(Today’s article features another installment in the “Ghost Walking” series by recurring contributor Paul James of the Knoxville History Project.)
Sometimes you can just step into an old photograph and imagine you’re there. Often, for me, it’s those dynamic images of street life from the late 1800s/early 1900s that seem to capture moments in the city’s past where you wish you could have been, even if just for a few moments. One of the liveliest spots appears to be on Gay Street at Union Avenue (just like it is today), a bustling intersection that over the years included jewelers, music shops, movie theaters, and department stores.
Right on the southwest corner of Gay and Union was a building that naturally drew a lot of people. The East Tennessee National Bank opened in 1872 on Gay Street, went on to become one of the city’s leading financial institutions, and its headquarters were on this corner by 1885. R.C. Jackson served as the bank’s inaugural president and is likely Major Richard Jackson, the railroad’s first superintendent here in town, and for whom Jackson Avenue in the Old City is named. Two Knoxville mayors also served as bank presidents during those early days, including British-born Joseph Jaques (mayor in 1858 and 1878) and Reuben Payne (mayor in 1882). One notable VP proved to be William Wallace Woodruff, whose hardware and furniture store was just half a block to the north of here. That building still bears his name above the awning to the Downtown Grill & Brewery at 424 S. Gay.
The East Tennessee National Bank would be a mainstay on that corner for decades, becoming the site of Park National Bank in the 1930s, its change of name reflecting the passion of the times: interest in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park movement, almost reaching a successful conclusion by then. The bank was rebuilt in the early 1970s, giving us the tower block we know today. Relatively recently, the building became the Embassy Suites Hotel.
Just south of the bank, Hope Brothers Jewelers became a particularly prominent business on Gay Street, notable for its equally prominent and ornate street clock (the timepiece later moved diagonally across the street to where it stood for decades more. You can still see the name above the entrance to Lilou Brasserie. What I find curious about Hope Brothers is that looking at old advertisements, the store touted world-famous Royal Crown Derby China—the town I was born in the UK!
In 1890, several thousand veterans came to Knoxville for a rare Blue-Gray reunion, commemorating the Battle of Fort Sanders in 1863 during the Civil War. Many walked right by this corner on parade, straight from the Southern Station, and it would have been the first time since the war that they had returned to the city in which they had fought. Here they could meet fellow soldiers from either side of the conflict, and remember those grim days, but also be reminded that they were grateful to still be alive. Knoxville gave the veterans a tremendous welcome. In the photo below, you can see the buildings around Gay and Union decorated to the nines with banners and streams of bunting. The main festivities, though, focused on what was left of the battlefield, just west of town, even then increasingly being engulfed by suburban growth. What we know as Fort Sanders today was then simply West Knoxville or West End.
Most people living in the 1800s would have been familiar with destructive fires, but seven years after the big reunion, on April 8, 1897, downtown residents, businessmen, and passersby would witness a particularly devastating one—afterward dubbed “The Million Dollar Fire” by the insurance companies, though the cost would far exceed that. The blaze effectively took out most of the 400 block on the east side of Gay Street, as well as the west side of State Street. Jim Thompson, a young photographer, practically on his first assignment, took several, now classic, photos of the fire and its aftermath from the roof of a building at Gay and Union.
If you think that this intersection is a busy one today with countless pedestrians, vehicles, dogs, scooters, and such, try taking a time capsule to about 1905 and have fun dodging the multitude of shoppers and people running errands, sidestepping horse manure before the road sweepers could pick it up. And boys on cycles delivering telegrams. Plus, all the horses and carts, hack cabs, streetcars, and something new and unpredictable: the motorcar.
Most people can take care of themselves, but how about those poor horses? Pressed into service, sometimes in endless shifts, they would become of great concern for some.
Hack cabs, or hacks (short for Hackney Carriage), were available to hire at any time of day or night, and in 1892 a city ordinance capped fares at 25 cents for any ride within city limits. By the early 1900s, there was more concern for the working animals, with calls for better treatment of the horses, which were often said to be “in perpetual motion.” They were encouraged to be. Why? An earlier ordnance instructed hack drivers to keep moving on Gay Street and not congregate, causing a nuisance for other traffic, unless they were stationed at the official hack stands that were often unsightly, if not downright unhealthy.
On top of that, representatives with the Knox County Humane Society (organized in 1885), claimed that many of the working horses were often poorly fed and some too infirm to even be in service, especially pulling large carriages all day. Without getting too rosy about the past, the sights and smells along Gay Street must have been, at times, quite startling.
Before long though, the mighty automobile would increasingly compete, and in many ways eclipse hooved conveyances.
In 1905, a new building arose above the pedestrians and street traffic on this spot that still towers above us. Miller’s Department Store, which opened just to the north of here in 1903 on the 300 block, proved to be so successful that it soon expanded into two other adjoining buildings. Two years later, the store announced it was about to demolish what was then called the former Ramage Corner Book Store building, that had been there about a decade, on the northwest corner of Gay and Union.
What Miller’s realized on that corner was a grand, Beaux-Arts building of distinction, complete with Greek-style “Caryatids” and other ornamental flourishes on the upper parts of the south and east facing walls, just under the roofline. That strange word, Caryatid, means “a stone carving of a draped female figure, used as a pillar to support the entablature of a Greek or Greek-style building.” The female forms here, all four of them and all different, weren’t draped at all, but seemingly proud of their natural form.
Somewhat remarkably, in the days before historic preservation became a thing, the two outfacing sides of the Miller’s Building were clad in a mirrored façade covering up these ornamentations. Fast forward to the late 1990s, when the building was about to get a major makeover, local architect in change of the project, former City Councilman Duane Grieve, was saddened to discover the hidden gems were missing. But a few pieces of one of them turned up and Grieve led a meticulous restoration project (that involved cross country trips to see a west coast artisan) to reconceive four new Caryatids, based on the one remnant, and remounted them in fiberglass on the east facing façade.
In a sense this preservation project heralded the beginnings of a downtown renaissance that continues today. If you’ve never looked up there, it makes for a fine first view.
