When I was younger, even just 20 or 25 years ago, there were a number of beautiful old historic homes around West Knoxville. Kingston Pike in particular offered a number of such sites stretching westward from the antebellum Baker-Peters Home (at Peters Road) intermittently along the highway, past Lovell Road and finally continuing on out past Campbell Station toward Lenoir City. I can think of at least 17 historic homes along this particular stretch of road that existed then. Today, there are less than half that number; most have been razed to make room for ever-expanding West Knoxville developments.
I read in a Metro Pulse article back in the early nineties that "Knoxville has no sense of itself" (or, as a friend of mine used to say, Knoxville never met a strip-mall it didn't like). The MP comment really resonated with me at the time, and today offers as good an explanation as any why so many of our historic homes are now either gone, or their once stately lawns marred by gas stations and fast food restaurants.
Four or five years ago, my oldest daughter and I were driving down Walker Springs Road and I drove her up to look at the old Thomas Walker estate. It was Mr. Walker's property for which the road was named, and the location of the house must have once offered a commanding view of the adjacent bottom land. The property is located less than a half mile from the site of Cavett's Station, and the Walker home was built within a generation or two of the terrible massacre there. At the time we visited the home, I was surprised to see it was for sale. The brochure stated that the home was built in 1834, was registered on the National Register of Historic Homes and was listed at 259k (which I considered a steal for such an important piece of Knoxville history). After that day, I often fantasized (as history geeks will do) about purchasing the home, stocking it with period-piece antiques, and living the remainder of my days there, smoking a pipe and quietly conversing with whatever Walker ghosts still roamed around the property.
Over the past three or four years, there has been some restructuring of Walker Springs Road, and a connector has been completed from the interstate to route traffic in a much more direct fashion toward Middlebrook Pike and points west. Last week I decided to veer off the connector and take a drive by the old home, just to see how it was faring. However, when I arrived at the site, the home was completely gone, the property graded flat.
I sat there in disbelief, unable to comprehend what would possess someone to completely eradicate a landmark of Knoxville's history that had stood proudly for over 170 years. However, it became apparent when I turned and saw the new complex of cookie cutter houses that had just gone in across the street. The estate was gone because the property was suddenly now marketable to some faction of West Knoxville developers.
I am consistently reading articles in local papers in which prominent Knoxvillians, developers included, lament their inability to reshape Knoxville, particularly downtown Knoxville, in the progressive molds of Asheville, NC and more recently, Chattanooga. To me, the reasons are obvious- metropolitan planning in those towns has embraced the local history; protecting, renovating and developing that heritage until it adds texture and a sense of place to the very essence of the towns themselves. In other words, planning that places an emphasis on historic preservation offers a town its soul. And as long as Knoxville is willing to tear down an antebellum mansion or pave over a cemetery in order to create space for another plastic development, we are in very grave danger of losing ours.
