East Tennessee Historical Society

The Big Ears Festival is an annual music festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, created and produced by AC Entertainment.

The Burwell is situated on the landmark corner of Gay Street and Clinch Avenue in Knoxville, Tennessee above the majestic Tennessee Theatre, and is the oldest of Knoxville’s historic skyscrapers. Views from the Burwell include the Sunsphere, Krutch Park, Gay Street, the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, Clingmans Dome, Mount Le Conte, and the Tennessee River.

The Holston is a condominium high-rise located at 531 South Gay Street in Knoxville, Tennessee. Completed in 1913 as the headquarters for the Holston National Bank, the 14-story building was the tallest in Knoxville until the construction in the late 1920s of the Andrew Johnson Hotel, located a few blocks away. The Holston was designed by architect John Kevan Peebles and today represents the city's only Neoclassical Revival-style high rise. In 1979, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places for its architecture and its prominent position in the Knoxville skyline.Founded in 1890, Holston National Bank had grown to become one of Knoxville's three largest banks by 1913, when it built the first twelve stories of the Holston building. The 13th and 14th stories were added in 1928 after Holston National merged with Union National to create Knoxville's largest bank, Holston-Union. The bank failed in 1930 during the onset of the Great Depression, however, and was replaced the following year by the Hamilton National Bank of Knoxville. Over the next four decades, Hamilton National remained Knoxville's largest bank, at times controlling over half of the city's banking resources. Hamilton National was seized by Jake Butcher's United American Bank in 1975 following a bid war, and the bank moved its headquarters to the nearby Plaza Tower in 1978.

The Mechanics' Bank and Trust Company Building is an office building located at 612 South Gay Street in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Built in 1907 for the Mechanics' Bank and Trust Company, the building now houses offices for several law firms and financial agencies. The building's facade was constructed with locally quarried marble, and is designed in the Second Renaissance Revival style. In 1983, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural significance.The Mechanics' National Bank was chartered in 1882, and moved into a building at what is now 612 South Gay that same year. Within a few months of opening, the bank's president, Thomas O'Connor, was killed in a notorious shootout. In 1907, after the bank reorganized as the Mechanics' Bank and Trust, it built the first three floors of the current Mechanics' Bank building. The Union National Bank absorbed Mechanics' Bank in 1922, and added the top two stories the following year. The building later housed a branch of the Hamilton National Bank (headquartered in the nearby Holston building). In the early 1980s, the building was home to the City and County Bank, part of the Butcher banking empire, which collapsed in 1983 due to bank fraud.

The Old Customs House, also called the Old Post Office, is a historic building located at the corner of Clinch Avenue and Market Street in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Completed in 1874, it was the city's first federal building. It housed the federal courts, excise offices and post office until 1933. From 1936 to 1976, it was used by the Tennessee Valley Authority for offices. Expanded in 2004, the building is home to the East Tennessee History Center, which includes the Lawson McGhee Library's Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection, the Knox County Archives, and the East Tennessee Historical Society's headquarters and museum. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural significance.

The Fidelity Building is an office building in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Initially constructed in 1871 for the wholesale firm Cowan, McClung and Company, the building underwent an exterior renovation and was converted to Fidelity-Bankers Trust Company in 1929 and has since been renovated for use as office space. In 1984, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places for its architecture and its role in Knoxville's late-nineteenth century wholesaling industry.Cowan, McClung and Company was formed in 1858 by Knoxville merchants James H. Cowan, Perez Dickinson, and several members of the McClung family. During the years following the Civil War, the company became one of the most profitable in Tennessee as Knoxville's wholesaling market grew exponentially. The company erected its four-story headquarters on Gay Street's 500-block in 1871, and occupied the building until 1919. Another wholesale firm, Anderson-Dulin-Varnell, operated out of the building until 1929. The Fidelity-Bankers Trust Company occupied the building from 1929 until 1964.The Fidelity Building is currently the headquarters of the wholesale grocery company, H. T. Hackney. In May 2011, the company announced plans to open a grocery store on the building's ground floor.

The East Tennessee Community Design Center, founded in 1970, is an organization who offers design and planning assistance to communities and organizations throughout 16 counties of East Tennessee. The Community Design Center offers its services through the pro bono contributions of area architects, landscape architects, planners and other professionals. It is located in Knoxville, Tennessee and is registered as a nonprofit corporation chartered as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization under IRS regulations.

James White's Fort, also known as White's Fort, was an 18th-century fort and settlement that became Knoxville, Tennessee, in the United States. The settlement of White's Fort began in 1786 by James White, a militia officer during the American Revolutionary War. When William Blount, the territorial governor of the Southwest Territory, moved the territorial capital to White's Fort in 1791, he renamed it Knoxville in honor of Henry Knox, the American Revolutionary War general and President George Washington's secretary of war. The fort began as a cabin near what is now the corner of State Street and Clinch Avenue. This cabin soon became the center of a cluster of fortified log structures known as White's Fort. The original cabin later became the kitchen of the Kennedy house, which was built in the 1830s. In 1906, when the Kennedy house was demolished for development, Isaiah Ford bought the log structure and moved it to Woodlawn Pike. It was purchased again in 1960 by the City Association of Women's Clubs; in 1968, the timbers were reconstructed as part of the fort. The fort still stands on a bluff near its original location. Seven log cabins and the stockade fence remain. The cabins house pioneer artifacts and furnishings.

The General Building, also called the Tennessee General Building or the First Bank Building, is an office high rise located in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. Constructed in 1925, the 14-story building is the only high rise designed by Charles I. Barber, and has over the years housed the offices of dozens of banks, physicians, and various financial and architectural firms. The Lexington, Tennessee-based First Bank is the current anchor tenant. In 1988, the General Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its architecture and its role in Knoxville's commercial history.

Gay Street is a street in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, that traverses the heart of the city's downtown area. Since its development in the 1790s, Gay Street has served as the city's principal financial and commercial thoroughfare, and has played a primary role in the city's historical and cultural development. The street contains Knoxville's largest office buildings and oldest commercial structures. Several buildings on Gay Street have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Part of Charles McClung's original 1791 plat of Knoxville, Gay Street was a focal point for the early political activity of both the city as well as the State of Tennessee. By 1850, Gay Street was home to three-fourths of Knoxville's commercial activity, and in 1854, the street became Knoxville's first paved road. On the eve of the Civil War, Gay Street was the site of simultaneous Union and Confederate recruiting rallies. After the war, Gay Street saw extensive commercial development as railroad construction brought an industrial boom to Knoxville.Gay Street and events that took place on Gay Street have been mentioned in the works of James Agee, Cormac McCarthy, Mark Twain, and George Washington Harris. Cultural institutions established along Gay Street include the Lawson McGhee Library (1886), the Bijou Theatre (1909), the Riviera Theatre (1920), the Tennessee Theatre (1928), and the East Tennessee History Center (2004). The Knoxville Journal, Knoxville Whig, and Knoxville Register were all once headquartered on Gay Street, and radio stations WNOX and WROL both broadcast from Gay Street at various times during the 20th century.

The Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial is located at Market Square in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. It honors the women who campaigned for the state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to give women the right to vote. Tennessee was the final state to ratify the amendment and have it added to the Constitution, and thus was the focus of considerable effort both from local women and women who travelled from other states to assist them. The ratification vote was passed on August 18, 1920. The sculpture was commissioned by the Suffrage Coalition and designed and created by Alan LeQuire. It was unveiled on August 26, 2006, as part of a day of commemorations, which included a re-enactment of a suffrage march, with women in vintage clothes and replica sashes, and carrying replica banners. Martha Craig Daughtrey was the speaker at the unveiling; she was the first female judge on a Tennessee court of appeals and the first woman on the Tennessee Supreme Court.The bronze sculpture depicts three women who were leading campaigners for women's suffrage: Elizabeth Avery Meriwether of Memphis, Lizzie Crozier French of Knoxville, and Anne Dallas Dudley of Nashville. The base of the sculpture features text on the campaign and a number of quotations from the campaigners, including the following by Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch: "All honor to women, the first disenfranchised class in history who unaided by any political party, won enfranchisement by its own effort alone, and achieved the victory without the shedding of a drop of human blood."

The First Presbyterian Church Graveyard is the oldest graveyard in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Established in the 1790s, the graveyard contains the graves of some of Knoxville's most prominent early residents, including territorial governor and Constitutional Convention delegate William Blount and Knoxville founder James White. In 1996, the graveyard was added to the National Register of Historic Places. While platting Knoxville with his son-in-law, Charles McClung, in 1791, White ordered at least one lot to be set aside for a church and cemetery. The cemetery spot may have been used as early as the 1780s for burials, and the cemetery contained several graves by 1799, but the earliest marker is Blount's, dated 1800. While the First Presbyterian congregation was active in the 1790s, the first church was not built on the site until 1816. The graveyard was used for burials for nearly sixty years, its most active period being during the Epidemic of 1838, in which hundreds of Knoxvillians died from an unidentified illness.