Shopping LOCAL in Cookeville: the WestSide, Broad Street and the market on Mahler

Ask someone in Cookeville where to shop independent and the answer usually starts at the old railroad depot. The brick station on West Broad Street went up in 1909, and the city now calls it the heart of the historic WestSide district. Within a few blocks of it are a bookshop, a plant shop, coffee bars, a brewery, boutiques and studios, most of them in older storefronts along West Broad and the side streets that cross it.

This guide walks through the places locals point to, a few more across town, and the markets and shop walks that bring makers out.

The WestSide: Broad Street from the depot

The stretch of West Broad Street between the depot and downtown has a long shopping history. A local history of the area describes the block between Cedar and Walnut avenues as lined with large brick buildings that were once promoted as the West Side Shopping Center, the biggest in the Upper Cumberland. Today the scale is smaller and the owners are local.

Plenty Downtown Bookshop, at 41 West Broad, is a nonprofit bookshop. Alongside new books it carries stationery, tea, children's gifts and goods from local makers, and its stated goal is to raise literacy and book culture across the Upper Cumberland. It also sells books and audiobooks online through partner sites, so a purchase from the couch still supports the shop.

Across the street at 48 West Broad, Glass Tangerine sells houseplants and gifts and runs its own flower farm, with flowers for weddings and events. It is a good stop for a housewarming present or a pot of something green for a winter windowsill.

Next door to the bookshop, SoulCraft Coffee has a café at 43 West Broad and a second one at 715 Mahler Avenue, and its retail shelves carry locally roasted beans for brewing at home.

A few doors down at 107 West Broad, Broadway Boutique Mall gathers more than 20 vendors, local artists and small businesses under one roof, with clothing, gifts, décor and handmade goods, plus booths of its own.

Side streets: Cedar and Walnut avenues

Two of the WestSide's best-known stops sit a block or so off Broad. Ralph's Donut Shop, at 59 South Cedar Avenue, has made donuts by hand since Ralph and Evelyn opened it in September 1962 with six stools. They doubled its size in 1974, and in August 2025 the shop was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It sells shirts and other merchandise as well as donuts, which makes it an easy place to pick up a Cookeville gift.

Dream Country Brewing, at 105 South Walnut Avenue, brews Old World-style beers using ingredients grown and foraged around Cookeville, and rents out its space for private events. Growlers and cans from a local brewery are a natural thing to bring to a holiday table.

Farther down the same street, at 186 South Walnut, Cookeville Art Studio & Gallery is a nonprofit studio that hangs a new exhibit every month alongside its painting and ceramics classes.

Beyond the WestSide

Independent shops aren't only on the west end of Broad. At 124 East Broad Street, The Outdoor Experience is a locally owned outdoor clothing and equipment shop that has been outfitting the area since 1998, with footwear, fly-fishing gear, kayaks, camping and backpacking gear and, through its Caney Fork Cycles shop, bicycles. It also rents kayaks, bikes and backpacking gear for a weekend on the Caney Fork or Center Hill Lake.

The Market on the Square calls itself a family-owned gift shop in the heart of Cookeville, owned and operated by women, with home décor, kitchenware, jewelry, clothing and gifts, and it offers curbside pickup and in-town delivery. Luxe Boutique, locally owned in Cookeville since 2012, sells women's clothing, shoes and accessories, with an online shop as well.

Shop walks and markets

Cookeville's biggest shop walk is the ART Prowl, held each November by the nonprofit Art Round Tennessee, which marked its 25th year in 2026. It starts from a welcome tent on the WestSide, and its hosts are galleries, boutiques, coffee bars and studios, many of them the shops above. The same group holds First Fridays, free pop-up art shows where local artists exhibit and sell their work, on the first Friday of each month from May through October at locations around the city; check its page in the spring for the next season's dates.

Art Round Tennessee and the city have also placed public art along the way. Spokes, a 36-foot-wide arch built from bicycles that residents donated, stands over the Tennessee Central Heritage Rail Trail by the depot, and a banjo-shaped bike rack sits at the depot itself.

The Cookeville Farmers Market, run by the city, is at 201 Mahler Avenue, where the rail trail runs north from the depot. Growers get their permits between February 1 and November 30, and Putnam County growers need a letter from the county agricultural extension agent before selling for the first time, which keeps the stalls in the hands of farmers.

For handmade holiday gifts, the GFWC Cookeville Junior Woman's Club holds Santa's Workshop each November at the Hyder-Burks Agricultural Pavilion. The club says the show gathers more than 180 crafters and vendors, draws more than 7,000 visitors and raises over $60,000 a year for community nonprofits, so shopping there doubles as giving.

Why it matters here

Cookeville is in the middle of deciding what its downtown becomes. In July 2026 the City Council approved the 39 Depot Master Plan for about five acres the city bought at Depot Street and South Cedar Avenue, on the WestSide's edge. The plan sketches parking, green space, a stage and plaza, a possible farmers market and a museum, and new shops on what is now mostly vacant industrial land. Mayor Laurin Wheaton said the design is not final and called it a project that will keep the WestSide's revival going. No construction timeline or cost has been released.

Whatever gets built, the WestSide's character comes from the people already there: a nonprofit selling books by the depot, a family donut shop in its seventh decade, a brewery using what grows nearby. Buying a gift, a coffee or a bag of tomatoes from them keeps that going.