Eugenia Williams House Opens Its Doors to Arts, Culture & Community

Who was Eugenia Williams? The enigmatic Coca-Cola heiress kept her guard up through life and into death, her privacy as literal as the tall brick wall that kept busybodies from peeking into her Lyons View Pike estate. She left no letters or diaries, and few photos. 

There are rumors, of course. It’s Knoxville, after all. Whispers about her divorce from a jet-setting, jazz-age marriage. Speculation of an affair. 

Suddenly alone in her mid-30s, Eugenia decided to tear down her family home and build, in its place, something entirely her own. Completed in 1941, it was a sort of vintage Barbie Dreamhouse, complete with all the modern bells and whistles of the time, from a state-of-the-art kitchen to parlors perfect for entertaining. And upstairs, a mirrored boudoir for trying on her latest New York looks, with closets upon closets of impeccably curated fashion.

But instead of reinventing herself as a hostess, Eugenia retreated into a life of intense privacy. 

Now, a quarter century after her death at age 98, her estate is being opened to the public for the first time. It represents the culmination of a meticulous six-year restoration by the Aslan Foundation after decades of deterioration.

Visitors are invited to wander through woodland wildflower gardens, among the spring ephemerals and fern drifts, and picnic upon the sprawling green velvet lawn. Ticketed house tours are available by reservation, a rare glimpse into Eugenia’s most intimate chambers. 

At last, it seems, the party guests she so meticulously planned for have finally arrived. Still, it’s impossible to wander the grounds without wondering who Eugenia Williams really was, and why she chose to disappear.

Aslan Foundation 

Katharine Killen, executive director of the Aslan Foundation, is standing outside on the sweeping veranda. She glances up at the house and then out toward the gray Tennessee River below. Someone opens the door and a few harp notes ripple out into the brisk morning air, which smells like damp grass and old stone.  

“To me, the house clearly looks like it was built to entertain,” she says. “It was built to have people here.”

She imagines the scene aloud: a small concert, perhaps the opera, performing on the veranda where we’re standing now. People are listening intently from the lawn, in chairs and on blankets. 

“The house sort of told us what it wanted, just by the way it was designed and presented,” Katharine continues. “And that’s a huge part of what we do. We see this as a broader vision for what the property can be, how it can serve and hopefully inspire the community.”

Aslan’s support for the arts, historic preservation and natural spaces is impossible to overstate, quietly shaping much of Knoxville’s cultural landscape. The Eugenia Williams House leans into that mission through a slate of partnerships, nine in total: Knoxville Museum of Art, Big Ears Festival, Knoxville History Project, Beck Cultural Exchange Center, Knox Heritage, Knoxville Opera, Knoxville Garden Club, East Tennessee Historical Society, and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra.  

It’s great fortune that Megan Robertson, the house director, brings a background in art history and museum programming. Megan says collaborations, whether history talks and educational programming or site-specific art and music performances, are central to how the house will evolve. 

While public tours will certainly be popular in the coming weeks and months (some are already sold out), Megan believes it’s the grounds and cultural programming that will bring people back again and again.

“We want to be part of the fabric of Knoxville’s arts and cultural community,” she says. “We’ve invited our partners to think about how they can engage audiences in new ways in this space.”

Sanders Pace & Reed Hilderbrand

I know I’ll be checking in often, even if just for a quiet place to walk. I’ve been fortunate to tour the estate previously, most recently earlier this week during a media preview. A highlight was hearing from Brandon Pace, principal at Sanders Pace Architecture, the project’s lead architect. His account of the restoration, and the painstaking level of detail involved, was fascinating.

The grounds tour was led by Eric Kramer, principal at Cambridge, Mass.-based landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrand. Before the renovation, the wooded slope down to the river was choked with invasive plants. Today, it’s been restored with more than 450 trees, hundreds of shrubs, and thousands of groundcovers and herbaceous plantings. Some are historically inspired, others selected to support long-term ecological health.

I could go on at length about the architecture and/or the landscape, but in the interest of keeping this story tethered, however loosely, to Inside of Knoxville’s usual urban focus, I want to circle back to the cultural programming and partner institutions whose work is typically rooted downtown.

While it’s just a 10-minute drive from the city center, the Eugenia Williams House, with its wooded grounds and almost suspended sense of time, feels much farther away. Which is part of the appeal. There’s something compelling about experiencing art in environments apart from the usual galleries and concert halls.

I reached out to a few of the house’s cultural partners to see how they’re thinking about using the space.

Big Ears

It doesn’t take much to get Ashley Capps’s wheels turning, as executive and artistic director of Big Ears, whose flagship festival returns next week. Despite being in the 11th hour of preparations, he rang me almost immediately, excited to talk about the Eugenia Williams House and its potential. 

“I’ve had the pleasure of visiting several times over the last few years while they’ve been working on this,” Ashley says. “It’s really captured my imagination. It feels like a place that could host some truly unique gatherings—not just events, but art and music experiences.”

Exactly what those might look like is still taking shape, but the possibilities are expansive. Ashley’s mind goes to immersive, one-of-a-kind moments, experiences that unfold in response to the space itself. 

As an example, he describes a virtual reality concert that used archival footage of a solo piano performance recorded before the artist died to create a kind of living monument. “You felt like you were in the room with him—you could walk around the piano, look over his shoulder, watch the keys move. It was eerie, but also really beautiful and evocative.”

Something that technologically complex may not land here, he notes, but the underlying idea of creating intimate, spatially aware experiences feels like a natural fit.

“You can imagine something as simple as a piano in the house,” he says, “or music that moves from room to room, where the experience shifts as you move through the space.”

And it’s not just the house itself. The surrounding grounds, a layered landscape crisscrossed with winding paths and unexpected moments, open up even more possibilities.

“The exterior is incredible,” Ashley says. “It’s the kind of place that just invites ideas. I don’t know exactly what yet, but it makes you want to try things.”

Knoxville Opera

Kate Smith, Knoxville Opera’s director of programs, tells me she sees the house as a chance to reframe how audiences experience vocal performance.

“We’re really excited about what this partnership could be,” she says. “It gives us a chance to do something a little different, to bring people in and experience opera in a way that feels close, relaxed and personal.”

Rather than large-scale productions, the Opera envisions smaller, salon-style programs, where audiences sit just a few feet from the performers—hearing not just the music, but the breath and the nuance that can get lost in larger venues.

“We’re hoping to create experiences that feel immediate and human,” says Kate. “It allows us to offer both the grand experience at the Tennessee Theatre and a more intimate one here.”

Like Ashley, the Opera is excited about the Steinway in the living room, which brings a richness and quality of sound that’s a treat in and of itself.

“At the end of the day, our goal is to create something that feels relevant and meaningful,” Kate says, “whether someone has been coming to opera for years or is experiencing it for the first time.”

Knoxville Museum of Art

I call Steven Matijcio, executive director of the Knoxville Museum of Art, from the parking lot of the Eugenia Williams House. I’m in a weird in-between headspace, the brackish water somewhere between full color and sepia. Already on the level, he starts talking about dichotomy.

“Eugenia is such a compelling subject,” he says. “She’s both a mystery and an enigma, but also a very present force in the home. There’s this intrigue, but you also feel her personality—the love of fashion, this almost nascent desire to entertain and welcome you.”

When artists are thinking about site-specific work, he says, they often want a blank canvas. They don’t want to compete with existing elements. But Eugenia’s mystery creates openness for interpretation, even as the house offers so much to respond to. He imagines plein air painting here, too, using the house not just as a venue but as a subject in its own right.

“The architecture, the flow of the house—it creates this ongoing dialogue between the artist, Eugenia and the space itself,” Steven says. “Every installation or work becomes part of that conversation.”

One installation already in development leans directly into that idea. Inspired by a past work by artist Gabriel Lester, Melancholia in Arcadia, the piece draws on the image of lace curtains caught in motion. It’s an old archetype tied to the passage between life and death, the idea of a spirit moving through a room.

In Lester’s earlier work, created for an exhibition in Istanbul, the curtains were stiffened and frozen mid-billow, capturing a moment that felt both fleeting and permanent. At the Eugenia Williams House, Steven says, the concept will take on new resonance. Planned for a hallway with functional floor-to-ceiling windows, it occupies a transitional space—an in-between state. She’s left, and yet she remains.

Read more: “The Mystery of the Eugenia Williams House” by Jack Neely for Visit Knoxville

Website: Eugenia Williams House | 4848 Lyons View Pike | Knoxville, Tennessee 37919

Planning your visit: 

Soft opening dates:
March 19–21
March 26–28

The property will then close briefly before its grand opening on April 11.

The 24-acre grounds are open Thursday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and can be explored freely during those hours.

Interior visits are available only through pre-scheduled, ticketed tours and special events. Tours are led by Knoxville Walking Tours and must be reserved in advance. Capacity is limited, so plan ahead.

Special thanks to Tricia Bateman Design.