The Faulkners are different. They have been conducting science’s first archaeological excavation of Union Fort Sanders.

The Krystal suddenly boarded up on Cumberland Avenue was no architectural marvel. Its functionalist building had been completely rebuilt, perhaps more than once, in its half-century on the Strip. I won’t argue it was historic. Still, it was a real, ...

He’s the last superintendent of Lakeshore Mental Health Institute on Lyons View, which closes forever on June 30, after operating there, by various other names, since Grover Cleveland’s first term.

By a plan disclosed just this month, as a result of some bureaucratic paperwork, the University of Tennessee intends to demolish three Victorian houses, just like that. The university, whose student body hasn’t grown in decades, wants to awe us ...

Walking to the bus stop, late at night, I meet friendly strangers.

Some major historical figures seem so elusive they don’t quite seem real, almost as if they lived in a slightly different dimension that only occasionally intersected with ours. Take Lloyd Branson. Maybe Knoxville’s first professional artist, he’s sort of famous.

In our agony about raising money for Knox County schools, we should take just a moment to acknowledge that among urban counties with populations of over 400,000, Knox County is still one of the nation’s basement bargains. I own a ...

Knoxville’s generally proud of its restaurants, but they rarely get much attention outside the metro area. Well-traveled newcomers I’ve met are often disdainful, claiming they find only one or two that are passably interesting. I should say here, and quickly, ...

This Saturday, on Market Square, Knox Heritage launches its Historic Downtown Knoxville Walking Tour. It’s a handsome piece of work, a long, pocket-sized booklet with photographs. It’s the closest realization of an amenity I had hopes would be in place ...

I was there nearly every day of the 1982 World’s Fair. I lived a block and a half away from the western gate, and I worked there, mostly in crowd control. Assignments to monitor unruly lines put me in nearly ...

Suddenly there’s a third, and a fourth, bar on the once-forlorn 400 block of Gay. Things are looking up for that problematic block; 20 years ago it seemed too big and woebegone to revive. The bad news is that the ...

East Tennessee Art & Artists is not a big exhibit, but you can easily kill an hour or so, as I did, just puzzling over it.

The Rossini Festival is next weekend, 10 years old now. In my experience with my home town and its festivals, Knoxville Opera’s annual street fair was the first one that clicked on all cylinders: interesting food, good drink, diverse music, ...

On Central Street, at the very foot of Cumberland Avenue, is a plain white cinder-block church. A wooden sign calls it the Romanian Church. Thanks to the scarcity of intervening buildings, you can see it from Gay Street. The building’s ...

Many folks middle age and beyond remember that before the building at Gay and Union was Arby’s, it was Spence Shoes. In fact it was a shoe store, on the ground floor, for more than 40 years, with a tailor, ...