Chilhowee Park

Home to many of the workers of Standard Knitting Mills when it was begun in the early 1900s, Chilhowee Park today is a neighborhood with an active community association and a resurging sense of self.

Much of Knoxville suffers from historical atrophy, that perplexing tendency to forget the historical and original in favor of only what is known today. Chilhowee Park is very much an original neighborhood, begun as a residential development in the late 1890s to complement the new Chilhowee Park and encompassing the area around the lake at the present day fairgrounds.

In the last 20-30 years, however, the area has been labeled, relabeled, and rebranded. It may have been part of Park City's original 1907 plat, but other historical documents and newspaper clippings describe the residential development of Chilhowee Park as a separate and distinct area. Present-day boundaries for "Parkridge" remain somewhat fuzzy, complicated too by the designation of Park City as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places, and "Edgewood-Park City" receiving local historic designation in 1997 from the Metropolitan Planning Commission.

When Park City became Parkridge, some began referring to the area east of Cherry Street as "East Ridge." In 1980, the East Ridge Neighborhood Watch was formed. In 1994, the name was changed to the Chilhowee Park Neighborhood Association.

For the record, Chilhowee Park has simple and clear boundaries: I-40 to the north, Chilhowee Park and Beaman Street to the east, Magnolia Avenue to the south, and Cherry Street to the west.

There is a good selection of Craftsman, Victorian, even some Mediterranean and Spanish Colonial Revival homes in the district, and while the area is still facing the challenges of many urban neighborhoods, it is home to artists, as well as blue- and white-collar professionals alike.