Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

Comment
on this story

Two Weddings and a Fundeal

Dave Collins, the Knox County commissioner and private architect (of bliss?) has been aching to exercise his official capacity to marry people, but until recently, nobody asked. When they did, they wanted him to marry them in a civil ceremony on his own wedding day, April 28. When he asked his own bride-to-be, Karen Ann Simsen, the Chamber Partnership flack, what to do, she said to go ahead and live out his other dream. The vows of Dinah Hilton and Steve Herzog will be read by Collins at 2 p.m., and the Collins-Simsen nuptials will be concluded at 6 p.m., The Rev. Jan Wade presiding. Simsen says their wedding will be really small, so they don't want the downtown location publicized. Too many well-wishers might poison the well.

We Demolish a Little Architecture, Too

Every spring break, preservationists cast a wary eye in UT's direction, wondering which historic house will bite the dust this time. For years, it's been the university's M.O. to quietly target a historic house and then, when school is out, take advantage of the absence of witnesses and demolish it quickly, with no announcement of the action. As many noticed only after it was too late to propose alternatives, they've struck again.

Twice. The first victim we noticed was a circa-1905 wood-frame house at Cumberland Avenue and 13th Street near the old Hodges Library, and was most recently used as the UT Textile Materials Research Lab. Once the longtime residence of federal official Julius Eskew, in the '30s, it became known as Lowery's Tourist Home. UT acquired it in the late '40s, and after using it briefly as a men's dormitory, it was for years the UT psychological clinic.

Simultaneously, UT was also at work demolishing a second, less conspicuous but perhaps more significant house, a 1926 brick, slate-roofed Tudor at 1806 Lake Avenue designed by one of Knoxville's most distinguished architects of the 20th century, Albert Baumann, Jr. (1897-1952), whose firm designed the downtown post office, the Andrew Johnson Hotel, Cherokee Country Club, and many other well-known buildings. The seven-room house UT tore down this week was unlike all the other buildings he designed in one respect; it was Albert Baumann's home.

More circa-1920s residences on the 1800 block of Lake Avenue, though now occupied by fraternities, aren't expected to survive the year.

Who Does Rule Home Rule?

U.N. peacekeepers may be called in Thursday April 5 when the warring factions of Citizens for Home Rule get together at the City County Building for a court-ordered general membership meeting to elect new officers.

The friction within CHR, which has fought the city's annexation practices for decades, went public last summer after one side objected to the billing practices of CHR attorney David Buuck, who represents members in annexation law suits. For years, CHR had been the last, best hope of the unwillingly-annexed. The homeowners' drill was simple: pay your $25 membership fee, Buuck files suit and never loses. A major bone of contention was that Buuck, recognized as one of the state's top lawyers in the annexation field, hadn't submitted a bill in several years. When ordered to do so, Buuck billed CHR $27,000 for 33 months' work. (Buuck's sporadic billing practices had been approved by former CHR leaders, who enjoyed piling up a large, interest-bearing bank balance.)

Turned out he was still working at the bargain basement $80-per-hour out-of-court, $100-per-hour in-court rate he had agreed to back in the '80s.