Compiled by Jack Neely for the Knoxville History Project. The Tennessee Theatre’s tall sign, removed this week, is only about 12 years old. A vertical sign was there during the theater’s early years, but it was removed in 1956. When […]
Buildings
The Knoxville Sessions box-set release of 1929 and 1930 recordings—celebrated with a frequently surprising festival this past weekend—is remarkable for several reasons, nationally or even internationally. It’s a pretty fascinating echo of an underdocumented era from the beginnings of popular […]
The Tennessee Valley Authority’s headquarters is for sale. For years, the presence of a couple of giant blank buildings that aren’t generally open to the public, and are empty most of the time, was a challenge to Market Square development. […]
Is the Cal Johnson Building Still Safe?
April 20, 2016
Last Thursday afternoon, the Metropolitan Planning Commission unexpectedly rejected its own staff’s recommendations and declined to endorse Mayor Rogero’s much-publicized initiative to give the Cal Johnson Building on State Street H-1 historical protection. It takes some imagination to call it […]
The Architects of Knoxville
April 14, 2016
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 […]
When We Were Modern: The Knoxville Seven, and the Store of Tomorrow
February 10, 2016
If you’re curious, after a while you’re likely to run across something about a group of defiantly modern artists called the Knoxville Seven. You might see a surprising abstract here or there, in a gallery or a friend’s house. For […]
A Personal History of Knoxville’s Civic Coliseum
January 20, 2016
The Knoxville Civic Auditorium and Coliseum dilemma illustrates a challenge to preservation practice and theory. The value of historic preservation is easier to prove with smaller buildings. In any building of less than 50,000 square feet, a building with so […]
The Cal Johnson Building: New Hope for a Neglected Landmark
January 13, 2016
Last month, the Rogero administration made an executive decision about one of the very few decrepit buildings left downtown. The three-story brick building on State Street known as the Cal Johnson Building now has a city-imposed H-1 overlay, a historic-preservation […]
Autumn Leaves: A Few Notes About Our Changing Seasons
November 25, 2015
It’s been an odd fall, and not just because I still have a yellow flower on my surviving tomato plant. This past weekend its leaves still smelled like July. In the Old City, at the corner of Central and Willow, […]
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EDITOR
Jack Neely is executive director of the Knoxville History Project. He has become one of Knoxville’s most popular writers and its unofficial historian. Jack is well known for his thoughtful, well-researched, and provocative pieces of long-form journalism, not to mention his books, speeches, and other public appearances...
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