Fidelity Building (Knoxville)

Last updated
Cowan, McClung and Company Building

Fidelity-building-knoxville-tn1.jpg

Gay Street facade
Location 500–504 Gay St.
Knoxville, Tennessee
Coordinates 35°57′55″N83°55′5″W / 35.96528°N 83.91806°W / 35.96528; -83.91806 Coordinates: 35°57′55″N83°55′5″W / 35.96528°N 83.91806°W / 35.96528; -83.91806
Area less than one acre [1]
Built 1871, remodeled 1929 [1]
Architectural style Second Renaissance Revival
NRHP reference # 84003566
Added to NRHP July 12, 1984

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 was home to Fidelity-Bankers Trust Company during the mid-twentieth century, 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. [1]

Knoxville, Tennessee City in Tennessee, United States

Knoxville is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Knox County. The city had an estimated population of 186,239 in 2016 and a population of 178,874 as of the 2010 census, making it the state's third largest city after Nashville and Memphis. Knoxville is the principal city of the Knoxville Metropolitan Statistical Area, which, in 2016, was 868,546, up 0.9 percent, or 7,377 people, from to 2015. The KMSA is, in turn, the central component of the Knoxville-Sevierville-La Follette Combined Statistical Area, which, in 2013, had a population of 1,096,961.

National Register of Historic Places federal list of historic sites in the United States

The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance. A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred preserving the property.

Contents

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. [1]

American Civil War Civil war in the United States from 1861 to 1865

The American Civil War was a war fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865, between the North and the South. The Civil War is the most studied and written about episode in U.S. history. Primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people, war broke out in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina shortly after Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated as the President of the United States. The loyalists of the Union in the North proclaimed support for the Constitution. They faced secessionists of the Confederate States in the South, who advocated for states' rights to uphold slavery.

Gay Street (Knoxville) Historical and famous street in Knoxville, Tennessee

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.

The Fidelity Building is currently the headquarters of the wholesale grocery company, H. T. Hackney. [2] In May 2011, the company announced plans to open a grocery store on the building's ground floor. [2]

Design

The Fidelity Building interior Fidelity-building-interior-tn1.jpg
The Fidelity Building interior

The Fidelity Building is a four-story, three-bay brick building originally constructed in 1871, and extensively remodeled in 1929. The building was originally designed in an Italianate style, and contained a central pediment and balustrade, and storefronts flanked by Corinthian columns. In 1929, the architectural firm Baumann and Baumann remodeled the building, and the pediment, balustrade, and exterior Corinthian columns were removed. [1]

Bay (architecture) space defined by the vertical piers, in a building

In architecture, a bay is the space between architectural elements, or a recess or compartment. Bay comes from Old French baee, meaning an opening or hole.

Italianate architecture 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture

The Italianate style of architecture was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture.

Pediment element in classical, neoclassical and baroque architecture

A pediment is an architectural element found particularly in classical, neoclassical and baroque architecture, and its derivatives, consisting of a gable, usually of a triangular shape, placed above the horizontal structure of the entablature, typically supported by columns. The tympanum, the triangular area within the pediment, is often decorated with relief sculpture.

The building's first-story Gay Street facade, which reflects the 1929 remodeling, consists of an ashlar veneer, with a recessed entrance topped by an eagle-and-garland frieze. The rear of the building is largely unaltered from its 1871 design, the exception being a one-story addition added in the early 1980s. The building's interior, which also reflects the 1929 remodeling, includes a central hall with gray marble walls and floors, and square Corinthian columns. [1]

Ashlar Finely dressed stone and associated masonry

Ashlar is finely dressed stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared or the structure built of it. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally cuboid, mentioned by Vitruvius as opus isodomum, or less frequently trapezoidal. Precisely cut "on all faces adjacent to those of other stones", ashlar is capable of very thin joints between blocks, and the visible face of the stone may be quarry-faced or feature a variety of treatments: tooled, smoothly polished or rendered with another material for decorative effect.

Frieze wide central section part of an entablature

In architecture the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon the architrave and is capped by the moldings of the cornice. A frieze can be found on many Greek and Roman buildings, the Parthenon Frieze being the most famous, and perhaps the most elaborate. This style is typical for the Persians.

History

Cowan, McClung and Company

1875 ad for Cowan, McClung & Company in the Knoxville Chronicle, with the Fidelity Building pictured on the left Cowan, McClung and Company ad 1875.png
1875 ad for Cowan, McClung & Company in the Knoxville Chronicle, with the Fidelity Building pictured on the left

Cowan, McClung and Company was formed in 1858 by the merger of two Knoxville wholesalers– Cowan and Dickinson, operated by James Cowan (1801–1871) and Perez Dickinson (1813–1901), and McClung, Wallace and Company, operated by the McClung family. [1] [3] Cowan was a nephew of Nathaniel and Samuel Cowan, who had opened Knoxville's first general store in 1792, [4] and was a stepson of Thomas Humes, who had established the Lamar House Hotel in 1816. In 1820, Cowan opened his first store, located at the corner of Gay and Main, using money he had borrowed from his mother. [3]

In 1832, Cowan formed a partnership with Dickinson, a Massachusetts-born professor who had moved to Knoxville several years earlier to teach at East Tennessee University. [3] Cowan and Dickinson built a larger, two-story store, [3] and in subsequent years, the corner of Gay and Main became known as "Dickinson's Corner." [5] The McClung family, descendants of Knoxville surveyor Charles McClung, had been active in Knoxville's wholesale trade since 1816, and by 1850, the family controlled two major Knoxville wholesaling firms, C. M. McClung and Company and McClung, Wallace and Company. [1]

As the nexus of the relatively isolated farming communities of East Tennessee and the great manufacturing centers of the eastern United States, Knoxville grew into a wholesaling mecca in the years following the Civil War. By 1866, Cowan, McClung and Company, the state's leading wholesaler, was generating more tax revenue than other firm in the state. [3] The following year, Cowan and two of his McClung partners reported three of the five highest personal incomes in Knox County. [6] The company built its new four-story warehouse and store at the corner of Union and Gay in 1871, and within three years, the company was earning $2 million annually. [3]

Later history

Cowan, McClung and Company closed in 1919, and another wholesaler, Anderson-Dulin-Varnell, moved into the building at the corner of Union and Gay. During the 1920s, Anderson-Dulin-Varnell, which operated the nearby Miller's Department Store, was one of Knoxville most successful retailers. [1] In 1929, the Fidelity-Bankers Trust Company, one of Knoxville's leading financial institutions, became the building's third occupant. Fidelity operated out of the building until 1964, when it merged with Tennessee Valley Bank and moved to a new building on Market Street. [1] [6]

The Fidelity Building is currently the headquarters of the H.T. Hackney Company, which bills itself as one of the nation's largest wholesale grocery distributors. [2] [7] The company has operated a small convenience store in the lower south section of the building for several years. In May 2011, the company announced plans to expand the convenience store into a full-scale grocery, in partnership with Maryville-based retailer, The Market. [2] Since 2006, the University of Tennessee's Knoxville Downtown Studio has operated out of the northern half of the building's first floor. [8]

See also

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Nissa Dahlin Brown, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for Cowan, McClung and Company Building, May 1984.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Bill Brewer, H.T. Hackney Plans Gay St. Grocery, Knoxnews.com, 27 May 2011. Retrieved: 28 May 2011.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 East Tennessee Historical Society, Mary Rothrock (ed.), The French Broad-Holston Country: A History of Knox County, Tennessee (Knoxville, Tenn.: The Society, 1972), pp. 221-222, 402, 411.
  4. ↑ John Wooldridge, George Mellen, William Rule (ed.), Standard History of Knoxville, Tennessee (General Books, 2009), p. 144.
  5. ↑ Ellen Renshaw House, Daniel Sutherland (ed.), A Very Violent Rebel: The Civil War Diary of Ellen Renshaw House (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1996), p. 220.
  6. 1 2 East Tennessee Historical Society, Lucile Deaderick (ed.), Heart of the Valley: A History of Knoxville, Tennessee (Knoxville, Tenn.: East Tennessee Historical Society, 1976), pp. 34, 377.
  7. ↑ The H.T. Hackney Company - Introduction. Retrieved: 28 May 2011.
  8. ↑ Roger Harris, "Downtown Becomes Urban Classroom," Knoxville News Sentinel, 5 January 2006. Retrieved: 25 August 2011.
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