Lib Cooper Knoxville Digital Postcard Collection

Elizabeth Cooper was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on July 16, 1918.  An active member of the Knoxville community, Elizabeth always took pride in her ancestry and the history of Knoxville.  Her passion for history gave way to extensive collection of postcards, newspaper clippings and written memories.

This digital collection was generously donated by Lib Cooper’s granddaughter, Adrienne Webster, in her memory.

The postcards largely date from the turn of the 20th century and generally cover the period 1900-1930.

Looking northeast across the 100 block of Gay Street towards the Southern Railway Station. Many of the buildings visible in this picture have been torn down, like the two red-brick buildings in the foreground, on either side of Gay Street, railroad office buildings torn down in the late 1970s. The Emporium still stands, as does the Southern Station, then new, still stands, though its clock tower was removed in 1945.

 

The Old Courthouse on Main Street, which then had two-way buggy traffic, notably featuring the Firefighters Memorial which is now located on Summit Hill Drive at the Downtown Fire Station. The memorial was also located at one time at the North Fire Station in Emory Park. This postcard shows the courthouse before the 1920s additions that extended it in both directions.

 

In the 1790s, the United States Barracks or “Blockhouse” was on the corner of Main Street and Gay Street and housed 300 U.S. Troops. Painted in 1901 by Knoxville’s first professional artist, Lloyd Branson, the scene offers a glimpse into Knoxville’s early days.

 

By the mid-1880s, the Knoxville Woolen Mills, was one of the city’s largest industrial employers with 900 workers. By 1908, it was considered the largest mill of its kind in the South. From about 1884 to 1911, it stood on the north side of Fort Sanders, near the northwest corner of Dale and 17th Street, near what’s now I-40. Its tower and ivy-covered brick walls looked almost academic. Click here for an archive photograph of the mill.

 

The 1874 Custom House, designed by nationally known architect Alfred Mullett, was home to multiple federal offices including the local U.S. Post Office until the completion of its replacement in 1934 on Main Street. After that, it served as offices of the Tennessee Valley Authority for about 40 years. This photo was taken several years before its first enlargement in 1910. A second major addition came almost a century later, connecting the building to Gay Street.

 

Eastern State Hospital for the Insane opened in 1886 at Lyons View. The first patients arrived from Nashville by train at the nearby station at Erin. (The community changed its name to Bearden in the late 1800s.)  The hospital closed in 2013 and most of the hospital buildings have since been demolished to make way for major park improvements. Only the center section of the large building shown above still stands, serving as offices for Lakeshore Park and City Parks and Recreation.

 

Built in 1918, Whittle Springs Hotel once boasted “medicinal waters,” but was locally famous both for its jazz-age dances, which drew some of the great orchestras of the era, and for its gigantic swimming pool. The golf course that still bears its name was built alongside it as an amenity. The hotel had closed and was being used for WNOX radio-station offices when was torn down in 1963.

 

Built in 1905, the Stratford Hotel was located just off Market Square on Asylum Avenue, now Wall Avenue. It may have been the place to find a cheap and memorable 50-cent “Christmas Plate Dinner” in 1914. According to a vintage advertisement, the menu featured “clear green turtle” soup and broiled Spanish mackerel, with the extra inducement of Wooten’s Orchestra.” The building became the Stratford Hotel Barber Shop after the hotel ceased operating around 1939.

The Holston National Banking on Gay Street at Clinch Avenue was completed in 1912 notably making it Knoxville’s tallest building until the Andrew Johnson Building was built in 1930. The Holston Bank closed early in the Depression, when hundreds of banks failed. The building mainly served as an office building for most of its history, and housed East Tennessee’s first FBI HQ in the 1930s. Radio station WROL also operated a studio there, which began to specialize in bluegrass in the 1940s. Notably, Flatt and Scruggs cut their very first bluegrass records there in 1948.

 

 

Presented to the public in 1926, Talahi was an almost revolutionary planned community, a real-estate dream finally ended by the stock-market crash of 1929. Talahi’s monuments are a peculiar combination of ancient Egyptian, Cherokee, and art-deco styles.

 

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