Cornstalk Heights
Encyclopedia
Cornstalk Heights is a neighborhood in Harriman, Tennessee
, USA. Platted in the early 1890s as a residential area for Harriman's upper and professional classes, the neighborhood contains over 100 buildings added to the National Register of Historic Places
in 1991 as a historic district for their architectural and historical significance. The neighborhood is named for the home of Harriman founder Frederick Gates, which once stood near the eastern end of the district.
Harriman was envisioned as a large-scale industrial center where the application of late 19th-century social reform principles, namely prohibition
, would create an ideal living environment. The East Tennessee Land Company, led by Gates, designed the city in late 1889, including in the design several larger, more expensive lots in what is now Cornstalk Heights. Most of the district's earliest houses cost over $3,000 apiece, with some as high as $10,000— enormous sums for the period. Throughout the 1890s and early 1900s, Harriman's affluent residents built dozens of Victorian
homes, most of which are still standing. In 1990, the Cornstalk Heights Historical Community Organization was formed to prevent the district's Killeffer Park from being converted into a housing development.
in the Emory River
on the north, east, and south, and by Walden Ridge
on the west. The heights rise to a maximum of about 100 feet (30.5 m) above the rest of the city. The district is located along Cumberland, Clinton, and Trenton streets, which run north-to-south, and Walden, Crescent, Queen, and Virginia avenues, which run east-to-west. A narrow alleyway runs along the crest of the ridge between Clinton and Cumberland streets. The district consists of blocks 413-806 Clinton Street, 409-829 Cumberland Street, 502-702 Trenton Street, 418-503 Queen Avenue, 319 Virginia Avenue, and 330, 402-417, and 424-506 Walden Avenue.
The neighborhood contains 110 houses, 100 of which are contributing properties in the National Register listing. Killeffer Park, located along Cumberland Street, is also a contributing property. Two churches in the district— the First Presbyterian Church and the Open Bible Baptist Church— were built in 1956 and 1985, respectively, and are non-contributing buildings due to age. The district's lone contributing commercial building is located at the corner of Walden Avenue and Clinton Street.
activists led by Frederick Gates and General Clinton B. Fisk
, purchased the land from Byrd's widow for $26,000. The company hoped to establish a large industrial center that would attract businesses, while at the same time demonstrate the benefits of barring the sale or consumption of alcoholic beverages.
On Christmas Day, 1889, the East Tennessee Land Company platted a 343 acres (138.8 ha) section of Harriman that included most of what is now Cornstalk Heights. These lots were sold in late February 1890 at an auction attended by over 4,000 prospective buyers from across the country. In the Cornstalk Heights section, lots along Cumberland Street and the section of Walden Avenue between Cumberland and Clinton streets typically sold for over $2,000. Lots along Clinton Street typically sold for over $1,000. The deeds to these lots required that lot owners construct frame or brick houses with at least six rooms. Over the next two years, fourteen contractors began building homes in Cornstalk Heights, using primarily materials from new industries that had been established across town along the Emory River. The homes of Gates and Gates' successor as the East Tennessee Land Company's general manager, William H. Russell (1857–1911), were probably the earliest homes built in Cornstalk Heights. Gates' house was demolished in the 1950s, but Russell's house still stands at 525 Cumberland Street.
Although the East Tennessee Land Company went bankrupt in the wake of the Panic of 1893
, it had succeeded in attracting enough new industry to help Harriman survive. Many of the heads of these new companies built homes in Cornstalk Heights. Henry Winslow, manager of the Harriman Land Company and Harriman's primary developer after the departure of the East Tennessee Land Company, built his house at 802 Clinton Street. David Gibson, owner of Gibson Agricultural Works, built at 403 Walden Avenue. V. G. Farnham, manager of the Harriman Tack Company, built at 813 Cumberland Street. S. K. Paige, owner of a lumber company, built the house now known as "Bushrod Hall" at 422 Cumberland Street. In the 1920s, Tom Tarwater— manager of the Roane Hosiery Company— built at 709 Cumberland Street.
The Reverend Alexander Killeffer, a photographer for the East Tennessee Land Company, founded Harriman's St. Andrews Episcopal Church in the early 1890s, and helped build its original meeting house at 630 Trenton Street, where the Open Bible Baptist Church now stands. The original design of Harriman included a park along Cumberland Street, originally named Fisk Park, but eventually renamed "Killeffer Park" after Killeffer's son, Louis, a long-time resident of Cornstalk Heights. The site along Clinton Street now occupied by the First Presbyterian Church was originally the site of a school, which operated from 1891 to 1917.
homes designed in Queen Anne
, Eastlake
, and Folk Victorian styles. Colonial Revival
and Bungalow/Craftsman
styles were more common for houses built after 1900. Other architectural styles represented in the district include Dutch Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, Neoclassical Revival
, American Foursquare
, and Minimal Traditional.
Houses in the district range from one to three stories, and typically follow irregular floor plan
s. Most have gable
d roofs, aluminum, brick, or stone siding, and limestone or brick foundations. The district has 33 contributing outbuildings, mainly carriagehouses, servants' quarters, and garages. To compensate for abrupt changes in elevation, limestone retaining wall
s surround the perimeters of several housing lots, as well as Killeffer Park. The district's sidewalks still consist of the original bricks laid out in the 1890s, some of which bear the stamp of the Robbins Brick Company of Scott County, Tennessee.
Harriman, Tennessee
Harriman is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee, primarily in Roane County, with a small extension into Morgan County. It is the principal city of and is included in the Harriman Micropolitan Statistical Area, which consists of Roane County and is a component of the Knoxville-Sevierville-La...
, USA. Platted in the early 1890s as a residential area for Harriman's upper and professional classes, the neighborhood contains over 100 buildings added to the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 1991 as a historic district for their architectural and historical significance. The neighborhood is named for the home of Harriman founder Frederick Gates, which once stood near the eastern end of the district.
Harriman was envisioned as a large-scale industrial center where the application of late 19th-century social reform principles, namely prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
, would create an ideal living environment. The East Tennessee Land Company, led by Gates, designed the city in late 1889, including in the design several larger, more expensive lots in what is now Cornstalk Heights. Most of the district's earliest houses cost over $3,000 apiece, with some as high as $10,000— enormous sums for the period. Throughout the 1890s and early 1900s, Harriman's affluent residents built dozens of Victorian
Victorian architecture
The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...
homes, most of which are still standing. In 1990, the Cornstalk Heights Historical Community Organization was formed to prevent the district's Killeffer Park from being converted into a housing development.
Location
Cornstalk Heights is situated atop a low-rising ridge in the original section of Harriman, which is bordered by an oxbow bendMeander
A meander in general is a bend in a sinuous watercourse. A meander is formed when the moving water in a stream erodes the outer banks and widens its valley. A stream of any volume may assume a meandering course, alternately eroding sediments from the outside of a bend and depositing them on the...
in the Emory River
Emory River
The Emory River is a stream draining a portion of Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau.-Hydrography:The Emory River rises on the slopes of Frozen Head and Bird Mountain, prominent peaks in that part of the Cumberland Plateau in Morgan County, Tennessee. Frozen Head is the focus of a Tennessee state park...
on the north, east, and south, and by Walden Ridge
Walden Ridge
Walden Ridge is a mountain ridge and escarpment located in Tennessee, in the United States. It marks the eastern edge of the Cumberland Plateau and is generally considered part of it. Walden Ridge is about long, running generally north-south...
on the west. The heights rise to a maximum of about 100 feet (30.5 m) above the rest of the city. The district is located along Cumberland, Clinton, and Trenton streets, which run north-to-south, and Walden, Crescent, Queen, and Virginia avenues, which run east-to-west. A narrow alleyway runs along the crest of the ridge between Clinton and Cumberland streets. The district consists of blocks 413-806 Clinton Street, 409-829 Cumberland Street, 502-702 Trenton Street, 418-503 Queen Avenue, 319 Virginia Avenue, and 330, 402-417, and 424-506 Walden Avenue.
The neighborhood contains 110 houses, 100 of which are contributing properties in the National Register listing. Killeffer Park, located along Cumberland Street, is also a contributing property. Two churches in the district— the First Presbyterian Church and the Open Bible Baptist Church— were built in 1956 and 1985, respectively, and are non-contributing buildings due to age. The district's lone contributing commercial building is located at the corner of Walden Avenue and Clinton Street.
History
Before 1890, what is now Cornstalk Heights (and much of Harriman) was part of a large farm owned by Robert K. Byrd. That year, the East Tennessee Land Company, formed by northern TemperanceTemperance movement
A temperance movement is a social movement urging reduced use of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements may criticize excessive alcohol use, promote complete abstinence , or pressure the government to enact anti-alcohol legislation or complete prohibition of alcohol.-Temperance movement by...
activists led by Frederick Gates and General Clinton B. Fisk
Clinton B. Fisk
Clinton Bowen Fisk , for whom Fisk University is named, was a senior officer during Reconstruction in the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands. He endowed Fisk University with $30,000...
, purchased the land from Byrd's widow for $26,000. The company hoped to establish a large industrial center that would attract businesses, while at the same time demonstrate the benefits of barring the sale or consumption of alcoholic beverages.
On Christmas Day, 1889, the East Tennessee Land Company platted a 343 acres (138.8 ha) section of Harriman that included most of what is now Cornstalk Heights. These lots were sold in late February 1890 at an auction attended by over 4,000 prospective buyers from across the country. In the Cornstalk Heights section, lots along Cumberland Street and the section of Walden Avenue between Cumberland and Clinton streets typically sold for over $2,000. Lots along Clinton Street typically sold for over $1,000. The deeds to these lots required that lot owners construct frame or brick houses with at least six rooms. Over the next two years, fourteen contractors began building homes in Cornstalk Heights, using primarily materials from new industries that had been established across town along the Emory River. The homes of Gates and Gates' successor as the East Tennessee Land Company's general manager, William H. Russell (1857–1911), were probably the earliest homes built in Cornstalk Heights. Gates' house was demolished in the 1950s, but Russell's house still stands at 525 Cumberland Street.
Although the East Tennessee Land Company went bankrupt in the wake of the Panic of 1893
Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures...
, it had succeeded in attracting enough new industry to help Harriman survive. Many of the heads of these new companies built homes in Cornstalk Heights. Henry Winslow, manager of the Harriman Land Company and Harriman's primary developer after the departure of the East Tennessee Land Company, built his house at 802 Clinton Street. David Gibson, owner of Gibson Agricultural Works, built at 403 Walden Avenue. V. G. Farnham, manager of the Harriman Tack Company, built at 813 Cumberland Street. S. K. Paige, owner of a lumber company, built the house now known as "Bushrod Hall" at 422 Cumberland Street. In the 1920s, Tom Tarwater— manager of the Roane Hosiery Company— built at 709 Cumberland Street.
The Reverend Alexander Killeffer, a photographer for the East Tennessee Land Company, founded Harriman's St. Andrews Episcopal Church in the early 1890s, and helped build its original meeting house at 630 Trenton Street, where the Open Bible Baptist Church now stands. The original design of Harriman included a park along Cumberland Street, originally named Fisk Park, but eventually renamed "Killeffer Park" after Killeffer's son, Louis, a long-time resident of Cornstalk Heights. The site along Clinton Street now occupied by the First Presbyterian Church was originally the site of a school, which operated from 1891 to 1917.
Designs
The earliest (1890–1895) houses in Cornstalk Heights were mostly VictorianVictorian architecture
The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...
homes designed in Queen Anne
Queen Anne Style architecture (United States)
In America, the Queen Anne style of architecture, furniture and decorative arts was popular in the United States from 1880 to 1910. In American usage "Queen Anne" is loosely used of a wide range of picturesque buildings with "free Renaissance" details rather than of a specific formulaic style in...
, Eastlake
Eastlake Movement
The Eastlake Movement was a nineteenth century architectural and household design reform movement started by architect and writer Charles Eastlake . The movement is generally considered part of the late Victorian period in terms of broad antique furniture designations...
, and Folk Victorian styles. Colonial Revival
Colonial Revival architecture
The Colonial Revival was a nationalistic architectural style, garden design, and interior design movement in the United States which sought to revive elements of Georgian architecture, part of a broader Colonial Revival Movement in the arts. In the early 1890s Americans began to value their own...
and Bungalow/Craftsman
American Craftsman
The American Craftsman Style, or the American Arts and Crafts Movement, is an American domestic architectural, interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts style and lifestyle philosophy that began in the last years of the 19th century. As a comprehensive design and art...
styles were more common for houses built after 1900. Other architectural styles represented in the district include Dutch Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, Neoclassical Revival
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
, American Foursquare
American Foursquare
The American Foursquare or American Four Square is an American house style popular from the mid-1890s to the late 1930s. A reaction to the ornate and mass produced elements of the Victorian and other Revival styles popular throughout the last half of the 19th century, the American Foursquare was...
, and Minimal Traditional.
Houses in the district range from one to three stories, and typically follow irregular floor plan
Floor plan
In architecture and building engineering, a floor plan, or floorplan, is a diagram, usually to scale, showing a view from above of the relationships between rooms, spaces and other physical features at one level of a structure....
s. Most have gable
Gable
A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...
d roofs, aluminum, brick, or stone siding, and limestone or brick foundations. The district has 33 contributing outbuildings, mainly carriagehouses, servants' quarters, and garages. To compensate for abrupt changes in elevation, limestone retaining wall
Retaining wall
Retaining walls are built in order to hold back earth which would otherwise move downwards. Their purpose is to stabilize slopes and provide useful areas at different elevations, e.g...
s surround the perimeters of several housing lots, as well as Killeffer Park. The district's sidewalks still consist of the original bricks laid out in the 1890s, some of which bear the stamp of the Robbins Brick Company of Scott County, Tennessee.
Notable houses
- Russell-Jackson House (525 Cumberland Street), an Eastlake-style house built in 1890 for William H. Russell, general manager of the East Tennessee Land Company, and believed to be the oldest standing house in Cornstalk Heights.
- Nottingham-Webb House (417 Clinton Street), also called the D'Armond House, a Queen Anne-style house built in 1890 by early Harriman judge C. W. Nottingham.
- Hopkins-Bensey House (725 Cumberland Street), a Folk Victorian house built c. 1890-1892, and once used as a Presbyterian manseManseA manse is a house inhabited by, or formerly inhabited by, a minister, usually used in the context of a Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist or United Church...
.
- Bushrod Hall (422 Cumberland Street), also called the Paige-Robinson House, a Queen Anne-style house built in 1892 by lumber mill owner S. K. Paige. In 1895, the American Temperance UniversityAmerican Temperance UniversityAmerican Temperance University opened in 1893 in the planned town of Harriman, Tennessee, which was developed as a community with no alcoholic beverages permitted. In its second year of operation the institution enrolled 345 students from 20 states. However, it closed in 1908. Those who attended...
purchased the house for its School of Domestic Sciences for Young Ladies, which operated until 1900. The house was renamed "Bushrod Hall" after one of the school's benefactors.
- Williamson-Jones House (629 Cumberland Street), or Lane House, a Folk Victorian house built by A. T. Waters in 1893. The Williamson and Jones families were later owners. The Lane family lived in the house between 1914 and 1965.
- Winslow House (802 Clinton Street), a Queen Anne-style house built in 1895 by Harriman Land Company manager Henry Winslow. Winslow's son, John Cooper Winslow, lived in the house until the 1970s, but stayed in just one room, leaving the remainder of the house as it was the day his mother died. John Cooper Winslow's odd behavior led to the development of a number of ghost stories surrounding the Winslow House.
- Monte Vista (514 Cumberland Street), or the Cassell-D'Alessandro House, a Colonial Revival-style house built in 1905 by Judge Robert Cassell and his wife, Perle.
- Killeffer House (506 Clinton Street), a Colonial Revival-style house built in 1939 to replace a 1904 house which had burned. Dr. Louis Killeffer, a physician whose parents were among the city's earliest residents, lived here until the 1970s.
External links
- Cornstalk Heights — official site
- Bushrod Hall — official site