Knoxville Postcard Pack Amy Vineyard LR

Amy Vineyard has been delving into her own shoeboxes and shared this unusual postcard pack with us. The front depicts a view across the Tennessee River looking towards downtown. The date is around 1905, not long after the fourth, and current, Gay Street Bridge was built in 1898, and shortly after outlaw Kid Curry fled across the bridge on a stolen horse after he had escaped from jail. A cluster of buildings, now long gone, line Front Street (later Neyland Drive), but the most visible building is the Knox County Courthouse, the center part of which forms the Courthouse that we know today. The spire to the right of the Courthouse belonged to the old First Baptist Church on the 600 block of Gay Street (it moved to its current location on Main Street in 1924).   Given the age of the photograph, the sternwheeler towboat, perhaps the Oliver King, is pushing a barge downstream.