The General Building, also called the Tennessee General Building or the First Bank Building, is an office high-rise located in downtown
Knoxville, Tennessee
Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state' ...
, United States. 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
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 or "great artistic ...
for its architecture and its role in Knoxville's commercial history.
Design
![General-building-facade-tn1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/General-building-facade-tn1.jpg)
The General Building is a 14-story "L-shaped" building rising on the northwest corner of Church Avenue and Market Street. By 1958, a four-story annex had been added to the rear of the building, giving the first four stories a square shape, rather than an L-shape. The first three stories of the Church and Market facades are covered with a rusticated limestone veneer. All four corners are delineated by concrete
quoins along the entire height of the building, and the roof is decorated with a
terra cotta
Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous.
In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...
cornice.
The elevator
penthouse atop the building typically bears the name of the anchor tenant (currently First Bank).
The main facade, facing Market Street, consists of three arched openings, with the north opening leading to the general lobby, the south leading to the bank lobby, and the middle opening containing a window. The bank lobby is the most elaborate interior room, consisting of arched ceilings and a second-story
mezzanine with a
balustrade. The general lobby contains marble floors and bronze-plated elevator doors. Much of the building's interior was extensively remodeled in the early 1970s.
The General Building is situated near the heart of the Knoxville's Central Business District.
Gay Street lies one block to the east,
Market Square lies two blocks to the north, and the courthouse and other municipal buildings lie just over a block to the south. The cluster of buildings across the street to the south were listed on the National Register as the
South Market Historic District in 1996.
History
The General Building stands on a lot that lies just outside
Charles McClung
Charles McClung (May 13, 1761 – August 9, 1835) was an American pioneer, politician, and surveyor best known for drawing up the original plat of Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1791. While Knoxville has since expanded to many times its original s ...
's original 1791
plat
In the United States, a plat ( or ) (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Surveys to show the distance and bea ...
of Knoxville, although the lot had been incorporated into the city by 1795. During the 19th century, the sanctuary of Knoxville's Methodist Church, South, congregation occupied the lot next to the building (the congregation, now the Church Street United Methodist Episcopal Church, moved to
its new sanctuary on Henley Street after the old church was destroyed by a fire in 1928).
[Henry Wellge]
Knoxville, Tenn.: County Seat of Knox County, 1886
(Milwaukee: Norris, Wellge and Company, 1886). Map. By the early 1900s, the lot on which the General Building would be built was known as "Old Rambo Corner."
In late 1924, several investors formed General Building, Inc., with the intention of addressing the need for a "modern office building" in Knoxville. One investor, A. P. Brown, investigated several sites in the downtown area, but failed to find a site that could be acquired for a reasonable price. In 1925, the real estate firm Alex McMillan Company agreed to sell Old Rambo Corner at a bargain price in return for a 25-year lease on a portion of the proposed building's first floor. The building, designed by Charles I. Barber of the firm
Barber & McMurry and constructed by Worsham Brothers, Inc., was completed in 1925.
Along with Alex McMillan, early occupants included Barber & McMurry, who operated out of the building until 1934, and prominent Knoxville physician Herbert Acuff, who had offices in the building until 1931.
Anchor tenants through the years have included Third National Bank, the Bank of Knoxville,
and BankFirst.
BB&T
BB&T Corporation (previously known as the Branch Banking and Trust Company) was one of the largest banking and financial services firms in the United States, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 2019, BB&T announced its intentions to merge ...
was the General Building's anchor tenant from the late 1990s until 2003, when it moved to the larger Riverview Tower on Gay Street.
["BB&T to Move to Riverview," Knoxville ''News-Sentinel'', 8 March 2003.]
Current tenants
The General Building contains roughly of office space.
Along with its anchor tenant, First Bank, the building houses offices for Clayton Bank and Trust, the Legacy Parks Foundation, the Cornerstone Foundation of Knoxville, the Chapman Family Foundation, and the HealthCare 21 Business Coalition. The building also houses offices for numerous financial specialists and real estate agents.
See also
*
The Holston
The Holston is a condominium high-rise located at 531 South Gay Street in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Completed in 1913 as the headquarters for the Holston National Bank, the fourteen-story building was the tallest in Knoxville until t ...
*
Andrew Johnson Building
The Andrew Johnson Building is a high-rise building in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Completed in 1929 as the Andrew Johnson Hotel, at , it was Knoxville's tallest building for nearly a half-century.Ronald Childress, National Regi ...
*
Mechanics' Bank and Trust Company Building
*
Medical Arts Building
References
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External links
Tennessee General Building, 1920s— early photograph of the General Building, on file at the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection
Tennessee General Building - Bank lobby— early photograph on file at the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection
General Building - Bank lobby mezzanine— early photograph on file at the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection
General Building - Bank lobby and furniture— early photograph on file at the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection
Office buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee
Skyscrapers in Knoxville, Tennessee
Buildings and structures completed in 1925
National Register of Historic Places in Knoxville, Tennessee
Skyscraper office buildings in Tennessee