Compiled by Jack Neely for the Knoxville History Project.
Knoxville Area Transit now offers the Green Line, a new trolley route that serves the Old City area.
It’s free, and so is this paper. If you have about 15 minutes to kill, take a free, air-conditioned tour of historic downtown Knoxville.
Pick it up going north on Gay Street at Union. As you ride, you’re following the route of the first trolley in Knoxville history, a mule-drawn trolley in 1876.
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The east side of the 400 block of Gay, where the Phoenix, Woodruff’s, and other tall buildings stand today, was the site of the worst fire in Knoxville history, the Great Fire of 1897. Most of these buildings were built soon after that. Tailor Lofts and the Century Building survived it. Everything in between was decimated. At least four died.
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When the trolley turns right, down Summit Hill, it’s tracing the course of old Vine Avenue, which was for almost a century the main commercial and cultural street of the black community. Almost all of Vine Street was obliterated during urban renewal in the 1950s and ‘60s. Summit Hill and Central is near the lively urban center once known as “Little Harlem.”
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Left on Central, and we’re in the old Bowery. This 100 block of South Central once hosted more than 60 businesses, including, between 1888 and 1907, multiple saloons, as many as 11 on this block at once.
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Right on East Jackson. Originally known as Hardee Street, it was both working-class residential and industrial by the late 1880s, known for its meat-packing houses. We’re entering the district once known as Cripple Creek, so named for the fact that First Creek takes a crooked jag to the east here.
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Right on Patton Street. A predominantly black residential street, with a few businesses, including Knoxville’s first known tamale makers, in the late 1800s, it hosted the Patton Street Church of God, where blues legend Ida Cox sang in her later years.
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Right on Willow. Willow goes by the site of the old Union Stockyards, a noisy place before it was forced out by Urban Renewal in 1957. Over on the left, just out of sight, is First Creek, downtown Knoxville’s original defining principle, now contained in a culvert.
Left on Central, then Right on Summit Hill. Summit Hill Drive is named for the hill it crosses. The highest spot downtown, it was originally known as Gallows Hill, the site of at least a few executions by hanging in the early 1800s. Since 1855 it has been the site of East Tennessee’s first Catholic church, Immaculate Conception. The current church building was completed in 1886, the oldest church building downtown. Due to its unique height, its steeple became the location of the city’s town clock, visible from both Market Square and the Southern train station. Long maintained by the city, the clock is now run by the church.
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A bit farther, on the right, is the large red-brick complex now used by Lincoln Memorial University’s law school. The columned building at front, built in 1848, was originally the Tennessee School for the Deaf, the first such school in this region and one of the first deaf schools in the United States. Between 1925 and 1980, after the school moved to Island Home, the building served as City Hall.
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Left on Locust. On the right are Kendrick Place, a century-old townhouse complex renovated for upscale residences in the early 1980s; the old Masonic Temple, radically remodeled more than a century ago from industrialist Charles McClung McGhee’s large Victorian home; and the 1929 YMCA, emblematic of the Old World styles evoked by architect Charles Barber.
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Crossing Clinch, the UT Conference Center was the 1956 Rich’s Department Store, a modernist marvel in its day. In 1960, it was the location of some dramatic and ultimately successful anti-segregation sit-ins. It was later Miller’s.
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Next block, you’ll see the marble-front 1950s state supreme court building, in the news recently, and next block, the 1929 Medical Arts Building, recently renovated for residents.
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Left on Main, and you’ll see the 1934 Post Office building, designed by Baumann & Baumann. Some architects call it Knoxville’s finest building. Across the street is the 1924 First Baptist Church. The 1991 Whittle Building, a.k.a. Baker Federal Courthouse, designed by maverick architect Peter Marino, is across the street from architect Bruce McCarty’s 1979 City County Building—and the 1886 Knox County Courthouse, with its tree-shaded monuments.
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Then back to Gay, where there’s too much to talk about in one column.
Featured Photo: Central to Knoxville’s African-American community from the 1920s to the 1960s, the Gem Theatre was built over First Creek, near the southeast corner of what’s now Summit Hill and Central, a site visible from the Green Line. Rebuilt after a 1942 lightning fire, the popular cinema and performance hall was one of hundreds of buildings torn down during Urban Renewal. Photo courtesy of Volunteer Voices: The Growth of Democracy in Tennessee.
The Knoxville History Project, a nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of and education about the history of Knoxville, presents this column each week to raise awareness of the themes, personalities, and stories of our unique city.
Learn more on facebook.com/knoxvillehistoryproject • email jack@knoxhistoryproject.org
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