1023 Eleanor Street 2,300 sq. ft. 3 bdrm/ 2&1/2 bath $212,000 For sale by owner: 385-4247

Well, movin’ on over actually

by Matt Edens

With Sunday feature spreads in the daily paper and lofts now selling for $150 per square foot, it’s nice to see that downtown living has caught on. Here’s hoping it keeps on keeping on too, because there’s probably room for a few hundred more condos within the Central Business District proper.

As hot as the trend is, it’s hardly the first center-city housing market to catch fire. Just a few blocks north of what we conventionally call “downtown”—a concept we need to expand, if you ask me—the Fourth and Gill neighborhood has been on a slow, steady burn for more than a decade. Even if, compared to the gallons of printers’ ink and miles of videotape that’s been dedicated to downtown over the last couple years, it remains relatively incognito as far as mainstream Knoxville’s concerned. In fact, a large number of the folks moving into the neighborhood of late have come from out of town, drawn by the incredible housing values Knoxville’s supposedly most “gentrified” neighborhood still offers (especially when compared to bigger, hipper markets).

Which just goes to show that the more things change the more they stay the same. It was 13 years ago when this house’s current owners moved to town from Manhattan. She was a PR person hired by Whittle. He was in film and video production (And if you’d been asked to guess then which would become a mainstay of the local economy, which would you have picked?). Their realtor, of course, steered them west. But fresh from pre-Guiliani New York, downtown Knoxville didn’t seem daunting. It seemed like Mayberry. And, two kids later they still think of it that way. This place isn’t on the market because they’ve fled west for the family-friendly fantasy of Farragut. It’s on the market because they’ve traded up to a bigger house just around the corner (They’re not the only ones. I know of roughly a half-dozen Fourth and Gillers who are so fond of the place that they’re on their second home in the ’hood—their third in at least one case).

Which doesn’t, by any means, make this house a hand-me-down (and I’m not just saying that because the owner happens to co-sponsor this column). Built in 1906, this house is almost picture-perfect, starting from the limestone retaining wall at the sidewalk, past the ancient maple tree, hydrangea and crepe myrtle in the front yard to the pink Tennessee marble steps up to the front porch (there’s a swing, naturally). Through the front door, there’s a foyer full of refinished hardwoods and the lovingly restored original staircase with a stained-glass window on the landing. Other features include refinished oak and heart pine floors in excellent condition, period light fixtures, original brass door hardware, four fireplaces with original mantles and tile and new gas-burning fixtures. Updates include a laundry, large kitchen with marble-topped center island and brick-accented concrete patio out back with a connecting walkway that leads through the privacy fence to off-street parking accessible from the alley.

About the only thing that could make this deal sweeter would be first dibs on the owners’ new place, a turn-of-the-century foursquare whose renovation is one of the most eye-popping before-and-afters I’ve seen lately. I wonder who handled the financing...

September 9, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 37 © 2004 Metro Pulse