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Smith House demolition may bode well for historic preservation

by Matt Edens

It was inevitable, I suppose, in today’s partisan political climate. The dust had barely settled over the ruins of the J. Allen Smith House before some people hijacked the cause of historic preservation as an excuse to engage in their favorite pastime: Republican bashing. One of my favorites, posted to a local message board, cited the demolition as further evidence that the “repugs,” as they’re known in those sort of circles, are “a bunch of arrogant assholes. But we already knew that from all the ‘W’ emblems on their SUVs.” Similar comments in a News Sentinel online poll prompted a hit piece in the paper tut-tutting over the tackiness of these “anonymous comments,” ironic since the byline of the piece, by the way, merely said “News Sentinel Staff.”

Well, as much as this sort of preening puffs up one’s sense of moral superiority, let’s check a few facts. First off, Cherokee Country Club is more Buick and Caddy country. Which, as trivial as that sounds, played a part in the drama. Stuck with dwindling, blue-haired membership and located in the inner ‘burbs that are increasingly populated with “blue state”-minded Bobos more likely to belong to the Sierra Club than a country club, the club’s relentless pursuit of parking was supposed to help seduce all the SUV soccer mom demographic currently joining outer-suburb clubs like Gettysvue and Avalon. (Misguided, if you ask me, since largely landlocked Cherokee can hardly compete with those gargantuan golf courses on their own terms.)

Then there’s the irony that, while the majority of Cherokee’s membership may be Republican, so were many of the people who pitched in to try and prevent them from demolishing the house. The most prominent—and probably most pugnacious—was recently appointed ambassador to Poland by President Bush. Historic preservation, it seems, is surprisingly bipartisan.

So, for that matter, is demolition. One need only look a few years back and a few blocks away from the J. Allen Smith house to recall a house of similar age and significance, the Bonnyman house on Kingston Pike (perhaps better known as the Teen Board building), that was bulldozed by that bastion of reactionary Republicans: the Unitarian Church. And, for every Republican blowhard pounding the bully pulpit over property rights, there’s an NPR listener with his nose out of joint over gentrification.

Rather than place partisan blame until we’re blue in the face, we need to realize that, as far as historic preservation is concerned, the problem is cultural, not political. And, like most things, if the culture changes the politics will follow.

And that’s where the loss of the J. Allen Smith house offers an opportunity. Most cities with a strong preservation ethic trace that fact to the loss of a particularly significant building: Savannah’s Market House being the most well-known example. Granted, Savannah’s Market House was torn down at roughly the same time Knoxville’s was. And Knoxville has missed many such opportunities since.

Here’s hoping that this time things are different. The loss of the J. Allen Smith House comes at a time when historic preservation is already paying big dividends to the community: home prices in center-city historic districts from Fourth and Gill to Island Home have never been higher (and, in Fourth and Gill’s case, are approaching the metropolitan median); loft conversions of historic buildings have become the backbone of downtown revitalization; and the renovation of historic schools like Tyson Junior High have put these former drains on the public finances back on the property tax rolls. Actually, compared to many of the big-ticket proposals that have come down the pike of late for pumping life back into the center city, you’d have a hard time finding a strategy that’s been more consistently successful and cost effective, particularly from the local government’s perspective. And Knox Heritage—the local non-profit dedicated to promoting historic preservation—has never been stronger either. Increasing membership and fundraising have allowed the group to grow from an all-volunteer organization to a staff of three, whose strong relationships on the local, state and national level have allowed it to accomplish things that, just five years ago would have seemed astonishing: working with the school board to broker the deal to save South High and securing several million dollars in tax credit financing from the National Trust for the restoration of the Tennessee Theatre. And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the nearly five-year struggle over the Smith house’s fate neatly coincides with the growing prominence of Knox Heritage or the Ashe administration’s embrace of preservation that proved pivotal to projects like the Sterchi and Emporium. So I guess the real question regarding the Smith House and the future of historic preservation isn’t whether it will be the turning point, but whether it already was, long before the bulldozers rolled.

December 23, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 52 © 2004 Metro Pulse