And the Electrical Wizard of St. Charles Avenue Ayres Hall is a century old this year, and maybe, finally, it’s as old as people always thought it was. Actually, some newcomers, innocent of the challenges of the frontier era, see […]

  A sexual assault, a downtown lynch mob, and a sheriff’s forceful response One century ago this month, an angry crowd gathered on Gay Street at Hill Avenue. Their objective was the old fortress-like jail known as the County Bastille. […]

This is a story of a kid who was scared of a graveyard. It’s also the story of the founder of a major American institution, a cultural leader who changed a whole profession, established a landmark, and introduced a new […]

We will remember this. Sixteen months after we began canceling events, we’re coming back out. The virus is still afoot, and nightclubs and festivals aren’t fully booked yet, but enough people feel safe that we are emerging from our cocoons, […]

This summer marks the 130th anniversary of a civil-rights convention that was decades ahead of its time—and helped introduce some charismatic Black leaders of the future.   In 1891, a national conference of African American civil-rights activists, recently organized in Chicago, chose to […]

The obscure and contradictory story of Haywire Mac   In that interesting masonry peninsula where southern Old North narrows to a point as Broadway encroaches on Central, there, off Irwin Street, is a large, colorful mural on the back of […]

The fate of artist Catherine Wiley’s childhood home raises a question: How do you know when you’re buying a cultural landmark? Once every year or two, I need to take a sentimental lap through Fort Sanders, my old neighborhood, what I […]

WHAT KNOX COUNTY HAS IN COMMON WITH MENORCA, AND WHY REMOVING A LEGACY OF A NATIVE-TENNESSEE UNION COMMANDER WOULD ALSO REMOVE A RARE LEGACY OF LATINO PARTICIPATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY. You may have heard about the proposed removal—presented, a little […]

From the day it was finished in 1903 The Southern Railway Station on Depot Street was remarkable in several ways. It was overcrowded, for one thing, an unwelcome surprise to the architect, who had apparently miscalculated. The mortar had hardly […]