Parkridge

Parkridge is a 1980s name for an 1880s neighborhood. Back when the houses of Parkridge were first built, the subdivisions were called Poplar Springs, Elmwood Park, Edgewood Park, Cold Springs, and Hazen Hill. These were residential additions developed in the 1880s east of the town of Knoxville and north of the village of Shieldstown. Two of Parkridge's subdivisions, Poplar Springs and Elmwood Park, were even part of Shieldstown.

Poplar Springs

In the1880s, the Poplar Springs suburb extended the town of Shieldstown east from Bertrand to Olive and north from Linden to Woodbine. This early suburb was developed by Shieldstown landowners John H. Shields and Preston Blang, whose wives, Mary Amanda McMillan and Margaret Bell, were from area families who had farmed the land for decades. The 1860s Shieldstown Cemetery is still on Linden Avenue east of Bertrand Street, and the 1870s Third Baptist Church was once in the same block. The 1890s Presbyterian Church still stands on the corner of Linden and Olive; the 1880s Shieldstown School used to be across the street. The 1920s Little Brick Church still stands on East Fifth just past Bertrand; there were once houses all around it, including on Spring Street, the alley to the rear. A few older houses are still standing in old Poplar Springs, on Linden, Magnolia, Fifth, and Woodbine, between Bertrand and Olive: small cottages with old-fashioned arches and posts and farmhouses with bits of decorative trim, alongside bungalows from a later era. The northern section of Poplar Springs, from Magnolia to Woodbine, is part of Parkridge.

Elmwood Park

Also in the 1880s, the new Elmwood Park addition was developed across Bertrand Street from Poplar Springs. Elmwood expanded Shieldstown's boundaries north from Linden Avenue to Woodbine and west from Bertrand Street past Jessamine to First Creek and the Southern Railroad. Old Shieldstown families had lived along Linden Avenue and Islington Avenue for decades, and now large houses were springing up on Magnolia Avenue and the streets to the north. Throughout the 1880s, the Elmwood trolley line ran out East Fifth Avenue from Elmwood Park to take residents and visitors to Chilhowee Park, and as a result, Chilhowee Park also became known as Elmwood Park for a while.

The Knoxville city directories from the 1800s and 1890s show a smattering of new houses cropping up on the dirt roads between woods and fields, and the fire insurance maps show the shapes of the houses, with their turrets and bays, verandas and porches, stables and chicken coops. In 1900, Elmwood Park residents included George Branner, mayor of Park City, at 1724 Magnolia Avenue; his neighbor Andrew Park White, descendent of Knoxville's founder James White, at 1520 Magnolia; and Andrew's brothers James Park White and George McNutt White at 1311 East Fifth Avenue. Elderly residents or their descendents, whose families lived in Elmwood Park in the early days, have told of the half-acre family gardens, the horses and cows grazing where Caswell Park is now, the woods where the Magnolia Apartments now stand, and the swamp on the site of the Bread Factory.

Edgewood Park

In the 1890s, the Edgewood Land and Improvement Company began subdividing and promoting the area that became known as Edgewood Park, extending from Woodbine north to Glenwood and from Boruff west to Pratt Street Park. Many large Victorian, Queen Anne, and Eastlake houses along Washington Avenue and Jefferson Avenue were designed by the nationally-known Knoxville-based mail-order architect George F. Barber. In Edgewood, houses with definite or probable Barber designs have been identified at 1810 Glenwood Avenue, 1501 Woodbine Avenue, and 1603, 1640, 1701, 1708, and 2039 Jefferson Avenue and at 1614, 1618, 1620, 1635, 1701, 1702, 1704, 1705, 1712, 1724, 1730, 1802, 1803, 1804, 1904, and 1905 Washington Avenue.

Most of the Barber house designs in the Knoxville area are in Edgewood, and most of the Barber houses in Edgewood are on Washington Avenue. The homes of George F. Barber himself and his partner, J.C. White, descendent of Knoxville's founder James White, still stand today at 1620 and 1701 Washington Avenue. As was the custom in those days, smaller houses for factory and railroad workers were constructed alongside the finer houses where their employers might have lived. In the 1890s, a trolley circuit ran through Edgewood along Washington Avenue to Chilhowee Park, furthering the development of Edgewood. To increase trolley passengers, the trolley company developed Chilhowee Park as an amusement park.

Hazen Hill

Land in the Hazen Hill addition was sold throughout the 1890s by the real estate firm of Asa Hazen, a brother of Rush Strong Hazen whose 1850s Mountain View house is now the Mabry-Hazen House Museum. Hazen Hill extends from Jefferson Avenue north to curved, residential Adams Avenue and from Boruff Street east beyond Spruce; a variety of investors developed the land further east. Although early ward maps and insurance maps depict planned subdivision lots, many houses in Hazen Hill appear to have been built during the 1920s-1960s, and some Adams Avenue lots, never developed, are still the densely wooded hills of Chestnut Ridge. Early residents of the area seemed to be primarily upper middle class merchants or professionals. From at least 1910 on, a small black community existed on the slopes of Chestnut Ridge, which included Adams Avenue, Dodson Street, and Nichols Street. The lower-income residents of Chestnut Ridge, both black and white, generally worked at either the local factories or the more affluent homes.

Cold Springs

The Cold Springs addition was developed from Cold Springs Farm east of Shieldstown, owned by Robert Houston, senator, secretary of state, and first sheriff of Knox County, and by Joseph Mabry, landowner and entrepreneur, who also built another house up on a bluff on Dandridge Pike in the town of Mountain View overlooking Shieldstown, still standing today, known as the Mabry-Hazen House Museum. Cold Springs houses dating from the 1920s-1960s were built from Woodbine south to Tarleton and from Olive east to Hembree. The rambling brown brick Cold Springs farmhouse, with its stone springhouse, still stands near Cherry Street, between Parkview and MLK Boulevard, known for over a century as the Mount Rest home for elderly ladies.

Shieldstown

Shieldstown in the 1850s was a six-block residential district extending from the Shields home on First Creek east to the crossroads of Bertrand and Howard. If John H. Shields had an address, it might have been Jessamine Street, which ran along First Creek near Bell Avenue and Howard (Linden) Street. Today there is nothing left of the original 1850s Shieldstown settlement on Islington and Linden except sidewalks and parking lots, and where the Shields house might once have stood by the creek are the warehouses of a plumbing supply company. But on a little knoll not far from First Creek, to the southeast of Bell and Howard, is a stand of tall trees, catawbas and maples, remnants of someone’s garden. And at the back of the abandoned garden is one old gnarled grandfather tree, ancient and stout, thick branches spreading, a species we have never seen. A Shieldstown house stood there.

Landowners listed in the 1860 census for the second district include families who lived in Shieldstown and Mountain View for years to come: Burnett, Churchwell, Davis, Lusby, Mabry, and Woods families. Joseph Mabry had the largest holdings, 61,000 acres; George Churchwell had 25,000 acres; James M. Davis had 4,000 acres; John H. Shields had 2,500 acres; Moses H. Lusby had 100 acres; and the Burnett and Woods families had about 25-50 acres each. John Shields and his family soon left for the west coast, but other families were still there in the 1880 census listings and had family members buried in the Woods, Burnett, and Shieldstown cemeteries over the years into the 1900s.

By the 1860s, Shieldstown was in the middle of a civil war. The old state fairgrounds, located near what is now Chestnut Street on the eastern outskirts of Shieldstown, became the mustering grounds for the third and fourth Tennessee Confederate regiments in the spring of 1861. The Mabry-Hazen House sheltered Confederate officers during the war. Two forts were built on the bluffs to the southwest, Fort Huntington-Smith and Fort Hill, occupied by the Union Army during the autumn of 1863. From the forts, then as now, one might have a bird's eye view of Shieldstown. At the height of the conflict, the trees and shrubs in the area were burned so that no enemy would be obscured by their foliage, the landscape a muddy plain below the forts.

After the war, throughout the 1870s, Shieldstown expanded with the construction of schools, churches, parks, and homes. John Shields established the Poplar Springs Addition along Howard and Islington, extending the town another six blocks east past Bertrand to Olive and several blocks north of Magnolia. The crossroads of Bertrand and Howard seemed to form the town center: the Shieldstown Country School stood on Howard, six lots east of Bertrand, flanked by shops on the corners of Bertrand and Cruze. The community was devout, with several churches in the area: the Sanctified Methodist Church at Bertrand and Islington; the Bell Avenue Baptist Church at Bertrand and Bell; the Second Presbyterian Church on Bertrand north of Bell; and the Third Baptist Church on Howard east of Bertrand. A number of older houses are still standing in the old Poplar Springs district of Shieldstown, from Linden to Woodbine, between Bertrand and Olive: small cottages with old-fashioned arches and posts; farmhouses with decorative sawn-wood trim; hints of Victorian gingerbread here and there; and bungalows from a later era.

By the 1880s, Shieldstown had grown to 721 residents living in 165 households, with a mingling of races and classes. The 1880 census lists 104 white families and 61 black or mulatto families, living next door to each other. About one-fourth of the Shieldstown households were headed by black or white women, another fourth by black men, and one-half by white men. Men are identified by a trade or profession; women, even widows and single women living alone, are listed as “keeping house.” It may be that they were able to make a living for themselves with the chickens and gardens outside their doors. The few women who worked at other tasks or outside the home were employed in the capacity of cook, housekeeper, seamstress, or washerwoman. Only a few children were listed as being “in school.” Typically, boys were working alongside their fathers or apprenticed to a trade by age 13.

Most of the Shieldstown men and boys worked with their hands. They were employed as barbers, blacksmiths, boatmen, bricklayers, butchers, carpenters, cabinet makers, carriage makers, chair caners, conductors, draymen, drivers, farmers, fishermen, gardeners, harnessmakers, hucksters, ironworkers, laborers, mail carriers, painters, peddlers, plasterers, printers, saddlers, shoemakers, stonemasons, teamsters, traders, wagoners, and well diggers. They also worked for brickyards, drugstores, factories, foundries, gasworks, livery stables, lumberyards, markets, mills, quarries, railroads, slaughterhouses, tanyards, and tobacco manufacturers. But some Shieldstown residents owned the businesses where they worked, and the town also had an herb doctor, office worker, teacher, manufacturer, two ministers, five merchants, and several clerks. The latter lived side by side with those of the working class, merchants and ministers next door to day laborers.

The main east-west route through town was still called Howard Street where it lay between Jessamine and Olive, but was dubbed Linden Avenue east of Olive. With the eastward expansion, the intersection of Olive, Linden, and Howard became a community hub, replacing the old crossroads of Howard and Bertrand. The Armstrong School occupied the block bounded by Linden, Olive, and Parkview, and at the same corner in 1891 was built a brown brick church that is still standing, Third Presbyterian, later known as Park City Presbyterian. Throughout the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the Mabry-Bell streetcar ran out to the new fashionable East End subdivison and back via Mabry Street and Bell Avenue, and the Elmwood Trolley ran out to Chilhowee Park and back on East Fifth Avenue.

For about two or three years, 1891-1893, the city of Knoxville annexed Shieldstown and its subdivisions, and the area became known for two years as the tenth ward of the city of Knoxville. The double taxations of the residents and the inability of the city to adequately serve the educational and street improvement needs brought a public outcry that resulted in the removal of Shieldstown from the tenth ward of the city of Knoxville. Shieldstown reverted back to a separate town for the next 15 years, 1893-1907, during which time residential developments, community parks, and trolley lines expanded the area and made it an attractive place to live. After the turn of the century, the racial and social composition of Shieldstown became increasingly white middle class and working class east of First Creek, with black families located predominantly on the west side of First Creek, known for years as The Bottoms. The white boys from Shieldstown and the black boys from The Bottoms met in the creek to play.


Park City

For a decade, 1907-1917, Shieldstown and its subdivisions were incorporated as the town of Park City, which is thought to have been named for the ever popular weekend and leisure site, Chilhowee Park. Other residential developments in Park City, outside the area that was to become Parkridge, included the Lake Park Springs, Beaman Lake Park, and Chilhowee Park subdivisions near the park and the East End addition to the south. Park City saw much growth from 1910 to 1920, and residential construction continued strongly into the 1930s. Chilhowee Park hosted three national expositions between 1910 and 1912, and industrial employment during the decade increased substantially. Residents seemed to be primarily upper middle class merchants or professionals. In 1917, the city of Knoxville annexed the town of Park City along with the towns of Mountain View, Oakwood, and Lonsdale. These towns continued to keep their names after annexation by Knoxville, into the 1950s and longer.

In 1930, a Knoxville planning study noted several aspects of Park City: two streetcar lines served a population of 9,000 persons. Park City also contained Knoxville's largest park, Caswell Park, on Winona Street. Industrial development along Cherry Street and Southern Railroad tracks was also occurring throughout the 1930s, and by the late 1940s, local industries such as Standard Knitting Mills and the new Levi-Strauss Factory were the major employers. During the 1930s depression and the 1940s wartime, a significant number of homes in Park City began to convert from single family occupancy to rental apartments. In spite of the homes, parks, and mills, chronic unemployment during the 1950s spurred migration from Park City. By the 1960s, much of the area's housing stock was at least 40 years old, with some much older, much of it unfashionable and deteriorating, which did not encourage new development. The construction of Interstate 40 along the north and west side of Park City created isolation or displacement for many residents who stayed. Park City thus underwent some major social and physical changes.

Integration of Knoxville city schools in 1963 brought further socioeconomic changes to Park City, and in 1964 a ten-year displacement project moved many black citizens into Park City. Since 1975, the racial composition of Park City has reflected an equal number of black and white families, returning Park City closer to the racial and social diversity that Shieldstown had developed a hundred years before. In 1979, the Knoxville Neighborhood Housing Services set up office in Park City and worked with residents to provide housing rehabilitation and financial and organizational assistance for the modern residents of the hundred-year-old neighborhood.

Parkridge

In 1983 the Parkridge Community Organization was formed to revitalize the neighborhood and provide a way for residents to work together. The name reflects the some of the areas the organization serves: Elmwood Park, Edgewood Park, Chestnut Ridge, and other areas in the northwestern quadrant of Park City. The Knoxville Neighborhood Housing Services continued to work with Park City residents, and a resurgence of buyers began rehabilitating the historic homes. In 1990, Parkridge became part of the Park City Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, and Parkridge residents began winning awards for their beautiful renovations. In 1995, Parkridge received $200,000 worth of improvements and two years of concentrated city services, plus $10,000 as a TNT neighborhood. In 1997, a Spirits of Parkridge home tour invited residents of the metropolitan area and surrounding counties to view Parkridge's restored historic homes. In 2003, a series of annual tours began with Come Home to Parkridge; the 2005 tour, Next Stop: Park City, paid homage to the trolleys of yesteryear.


Since its formation, the Parkridge Community Organization has built two playgrounds, the Tot Lot on Chestnut Street and Parkridge Park on Bertrand Street, and held street fairs, crime watch meetings, neighborhood clean-up days, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, Easter egg hunts, and housing fairs. The organization also promotes codes enforcement and police patrols for its urban streets and rehabilitation any decrepit or vacant houses. A neighborhood newsletter, The Parkridge Press, reaches 800 families and keeps them informed of events and projects. Parkridge developed a website in 1997s, redesigned this year by Park City's own Tribe One Bounce Interactive Studios. A Parkridge e-mail list is often busy with news and comments. Today Parkridge offers a wide diversity of neighbors by age, race, income, background, education, and profession. The housing is affordable and the neighborhood is easily accessible to downtown and other areas of the city via public transit, bike lanes, and walking trails.



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Sources: Ronald Allen, Stephen Ash, Margery Weber Bensey, Robert Booker, Becky French Brewer, Betsey Creekmore, Lucille Deaderick, Matthew Edens, J.W. Frye, Richard Hailes, Douglas McDaniel, Robert McGinnis, Keith Richardson, Mary Utopia Rothrock, William Rule, James Welcker, and city directories, census records, fire insurance maps, and ward maps.

Compiled by Margery Weber Bensey