Knoxville is not famous for its architecture, but maybe it can be.
Thomas Hope, who was a furniture maker and planner of homes, is often described as Knoxville’s first architect. Originally from England, Hope (1757-1820) had lived in Charleston before he moved here in the 1790s. The designed the Ramsey House, the unusual 1797 stone house in the Forks of the River area. Hope also designed “Statesview,” which is visible off Peters Road in West Knoxville.
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The first to advertise himself as a commercial architect, however, was Joseph Baumann (1844-1920). The son of German immigrants, Baumann moved to Knoxville shortly after the Civil War and began both designing and building buildings for clients. Among those still standing are the 1876 Kern Building, on Market Square, and Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, on Vine Street. Baumann formed a partnership with his much-younger, more formally trained brother, Albert B. Baumann, and the firm became known as Baumann Brothers. Among their accomplishments are Westwood, the 1890 home of Knox Heritage, and Knoxville High School (1910). Later, the younger Baumann formed a new partnership with his son, A.B. Baumann, Jr., who had studied under the famous architect Paul Cret. The new firm known as Baumann and Baumann left surviving work like the Andrew Johnson Building (1930), once the tallest building in East Tennessee, and the U.S. Post Office building on Main Street (1932).
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Perhaps the most famous architect who ever lived in Knoxville was George Barber (1854-1915). Born in Dekalb, Illinois, he moved to Knoxville at the peak of his career, in 1888. He became known for his almost fanciful Victorian designs, which he sold by mail order. Today, hundreds of Barber houses are maintained across the country, even on the West Coast, but the highest concentration of them is in Knoxville, especially in the Parkridge neighborhood, where the Barber family lived.
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George Barber’s son, Charles Barber (1887-1962), was co-founder of Barber McMurry, which celebrated its centennial as an architectural firm last year. He designed churches, academic buildings, and residences, often with medieval flourishes. Barber McMurry has evolved with the generations, known for much of UT’s gothic-revival architecture, but the firm recently designed the much-admired modern Natalie Haslam Music Center at UT.
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Knoxville native John Fanz Staub (1891-1981), moved to Texas early his career where his work is well known, especially in the Houston area. He did little work in his hometown, but two of his houses are extraordinary: the old-English cottage Hopecote (1924), now part of UT, and the grand Williams House (1940) on Lyons View.
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Indiana-born Bruce McCarty (1920-2013) came to Knoxville in the 1940s and quickly became Knoxville’s leader in modernist design. At first he designed imaginative modernist homes, especially in the booming new neighborhoods of West Knoxville. Later he became known for large public buildings, like Clarence Brown Theatre and the City-County Building.
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McCarty was not the first modernist here. A few others, like Roland Wank and Alfred Clauss, who had studied at the Bauhaus, were here in the 1930s, to work for TVA. Clauss designed several striking modernist houses still standing in Knoxville.
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Several nationally famous architects have done work in Knoxville. Washington-based Alfred Mullett (1834-1890) designed two very different buildings here: the 1874 Custom House at the corner of Clinch and Market (now the oldest part of the East Tennessee History Center); and Greystone, the 1890 house on Broadway that’s now the headquarters of WATE, believed to be his final project.
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John Russell Pope (1874-1937) is another architect famous for his Washington work, including the Jefferson Memorial and the National Gallery of Art. In Knoxville, Pope first designed the Dulin house on Kingston Pike (later used as an art museum), and more than a decade later worked with Barber & McMurry on the Church Street United Methodist Church (1931).
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Other well-known architects and architectural firms who have done work in Knoxville includeJ.W. Yost, of Ohio, who designed the main part ofSt. John’s Episcopal Church (1892); Cleverdon and Putzel of New York, who designed the 1906 Arnstein Building at Market and Union; and Graven & Mayger of Chicago, who designed the Tennessee Theatre (1928). New York-based architects Harrie Lindeberg (1879-1959) and Francis Keally (1889-1978) both designed suburban homes on the west side of town before World War II.
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The Knoxville Museum of Art (1990) was one of the last accomplishments of New York-based museum designer Edward Larrabee Barnes (1915-2004).
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The often outrageous New Yorker Peter Marino (born 1949), who worked with Andy Warhol, designed the Georgian Whittle Communications Building (1991), now the Howard Baker Federal Courthouse.
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