TAKING BROOKLYN TO NASHVILLE

Nashville, meanwhile, was alive with new restaurants and independent stores, as an influx of young creative people from New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere flocked there for the cheaper real estate and collaborative arts scene.

On visits to see family, Turner and her husband, Clay Ezell, 35, began to look at their hometown with fresh eyes. “We were, like, ‘We should just go home,’” Turner said up on her roof one bright afternoon. “Nashville is a much more interesting town than it ever was when we lived there.” front yard, like the last remnant of a stately old neighbourhood.

The couple rent the ground floor to a commercial tenant, and live in an apartment carved out from the second floor. The arrangement was inspired by the Brooklyn brownstone gentry they once aspired to be, who live on the upper floors of their restored town houses while renting the garden level.

“We couldn’t afford to do that there,” Turner said. “But we wanted to try our hand at doing it here.”

The building, built in 1880, had walledoff rooms stuck in 1980. To transform it into a modern open home, the couple hired Nick Dryden, a local architect who has played his own role in Nashville’s hipification. His firm designed the popular 404 Hotel and the artisanal coffee house Barista Parlor Golden Sound, among other trendy projects. Given the white-hot real estate market, Dryden said, the building Turner and Ezell bought “could easily have fallen prey to the open market and been bulldozed.”

“The structure has been reclaimed and reinvested in,” he said. “Kudos to them for taking that on.”