Comment
on this story

Not exactly like the other

by Matt Edens

"Everything looks the same." How often have you heard that critique of modern mass-produced suburbia? It's certainly true in the cheaper West Knoxville subdivisions (you know the ones—lots of vinyl and nowhere near the lake). A realtor friend has a listing or two out there now, in one of the larger subdivisions off Middlebrook Pike: the same three houses over and over again, 250 of them. At least comparable sales are easy to find.

Sure, it's monotonous. But that's really not the problem. Baron Hausman's Parisian boulevards are rigidly regimented. Yet no one seems to complain. Block after block of identical Manhattan and Brooklyn brownstones are some of the most sought after real estate in the country. And most any Southern courthouse square or New England village green is more or less the same as the next: as like one another in their layout and landscape as any two suburban shopping centers. The problem with so much of what we build today is the uniformity. It's that it's all so uniformly shoddy—cheap materials, hastily assembled with a planned 30-year design life.

Curiously, in many older neighborhoods, identical houses are part of the neighborhood's quirky charm—the sort of thing that tour guides point out. Of course, they're rarely the same three houses over and over again—most every historic district in the country has its "twin houses" or "such and such's row." Knoxville's hardly an exception. There's a set of mirror image twins on Carrick in Mechanicsville and a row of four identical houses on Luttrell in Fourth and Gill. Oakwood's mill-village origins graced it with several quintuplet and sextuplet sets of the same two-bedroom cottages. And Parkridge has several sets of twins, including these two: 2112 and 2110 Jefferson Avenue.

Although the twins, at this point, are more fraternal than identical. 2110 Jefferson is a duplex (for sale, also—A.D. Williams with Heath Shuler Realty's as the listing agent: 539-6010). But 2112 Jefferson has been restored back much as it was when built circa 1915 by a downtown bank clerk (who no doubt caught the trolley into work every morning a block over on Washington—KAT's number 30 bus still runs the same route). It's a neat little house, bigger than it looks—a main level master bedroom with two more bedrooms and a second bath tucked upstairs (the restoration added lots of closets under the eaves and a 2nd-floor laundry). Also downstairs are a big kitchen with a long row of original casement windows, more casement windows in the living room and dining room, lots of ladder back doors and a nice fireplace with original mantel and blue crackle-finish tile.

Recent work includes plumbing, wiring, central heat and air, and new Berber carpet (the hardwood's still there if you want it). Oh, and if you're not interested in taking the bus, the corner lot comes complete with a detached garage. All told it's a great house for someone who's outgrown their two-bedroom apartment (payments could be about the same too).
 

January 15, 2003 * Vol. 14, No. 3
© 2004 Metro Pulse