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Local Color: Fort Sanders

Much of the northwestern quarter of Fort Sanders was once devoted to the produce industry. There’s much less of it now, but the Carl Griffin Produce Co. on Forest Avenue hangs on, albeit as easy prey for taggers.

Much of the northwestern quarter of Fort Sanders was once devoted to the produce industry. There’s much less of it now, but the Carl Griffin Produce Co. on Forest Avenue hangs on, albeit as easy prey for taggers.



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  • Steele Chatman pitches a washer as Caldwell Lealy, Charlie Bradberry, and Raphael Smith wait their turns.
  • Seventeenth and Grand, not far from the interstate, gets less pedestrian-friendly.
  • Crutches lean against a tree, waiting for their owner to hobble back and claim them.
  • Students move some furniture across Cumberland Avenue at the beginning of fall semester. To some students, a move from a UT dorm to a Fort Sanders apartment is considered upward mobility.
  • Ooga Mooga’s Tiki Tavern, on White Avenue but facing 17th, at dusk.
  • Entry pillars were placed on 11th Street at Clinch to warn the unsuspecting about what they were getting into.
  • Artist Beth Meadows works in her studio located in the Redeemer Church on 17th, which has converted its upstairs into affordable studios for creative sorts.
  • Christ Chapel Church, facing Highland Avenue at 16th Street. This older church building, built when Fort Sanders was still a family-oriented neighborhood, was used for other arts-related purposes for several years, but has lately been serving as a church again.
  • A view of 21st Street, looking north into the factory district.
  • Students enjoy a round of cornhole in the front yard of the Chi Phi frat house on Clinch near 17th.
  • An unsuspecting visitor finds himself framed by modern sculpture at the Knoxville Museum of Art.
  • Not all of Fort Sanders’ houses were for the wealthy. Lower on the slope of the ridge are smaller houses, closer together, some of them once occupied by working-class families.
  • Houses in the Crown at Campus Pointe housing complex.
  • The Corner Market on 13th has been selling groceries to neighbors since the early 20th century.
  • The once-busy 18th Street IGA was in business for several decades, but has been closed for the last couple of years, as preservationists and the nearby hospital discuss its fate.
  • Fort Sanders wasn’t always UT-centric, but it is now, as this Laurel Avenue house’s front door attests.
  • Students enjoy a late afternoon at 17th and Cumberland. Once known as Fort Sanders Avenue, 17th once led up to the ruins of the Civil War fort itself.
  • The Knoxville Skatepark, in Tyson Park, is just across the overpass from Fort Sanders’ west end.
  • Retro arcade and console games line the walls at the Fort Sanders Yacht Club, on 17th near Cumberland Avenue.
  • Much of the northwestern quarter of Fort Sanders was once devoted to the produce industry. There’s much less of it now, but the Carl Griffin Produce Co. on Forest Avenue hangs on, albeit as easy prey for taggers.
  • Drug-culture symbology or practical joke, shoefitti doesn’t trouble Fort Sanders’ birds.
  • The 17th Street Market and Deli, by sunset. It’s very close to the site of the fatal Confederate charge in 1863.
  • Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center and Thompson Cancer Survival Center, with Cumberland Avenue’s Strip in the foreground, seen from Terrace Avenue.

Exploring Knoxville’s neighborhoods: A continuing series by photographer Shawn Poynter

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