Oakwood, Lincoln Park and North Central look for their own resurgence.
by Jesse Fox Mayshark
Before Broadway was established as North Knoxville's main commercial strip, it had plenty of competition from North Central Street. The two avenues cross paths just north of Old Gray Cemetery. But where Broadway has become the primary access route to downtown from Fountain City and points beyond, Central faded somewhat with the routing of Interstate 275. The street has now become more of a local thoroughfare, primarily serving the residents of Oakwood and Lincoln Park.
The two neighborhoods are really more like Siamese twins, with no clear demarcation separating them. Everyone agrees Oakwood starts just past Woodland Avenue, and Lincoln Park ends at Sharp's Ridge, but the boundary between is fuzzy. Some say Atlantic Avenue, some say Chicamauga, but the entire area has a coherence. Except for some larger, grander homes up on Oak Hill near St. Mary's, most of the houses are modest two-bedroom affairs with three-pillar porches, lawns in front and yards in back. Alleys for garbage collection (and, often, garage access) run between the streets from east to west. Unlike Fourth and Gill and Old North, these neighborhoods haven't changed their character much since they were built. They remain staunchly working- and middle-class, with a mixture of rental and owner-occupied properties. Although many of the industries that once employed their residents are gone—the mills, the Dempster plant, the rail yards—they retain a no-nonsense blue-collar amiability.
Connie Loy wouldn't trade it for anything. She was born at St. Mary's, and she now lives on Oglewood Avenue (just across from the baseball fields at Christenberry Elementary School) and works at the Tennessee Roofing Co. on Central. "I moved to West Knoxville for a few years and couldn't take that," she says. "So I came back to this area. It's a friendly neighborhood, a friendly community. And it's a pretty community."
It is pretty, or at least the residential areas are. But while Central Street itself offers plenty to catch the eye, it's mostly not for aesthetic reasons. One of its most enthusiastic boosters works right next door to Loy. Behind the counter of the original Steamboat Sandwiches, North Knoxville's most successful homegrown franchise, is the ebullient Don Anderson, a former carnival barker and theme-park operator who grew up in the neighborhood and moved back here in 1989. His sandwiches, on perfect spongy homemade bread, have made him one of Central's rare destination attractions; people come from all over the city to eat here. He has franchised delis in eight states, from Ohio to Alabama. His restaurant's walls are covered with photographs from Knoxville history, including many from right around here. On the counter is a picture of this very building, a 1924 structure that originally housed a drugstore.
"We're from this end of town," Anderson says. "I went to Catholic and East High School." When he was a boy, he once walked to the top of Sharp's Ridge and climbed one of the then-new broadcasting antennas. "I got about halfway up and decided that was high enough for me," he says with a laugh.
In the area's rougher years, Central was home to innumerable honky tonks and beer joints. Next door to Anderson's building was the old Casual Lounge ("We called it the Casualty," he says), which according to legend was a favorite getaway spot for the Allman Brothers Band. Some say that Greg Allman's brief, tempestuous marriage to Cher ended when she tracked him down to North Central and caught him with another woman. Closer to downtown, in a dip where Central meets Anderson Avenue, was the infamous "Happy Hollow." Don Anderson used to belong to a youth boxing program that worked out in a gym upstairs from one the hollow's carousing establishments. "We'd go and look out the windows and watch the drunks falling out of the bars," he says.
North Central was also home to the first major department store built outside downtown Knoxville. The original Sears building, constructed in the late 1940s, is still standing, although it's now just warehouse and office space for the county school system. But you could make a case that it was the first step toward the suburban drain on downtown retail.
The malls put an end to Central's major retail ambitions, but there are reasons for optimism about the street's future. The city is cleaning up the adjacent Coster Shop property for industrial redevelopment. And just behind Anderson's sandwich shop is a former Dempster office building that the Helen Ross McNabb Center is remodeling for administrative offices. It will mean dozens of new employees in the area and one less vacant building.
Bob Whetsel, Knoxville's director of public works and a longtime resident of Fourth and Gill, says the Oakwood/Lincoln Park area is experiencing some of the trends that hit his neighborhood a few generations earlier: original homeowners dying or moving out, houses being converted to rental units, a population in transition. But with a strong neighborhood group in place and growing interest in North Knoxville from young professionals and families, residents hope they can encourage a smooth generational shift.
Loy says the Oakwood/Lincoln Park association is working with the Center for Neighborhood Development on a comprehensive neighborhood plan. And she says she notices more people fixing up their old houses and taking an interest in the area's history. She too hopes for more commercial investment. But even now, she doesn't find much lacking here.
"We have the big [Broadway] shopping center, some small convenience stores," she says. "You can find just about anything without leaving the neighborhood."
April 18, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 16
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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