committed to rebuilding it in concrete; the exterior was finished in 1925, and the building reopened as a city museum on May 20, 1931. Even the small bridge between the Sunken Gardens and Lake Watauga is a record-holder — laid in 1906, it was the first reinforced concrete bridge built in Tennessee.
So this is a park Nashville has repeatedly decided to invest in rather than let go. A cafe and a pavilion are modest next to a full-scale Greek temple. But they answer the most ordinary complaint about Centennial Park: that you could spend an entire day there and never find a decent cup of coffee, and that the park's own programming had nowhere dry to put 400 chairs.
Today's celebration starts at 10 a.m. at the pavilion, with remarks, live music, Kidsville activities for families, and a commemorative screen print.
If you're going
The park is already in one of its best stretches of the year. The free Musicians Corner concert series runs its fall season on the lawn, Kidsville takes over the Parthenon for the under-twelves on Sept. 26, and the park just closed out another season of free Shakespeare. A cafe on site changes the math on all of them — you can now make a morning of it without leaving for lunch.
Planning a wider day around it? Our Nashville neighborhood guide covers where to eat and what to see in West End and every other district. Visiting from out of town for the Parthenon? Book your stay »
