Collierville’s town square is the historic civic and commercial center of Collierville, Tennessee, a town in far southeastern Shelby County roughly 30 miles from downtown Memphis. It is a rectangular green ringed by storefronts, town buildings and a gazebo — and, unusually, an active railroad line runs directly through the middle of it.
Where is Collierville’s town square?
The square sits at the historic core of Collierville, in Shelby County, southeast of Memphis proper. Collierville is one of the incorporated suburbs that make up the eastern arc of Shelby County, alongside Germantown and Bartlett, and its square functions the way many older Southern county-seat squares do: as the point around which the town was originally laid out, with commercial buildings facing inward and residential streets radiating outward. The distinction between Collierville and Memphis’s other eastern suburbs, including how each is governed and how each grew, is covered in more detail in a separate comparison of Memphis, Germantown and Collierville.
Why does a railroad run through the middle of it?
Because the square exists because of the railroad, not despite it. According to the Town of Collierville’s own account of its history, the settlement grew from a stagecoach stop kept in the area in the 1830s, and the town was platted in the 1850s along the route of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. The square was built facing the tracks rather than around them, and that layout has not changed. A rail line — now operated as a freight corridor — still runs directly across the green, and trains passing through the square are a routine, visible part of how the space works, not an incidental feature.
This is unusual for a Southern town square. Most were built around a courthouse, with streets on all four sides and no through-traffic corridor bisecting the green itself. Collierville’s square is one of a small number in the region where the original commercial layout was shaped directly by a working railroad, and the town’s own historical materials treat that relationship as central to why the square looks the way it does.
What buildings and features define the square?
The square is anchored by a small park or green at its center, with a gazebo used for civic gatherings, weddings and public ceremonies. Surrounding it are two- and three-story commercial buildings dating largely from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most now occupied by independent shops and restaurants rather than the feed stores and general merchants the buildings were originally built for. A historic railroad depot, built to serve the line that runs through the green, still stands along the tracks. Collierville’s town hall and other municipal buildings sit at or near the square, reflecting its continued role as the seat of town government rather than a purely commercial or ceremonial space.
Is the square on the National Register of Historic Places?
The historic core of Collierville, including the square and the commercial buildings facing it, is recognized as a historic district under federal preservation review, with individual buildings and the district as a whole subject to the kind of documentation the National Register of Historic Places requires. Readers who want the specific listing details, boundaries and dates should confirm them directly through the National Park Service’s National Register records or the Tennessee Historical Commission, which maintains state-level historic designations and is the more direct authority on Tennessee properties.
What happens on the square through the year?
The square functions as Collierville’s default venue for recurring civic and seasonal events, in the way many small-town squares do: a farmers market operates seasonally on or near the green, a fall festival draws vendors and crowds into the surrounding streets, and the town’s holiday season is built around lighting and a parade routed through the square. Exact dates and vendor lists change every year and are set by the Town of Collierville and its event partners, so specific timing should be confirmed on the town’s own site rather than assumed from a prior year’s calendar. What is durable is the pattern: the square is the town’s default public gathering point for anything seasonal, the same role a courthouse square plays in many county seats across Tennessee and Mississippi.
How is Collierville different from Memphis itself?
Collierville is an incorporated town with its own government, separate from the City of Memphis, sitting within Shelby County. It also operates its own municipal school district, Collierville Schools, distinct from Shelby County Schools — one of several suburban municipal districts formed after Shelby County’s school systems were reorganized in the early 2010s. That structure matters for anyone comparing life in Collierville to life inside Memphis proper: governance, schools, and even some public services are handled locally rather than through the city or the countywide system. A broader look at how Memphis’s suburbs relate to the core city, and what that means day to day, is covered in the site’s Living in Memphis hub.
Do you need a car to get to Collierville’s square?
Effectively, yes. Collierville sits well outside the reach of Memphis’s urban bus network and its downtown trolley line, and there is no direct transit connection from central Memphis to the square. Reaching it means driving, which puts it in the same category as most of Shelby County’s outer suburbs rather than the walkable core neighborhoods closer to downtown. The site’s guide to whether you need a car in Memphis covers this distinction in more detail, and the Getting Around archive has related coverage of how transit, driving and parking work across the metro area.
How does the square fit into a Memphis visit or a Memphis life?
For a visitor built around downtown Memphis, Beale Street, Sun Studio and the riverfront, Collierville’s square is a detour rather than a stop on the way to anything — a look at a different kind of Southern town center, built around a working railroad rather than a courthouse. For residents of Shelby County’s eastern suburbs, the square functions as the older, walkable center that many newer subdivisions in Collierville and its neighbors were built without. Either way, it is worth understanding as a real municipal square with a specific history, not a themed attraction. General planning resources for structuring a Memphis-area visit, including how outlying towns fit into a trip, are collected in the Memphis Practical hub and the Day Trips archive; broader context on how Memphis’s neighborhoods and suburbs differ from one another is in the Neighbourhoods archive.
Access Memphis is an independent guide written from published, checkable sources. We have not visited the places described here and we do not publish personal recommendations or invented ‘local favourites’ — where something is singled out as notable, we say who says so. Opening times, fares, closures and prices change at short notice, so treat everything here as a starting point and confirm with the museum, operator or venue directly before building a day around it. We give no advice on visas, insurance, health or safety; use your own government’s official guidance for those.
Featured image: Photo by Heath Cajandig, source, CC BY 2.0
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