Maple Hall tops this list, though the establishment itself still seems new to some of us. The name is that of a bowling alley built in 2016, which got its name from the lumber they favored for constructing the lanes. But it’s located in a historic building, a large late-Victorian commercial building, one of several built adjacent to each other on the same block in 1897, to replace a huge gap left smoldering after the worst fire in Knoxville history. Designed by the firm of Baumann Brothers, notable for several landmark buildings around town, it served as a wholesale house and, for a longer period, a very successful downtown department store, first known as Penney’s. In fact, Mr. J.C. Penney himself visited this building once a year to be sure everything was shipshape, and it generally was. The big department store lasted into the 1980s, well after most of the old-line department stores had closed or left downtown, and for a few years, the empty store served as a rather spooky site for a few open-minded organizations to host Christmas parties.
In the 21st century, some creative sorts looked to add something new to the reviving downtown. Maple Hall is not downtown Knoxville’s first bowling alley, or its second or third. In fact, the first bowling alley on record was on Market Square before the Civil War, and there was another basement bowling alley at the old Imperial Hotel, at the site of present-day Hyatt Place, by the 1890s. But nobody tried it for a long time, and in 2016 Maple Hall was the first one most people could remember. An interesting reconstruction of the interior, redesigned by architect Mark Heinz with Dewhirst Properties, reimagined the area one known as Penney’s shoe department, created not only bowling lanes but a restaurant and bar above it, one used monthly for presentations by the Knoxville History Project. (Free to visit; fees for bowling, with food and drink available for purchase.)
Built ca. 1834, Crescent Bend House and Garden, 2728 Kingston Pike, is one of Knoxville’s oldest houses. The white-painted brick house was originally the home of Drury Payne Armstrong (1799-1856), a farmer and merchant, and one of the largest landowners in the Knoxville area. He was also a slaveowner, and it’s very likely that enslaved labor created the brick of which the house is constructed. Among his many interests was railroad construction, in which he invested as a young man, but he only barely lived to see Knoxville’s first railroad, which arrived in 1855. His son Marcellus Murat Armstrong (known to his chums as “Whack”) succeeded him here, and his descendants remained in neighboring houses along this tree-shaded section of Kingston Pike well into the 21st century. But other successors lived here, too.
By the 1880s, Judge Jerome Templeton, lived here with his lively family, and elaborately entertained here; after a trip to Europe, he was convinced the house should be improved with a corner turret. A later resident, Mrs. A.P. Lockett, had the turret removed, but changed the old name to Longueval, the French town that played a role in World War I. Almost half a century ago, reviving the older name Crescent Bend, a.k.a. the Armstrong-Lockett House, it became known as a museum attraction. It’s especially known for its display of antique silver, and ask about the legend of the ancient wallpaper. But what you remember best may be the part you don’t see from the road, the terraced gardens that lead down to the river, which were rapturously described by visitors during the Victorian era. (Admission is $7 for adults, with other rates for children and special events. It has limited hours, currently on Fridays and Saturdays, so check before you go.)
Sometimes known as Swan Pond, for a now mostly vanished wetland on its property, Ramsey House, at 2614 Thorngrove Pike, on the east side of town, is a real architectural landmark, as a large stone building constructed in an era of log cabins. It’s one of the oldest houses in the Knoxville area to begin with, built in 1797. It’s one of the only two surviving houses by the English-born and trained architect and furniture-maker Thomas Hope (1757-1820). It’s also the first known structure to be built of Tennessee marble, which is quarried nearby, and which decades later became nationally popular and a major part of our economy in the days when Knoxville was known as the Marble City. Several Tennessee-marble-clad monuments in Washington and New York could be said to trace their lineage to this house. (For more on buildings featuring marble, visit the Candoro Building or explore the Pink Marble Trail.)
Ramsey House’s builder was Pennsylvania-born Francis Ramsey (1764-1820), an important political and financial figure in the early days of Tennessee’s government. The house was the birthplace of his son, J.G.M. Ramsey, physician and pioneer Tennessee historian, author of “Ramsey’s Annals.” Long a private home, it was heralded as a “state shrine” in 1952, when it earned some positive national attention (in Antique magazine) and became a house museum, notable for its period antiques. One of the area’s most durable historic sites, it hosts many of Knoxville’s vintage 1864-rules “base-ball” games. (Admission, $10 for adults; open Wed.-Sat., with tours each hour.)
The Knoxville Museum of Art, at 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive, is the culmination of a century of attempts to start a permanent art museum in Knoxville. It stands on the site of the 1982 World’s Fair’s Japanese Pavilion (which featured, among other things, an artistic painting robot), and represents the first major development on the fair site after the big exposition itself. One of the last designs by Chicago-born architect Edward Larrabee Barnes (1915-2004), who has designed major museums in Dallas and Minneapolis as well as skyscrapers in New York, the 1990 edifice has welcomed hundreds of thousands of lovers of art, and hosted hundreds of musical and cultural events. It’s home to the world’s largest collection of the work of exuberant portraitist and abstract expressionist Beauford Delaney (1901-1979). Its “Higher Ground” exhibit presents a chronological and repeatedly surprising survey of the evolution of East Tennessee art, from antebellum landscapes through the impressionist era (represented here by the mysterious and accomplished Catherine Wiley (1879-1958) and others), Smoky Mountains influenced art, surrealism, and abstract expressionism—as well as the legendary music-related Marion Greenwood mural, “History of Tennessee,” once-controversial and concealed for several decades behind paneling of the university’s ballroom. (Admission is free, with donations encouraged. Open Tuesday-Sunday.)
Journalists hesitate to use the word “unique,” which literally means the only one of its kind in the universe, but Ijams Nature Center, at 2915 Island Home Avenue, may qualify. The 315-acre nature preserve began more than a century ago as a riverside bird sanctuary by illustrator-conservationist Harry Ijams (1876-1954), who raised several lively daughters here in what was for them a family paradise. But what makes it especially memorable today is the large acreage of historic land of marble quarries, some of them abandoned more than a century ago, and all in various stages of reclamation by nature. Altogether, Ijams represents some of the most picturesque spots in the city—all the more astonishing considering that this roamable combination of fields, forests, and rocky outcrops (with a small museum) is all a 10-minute drive from downtown. Ijams is known for mountain biking, rock climbing, boating, nature tours, and occasional musical and dramatic events. (Visiting is free, but donations are encouraged. Open daily.)
Marble Springs, one of the more rural experiences on this list, is in South Knox County, and was once the home of the guy honored in the highway that leads to it—John Sevier (1745-1815). Atypical of East Tennessee’s typically British or Scots-Irish pioneers, Sevier’s wandering family had roots in France and Spain. He became prominent on the frontier through his heroism in the Revolutionary War’s Battle of King’s Mountain, and leadership in both the “Lost State” of Franklin, and as the first governor of Tennessee. Sevier was governor when he attempted to build a house for himself in downtown Knoxville, but finances forced him to think better of it, and he and his wife spent their later years on this agrarian property on the south side. Today it’s a recreated compound of historic log cabins, one of which was long believed to be Sevier’s own home, though recent research suggests it was built soon after his death in 1815. Regardless, Marble Springs may present the most authentically immersive pioneer experience in the area. (Free to visit; $10 to join guided tours. Open Wednesday to Sunday; hours vary by month.)
Although a very old place, Cherokee Caverns, at 8524 Oak Ridge Highway, is still unfamiliar to many lifelong Knoxvillians. It’s older than Blount Mansion, older than the Indian mounds. In fact, it’s older than human life. Still, it’s probably better known now than it was 20 years ago. Located off most beaten paths, several miles from downtown in the northwestern corner of the county, near Solway, the big cave has been waiting patiently for fame. There’s evidence that it was used by Native Americans centuries ago, but its “modern” period begins in 1854, when a farmer named Robert Crudgington explored it and eventually purchased it; his daughter, Margaret Crudgington Gentry, led an effort to make them available to the public. It opened as Gentry’s Cave in 1929. Later, when it was on new Oak Ridge Highway, it was known as Atomic Caverns (there’s a stalactite that resembles a mushroom cloud), then Caveman’s Palace, Palace Caverns, Caverns of the Ridge, Cherokee Firesite Ceremonial Caverns, sometimes serving as a venue for live country music during its mid-century heyday. An attached restaurant was destroyed by fire in 1980, but in recent years a new organization has revived interest in the caverns, with emphasis on motion pictures and annual special events.
