Abode: Creative, unique, local homes - October 2016

OCT. 2016

creative, unique, local homes

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WELCOME

Photo by Denise Retallack

table of contents

Photo by David Fox

QUICK IDEAS

4 Locally Grown | Cool housewares and decor from Knoxville designers.

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Welcome to Our Abode!

Abode is a home living and design magazine unlike any other in Knoxville.

It celebrates the area’s most unique houses—whether they’re floating, tiny, or something else entirely.

6 Living Small | The tiny house movement is finally laying down some foundations in Knoxville. | BY THOMAS FRASER

HOUSE TOURS

8 Contemporary Vision | A Sequoyah Hills

midcentury marvel, the Jenkins House is Ben McMurry Jr.’s youthful masterpiece. | BY TRACY HAUN JONES

12 Past Future | In South Knoxville’s Little Got a cool house Knoxville needs to see? A fascinating preservation project?

New ideas for sustainable living? Drop us a line at editor@knoxmercury.com.

And if you happen to own a home design or real estate-related business that needs to reach our audience of discerning consumers, let’s talk!

For information about advertising in Abode, contact us at:

Switzerland, Alfred and Jane West Clauss’ prewar vision for modern living is being restored. | BY THOMAS FRASER

FOR SALE

16 Marble Palace | Inside Craiglen, architect

Charles Barber’s Italian villa in West Knoxville. | BY TRACY JONES

sales@knoxmercury.com or 865-313-2048.

Cover Photo by Denise Retallack Abode is a publication of the Knoxville Mercury ©2016 618 S. Gay St., Suite L2, Knoxville, Tenn. 37902 865-313-2059, knoxmercury.com

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OCT. 2016

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QUICK IDEAS

glass and wood

Locally Made Goods for Every Room Rustic Barnwood Headboard Brannon McCaleb’s ReBarn Custom Home Furnishings specializes in the recycling old wood into new creations for the home, from side tables to entertainment centers.

This made-to-order headboard uses reclaimed lumber from 50- to 100-year-old tobacco barns, grain bins, and fences.

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Artisan Lights South Knoxville’s Marble City Glassworks not only produces unique glass decor, but also offers classes to teach anyone the skills to create their own hot-glass creations.

Owner Matt Salley apprenticed with glass artist Richard Jolley, and the studio’s products reveal an artistic viewpoint.

BUY: etsy.com/shop/marblecityglassworks, plus Knoxville Soap Candle & Gifts, and the KMA gift store INFO: marblecityglassworks.com

New-Fashioned Water Carafe

Carved Dishes

The Pretentious Beer & Glass Company is the Old City’s secret family attraction, and owner Matthew Cummings is happy to explain how he makes his delightful glasses, such as this stylish “new-fashioned” carafe.

Knoxville woodworker Kellen Catani’s engineering background helps inform his stylish yet straightforward pieces, ranging from kitchen tools to home decor. He also displays a reverence for the wood itself, and does not use stains or veneers.

BUY: 133 S. Central St., 865-313-2111; etsy.com/shop/PretentiousBeerGlass

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OCT. 2016

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tiny houses

Living Small The tiny house movement is finally laying down some foundations in Knoxville

BY THOMAS FRASER

H

Matt Sterling shows off the 160-squarefoot tiny house he keeps stored at the Happy Holler Craftsmen Co-op off N. Central Street in Knoxville. Such houses can be built for as little as $20,000.

long-term mortgages. They’ve become popular enough that even manufactured housing giant Clayton Homes has unveiled plans for tiny houses.

“It’s an opportunity to do the right thing for the world, while making sense financially,” says Matt Sterling, a Maryville native who owns the artisan design/build firm Sterling Contracting. He cites Shafer as an inspiration and a resource.

Sterling is a member of the Happy Holler Craftsman Co-op on West Anderson Avenue, another local center for sustainability and a clearinghouse for information on tiny houses. He is a member of a craftsman co-op with five other members that operates out of what was once a derelict bar. He eventually wants to open the space— converted to a spacious, working shop—to the community and provide, for instance, carpentry lessons and sustainability workshops.

Outside sits a 160-square-foot tiny house he crafted himself from both raw and salvaged materials.

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Photos by Thomas Fraser

is house may be small—tiny, even—but David Bolt doesn’t like sitting around inside anyway. He’d rather be building a chicken coop or tending tomatoes or feeding the fish that provide nutrients for his aquaculture project. Or planning more tiny houses like his own.

“To me, the thought of buying a house and taking out a 30-year mortgage is hard to swallow,” Bolt says. He’s at what could be considered a sustainability compound of sorts: Sustainable Future, his company’s headquarters on Ogle Avenue, down from the famed South Knoxville restaurant King Tut’s Grill.

The airy, open, 2-acre site belies its urban setting and features solar arrays, a vegetable garden, temporarily empty chicken coops, a rainwater-collection system, and a huge workshop for constructing chicken houses and sprouting seedlings—and a demonstration model of a 288-square-foot tiny house.

Bolt made his money in the software industry before he started preaching the tenets of living closer to the Earth. He is just one local proponent of this minimalist approach to housing.

Tiny houses—typically, plumbed and wired stick-built dwellings of about 150 to 500 square feet, depending on whether they rest on wheels or permanent foundations—have gradually spread to East Tennessee in recent years; they were first widely promoted by a California man named Jay Shafer 18 years ago. The Facebook page for Shafer’s Four Lights Tiny House Company has nearly 60,000 likes, and he has published books singing the praises of such dwellings: They are relatively cheap, transportable, have a low carbon footprint, and can free people from traditional

salvaged materials, the houses can be built for as little as $20,000.

Sterling’s house—he doesn’t live there, but calls it “a really expensive business card”—is not as claustrophobic as one may imagine; nor is Bolt’s home. There is plenty of light, lofts for storage and sleeping, and a shower and composting toilet. Sterling’s house hasn’t been hooked to electricity or a water source, and isn’t fully kitted out yet, but there’s room to install a small stove and sink.

He built it after burning out on the traditional residential construction industry and taking a year off to tour cities where tiny houses have taken off, such as San Francisco and towns in Vermont. He built some of the homes in Huntsville, Ala., in cooperation with Foundations for Tomorrow, but they sit vacant because city codes don’t allow anybody—outside of mobile-home parks—to live on OCT. 2016

wheeled homes, he says.

“People get freaked out—it’s on a trailer and really small,” Sterling says. But tiny houses offer much better moisture control and insulation than a typical recreational vehicle or towed camper. Such city codes can be a hindrance, but the main roadblock is the need for a permanent foundation, which is required in Knoxville. Sterling says his next mission is moving toward a focus on permanent foundations.

Knoxville codes allow for tiny homes, with stipulations that include: • They must be at least 120 square feet for a single occupant, not including kitchen areas and bathrooms. For two occupants, they must be 220 square feet, and for three occupants—the maximum allowed— tiny houses must be 320 square feet.

• Tiny houses must have at least one habitable room of at least 120

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square feet.

• Ceiling heights must be at least 7 feet.

• The houses must have cooking and refrigeration equipment and a sink, all with frontal working clearance of 30 inches.

• There must be a hot and cold water supply and an approved method of sewage disposal.

• Stairways—needed to reach the lofts featured in most such homes—must be at least 35 inches wide, have risers of no more than 8 inches, and treads of at least 9 inches. Ladders are not allowed.

Bolt’s Sustainable Future is working on preliminary plans for a tiny-home development of about 3 acres near Western Avenue. The development would include two clusters of homes and preserve the remaining acreage as open space. It would be a communal development, of sorts, with community gardens.

Those features could be provided with expertise from the East Tennessee Permaculture Institute, a nonprofit that shares the Ogle Avenue site with the for-profit Sustainable Future.

“It’s all tied together,” Bolt says.

Jim Gray, an economist in the field of biodynamics, directs the institute, which he says is still in “an evolutionary process.” In addition to the poultry, hydroponic gardens,

SUSTAINABILITY

solar and rainwater collection demonstrations, the center plans a “food forest” that will provide edible berries and nuts.

“It’s an interesting experiment in both sustainable practice and building a community of like-minded people who can spread the word,” he says.

Bolt recently connected with Sterling and visited the Happy Holler Craftsman Co-op, referred to as “The Shop.”

For Sterling, the tiny-house movement represents potential for a massive lifestyle change that can unshackle and reorient people toward their true purposes, whatever those may be.

The houses and their accompanying concepts of living more lightly on the land “can free ourselves from the expense and burden of housing to pursue positive and creative endeavors, and do things you’re passionate about instead of working 60 hours a week,” Sterling says. n MORE INFO: East Tennessee Permaculture Research Institute etpri.org, 865-216-5495 Sterling Contracting Co.: sterlingcontractingcompany.com, 865-268-9557 Sustainable Future: sustainablefuture.biz, 865-603-0520 A BODE

Jim Gray (left), an economist and cofounder of the East Tennessee Permaculture Institute, discusses plans for the institute’s Ogle Avenue property in South Knoxville. David Bolt (right), owner of Sustainable Future, stands inside a 288-square-foot tiny house made by his company. Bolt also gestures toward a hydroponics system at the Permaculture Institute, which shares space with his company.

OCT. 2016

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HOUSE TOURS

modern

Contemporary Vision

A Sequoyah Hills midcentury marvel, the Jenkins House is Ben McMurry Jr.’s youthful masterpiece

BY TRACY JONES

E

Photos by David Fox

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very visionary architect should have a loyal patron.

Frank Lloyd Wright had the Kaufmanns, who commissioned iconic Falling Water in southwest Pennsylvania, where the home stands preserved as a modern masterpiece. In Knoxville, in 1954, Ben F. McMurry Jr. had Dr. Harry Jenkins. McMurry was only 28 when Jenkins asked him to design a contemporary home on one of the best lots on Cherokee Boulevard.

West Knoxville had never seen anything quite like it. In the mid-1950s, modernistic houses, as the style was called then, were locally few and far between. The International-style homes of renowned architects Alfred and Jane Clauss had been built in Holston Hills and off Chapman

OCT. 2016

Highway (see “Future Past,” page 12). But in Sequoyah Hills, the dramatic glass and steel and marble-façade masonry structure was a wonder—and the talk of the town.

Today, the “Jenkins House,” now home to University of Tennessee architecture professors Marleen and Tom Davis, is as contemporary and striking as it was when it was built.

“He hired a relatively young architect and trusted his vision,” says Marleen Davis about the relationship between Jenkins and McMurry. A popular physician, Jenkins was married to Varina Mayo Jenkins (of the seed company Mayos) and the family lived in a very different, Mediterranean-style home at the time. The Jenkins were Sequoyah Hills neighbors of Ben F. McMurry Sr., the architect’s father and a founding partner of the

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HOUSE TOURS

On the second floor, a wall of floor-toceiling glass spans the 50-foot-long, south-side great room, which faces Cherokee Boulevard and the Tennessee River across it.

architectural firm Barber and McMurry.

The 7,500-square-foot residence was a chance for the younger McMurry to shine.

“The home used a lot of contemporary-design thinking,” Davis says.

Specifically, the architect excelled at the modern tenet of “bringing the outside in,” both through site-specific exposures and in the choice of materials. In the second story’s 50-foot-long, south-side great room, which faces Cherokee Boulevard and the Tennessee River across it, a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass is supported by dramatically exposed black steel beams from the exterior ground floor.

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The glass front allows a constant play of natural light throughout the room; in the corridor that leads to bedrooms and baths, an interior skylight brings more rays into the home.

The home’s exterior masonry sports a façade of pink marble— East Tennessee’s own natural jewel—quarried locally and cut at nearby Marble City. In the second-story entrance, a pink marble retaining wall creates a natural path toward the great room. Originally, the outside-in concept was carried even further by a party deck off of the great room, although before the Davises bought the home, previous owners had converted this into a cozy TV room/den.

The kitchen, state of the art for its time, has also been redone, and the Davises redid the large master bath. The main guest bath still has the art deco-influenced gray and

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yellow geometric tile original to the home. The off-bedroom bath created for the Jenkins’ daughter, Carol Mayo Jenkins (an actress who is now a theater professor at UT), had pink marble and pink fixtures throughout. Like the marble, the glass, tile, and wood paneling in the home all came from local vendors.

Jenkins seems to have given McMurry his head in the way of “gadgets” for the residence. Along the southern wall of glass, there is an exposed steel catwalk between the glass and the beams. A built-in pipe-system window-washing apparatus was fashioned during construction to keep the view breathtaking.

The great-room ceiling boasts recessed lights on dimmers. Although now quite common, “that was very innovative for its time,” Davis says. The home had central air conditioning, also something of a novelty, and a built-in hi-fi and intercom system, although the sound system hasn’t been used in years. Davis says Carol Jenkins told her there was once a dumbwaiter between the basement rec area and upstairs kitchen, walled off after the family cat took too many trips upstairs-downstairs.

The downstairs, originally a rec room, is covered in terrazzo marble, as is the second-story outside entrance. The downstairs has sliding doors that open onto a patio area and lawn; the Jenkins hosted numerous parties for their friends and their daughter’s friends. The Davises mostly use the downstairs as a workroom/study, entertaining in the upper great room. There’s no bad spot for a gathering.

“The house is great for bringing people together,” Davis says.

She and her husband, who are the parents of two now-grown sons, weren’t sure what they were looking for when they relocated to Knoxville in 1994. They liked the convenience and neighborhood feel of Sequoyah Hills and, as design professionals, didn’t want something blah. This home had been on the market for a while, and the listing agent wasn’t sure whether it would sell to someone

HOUSE TOURS

who would appreciate the house for its architectural significance or whether it was going to become a tear-down for a McMansion lot. Their decision to buy was immediate.

Marleen Davis, who recently ran for City Council, is enamored with the history of the house. On one wall, along with an intriguing collection of maps of Knoxville and other cities, is the framed award McMurry won for the home, when the architect was recognized for his accomplishments by the Gulf States Regional Conference, American A BODE

Institute of Architects, 1958. Seeking out a preservation designation or landmark status for the home is on her to-do list.

Although McMurry became the president of Barber and McMurry (now BarberMcMurry) and was responsible for many fine structures, none of his other works were quite as daring or statement-making as the Jenkins House. But aside from the design merits of the home, the things that make it special to Marleen Davis and her family are more subtle pleasures: the view to the river and OCT. 2016

Current owners the Davises mostly use the downstairs as a workroom/study, entertaining in the upper great room.

There’s no bad spot for a gathering.

“The house is great for bringing people together,” Marleen Davis says.

bluffs beyond Cherokee Boulevard, and the lively street itself, as well as the artful play of natural light through the home throughout the day. For 61 years, it’s been a happy place, and it feels that way.

“It’s a beautiful house and a joy to live in,” she says. n

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Photo by David Fox

The Jenkins House: An Architect’s View

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n the most important lecture of a still-young career, the Oak Park-based architect Frank Lloyd Wright argued that only by using the means of the Industrial Revolution could the new cultures emerging in places like Chicago, London, and Vienna find a way forward to an architecture fitting for one’s time and place.

In sharp contrast to the English Arts and Crafts Movement, Wright proffered that it was possible to reconcile mechanization and handcraft. Further, through this marriage, architecture would “rise again” as a new art form with “A SOUL.” The time was March 1901 and the place was Jane Addams’ and Ellen Gate’s Starr’s Hull House in Chicago, part of the international Settlement House Movement—and all of which were inventions of the Industrial Revolution.

The Dr. and Mrs. Harry Jenkins House (1955) designed by the local firm Barber and McMurry, Architects, while far from Wrightian in appearance, is grounded in

BY GEORGE DODDS what were these same revolutionary and provocative principles. Sited prominently two-thirds up a south-facing slope overlooking the Tennessee River on Cherokee Boulevard, its 7,500 square feet of stone, steel, and concrete continue to challenge many of its neighbors’ preconceptions of domesticity and domestic architecture.

Ben McMurry Jr., the project’s chief designer and a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, screened the view of the river and the intervening landscape with a phalanx of elegantly proportioned matteblack steel columns and beams that extend well beyond a solid masonry base faced in local pink Tennessee marble. On the river side, an open steel catwalk connects the slender columns, which continue inside the second-floor main living space, to the main body of the building.

This provides utility access to the exterior facade along with lateral support to the columns, further permitting them to register a thin,

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elegant profile. The main entrance is from the north-facing rear, adjacent to a carpark carved out of the base of the main mass.

Sharing some tectonic and formal similarities to Philip Johnson’s Wiley House in New Haven, Conn. (1953), the Jenkins House is superior in several ways, not the least of which is the quality of its detailing, second only to the exactitude of its construction. The former is a result of a team of highly skilled Barber and McMurry architects and draftsmen headed by David West Barber. Inside and outside, seamless steel welds join column to beam. The 800-square-foot combination living/dining room dominates interior and exterior alike. Floor-to-ceiling sheets of rolled glass along the south façade afford an unobstructed sweeping view of the river valley and bluffs.

The Jenkins House stands as a signpost of a considerable body of fine modern houses in Eastern Tennessee, virtually unknown to architects and historians outside

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the region. While most are postwar, some, such as the work of Alfred and Jane West Clauss, predate American’s entry into World War II. Whether this is a house with “A SOUL” is beyond the scope of this article. That it meticulously demonstrates Wright’s argument that the machine can be an extension of the hand is clear.

Moreover, it stands as a ready sentinel reminding East Tennesseans of just how forward-looking was this place more than half a century ago and how many fine reminders remain of the kind of future Wright envisioned in 1901—and so many once dreamed of locally, in our own recent past.

George Dodds is a professor at the College of Architecture + Design at the University of Tennessee. He has been teaching and publishing commentaries on the practice and history of architecture, urbanism, and landscape architecture for over 30 years. A portion of this article was previously published in The Oxford American.

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HOUSE TOURS

modern

In South Knoxville’s Little Switzerland, Alfred and Jane West Clauss’ prewar vision for modern living is being restored

PastFuture

BY THOMAS FRASER

O Photos by Denise Retallack.

n a ridge above Ye Olde Steak House, off Chapman Highway in South Knoxville, you can travel to the past and get a glimpse of what was once the future.

Up a curving road flanked by old hardwood forest, past comparatively mundane homes, is Little Switzerland, a 20-acre deed-restricted community marked by the modernist architecture of Alfred Clauss and his wife, Jane West Clauss.

The houses—featuring straight lines, passive lighting, integration

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OCT. 2016

into the natural landscape, and a minimalist feel—were built by the Clausses as part of a speculative development during his employment as an architect with the Tennessee Valley Authority, beginning in 1938.

It is the vision of what Alfred Clauss, a native of Munich, Germany, who had previously worked in the studio of Mies van der Rohe, thought a subdivision should look like in prewar America.

“This is very progressive work,” even by today’s standards, says architect John Sanders, whose renovation of a Clauss home,

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previously occupied only by the Seymour and Tanner families, earned an award from Knox Heritage last year. The project also received a juried design award from the East Tennessee chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

The house—now inhabited by Sanders, the owner of Sanders Pace Architecture, and his girlfriend, Gina Lisenby—boasts a fine view of the Smokies through a large picture window that allows for natural lighting.

Its interior is sleek and has a modern European feel. There is no crown or cornice trim; white-oak floors and wood paneling reflect the light; and everything in the home seems to have its place, often via recessed and concealed closets and shelving. These are among the first International-style, split-foyer homes

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in the U.S. “All these houses embody that,” says Sanders, whose renovation work was in line with the deed restrictions and covenants still attached to the nearly 80-year-old houses and their 20 acres of property.

The covenants dictate “no dwelling shall be erected on any lot unless the design be of the so-called ‘modern architecture,’ as distinguished from and contrasted with the so-called ‘traditional architecture’ as exemplified by an English, Georgian, Grecian, and other types.”

Clauss feels like a “ghost to me,” Sanders says, and he believes his interior renovations were in keeping with the modernist philosophy of the architect. Clauss anticipated technological advances that would necessitate interior changes, Sanders A BODE

The Seymour-Tanner House is among the first International-style, split-foyer homes in the U.S., and was heralded in a 1940 News Sentinel article. The neighborhood’s covenants dictate “no dwelling shall be erected on any lot unless the design be of the so-called ‘modern architecture.’”

OCT. 2016

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HOUSE TOURS

The home’s European-style interior is sleek, with no crown or cornice trim; white-oak floors and wood paneling reflect the light; and everything in the home seems to have its place. It also boasts a fine view of the Smokies through a large picture window that allows for natural lighting.

says as a Roomba robot vacuum kicks on in a nearby room.

Sanders describes the designs of Clauss as “the antithesis of colonial architecture.” He is still trying to extract the visions of the German architect and his wife, who designed two other modernist homes in the area, in West Hills and Holston Hills, before moving to Philadelphia.

“I’m trying to get the stories out of them before the stories go away,” he says. Sanders has acquired six lots and two houses out of the seven A BODE

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lots and five homes that are part of the Little Switzerland development.

“Not only am I carrying the tradition of the original architecture, but also the people who lived here prior,” he says of Nancy and James Tanner, the ornithologists who lived here for decades before their deaths. The large poplar and walnuts that shade the house and provide habitat were left alone, and, in keeping with Clausses, the connection to the outdoor space is celebrated beyond the thick terra-cotta block walls. The house is still fronted by an ancient, perhaps original hedgerow.

Sanders bought the house on Dec. 31, 2013, and it “more or less became a full renovation,” he says, though he only made two floor-plan modifications. He had to discern which features of the house had been modified and what was

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original work. The children of the Tanners and photos provided by neighbors helped him decipher that.

The AIA deemed the project a “sensitive and careful upgrade to an important building—a pragmatic and low-tech approach on the exterior, and restraint in detail and materiality on the inside pay off in a convincing way as they balance the need for restoration and modern living needs. Staircase and bathroom treatment deserve special mention. Very glad this house was cared for in this way, it’s good for another 50 years. Thank you.”

The 1,600-square-foot home was marketed as a four-bedroom house, but it is now a two-bedroom dwelling. The sleek, subtle functionality remains apparent as one descends the stairs into the kitchen.

It is like dropping into another main level, spartan and efficient.

Sanders, a 1997 graduate of the University of Tennessee architecture school, now has his sights set on renovating and restoring another Clauss-designed home—the Clausses’ second home across the street.

Some of the original homes have strayed from the vision of Clauss, and Sanders knows he has a challenge ahead in his next project on the ridge. The redwood home he acquired is but a shell of the sleek modernist style of his house, and will require—among other things—a more in-depth window restoration.

He demonstrates the slide mechanism on one of the original windows, which, again, feature fantastic views of the Smokies and the foothills. A screw falls out of the window frame, suggesting the challenges ahead, but he remains undaunted.

“There are some things that need to be celebrated,” Sanders says.

He believes the ghost would approve. n The 1,600-square-foot home was marketed as a four-bedroom house, but it is now a two-bedroom dwelling. The sleek, subtle functionality remains apparent as one descends the stairs into the kitchen. It is like dropping into another main level, spartan and efficient.

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FOR SALE

West Knoxville

Marble Palace Inside Craiglen, architect Charles Barber’s Italian villa in West Knoxville

BY TRACY JONES

C

harles Barber was used to lavish requests. By the mid-1920s, the founding partner of Barber and McMurry had designed several over-the-top residences for Knoxville’s industrial barons. Craiglen (1043 Craigland Court) was something completely different. Candoro Marble Company owner John Craig wanted more than a mansion from Barber. He wanted a whole Italian villa, tucked away into the forests of what is now suburban Westland Drive.

Nothing like it in Knoxville had been built before, and it would be practically impossible to recreate today. The 5,373-square-foot home features two wings extended around a central courtyard in the front, with terraces overlooking formal grounds in the back. Exterior stucco covers walls of 14-inch concrete, all of it sitting under a red clay tile roof.

Inside, Barber and Craig modeled the interior layout and details after Italy’s 14th-century Palazzo Davan-

Photos by Matthews Smith

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FOR SALE

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zati, today a major tourist attraction in Florence.

The Italian connection sounds like a reach for the wilds of West Knoxville, but there was logic behind it. Barber had built the showroom for Craig’s Candoro Marble, in South Knoxville, where he spotlighted the famous East Tennessee pink marble that Craig’s firm quarried and cut, plus all of the incredible Italian, Greek, and other marbles that the firm imported. The home would be just as much of a showcase. From the courtyard entrance to the graciously appointed interior and beyond, Craiglen features more than 40 different kinds of marble.

Throughout the home are touches that show master artisans at work. Inside the living room, masons constructed a fireplace with a stone hearth that features the crest of the Davizzi family, the owners of the medieval palace.

Custom walnut bookshelves and cabinetry nestle under what look like beams of weathered wood but are actually painted concrete. The beams were hand-painted by Hugh Tyler, an artist who worked often for Barber and is now maybe more famously known as the uncle of author James Agee. Tyler is also responsible for a celestial mural above the dramatic two-story entry.

On the main level of the house, the living room connects to the walnut-veneered dining room through a vaulted loggia with Palladian doors that open to the southern courtyard and the north-facing terrace. Light pours through this happy space. The downstairs also features the kitchen, where the original wooden cabinets flank state-of-the-art appliances (recent additions to the home). There is also a breakfast nook and an ample butler’s pantry; the current owner has a kitchen herb garden tucked off the mudroom and kitchen entrance.

The home’s five bedrooms are on the second level (some converted to use as reading rooms or dens).

Many feature fireplaces, and almost all of them have deep and/or walk-in A BODE

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closets, unusual even in Barber homes at the time. The attendant bathrooms are like mini-marble showrooms, particularly the master bath, where dramatic sheets of white-and-black stone have been perfectly matched, vein to vein. The bed and baths ring a sunny gallery that overlooks the courtyard. The home also features a large basement, with access to the lower lawn.

On the spacious property, the owners have also built a detached three-car garage.

Barber commissioned famed landscape architect Charles Lester to design the formal Italian gardens, and the current owners commissioned their own update and restoration when they bought the home in the 1990s. The current owners are only the third. Between them and the Craig family was the developer who bought the home in the early 1970s to tear it down and build a subdivision. Instead, he divided much of the land around him into lots but kept Craiglen for his family

FOR SALE

for almost another 20 years.

Walking through the palatial home, enjoying its two-acre grounds, you would never question anyone for falling under its spell. ■ CONTACT: Barbara Apking, CRS, GRI Coldwell Banker Wallace & Wallace, Realtors, 865-250-5522 bapking@coldwellbanker.com

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Like nothing you’ve ever seen!

4861 Kingston Pike (865) 588-3088 Monday-Saturday 10-5:30

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Your Downtown Experience Begins Here

300 Gay St.

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Unit 302 Sold for $435,000 $338 / sq. ft.

129 S. Gay St. The Holston

Unit 1402 Sold for $1,445,000 $422 / sq. ft.

Call today for an appointment!

MELINDA GRIMAC | Affiliate Broker | o. 865.357.3232 | c. 865-356-4178 Melinda.Grimac@SothebysRealty.com | melindagrimac.alliancesothebysrealty.com Each office is independently owned and operated

Unit 301 Sold for $730,000 $326 / sq. ft.

Selling?? I will market your property here!

Considering Buying or Selling a Downtown property? Call Melinda Grimac today for a personal property evaluation.