Fourth and Gill Tour of Homes and Secret Gardens 2025, Part One

I hope you caught the Fourth and Gill Tour of Homes and Secret Gardens this past weekend. The annual event spotlights the Victorian and Craftsman homes of Knoxville’s first ring neighborhood, as well as shining a little light on the beautiful gardens in the neighborhood. The information in each of these posts is drawn completely from the work of Arin Streeter whose narratives guide the tour booklet. I’ll break this into two parts to give space for the beautiful homes and gardens included.

I skipped the first stop, which includes the Central United Methodist Church and gardens. I’ve photographed those many times before, so search for that if you’d like to see my shots. Also, I skipped the stop at 621 Eleanor because I did a complete feature on it just a couple of weeks ago as a preview for this tour.

That said, I started my tour at 717 Deery Street, a home which was featured in a New York Times article last fall focused on homes around the country costing less than $750,000. I’ll let the New York Times writer; Angela Serratore describe the home:

A Queen Anne Revival-style house from 1899: This three-bedroom, three-bathroom house is in Knoxville’s Fourth & Gill neighborhood . . . Two sets of steps, one stone and one wood, lead from the sidewalk to the green front door, which has its original crank doorbell and is set beneath a frosted-glass transom window.

To the left is the sitting room, which holds one of the home’s four decorative fireplaces. The molding along the ceilings is original. A long hallway links this part of the house to the kitchen and dining room, where the walls are trimmed with wood wainscoting. A small room off one side of the space has a built-in bar. Across the hall is the kitchen, which has butcher block countertops and a white subway tile backsplash. At the back of the hall is a laundry room with ample cabinet space and a door to the backyard.

Two bedrooms are on this level, both off the main hallway. Each has a decorative fireplace, and one has an en suite bathroom with a walk-in shower. The other has use of a bathroom with a deep soaking tub atop Moroccan-style tile floors.

Stairs lead from the kitchen to the second floor and the primary bedroom. An open lofted area is used by the sellers as a den and walk-in closet, and the bedroom, around the corner, is big enough for a king-size bed. The attached bathroom has a shower with a bench and walls lined with gray tile.

Pretty much what I would have said. Well done, Angela. She also notes that the home is just over 2,600 square feet. I’m always struck by the fireplaces and this home features some great ones, fortunately preserved.

Charles and Jane Simmons purchased two lots on the street in 1881 and 1884, subdividing them into three lots. As a result of the tight quarters, this home barely faces the street. It was completed in 1891 by Alice E. and George B. Brazelton. After just over a decade, they sold the home and it became a rental for fifteen years before being purchased by Oscar and Etta Wells Sandberg. Etta lived in the home for thirty years until her death at age 90.

Pictured above and in the gallery below are photographs of the gardens at 900 Gratz Street. Featuring a combination of “native plants alongside perennial favorites,” a beautiful firepit formed the center of the garden. Visitors were entranced with the plants in the bank lining the street.

Now dubbed the Fourth and Gill Neighborhood Center, or the Powers-Sanders House, the building will forever be known to many as “The Bird House.” Built in 1891, the home is unusual in that its first owner was a woman, Margaret Powers, whose was widowed two years earlier. She died just four years later and the home passed to her daughter, and son-in-law, Margaret and William Sanders. He began a candy manufacturing business in the Commerce Building on the 100 block of Gay Street, later relocating his factory to what is now known as The Candy Factory on the World’s Fair Park.

The home hasn’t served as a home since about 1960, belonging to the community in one form or another ever since. The site of concerts, art shows, radio broadcasts, and more, many neighborhood meetings have been and are held here. Kudos to the community, who have the home looking better than it has in years.

The garden at 922 Gratz Street hones in on native East Tennessee plants, with no grass, and rotating flowering plants throughout the year. The back yard is a sanctuary featuring a stone patio, fire pit, and raised vegetable beds. The vegetation is designed, as noted on the sign, to serve wildlife as much as is possible in an urban neighborhood.

We’ll end our journey of homes with another home that isn’t a home any longer. Now located at 903 Hall of Fame Drive (which didn’t exist when this home was built), the structure became commercial when that throughway was built and now serves as home to Elder Care Law of Tennessee. Thanks to the urban disruption of Hall of Fame Drive, the home must be accessed from the rear, its grand porch facing a highway.

Incredibly, given the current view, this former home sits in one of the oldest sections of the neighborhood, but “of the 150 or so houses that once stood there, only about a dozen remain.” That is thanks to the construction of both the Interstate and Hall of Fame Drive. Built in 1915 for Col. William B. Caswell, the home was sold to Ms. Ella C. Pierce in 1946 for $15,000. She operated Pierce’s Cigar Store and remained in the home until her death in 1982. The property shifted to commercial use on her death.