Comment on this story 210 Leonard Place 4 bdrm/2 bath 2,845 sq. ft. $193,500 Contact: Jon Brock Realty Execs: 531-2020

by Matt Edens

Few of us are professional decorators. But give Trading Spaces and any of the myriad other two-day room makeover shows a chance and eventually we’ll all get to play one on TV. It’s a television trend I’ve tried to make sense of for a while now, seeing as how Virginia Postrel—author of The Substance of Style—argued in a magazine article last year that “Trading Spaces unselfconsciously validates sprawl. Rather than ideologically condemning tract homes, it reveals their possibilities and pleasures.” True enough, I suppose, if Postrel considers reminding folks that they spent God-knows what on a house both she and Trading Spaces’ producers consider a “blank canvas” passes for validation (oh well, at least the schools are good. Overcrowded, but good...).

Pulling down ratings UPN and the WB would envy, Trading Spaces is the 400-pound gorilla at the heart of the Discovery Network’s international juggernaut (notice, by the way, how the word “learning” is strictly verboten around TLC network these days). In thousands of subdivisions around the country, viewers tune in and then look at their off-white walls and beige wall-to-wall and imagine something better. “No wonder the show is a Heartland hit,” says Postrel.

Which, I suppose, is one reason the show leaves me a little mystified. My inner-city neighborhood might be in the heart of Knoxville, but it’s hardly the heartland. Parkridge preservationists, downtown loft lizards and Bearden Bobos live in Blue America, not the Red America of sprawl county. Instead of talk radio we have NPR, The New York Times rather than USA Today and, in place of Trading Spaces, we have the Pottery Barn catalog. Mine came last week. Compared to the voyeuristic pleasure of watching two couples—and the ever-perky Paige Davis—the PB catalog is a different sort of yuppie porn, packed with totem objects so perfect that they inspire the sort of lust once reserved for Playboy centerfolds. And the backdrop, like Trading Spaces, is a subtle validation of the preferred habitat of blue America—notice, if you will, the bead-board wainscoting, the oh so wide planks of the pine floor, the faint ripples in the 100-year-old glass. In Red America homeowners sweat to inject a little character into their homes. In Blue America character oozes out of the walls.

So what if the rooms that grace Pottery Barn’s catalog are actually knocked together in the back of the photographer’s studio? That doesn’t mean you can’t own the real thing. This house on Leonard Place in Old North Knoxville should do nicely. With 10-foot ceilings, heart-pine floors, six fireplaces with original mantles, and a wonderfully preserved staircase tucked under the unusual belfry tower, this place is Pottery Barn come to life. Outside, the triple-sized lot has mature trees, lots of landscaping and a storage shed that mimics a Victorian carriage house.

Best of all, the house has been totally restored. No need to tackle any “Trading Spaces” projects of your own. All you need is furniture—from the Pottery Barn, of course.

June 17, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 25 © 2004 Metro Pulse