Tennessee State Prison

A stone fortress penitentiary that opened in 1898 on Cockrill Bend, west of downtown Nashville, with roughly 800 cells inside 20-foot walls. A federal overcrowding suit closed it in June 1992, and Hollywood moved in.

The Green Mile (1999) shot its prison scenes here, the building playing Louisiana's Cold Mountain Penitentiary. The state film office says: “the prison scenes were filmed in Nashville at the old Tennessee State Prison.”

The green-floored death row that gives the film its title was never in this building. Production designer Terence Marsh built E Block as a set at Warner Hollywood Studios in West Hollywood, California.

The Last Castle (2001) brought Robert Redford here. A crew of 150 spent 9 weeks adding a 200-foot entrance wall and 2 guard towers, while the facing cell block went up in a warehouse.

Ernest Goes to Jail (1990) filmed here for 3 days in the fall of 1989. Its cell tiers and execution chamber were sets that designer Chris August built inside a converted Nashville manufacturing plant.

Johnny Cash taped A Concert Behind Prison Walls here in 1974 with Linda Ronstadt, Roy Clark, and Richard Pryor, while the cells were still full. Heartworn Highways (1976) filmed David Allan Coe in the chapel.

Framed (1975) was the first feature shot inside. Marie (1985), Against the Wall (1994), Last Dance (1996), A Letter From Death Row (1998), and Walk the Line (2005) followed.

No public access: the interior has been closed since 2011 for asbestos, a March 2020 tornado damaged the masonry, and security patrols the state-owned site. The visit is the castle facade from Centennial Boulevard.