Bobby’s is an altogether different kind of bar. It began life in 1948 simply as the Idle Hour. By 1978, when Bobby Herald bought it and added his name to the sign, it had already been on the Row for decades, a place where songwriters and neighbors and music scouts and industry regulars gathered. On weekend afternoons, people would bring their kids to hear the music.

In 2005, the Idle Hour was evicted from its longtime site — a condominium complex sits there now — and Bobby Herald and his wife, Dianne, moved the bar to its current location on 16th Avenue, eight doors down from the old trailer. Bobby died later that year, but Dianne kept the bar going. It still has autographed head shots of musicians taped to the walls, interspersed with dollar bills signed by guests. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollar bills, many yellowed by smoke from the years before the bar banned smoking.

Lizard Thom Case, 72, bought the place in 2013 after Dianne retired, but he’d been a regular at the bar there for years before he bought it — so much of a regular that Dianne handpicked him to be Bobby’s “steward,” as Mr. Case calls himself. Even he doesn’t remember how the tradition of taping dollar bills to the walls began: “I don’t know how it started, but it grew like a fungus,” he said. His best guess: “Tourists love this place so much, they just want to leave some part of themselves here.” Visitors still come back years later, he said, and take selfies next to their own signed bills.

Last summer Mr. Case’s landlord announced that he was selling the site and four adjacent buildings to a developer. (All five evicted businesses are quintessentially Music City: a clothing store called So Nashville, a guitar repair shop, a music academy, a music publisher, and Bobby’s.) Short of the kind of 11th-hour miracle that saved Studio A, Bobby’s Idle Hour (“The only live music venue on Music Row!” according to its website) would end its seven-decade run, and yet another office building would rise in its place.

“Nashville doesn’t have preservation tools that other cities use as a matter of course,” Carolyn Brackett, senior field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, told The Tennessean last summer. “There are practical solutions that would balance development with the preservation of Music Row’s historic fabric and retain the music businesses that fill them. We urge Mayor Briley and Metro Nashville leaders to adopt them before it’s too late.”

For the current iteration of Bobby’s Idle Hour, it’s already too late. Last fall Bobby’s was named to the “Nashville 9,” an annual list of the most endangered historic places in Nashville, but this time no miracle was forthcoming. Mr. Case has until the end of the month to clear everything out.

It was never his plan to retire: “If we’d been able to stay in this venue, this particular building, I could’ve kept this bar another 10 years,” he said. “I love it. I love nurturing the songwriters. I love setting up these great nights of music. It’s been my life.”