Knoxify

As good a place to start as any, Kingston Pike is prob­a­bly the best known of Knoxville’s five spoke roads and, in many ways rep­re­sents a micro-view of Knoxville his­tory, from the mid-1800s thru the mid-1900s. The Pike is one of Knoxville’s ear­li­est roads dat­ing back as far as 1788, apparently.

Located on Kingston Pike, the brick wall (pic­ture to the above) is one of the road’s most rec­og­niz­able fea­tures. It was built by mem­bers of the Arm­strong fam­ily. Ear­lier, antecedents of the same fam­ily were also respon­si­ble for build­ing the Cres­cent Bend/Armstrong house (below).

Built in 1834 by D.P. Arm­strong, the Cres­cent Bend/Armstrong house is thought to be the old­est house on its sec­tion of the Pike. Orig­i­nally part of a 900 acre farm, the house is now a museum and host to wed­dings and other spe­cial events.

Bleak House, (shown below) built by Robert Arm­strong, was built by of hand-made brick by slaves, and later served as the head­quar­ters of Con­fed­er­ate Gen­eral James A. Longstreet. It was in the tower of this home, that Con­fed­er­ate sharp­shoot­ers shot Union Gen­eral William P. Saun­ders, dur­ing the siege of Knoxville. He died of his wounds a few days later. Bleak House, also known as the Con­fed­er­ate Memo­r­ial Hall, is now a museum.

One house you most likely have not seen is the Hugh San­ford house, designed in 1926 by Har­rie Lind­berg, a well known archi­tect of coun­try estates for promi­nent north­east fam­i­lies. The house, shown below, is owned by and sits behind the First Methodist Church and is used today by the church for a vari­ety of purposes.

The William F. Searle, Jr. house, built in 1927, was designed by well-known Knoxville archi­tects Bar­ber and McMurry. It is cur­rently home to the Knoxville Montes­sori School.

There are many other fine exam­ples of archi­tec­ture along this shaded and stately old road. They include fine old homes and some not so old. In addi­tion, sev­eral promi­nent Knoxville churches have their homes along Kingston Pike. You can find pho­tos of some of these homes here. It is worth the Sun­day drive, when gas prices are rea­son­able, par­tic­u­larly if you also take the oppor­tu­nity to travel down Chero­kee Boule­vard in Sequoyah Hills. And, who knows, you might find a soft­ball game, a touch foot­ball game, or even a sword fight between a cou­ple of old knights some­where along the way.

Addi­tional pho­tographs of houses and other points of inter­est on this sec­tion of Kingston Pike can be found in my Gallery, here.

(Source mate­r­ial used in writ­ing this entry came from Knox Heritage’s book­let “Kingston Pike & Lyons View Pike Trol­ley Tour”)