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Profile & History |
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Buena Vista Enhanced Option School (BVEOS) reopened its doors August 11, 2003, as a neighborhood elementary school for the first time in twenty-two years. Located in the North Nashville area, this dynamic school draws strength from the rich history of early Nashville.
In 1812, John L. Beck and his wife Lavinia built a two-story frame house on top of a lush hill two miles northwest of downtown Nashville. The house was set back from the front gate and had a magnificent view in all directions. John Beck named his home “Buena Vista,” a Spanish name phrase for good view. Later, after Buena Vista had passed to the John Erwin family in 1832, the Catholic Diocese of Nashville bought the property in 1860. Buena Vista became St. Cecelia Academy and Motherhouse. The Dominican Order built a new building adjacent to the old house in 1862 and substantially enlarged the convent in 2004.
North Nashville has been a vibrant part of the community from 1860 on. Germantown, the Capitol Hill area and the Buena Vista Historic District were all vital areas in Nashville’s early years. Nashville City Schools purchased a section of land on the corner of Buena Vista Pike and Jane Street in 1888 and in 1890, Buena Vista Elementary School opened. J. L. Wright, the first principal of Buena Vista Elementary, and fourteen of the faculty members welcomed 454 students in the first through fourth grades to the sixteen room school building.
Around 1900, the original building was damaged by a fire but reopened and remained a steadfast element of the community until 1931 when the old building, with its huge study hall and out-door toilet facilities was finally torn down and replaced. The new Buena Vista School opened as a junior high school. Jones Elementary was then opened to serve North Nashville’s elementary students.
In 1941, Buena Vista again became an elementary school serving the first through sixth grades. The dynamics of North Nashville changed with the times and in 1938, the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works completed one of the first housing projects in the United States, called Cheatham Place—so named because the Cheatham name had been a prestigious name in North Nashville. As Nashville grew and the City Schools merged with the County Schools, Metro Nashville Davidson County Schools organized Buena Vista into a Kindergarten and Fifth-Sixth Middle School and later into a Paideia Magnet Middle School.
Having come full cycle, with a new wing of classrooms, activity room and library constructed in 2003, Buena Vista is now a neighborhood school again as Buena Vista Enhanced Option School. It is truly enriching the North Nashville school environment as a prominent link with the community and its young children.
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