Ghost Walking the 200 Block of Gay Street, Part 2: Sweeping Changes in the 1970s 

Editor’s note: This is part 2 of Paul James’ series on the 200 Block of Gay Street. You can read Part 1 here. As always, a debt of gratitude to Knoxville History Project for their invaluable work in researching and preserving the story of our city. – Leslie

It’s now been a few months since the Lone Tree Pass building opened on the west side of the 200 block of Gay Street. I’m very pleased to see the re-opening of the sidewalk there. It’s a nice, shady stretch on a hot summer afternoon. And while we’ve yet to see new businesses open along the ground floor, new ones are popping up on the second floor above and in the courtyard between the commercial spaces and the residential side. You can take the steps on either side to get up there. I’ve had a few coffees in Treetop Coffee Shop, one of the few new businesses yet to open, and it has a nice, elevated view of the Cradle of Country Music Park. 

Some well-deserved life is now breathing more fully again on this block.

With the construction of Summit Hill Drive in the mid-1970s, driven by the development of the two TVA towers at the north end of Market Square, this part of town witnessed some dramatic changes. Numerous buildings were demolished along the new road route, including all the buildings on the 200 block and a few on its western fringe, like the old Lawson McGhee Library building on Market Street, and buildings to the east around Vine and Central. Some of these structures are still missed by some Knoxvillians with deep memories. 

What’s done is done, but it makes an interesting study to look back around this spot and see how it once was, even in the recent past.

As Jack Neely wrote in Knoxville’s Old City: A Short History, “…a group called the Downtown Knoxville Association, working with Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation, presented an idea for a sweeping divided-highway-style connector to link TVA’s huge new campus, City Hall, and a planned new fire hall. Those old streets themselves would be consolidated almost to oblivion by the plan.” 

Those streets also included parts of Vine Avenue, Commerce Avenue, and several shorter ones around old City Hall (now LMU’s Law School) and the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church that have since been lost to history. 

Jack also highlights how a group called “Citizens for the Humane Revitalization of Downtown Knoxville” vehemently opposed the plan, citing the many buildings that possessed character that would be lost. The group, which included young architect and early preservationist Ron Childress, particularly highlighted the old terra-cotta-clad Lawson McGhee Library building on Market Street, standing empty, as a new library had been built at Church and Walnut a few years earlier.

Looking at photographs of these streets before construction on Summit Hill can be disorientating.

Of course, Summit Hill Drive would be built, and we’ve lived with the consequences, good or otherwise, for more than a half century. Still, few of us recall the 200 block in any form other than the gap in an almost unbroken run of buildings along every block from the Gay Street Bridge to the railroad tracks at Jackson Avenue. 

In my last Ghost Walking story, I covered the history on this block from when Cal Johnson opened up his Lone Tree Saloon, and how shoe repair man, and Jewish immigrant, Louis Tobe took over the spot—both of them caring for the last remaining tree on Gay Street. See: “Ghost Walking the Lone Tree saloon & Shoe Shop on the 200 Block of Gay Street.” 

My part two is more of a photo essay. In the first photograph, taken from the Knox County Archives, we’re looking at the west side of Gay at the intersection with Commerce Avenue. It’s easier if you pretend you’re looking uphill along Summit Hill Drive, which you would do today if you stood looking from the same spot.

For many years in this once handsome block, one could find jewelers, clockmakers, and shoe shops. But these dated photos tend to betray the architectural distinction of some of these buildings. 

In 1974, local architect Charles Waterhouse Jr. put together “A Survey of Architectural Character in the Central Business District.” Regarding the corner building above, Waterfield wrote, “Two features dominate the façade of the building. The first is a large triple window which is thoughtfully flanked on either side by a simple single window. A combination of corbelled brick and five large accent blocks lead up to a massive, hood-like, bracketed cornice which helps to make this relatively small building more of a visual event than it would otherwise have been.” 

Woah. I hadn’t bothered to look at the building that way!

In the next photograph, about the center of the block, things quickly turn a shade or two darker. Porn theaters and peep shows clearly give a sense of why some town planners wished to clean up the area. At the Hidaway Lounge at 207 S. Gay, one man got shot after arguing with waitresses in 1977, and the following year the city cited the business with a prostitution charge.

But again, Waterfield helps lead our eyes away from the sleaze by noting “An interesting stone and terra-cotta composition, this design, while having definite neo-classical overtones, refuses to be stylistically pinned down. In the respect and others, it bears a more-than-usual resemblance to the Lawson-McGhee Library.” 

Thanks again, Charles!

The Summitt Hill Drive project progressed by degrees as by the late ‘70s this block was still here, several years after the completion of the TVA towers. In 1978, the Hidaway and its neighbor Dixie Loan were valued jointly at $100,000 (that’s about $680,000 in today’s money) as “fair market value” by KCDC. That same year, planning for the Quality Inn (now the Crowne Plaza) was underway, across from the TVA towers.

As we look up Commerce Avenue from Gay Street, that curious bridge has a sign on it that reads (if you zoom in), “General Products Annex.” That business, more formally “United General Products,” was located on the southwest corner of Gay and Commerce, where Visit Knoxville is today. In the early 1970s, it sold almost anything that might fit into a “general” category, including fishing gear, rifles, photographic supplies, even records and tapes.  

Another sign, just under the bridge, advertises the “Rainbow Room,” where for practically all of the ‘70s you could have seen a one-time TV star, and Columbia Records artist Bill Wyrick, who occasionally played at Chilhowee Park performing on the same bill with Ginny Kennedy, and kept up a permanent residence at the Rainbow Room with his band. (Kennedy would write a song, “Woman Half My Age,” that would be covered by Kitty Wells. Kitty fans can find a performance of the song easily enough on YouTube.) 

Just beyond the bridge you can just make out the corner of the old Lawson McGhee Library, built there in 1917, when it was standing waiting to be saved or abandoned. Of course, the latter happened. The original Lawson McGhee Library was built on the northeast corner Gay Street at Vine Avenue in 1885 and still stands. That’s another reality check. Think of all the character on the 100 block that still exists, yet the 200 block was obliterated. 

Today, the intersection of Gay Street and Summitt Hill Drive looks nothing like it did back in the ‘70s and before then. The next photo shows how mind-bogglingly cramped it was before the road-widening project. And yet, Commerce Avenue still survives in a radically truncated version between Central and State Street, alongside Marble Alley Lofts. 

Bits of old Knoxville can still be found if you know where to look.

Then again, it’s hard to find much of the Cradle of Music Park that still claims to be there, if mainly in spirit.

On the 100th anniversary of the Knoxville News-Sentinel in March 1986, the newspaper helped fund what was originally known as the East Tennessee Tribute to Country Music Park that opened in the spring of that year. The location was chosen due to the close proximity of the former WNOX radio studio on the 100 block where the popular, and long-running, “Mid-Day Merry Go Round” show was staged.

Credit goes to McClung Historical Collection manager and music journalist Eric Dawson for helping with this bit of local music history. In Knoxville Lives II (Knoxville History Project, 2020), Dawson wrote, “The paper’s staff arranged for an 18-foot high, 6,000 pound bronze-plated sculpture in the shape of a treble clef at the newly-created [park]….and accompanying the sculpture were bronze plaques displaying the names of more than 400 musicians who lived and performed in Knoxville…” Those plaques do exist in the McClung archives. 

Actually, the key KNS staffer involved in the project was the young journalist Wayne Bledsoe, who compiled the lengthy list of singers, performers and songwriters. Some of the names would be relatively obscure to many of us today. 

Subscribers could also make a donation toward the cost of the sculpture and attend a special “Meet the Stars Reception” at the new park on the day of the ribbon cutting. The same week, Chet Atkins, Carl and Pearl Butler, Archive Campbell, Pee Wee King, Charlie Louvin, Red Rector, and many others performed a special concert at the Civic Auditorium the same week. Roy Acuff and Alex Haley were also part of the show.

That treble clef sculpture was removed around 2009 when the pocket park became the Cradle of Country Music Park and a later, the non-music related piece of abstract art entitled “Pier 865” went in. 

Clearly, there is much to ponder just on this one block.

Special thanks to Jack Neely.

   

“Ghost Walking” is my own take on life on the city’s streets in bygone times; how these streets and their buildings have changed through the years, and how through old pictures and stories we can glimpse the echoes of people’s past lives and particular events. Some of the photos featured in this series are included in Downtown Knoxville that I co-authored with Jack Neely, and part of the popular “Images of America” range. If you’re looking for spooky ghost stories, please allow me to direct you to historian Laura Still’s book, A Haunted History of Knoxville, and her “Shadow Side” walking tours. Laura has been leading historic walking tours for years and she also generously donates a portion from most of her tours to the Knoxville History Project. Learn more at Knoxville Walking Tours.

Learn more about the city’s history and culture at Knoxville History Project.