Knoxville rediscovers a Gay Street landmark
by Jack Neely
There was a torso in a garden in Westmoreland. A torso and head are in storage in a Gay Street basement. They say a severed breast has been lying on someone's desk for years.
In all, Duane Grieve says, he has accounted for five breasts and two heads. Originally, there were eight breasts and four heads and eight arms. Grieve has pictures of all these parts in a photo album in his architectural firm on Emory Place.
The body parts in Grieve's photo album have become the most recognizable symbols of one of downtown's most promising and most maddening projects. They belong to the famous "angels" of Miller's, the four nude statues that, like comely gargoyles, once graced the building's elaborate beaux-arts facade on the Gay Street side, appearing to support the pediment of the department store with their upraised arms.
If the ladies seem more hopeful than they used to, it's because after more than a decade of false hopes and starts, the Miller's Building appears to be headed for salvation in a capacity few would have guessed a year ago: as the headquarters of Knoxville Utilities Board.
Grieve calls the huge seven-story building at the northwest corner of Gay and Union "one of downtown's finest buildings." Described in at least two major novels, Miller's was once East Tennessee's busiest department store and a landmark of turn-of-the-century beauty. Those who've never noticed it might be forgiven; for almost a quarter-century, the Miller's Building has been covered with mirrored glass, the victim of an ill-advised "modernization." Just after Miller's Department Store left the building in 1973, an out-of-state developer thought he could render the building more efficient, more modern, and more marketable by adding a new exterior.
It didn't work. TVA occupied the building for about 10 years before abandoning it in the mid-'80s. Revco, a long-term tenant, left its street-level space in the building in 1996.
Since then, the Miller's Building has been downtown's white elephant. One proposal after another has fallen through; UT was going to refit it as a conference center, then didn't. Most recently, Clayton Homes had planned to occupy the building as its national headquarters, but last year opted to build a new place in Blount County. The title to the property, complicated by multiple-ownership in some long-standing wills, has been a major obstacle to development.
In a special meeting in the Market Square sunshine a few weeks ago, City Council approved a proposal endorsed by Mayor Victor Ashe to acquire the Miller's property and fund one of the most massive renovation projects in Knoxville history. The price tag for the entire project is an estimated $14 million, a bill footed by the city with the expectation of getting much of it back. Pending the expected passage of today's referendum which will give KUB more autonomy from the city, KUB will pay the city $5 million to move into the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors of the Miller's Building—with a customer service office on the street level—perhaps as early as late 1999. KUB has long been straining at the seams of its fashion-victim green-block building at Gay and Church. The move will allow the utility to consolidate its offices, increasing its downtown presence from 80 to about 150 employees.
In a statement last month, KUB president Larry Fleming said he was "delighted" with the project. "It will give KUB the updated office space, systems, and equipment necessary to compete in a deregulated utility market," including a "more modern customer service area."
It could seem odd that a utility would seek modern-ness by moving into a much older building—until it's understood that the project calls for rebuilding much of the interior to adapt it to modern technology. KUB will pay for some $3 million in improvements to their floors. Perhaps the most interesting innovation in Grieve's proposal for the renovation is part of his overall project design: a modern multi-story atrium up and down the floors in the middle of the building, with a skylight at the top, an innovation which has given many older buildings a sense of airiness and natural light. Grieve calls it a "dramatic, light-filled space," which will be enhanced with a glass elevator.
One thing they won't have to rebuild, though, are the floors, which were built for heavy-load department-store use and are still mostly in good shape. (Except for some water damage near the roof, Grieve says the building remains structurally very sound.) In all, the building as remodeled will render some 160,000 rentable square feet. Though KUB is greatly expanding their floorspace with the move, they'll occupy only 40 percent of the Miller's space. The rest will be sold, condominium-style, for offices.
No other tenants have signed up yet, and the city is only in the very earliest stages of marketing the project. Mike Edwards of the Public Building Authority has no worries about filling the space. "Just across the street from the new Justice Center," he says, "there should be no trouble finding owners for it. We could fill it up just with lawyers."
He expects most of the city's investment to return directly through condominium sales, though the expense of revamping the exterior of the building—some $3 million—may not return directly, and could be chalked up to generally improving the appearance of the city.
It will be the exterior, of course, that will draw crowds as the building's "modernist" costume comes off later this year.
That ill-advised "modernization" would have been easier to explain had it happened 20 or 30 years earlier. But by 1974, when preservation was coming into vogue and sheer glass-box modernism was going out, people should have known better. Now, undoing what these tardy "modernists" did—removing the glass case and restoring the statuary damaged or removed by its installation—will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Grieve says they'll take it off carefully in the same order it was put up, but backwards.
The shape of the exterior has long been the subject of pessimistic speculation; creeping through the innards of the building with a camera, Grieve has obtained photos of enough of the subcutaneous original exterior to answer many observers' questions. Much of it is still intact and presentable, though it seems the contractors who hung the exterior caused considerably more damage than they promised they would, cutting off more statuary than they needed to, in some cases drilling unnecessarily into marble scrollwork. (Grieve found an ironic quote from the Boca Raton contractor promising he would "cover but not destroy" the building's exterior features.) And no, none of the nude angels are still there, all of them cut or knocked down. They'll be either recovered or reconstituted of some plaster mix or even fiberglass.
How the four angels arrived on the building in the first place is a little bit of a mystery. They don't appear in the earliest plans of the building. The most elaborate parts of Miller's were built in 1905 and 1911, the parts with the fluting and scrollwork and angels and more than 30 lions heads stamped in metal across the top. Molded from something like terra cotta, the intriguing bigger-than-life statues must have been added soon after construction. (A News-Sentinel article about them in a wintertime feature in 1970 headlined them, impiously, as the "Chilly Fillies.") Grieve thinks all the faces are at least slightly different; three are classically beautiful, but in a photograph one looks more like that of an angry baby boy. Whether that one will be replaced with its authentic expression is uncertain.
The modern facade is sagging; a few months ago, a pane of glass fell out dangerously onto Union Avenue below. Clearly, something had to be done, soon. "In order for the building to be saved," Grieve says, "it was clear the city would have to be involved."
Retiring council member Carlene Malone is relieved they were able to act. "Government is uniquely placed in that we can use condemnation in forcing the owners to come to grips with the complexities of ownership." KCDC has helped in condemning the building for a forced sale. "The Miller's Building sat there a very, very long time," Malone says. "It needs to sit no longer."
KCDC is currently involved in acquiring the project through negotiation, but has not yet played its condemnation card.
Malone, who moved to Fountain City from out of state in the early '70s, admits she has never even seen the Miller's Building as it will be revealed in a few months. She compares this project to one of her first fights, an unsuccessful preservation effort in Fountain City in the '70s. "To sit here, 20-some years later, you have to believe that we've learned the importance of historic preservation—the grandeur and character that is Knoxville's old buildings."
Brian Gracey of the Public Building Authority says, "It's pretty obvious that's the single largest property in the Market Square redevelopment area, with a very visible location on Gay Street, and in the center of the original business district. This is a very appropriate plan to bring a rebirth of that area."
The architect and contractor who will actually execute the plan have not yet been chosen; the city hired Grieve to help put together a preliminary proposal and budget. Though not one of Knoxville's more famous architectural firms, Grieve & Ruth's work is all over town: the new Sequoyah School annex, the Second Presbyterian Church annex, the TVA Credit Union at Wall and Gay.
The handiest example of Grieve's preservation work is on Emory Place, near North Gay. It's the headquarters of Grieve & Ruth, an 1880s commercial building which also uses skylights to create a modern interior. Here Grieve sits and contemplates the Miller's Building. He's been involved with it, working on spec since '86. He calls it "my passion."
Meanwhile, about seven blocks south, the Miller's Building itself remains inside its blank mirrored case. It's clear the building is closer to renovation than ever before. In a basement across the street from the site is an angel head big as a watermelon. Her arms are long gone, but she has both breasts with her, and her eyes have those recessed pupils that look like they're trying to make out something in the distance. She'll wait and see.
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