The University of Tennessee traces its beginnings to 1794, before Tennessee was even a state. But behind that founding date, which gives UT a claim to be one of the nation’s oldest public universities, is a story of stressful decades […]

This Friday, the 21st, will witness an event of interest to local music and architectural history. [media-credit name=”Courtesy TAMIS” align=”alignright” width=”300″][/media-credit]The old WNOX auditorium is going up for auction. It was designed in the early 1950s, when it looked like […]

The East Tennessee Historical Society has a deep history of its own. It dates back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson. In 1834, physician J.G.M. Ramsey (1797-1884), journalist and cleric Thomas Humes, sometime Congressman John Crozier, Judge William Reese, future […]

I didn’t realize the Baptist Hospital demolition would take out the old Chapman Highway motel that was once a Holiday Inn. Ordinarily the loss of a TV-era motel wouldn’t be a subject for comment, much less tears. It was hardly a […]

Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum will be opening its new Visitors Center on Aug. 14. Located off the beaten path, at 2743 Wimpole Avenue in East Knoxville, the 47-acre refuge is the largest publicly accessible garden in the city’s history. […]

This centennial of the Summer of 1915, celebrated by different audiences around the world through the works of James Agee and Samuel Barber, has been stirring some memories of the same neighborhood in another summer, 36 years ago, when I […]

On some of those July days, it rained just enough to steam everything up and make the soot smear. Knoxville was too distracted during wartime to make the joint look nice. Business came before beauty. Pro baseball was crippled by […]

Productions of Shakespeare’s work have a deep history in Knoxville. First launched as Shakespeare in the Park in 1991, at World’s Fair Park’s Tennessee Amphitheatre, the Tennessee Stage Company’s month-long Shakespeare production consists of two rotating plays, usually faster, livelier […]

The ancient name Palmyra is unexpectedly in the news. Two months ago, the roving street gang that likes to call itself the Islamic State seized the old Syrian ghost town and destroyed some of its pagan statues. They staged some […]