HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
A 1909 federal building with a century of forgotten rooms — and the footsteps to prove it.
110 SE Broad St, Murfreesboro, TN 37130
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Performance tickets vary by event. Ghost tour stops may be included in Murfreesboro Ghost Tours pricing.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Downtown building with multiple floors; elevator available for main performance spaces.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1909 · First Federal Building in Murfreesboro · Early Twentieth Century Post Office Architecture · Linebaugh Public Library Heritage · Downtown Murfreesboro Historic District
The building at 110 SE Broad Street opened in 1909 as Murfreesboro's first federally constructed building, designed to house the city post office. The structure changed hands and uses multiple times across the twentieth century — an unusual institutional biography that includes a stint as a stable during the years the site passed between civic functions, and a long period as the Linebaugh Public Library, which became a community fixture in Murfreesboro before a newer library facility was constructed.
In 1995 the City of Murfreesboro completed a renovation that converted the building into the Center for the Arts, establishing it as the city's primary venue for theater, music, and visual arts programming. In 2018, facility staff working to fix water backing up in the basement uncovered a previously unknown iron staircase sealed within the building's walls — a detail documented by the Rutherford County Historical Society and cited in local accounts as an example of the structure's layered, imperfectly documented history.
The building's position on SE Broad Street places it within Murfreesboro's historic downtown core, a few blocks from the public square and the Civil War–era courthouse. The Rutherford County Historical Society has maintained documentation of the building's construction history and the staircase discovery, offering a primary record of the site's complicated institutional past.
Sources
Paranormal accounts at the Center for the Arts predate its current use as an arts venue. Staff who worked in the building during the Linebaugh Library years reported hearing footsteps in sections of the building that were locked and unoccupied, a pattern that continued after the 1995 renovation. The Printing Services department, located in a lower section of the building, has accumulated the most specific complaints: workers there describe hearing voices in adjacent rooms that are empty when checked, and at least two staff members have documented instances of equipment being moved or turned off between shifts.
The most-cited physical anomaly remains the sealed iron staircase uncovered during 2018 basement repairs, documented by the Rutherford County Historical Society. Workers who found it described a sense of disorientation in the area — a detail that has since attached itself to the building's ghost narrative, though no specific historical event has been connected to the staircase's origin.
The Nashville Ghosts tour cites the Center for the Arts as one of the less theatrically obvious but more persistently reported locations on the Murfreesboro circuit, characterized by staff-reported phenomena rather than dramatic one-time incidents.
The building is open to the public during events. The 1909 federal architecture and the discovery of an unknown iron staircase during 1990s renovations are part of the building's documented history.
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