Random notes about big houses
by Jack Neely
Last week, I wrote a column about the J. Allen Smith house that annoyed quite a few people on both sides of the issue. I became the only Knoxvillian in memory to be called, in the same week, a socialist and a country-club sympathizer. I was also called a male chauvinist, a hypocrite, a poseur, and an obfuscator. I'll confess to the last of those charges, but I'd like to think that many readers missed my point.
Some gathered that it was a pro-demolition column. It wasn't. For what it's worth, a couple weeks ago I signed the petition in support of an involuntary H-1 overlay for the property. I would like to see it saved.
But I didn't feel as bold and sure as I often do signing petitions, because I think this is a problem the rich people should have been able to work out among themselves, without involving city staffers and lawyers paid for by taxpayers in Vestal and Norwood and Burlington.
I agree there's a need for historic zoning to control Knoxville's reckless development traits. However, in these infant stages, Lyons View is an awkward laboratory to test the idea. I suspect the public would feel more comfortable laying claim to a building the public can at least get a good look at—not one that, if saved, can only be an elite private residence or an annex to an exclusive country club.
In the last few years, I've written pro-preservationist columns about what may be the largest industrial building in the South to be built by a man raised to be a slave; about a sturdy, owner-occupied Tudor house condemned by UT; about the old International House, nearly as gorgeous as the J. Allen Smith house, and more hospitable; about our first, circa 1920 bus station; about a distinctive corner saloon building that was part of the old Bowery; about a historic, functional and, I thought, beautiful turn-of-the-century viaduct described as a setting in a major novel; about the Victorian studio of Knoxville's most famous photographer.
These buildings were the settings of our history. Most of them were downtown, in public places that I thought could be appreciated by voters and taxpayers, in places where casual visitors to Knoxville would see them, buildings I thought could contribute to the life of the city.
In response, I heard mostly crickets. In all cases except for the Cal Johnson Building on State—which is still standing, but barely—they were torn down, most without fuss. A pro-preservation column from me is often the equivalent of Extreme Unction.
By contrast, the fate of this private suburban estate has somehow garnered more attention and clout than any threatened historic building in years. Maybe I'm just envious. But architecture is a form meant to be experienced mainly by the eye, and when its location limits the public's encounters with it to brief glimpses, seconds when people glance away from the center line on a two-lane road at 45 mph, the architecture seems to me already diminished—at least from the perspective of the public, which is now stepping up to save it.
I'll admit I've been surprised to hear from several readers who tell me that one glimpse of the J. Allen Smith house gives them a sense of peace rare elsewhere in West Knoxville. Maybe I'm a clod for keeping my eyes on the road.
Maybe I should have known better, in this long battle between two well-entrenched factions, than to frolic in the DMZ.
I don't want to disappoint those who thought I'd finally written a pro-demolition column, so here's one:
Last week, some heaved a sigh of relief when they learned Marriott would be taking over the big concrete hotel we've been thinking of as the Hyatt for the last 30 years.
When the Hyatt opened in 1972, it supplanted the old Andrew Johnson Hotel, which for over 40 years had been our swankiest, and busiest, downtown hostelry. The Andrew Johnson did not last long after the Hyatt opened. We gave up a hotel that was located right on Gay Street, on a street corner with sidewalks and a multiple-faced street presence which included a barber shop, a newsstand, and a cafe. In return, we got a forbidding concrete bunker accessible mainly by automobile, in a little-traveled corner that can only theoretically be considered downtown. It's a jealous building that keeps its occupants to itself.
To this day, that hotel offers no pedestrian access to the rest of downtown. To enter or leave the building on foot directly from downtown, you have to dare automobile traffic in its narrow driveways.
West Town Mall is often blamed for the exaggerated demise of downtown, but the Hyatt opened the same year. The architectural history of its era is largely a history of the diffusion and concealment of the thousands of people who do come downtown every day.
This may be the principal reason honest folks like Mary Lou Horner can claim, as she did on TV last weekend, that downtown is "dead" after dark. Thousands of music and sports fans, partiers, diners, nightclubbers, and churchgoers still visit downtown every night, but thanks to Hyatt-style, car-oriented architecture, most do so secretly—hardly setting foot on a city sidewalk, as quietly as thieves or adulterers, without smart people like Mary Lou even noticing.
Today downtown's activity is thoroughly diffused and concealed, and the Hyatt is a big part of that conspiracy. Let's find good jobs for everybody that works there, tear it down—and keep Marriott interested in building other, better-integrated hotel projects downtown.
April 4, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 14
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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