Richland–West End is the neighborhood between West End Avenue and Murphy Road, from Wilson Boulevard east to I-440 — Richland, Central, Princeton, Westbrook, Bowling, Harvard, Craighead and Christopher among its streets. The land was part of John Brown Craighead’s estate (his house, from about 1811, still stands on Westbrook Avenue). In 1905 the Richland Realty Company bought it, two miles outside the city limits, and paid to extend the West End trolley line to Wilson Boulevard; building began on Richland and Central avenues and spread through the bungalow streets, and by the 1930s most of the neighborhood was built up.
It is one of the largest and best-preserved bungalow neighborhoods in Nashville — in 1979, more than two-thirds of its 361 houses were bungalows — with Colonial Revival houses, foursquares, Craftsman and Tudor houses among them, mostly one or one-and-a-half stories, on lots of about 10,000 square feet with alleys behind. Richland, Craighead and Bowling avenues and Christopher Street have planted medians. It has been on the National Register since 1979 and a Metro neighborhood conservation overlay since 1996, so new construction, additions and demolition go through the Historic Zoning Commission, and the main overlay is zoned single-family. The West End Avenue frontage itself, mostly condominiums, sits outside both lines.
Elmington Park is across West End Avenue, about half a mile from mid-neighborhood, with free movie nights in June, and the 440 Greenway starts there, running 1.25 miles to Park Plaza beside Centennial Park. The Murphy Road restaurants in Sylvan Park are about a mile away. Downtown is about four miles by West End Avenue, 10 to 15 minutes outside rush hour, Vanderbilt about two and a half, I-440 is at the east edge, and WeGo’s route 3 runs along West End about every 10 minutes at midday on weekdays.