Sequoyah Hills is a

neighborhood A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neigh ...

Knoxville, Tennessee Knoxville is a city in Knox County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. It is located on the Tennessee River and had a population of 190,740 at the 2020 United States census. It is the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division ...

, United States, named for the

Cherokee The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...

scholar

Sequoyah Sequoyah ( ; , , or , , ; 1770 – August 1843), also known as George Gist or George Guess, was a Native American polymath and Constructed script, neographer of the Cherokee Nation. In 1821, Sequoyah completed his Cherokee syllabary, enabl ...

.History of Kingston Pike/Sequoyah Hills
Retrieved: 20 December 2010. It is located off

Kingston Pike Kingston Pike is a highway in Knox County, Tennessee, United States, that connects Downtown Knoxville with West Knoxville, Farragut, and other communities in the western part of the county. The road follows a merged stretch of U.S. Route&nb ...

, between the city's

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...

and

West Knoxville West Knoxville is a section of Knoxville, Tennessee, US. It is west of the city's Downtown Knoxville, downtown area. It stretches from Sequoyah Hills, Tennessee, Sequoyah Hills on the east to the city's border with Farragut, Tennessee, Farragut on ...

. Initially developed in the 1920s, Sequoyah Hills was one of Knoxville's first suburbs and today is home to some of the city's most affluent residents. The neighborhood contains numerous notable examples of mid-20th century residential architecture, with houses designed by architects such as

Charles I. Barber Charles Ives Barber (October 25, 1887June 14, 1962) was an American architect, active primarily in Knoxville, Tennessee, and vicinity, during the first half of the 20th century. He was cofounder of the firm, Barber & McMurry, through which he de ...

, Benjamin McMurry, and

Francis Keally Francis J. Keally (December 3, 1889 – 1978) was an American architect and pioneering preservationist, based in New York City. Keally's design credits include the Oregon State Capitol in Salem, Oregon in 1938, in a one-time association with Tr ...

. Originally an agricultural area called Looney's Bend, the modern Sequoyah Hills neighborhood is largely rooted in the development efforts of 1920s-era visionary entrepreneurs E. V. Ferrell, who developed the Scenic Drive area, and Robert L. Foust, who established the "Talahi" subdivision in the vicinity of Cherokee Boulevard and Talahi Drive. Foust and Ferrell advertised their respective developments as utopian getaways where Knoxville's elite could escape the ills of congested city life. While the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

led to the financial collapse of the Talahi project and Foust's subsequent suicide, Sequoyah Hills nevertheless continued to develop over the years as Foust had envisioned. Cherokee Boulevard was home to Knoxville's first Dogwood Arts Trail, which was established in 1955. In 1979, the Talahi Improvements, which consist of several early landscape elements from Foust's Talahi development, were listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

Location

Sequoyah Hills is located on a

peninsula A peninsula is a landform that extends from a mainland and is only connected to land on one side. Peninsulas exist on each continent. The largest peninsula in the world is the Arabian Peninsula. Etymology The word ''peninsula'' derives , . T ...

created by a bend of the

Tennessee River The Tennessee River is a long river located in the Southern United States, southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. Flowing through the states of Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, it begins at the confluence of Fren ...

known as Looney's Bend. The neighborhood is bounded by the river on the east, south, and west, and by

( US-70/ US-11) on the north, though the Kingston Pike/Sequoyah Hills Neighborhood Association includes several streets just north of Kingston Pike. The area is generally hilly, with a 10 to 15-foot bluff rising above the rivershore along most of the neighborhood's southern edge. From the edge of the bluff, the land gradually slopes upward, reaching approximately above the river, affording houses along the upper slopes sweeping views of the river and Knoxville in the distance. Sequoyah Park, which occupies most of the south side of the neighborhood, lies in the floodplain between the rivershore and base of the bluff. Cherokee Boulevard, a

boulevard A boulevard is a type of broad avenue planted with rows of trees, or in parts of North America, any urban highway or wide road in a commercial district. In Europe, boulevards were originally circumferential roads following the line of former ...

with a grassy median dividing the right and left lanes, runs in a U-shape around the edge of the peninsula. The other main road, Scenic Drive/Southgate Road, runs roughly north-to-south across the center of the peninsula. A small commercial center, known as Council Point, is concentrated around the intersection of Kenesaw and Keowee avenues.

History

Early history

What is now Sequoyah Hills was inhabited by Native Americans as early as the

Late Woodland period In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BC to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some arch ...

(c. 500–1100 A.D.), as indicated by a 1,000-year-old

Indian mound Many pre-Columbian cultures in North America were collectively termed "Mound Builders", but the term has no formal meaning. It does not refer to specific people or archaeological culture but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks that in ...

that rises in the median of Cherokee Boulevard.Knoxville-Knox County Metropolitan Planning Commission
West Sector Plan - Historical Development and Historical Resources
9 August 2007. Retrieved: 20 December 2010. By the 18th century, the area was under control of the

, whose Overhill towns lay along the

Little Tennessee River The Little Tennessee River (known locally as the Little T) is a tributary of the Tennessee River that flows through the Blue Ridge Mountains from Georgia, into North Carolina, and then into Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. It dra ...

to the southwest. The neighborhood's namesake,

, was born in the Overhill town of Tuskegee around 1767. In 1796, Moses Looney, who had served in various capacities with the failed

State of Franklin The State of Franklin (also the Free Republic of Franklin, Lost State of Franklin, or the State of Frankland) was an unrecognized proposed U.S. state, state located in present-day East Tennessee, in the United States. Franklin was created in ...

during the 1780s, acquired a tract of land in what is now Sequoyah Hills. He and his descendants remained on the land for several decades, and the area became known as "Looney's Bend." Other early landowners in the Sequoyah Hills area included future Knoxville mayor James Park, who purchased a tract in 1804; William Lyon, who built a house and mill near the modern intersection of Lyon's View Pike and Northshore Drive around 1810; and Drury Armstrong (builder of

Crescent Bend Crescent Bend is a historic home at 2728 Kingston Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee. The building is known as ''Crescent Bend'' because of its location on a meander, bend of the Tennessee River. It is also known as the Armstrong-Lockett House, Longvi ...

), who acquired a large tract of land west of modern Scenic Drive in 1846. The oldest house still extant in Sequoyah Hills, which currently stands at 715 Scenic Drive, was originally built in the 1850s as a tenant house on the farm of Allen Johnson. Around 1814 George White, son-in-law of James Park and grandson of Knoxville founder James White, built a house along what is now Woodhill Place. While this house is no longer standing, foundation remnants of a barn that accompanied the house can be seen along Scenic Drive.

Early development

In 1890 Francis Huger, superintendent of the

East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway The East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad (ETV&G) was a rail transport system that operated in the southeastern United States during the late 19th century. Created with the consolidation of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad and th ...

, acquired over in Sequoyah Hills with the intent of moving a steel mill to the area. The

Panic of 1893 The Panic of 1893 was an economic depression in the United States. It began in February 1893 and officially ended eight months later. The Panic of 1896 followed. It was the most serious economic depression in history until the Great Depression of ...

doomed this venture, however, and the land was distributed to Huger's creditors in 1908. Knox County road commissioner Peter Blow built a house on the south bank of the river opposite Sequoyah Hills in 1910, where he operated a

ferry A ferry is a boat or ship that transports passengers, and occasionally vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A small passenger ferry with multiple stops, like those in Venice, Italy, is sometimes referred to as a water taxi or water bus ...

. Blow's Ferry Road, which connected the ferry to Kingston Pike, is believed to have been built along a trail that once accessed a cemetery containing the graves of Civil War soldiers and slaves. In 1907, several Knoxville businessmen established the Cherokee Country Club on Lyon's View Pike and erected a clubhouse on a hill with a commanding view of the river valley and the

Great Smoky Mountains The Great Smoky Mountains (, ''Equa Dutsusdu Dodalv'') are a mountain range rising along the Tennessee–North Carolina border in the southeastern United States. They are a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains and form part of the Blue Ridg ...

beyond. The original clubhouse was eventually demolished and replaced with the current building, designed by the noted Knoxville architectural firm Baumann and Baumann, in 1928. In 1913, trolley tracks were extended along Kingston Pike to its Lyon's View Pike junction, aiding in the development of the area. What is now Sequoyah Hills was annexed by Knoxville in 1917. With the advent of the automobile, affluent Knoxvillians began fleeing the congested urban neighborhoods for more spacious areas on the city's periphery. By 1920, several elegant residences, such as the H.L. Dulin House (1915) on Kingston Pike and the C. Powell Smith (1913) and E.C. Mahan (1920) residences on Lyon's View Pike, had been built near Sequoyah Hills. In 1921, Regal Manufacturing president S. D. Coykendall commissioned noted Knoxville architectural firm Barber & McMurry to build a house on what is now Scenic Drive.

Talahi and Sequoyah Hills

In the mid-1920s, E. V. Ferrell began major residential development in Sequoyah Hills. To connect his holdings along the peninsula, he built Cherokee Boulevard (named for the Indian mound in the road's median) and improved Scenic Drive as far as its modern intersection with Bluff and Southgate (a gate at this point inspired the name of the latter). Ferrell chose the name "Sequoyah Hills" to match the name of Cherokee Boulevard. By 1924, houses had been built at 901, 919, 927 and 937 Scenic Drive, and 50 lots had been sold by the end of the decade. Scenic-drive-sequoyah-hills-tn4

In 1926 Robert Foust, a partner in the real estate firm Alex McMillan Company, purchased a tract of land on the southeast section of Looney's Bend with plans to develop a premier subdivision for Knoxville. Foust envisioned a neighborhood for those "who insist upon and can afford the best," and where "all the ugliness of city life has been shut out." He named the new subdivision "Talahi," Cherokee for "standing oak forest." The new neighborhood, Foust believed, would bring together "an Indian past, a technical future, and a natural forest setting." Foust recruited landscape designer Earle S. Draper to oversee Talahi's complex landscape designs. The plans called for curvilinear streets, preservation of mature trees wherever possible, and underground utilities. Lot sizes were to be no less than 5,000 square feet and were restricted to single-family homes. Foust's restrictions called for all houses to be built in English Cottage or American

Colonial Revival The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture. The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the arch ...

styles (this restriction was abandoned by subsequent developers). A country club was to be built along the river bank. Between 1927 and 1929, Foust constructed several landscape features, including entrance pylons, fountains, and a park (Papoose Park). Talahi was opened to sales in the spring of 1929. Only one lot—940 Cherokee Boulevard—was sold before the stock market crashed later that year. In the early 1930s, lots in Talahi, originally marketed in the $4,000 to $10,000 range, were selling for just $600. His finances in ruins, Foust committed suicide in September 1933.

Notable buildings and structures

Talahi Improvements

Before the stock market crash ruined his development efforts in 1929, Foust managed to complete several landscape improvements in the proposed Talahi subdivision. These include gateposts at either end of the subdivision along Cherokee Boulevard, two fountains, a park, streetlight standards, and stone benches. The roads were originally paved in concrete, which has been preserved along parts of Talahi Drive, Iskagna Drive, and Taliluna Avenue. The Talahi Improvements are concentrated primarily between the intersections of Talahi Drive and Cherokee Boulevard and Talahi Drive and Taliluna Avenue, with islands in both intersections containing the two fountains, called "Sunhouse Fountain" and "Panther Fountain," respectively. Papoose Park, which is surrounded by an iron fence, is situated in the median along Talahi Drive between the two intersections. Stone walls with inset benches form a broken circle around the Cherokee Boulevard/Talahi Drive intersection, with the north walls opening toward Papoose Park, and the south walls opening toward the lake, where the proposed country club was to be built. Sunhouse Fountain is a circular stone fountain with twelve small posts, each decorated with a sunburst motif, and each originally surmounted by a bronze frog (the frogs have since been removed). Panther Fountain is a circular fountain with a central obelisk resting atop a base of varying geometric shapes. Water was discharged through panther heads on each of the four sides of the base. Cherokee motifs decorate the gateposts, pylons, and fountains, suggesting inspiration from both Cherokee folklore and the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

movement's emphasis on abstract figures.

Houses

*The Jenkins House on Cherokee Boulevard, built in 1955 and designed by noted Knoxville architect Ben McMurry, Jr., of the firm Barber & McMurry. In 2008, the magazine ''

Oxford American The ''Oxford American'' is a quarterly magazine that focuses on the American South. First publication The magazine was founded in late 1989 in Oxford, Mississippi, by Marc Smirnoff (born July 11, 1963). The name "Oxford American" is a play on ' ...

'' profiled this house in its list of the best modern homes of the southeast. Cherokee-boulevard-house-tn3

* University of Tennessee president's house (940 Cherokee Boulevard), a

Georgian Revival Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1714 and 1830. It is named after the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover, George I, George II, Ge ...

-style house built by Nashville surgeon Walter S. Nash in the 1930s after the Nash family home in downtown Knoxville was demolished for the construction of the Knoxville Post Office. Nash purchased the sole lot in Talahi before Foust's company collapsed into financial ruin. The

University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (or The University of Tennessee; UT; UT Knoxville; or colloquially UTK or Tennessee) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee, United St ...

purchased the house in 1960 from Nash's son-in-law and daughter, Ray Jenkins and Eva Nash Jenkins, and used it as its presidential mansion until 2009. *Thomas House (715 Scenic Drive), the oldest extant house in Sequoyah Hills, originally built in the 1850s as a tenant house on the farm of Allen Johnson. The Towle family purchased the farm in 1899 and in turn sold it to developer N.E. Logan in 1923. *726 Scenic Drive, a one-story

Minimal Traditional Minimal Traditional is a style of architecture that emerged in mid 20th century America as a vernacular form that incorporates influences from earlier styles such as American Colonial, Colonial Revival, Spanish Revival, Tudor Revival, and American C ...

-style Gunnison home built in 1948. Gunnison homes were a type of

prefabricated house Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in a factory or other manufacturing site, and transporting complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located. Some research ...

popular in the years following

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. *934 Scenic Drive, a 2.5-story Tudor Revival-style house built in 1928, designed by landscape architect Elizabeth Dunlap. *937 Scenic Drive, a two-story Neoclassical-style house built in 1924, designed by the architectural firm Barber & McMurry. *1029 Scenic Drive, a two-story Neoclassical-style house built in 1930, designed Barber & McMurry. *Lockett House (1065 Scenic Drive), a two-story Neoclassical-style house built in 1931, designed by the architectural firm Baumann and Baumann. The property includes an old log cabin moved from Jefferson County. *1079 Scenic Drive, a two-story

art moderne Streamline Moderne is an international style of Art Deco architecture and design that emerged in the 1930s. Inspired by Aerodynamics, aerodynamic design, it emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements. In indu ...

house built in 1935, designed by Dunlap. *1119 Scenic Drive, a 1.5-story Tudor Revival-style house built in 1940 for Dr. Clifford E. Barbour, designed by architect

and landscape architect Arthur F. Brinkerhoff.Knoxville-Knox County Metropolitan Planning Commission
Scenic Drive Area of Sequoyah Hills Neighborhood - Designation Report and Design Guidelines
September 2006. Retrieved: 20 December 2010.

Other buildings

*Sequoyah Elementary School, the original part of which (facing Sagwa Drive) was built in 1929, designed by the architectural firm Barber McMurry. *Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church, founded in 1947; the current church building was completed in 1954.Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church - Church History
. Retrieved: 20 December 2010.

Notable residents

Notable residents of Sequoyah Hills have included

Senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or Legislative chamber, chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the Ancient Rome, ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior ...

Howard H. Baker, Jr., businessman Jim Clayton (owner of Clayton Homes), author

Alex Haley Alexander Murray Palmer Haley (August 11, 1921 – February 10, 1992) was an American writer and the author of the 1976 book '' Roots: The Saga of an American Family.'' ABC adapted the book as a television miniseries of the same name and ...

, members of the Haslam family including Governor

Bill Haslam William Edward Haslam (; born August 23, 1958) is an American billionaire businessman and politician who served as the 49th governor of Tennessee from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, Haslam previously served as the 67th mayor of ...

, author

Cormac McCarthy Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.; July 20, 1933 – June 13, 2023) was an American author who wrote twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning the Western, post-apocalyptic, and Southern Got ...

, actress

Patricia Neal Patricia Neal (born Patsy Louise Neal; January 20, 1926 – August 8, 2010) was an American actress of stage and screen. She is well known for, among other roles, playing World WarII widow Helen Benson in ''The Day the Earth Stood Still'' (195 ...

, Tennessee Volunteers football coach Robert R. Neyland, actor David Keith, Knoxville mayors George Roby Dempster and Benjamin Morton, and photographer James Edward Thompson.

References

External links

Kingston Pike Sequoyah Hills Association
— official neighborhood site

{{Knoxneighborhoods Neighborhoods in Knoxville, Tennessee Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee National Register of Historic Places in Knoxville, Tennessee