Gene Burr. (Courtesy American Institute of Architects.)
He was arguably the last of a cadre that, more than half a century ago, changed the way we think about old buildings and, to some extent, our downtown, and in so doing, changed the course of Knoxville in a more authentic direction. After the surprise salvation of the Bijou Theatre in 1974, a very few imaginative Knoxvillians turned their attention toward the Old City. Before it was even called that, it was just an intersection of ragged, sooty old buildings, most of them underoccupied, some of them dead empty, over near the train tracks—where nobody went anymore because the passenger trains had quit years before that.
Beginning in 1978, often working closely with legendary preservationist Ron Childress, Gene began working on specific old buildings in the Old City, especially on four rare Richardsonian Romanesque brick buildings on West Jackson, including the ca. 1889 Carhart Building—which bears the name of a grocery wholesaler who went out of business in 1893—with an ideal of “mixed-use” renovation. When most people couldn’t define that term, he showed us how it worked. An old building that had once been mainly a warehouse could house retail, offices, and residences, all at the same time.
You had to be bold, because on that block, one of the most extravagantly decorated Victorian commercial blocks in the region—buildings were going down fast, both from fires and deliberate demolitions. Gene’s buildings are still there today, and on the National Register of Historic Places. One of the key juggernauts behind the Old City, in the 1970s-80s, Gene was the only one I could still talk to when I wrote the book, Knoxville’s Old City: A Short History. Would we have a thriving downtown today without those guys and their loony ideas back in the ‘70s?
Originally from New York State, he had studied at Auburn, then UTK—in 1971 he got his masters degree in planning here—then at the University of Manchester, England. He returned to Knoxville in 1974, just as the city was discovering its own architectural heritage, and started his own preservation-minded firm, first working mainly in obviously historic towns like Jonesborough, Dandridge, and Rugby. Here in town, he helped found the Community Design Center.
His own family lore up north suggested he was kin to Aaron Burr, and as it happens the same was true for George Burr, the architectural-products industrialist whose Burr & Terry Sawmill was the biggest thing in the Old City area a century before Gene first ventured there.
In 1980, Burr opened an office at 121 West Jackson, in the days when it seemed outlandish for a respected professional with a graduate degree to work daily down in that disreputable district. (One of his early tenants was a young nonprofit leader named Madeline Rogero.)
Meanwhile, he and Childress made a convincing case that Knoxville’s upcoming exposition could be different from all others if much of it happened in restored old buildings, like the old Foundry, the L&N station, the Candy Factory, and several small wooden Victorian houses that appeared doomed to demolition. At the time as well as in history, preservation is one of the things that makes Knoxville’s 1982 world’s fair stand apart, partly thanks to Burr’s urging.
After the big fair, he found another challenge when, working with architect Ed Green, he led a major renovation effort at the 1886 Knox County Courthouse, connecting it to the modernist City County Building, exposing the original vaulted ceilings, stained-glass windows, and much forgotten interior detail long hidden by too-practical dropped ceilings, and even a restoration of the courtyard’s old cast-iron fence, lost when it was donated for a scrap-metal drive during World War II. His work is still part of the experience of visiting that interesting building today.
But by 1984, though happy with what he had accomplished, Knoxville as a whole seemed unconvinced of the value of the Old City and downtown in general. By then only one restaurant and a couple of shops had opened down there. He left Knoxville to take a teaching post in Auburn, then migrated to Key West, where for five years he was claimed to be the first preservationist planner in that unique place. (Did it help that the sturdy, bearded, broad-faced architect bore some resemblance to Ernest Hemingway?) He was then off to Memphis, where he worked for eight years on redesigning a huge Army depot site for civilian use.
But he kept coming home, for projects and eventually to resettle. In his later years he won distinctions from the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, including the 2011 Gold Medal Award. Sometimes described as a retired architect, he never retired, really, but became more interested in landscape work, as on the Vestal Gateway Park, as he also served as president of Scenic Tennessee, involved in all sorts of projects not traditionally associated with architecture, including billboards, which he generally opposed. He helped Bruce McCarty save the unique Tennessee Amphitheatre.
Independent, mobile, and still curious even into his 90s, he was known to appear at public events in recent years, always with something to say, not necessarily about sports or his health or his last vacation, but more often about a new development or planning idea we hadn’t heard about. In recent years, he was especially interested in John Sanders’ preservation and renovation of the Clausses’ extraordinary prewar modernist hamlet known as Little Switzerland. We can only be grateful that, half a century ago, he got interested in some forgotten old buildings in a half-forgotten downtown. His spirit is still with us.
~ J.N. August 2025
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