The brewing dispute about the Gay Street Viaduct

by Jack Neely

I shouldn't have been surprised, a few months ago, when I polled architects about what was most architecturally distinctive about Knoxville, and several, before they talked about buildings, talked about bridges. There are more than a dozen of them coming into downtown (bridges, that is, not architects). Most of the entrances to downtown, in fact, entail crossing a viaduct. It's been like that for more than a century.

Blame Knoxville's topography, which demands bridges and viaducts. When Captain White, Governor Blount, and their cronies planned their original citadel about 207 years ago, they put it right on top of a bluff overlooking the river. Less than a square mile in size, this bumpy plateau drops off sharply on all four sides. Here it was likely easier to defend from Indian attack—which may have been their chief concern in 1791—and was much less likely to flood than some of the lower areas in the county, which often remained swampy for months. Here the whole of Knoxville remained, up on top of its bluff, long into the 1800s.

Topography was also one reason we were slow in getting railroads here. When they finally did arrive in 1854, they didn't even try to lay tracks all the way up to the bluff, where the city of Knoxville was. They laid them in the swampy bottomland just downhill from this hilltop city's northern limits.

It was always awkward, though, having our only train station down there at the bottom of a hill. For years, Gay Street, which climbed that slope, presented a notoriously difficult trek up to the city proper. "The road from the Knoxville depot into the city is a perilous one," as poet Sidney Lanier described it, circa 1859, in his only novel, Tiger-Lilies, presaging a near-disastrous horsecart accident there.

They fixed some of the problem with an iron bridge in 1876, then improved it with a steel one in 1890, then with the loftier reinforced-concrete Gay Street Viaduct in 1919. Doughboys who'd paraded down this hill to the station on their way to Europe in 1917 returned from the war to see old Gay Street becoming serviceably flat.

That viaduct project stretched more than a block south of the railyards, also covering up the first floors of several businesses in the 100 block. (That's the question I'm asked most often, by the way—where's Underground Knoxville? I've looked for it, myself, in the basements of indulgent proprietors along the 100 block. If it's there, Underground Knoxville is very dark, and characterized principally by thousands of tons of dirt.)

Anyway, when the viaduct was built, it was for automobiles and the heavy electric streetcars that crossed this viaduct several times each hour. But people didn't always cross the viaduct just to get to the other side. Many walked out there to linger on this sidewalk, jockeying for position right in the middle of the bridge, just for the view. For decades, the Gay Street Viaduct was Knoxville's balcony onto history. Underneath these balustrades were some of the most memorable spectacles of the century.

Hundreds leaned over this railing in the summer of 1925, for example, to say so-long to the mortal remains of William Jennings Bryan when his elaborately shrouded funeral train stopped on the tracks underneath. In late 1939, crowds gathered here again to bid good luck to Major Neyland's undefeated (and, all the regular season, unscored upon) Tennessee Vols when they left for their first Rose Bowl. There are lots of stories like that, most of them over 30 years old, because it's been that long since we've had passenger service here. But just three years ago, an audio crew of the BBC stopped in the middle of the viaduct and leaned over this balustrade to record the sound of a distinctly American train horn.

Today, the Gay Street viaduct is the second-oldest viaduct downtown. (The only one older is the 1905 Clinch Avenue viaduct over World's Fair Park, which has been pedestrians-only since the Fair.) On Gay you can see the wear of 79 years, spots where the concrete has fallen away; rusting steel pins are visible in some spots.

Maybe 79 years is not all that old for a bridge—in Britain and Italy, there are bridges centuries older that still carry heavy traffic. But they're mostly made of stone, not mere steel-reinforced concrete. Citing the viaduct's "old age" and the deterioration of its concrete, the Tennessee Department of Transportation, at the request of the City of Knoxville, has plans to tear the Gay Street Viaduct down and replace it with a new one with a greater load-bearing potential.

In recent months, rumors have made the downtown rounds that the viaduct's replacement will be an "interstate-style" bridge that will spoil or even destroy parts of bricklined Jackson Avenue; that it will be high enough to accommodate piggyback freight cars; that it will physically damage or destroy some currently occupied buildings; that it will block the view from the 100 block of the North 300 block, where Regas and other businesses thrive; that North Gay Street may be closed for two years. "It will kill business," says one longtime merchant.

Robbie Jones, who prepared the environmental-impact report for TDOT in Nashville, says he's been wrestling with the rumors for months. He says the piggyback freight notion is not even on TDOT's wish list. The height of the Gay Street Viaduct will indeed be raised, but only by six feet, just to meet current standards for new viaducts. Jones promises that in spite of the increased grade, the construction will not affect either Depot or Jackson Avenues, and that the 500-foot-long bridge will be no longer than it is now. Several design aspects are still being hammered out, but he says the new bridge will resemble the original as much as modern engineering design allows, featuring sidewalks on both sides, with a stairway down on the Jackson side and paneled balustrades all the way across.

Some downtowners have read TDOT's report and remain skeptical. But even that report acknowledges that some of those rumors are apparently true. The Southern Terminal's old "Express Depot," which currently houses the prominent interior-design firm Corporate Interiors, "will have to be altered and renovated in order to incorporate the new viaduct's design"; the report also hints the building may be damaged during the actual demolition. The added height of the bridge in the middle would indeed make Regas and the rest of North Gay Street invisible from parts of South Gay—the sidewalk in front of Harold's, for example. From an urban-design point of view, losing sight (literally) of an important part of downtown isn't ideal.

And North Gay would be cut off from South Gay for many months—the two-year estimate seems believable, considering the complicated nature of the "Underground Knoxville" end of the viaduct—bringing with it the business casualties that usually accompany closing a road.

The work order's not signed yet; negotiations are still going on concerning the design, and much of the funding for the project hinges on whether TDOT can get an exception to the rules that govern using federal money to destroy historic structures. See, the bridge itself is on the National Register of Historic Places: Item #25 in the inventory of the "Southern Terminal and Warehouse Historic District"—in fact, it's the one link that joins the two parts of that district together. Exceptions are given only in cases of dire need. The jury's still out on that one.

TDOT acknowledges that the bridge isn't about to collapse, and could be patched up; however, to bring it up to modern standards for safely handling a three-axle, 36-ton truck, it would need to be replaced. Opponents say we don't need trucks that size on Gay Street anyway.

TDOT's Documentation of Effect is a carefully considered, well-researched document. On page 46-7 it reads, "TDOT's diligent attempt to simulate the historic architectural elements of the original Gay Street Viaduct will result in a new railyard span...which will be very similar in design, scale, and construction." Furthermore, it "will not introduce...atmospheric elements which are out of character" with the neighborhood.

Jones mentions the Western Avenue Viaduct that replaced the Asylum Avenue Viaduct, razed in 1992, about which James Agee rhapsodized. The new span there is indeed fancier than it really needed to be just to carry automobiles down Summit Hill Drive. But when they built the Western Avenue viaduct, you may recall, TDOT forgot to put in the interior panels on the balustrades—and even where they remembered to put them in, they look much cruder and phonier than the originals did.

I'm not sure how or why, but sometime around 1945, Americans lost the plans for building a pretty bridge. We should think twice before we give up on the old ones.