East Tennessee History Center

06/26/2026

Appalachian Mills Annual Picnic in Sterchi (Chilhowee) Park, June 30 1928. Photo by Robin Thompson

Panoramic photo of Appalachian Mills employees and families at Chilhowee Park. After furniture store magnate James G. Sterchi purchased the Park in 1920, its name was changed to Sterchi Park. The city of Knoxville purchased the land and changed the name back to Chilhowee Park in 1930.

From the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection

06/25/2026

Buildings at the corner of Walnut Street and Western Avenue, Knoxville, TN, 1935. George Loo Hand Laundry, Rudder Shoe Shop, sign for Old South Beer and Greenlee's Bicycle Store.

Photo by Thompson Brothers, from the McClung Historical Collection.

06/24/2026

First regular passenger line plane ever to land in Knoxville, at Island Home Airport, January 10, 1936.

From front page of Evening Edition of Knoxville News Sentinel January 10, 1936:

"FIRST PLANE LANDS EARLY TO OPEN AIRLINE SERVICE

After years of waiting, Knoxville today was put on an air transport line.

American Airlines, largest in the country, inaugurated service between Nashville and Washington. At those two points American Airline planes connect with New York and Los Angeles.

The first ship, a gleaming blue and red low-wing monoplane, arrived at 12:03 p.m., two minutes ahead of schedule, in spite of a five minute late start at Asheville.

At Knoxville, the three-motored Stinson was christened "Miss Knoxville." Miss Nancy Rogers, president of the Knoxville Junior League, broke a bottle of honey over a strut."

FRONT ROW: Former Mayor John T. O'Connor, Postmaster Booth, Pilot Paul Carpenter, Paul Stanley (American Airlines manager for Tennessee), J. S. Gremillion (local airline manager) BACK ROW: Nancy Rogers (Junior League President), Chamber of Commerce Manager Clarence F. Holland, City Manager George R. Dempster, Mayor James Elmore, Sr.

Photo by Thompson Brothers, at the Calvin M. McClung McClung Historical Collection.

06/24/2026

"Have you looked at Knoxville lately? Really looked? Knoxville is keeping up with the times, growing by leaps and bounds. Yet her heart, her spirit, is still the same."

This 1986 video made by Johnston & Millsaps Advertising and Rowland Productions on behalf of the Greater Knoxville Chamber of Commerce was created to promote the city's growth and entice businesses to move there. Take a look and see who you might recognize, what's changed in the past 40 years and what remains the same. And what a theme song!

From the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound

This mid-1980's video was produced by Johnston & Millsaps Advertisi...

06/23/2026

Built on Market Square in 1876 by German immigrant Peter Kern as a bakery and ice cream parlor, this 1937 photo by Thompson Brothers shows Cole's Drugs, Ledgerwood Studios and Corkland's Shoes occupying the building.

Cole's and Corkland's were on the first floor, Ledgerwood dance studio on the second floor. Ledgerwood's sign reads "Tap, Toe, Ball Room, Piano-Vocal Exercises, Constructive, Reducing, Up-Building, Athletics, Hand-Tennis." A sign for the Roxy Theatre can be seen on Union Avenue in the left of the photo.

View more historic photos of Knoxville and East Tennessee at the online McClung Historical Collection.

06/18/2026

The McClung Collection recently acquired seven photographs featuring nine Black residents of Knoxville and Maryville in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Names were written on the back of each photo, and McClung Reference Librarian Danette Welch researched their histories and wrote brief accounts of their lives for our History Center Chronicles blog: https://www.knoxcountylibrary.org/library-news/african-american-studio-photographs-knoxville-and-maryville

06/17/2026

The photograph we posted yesterday of Kern's Bakery and Chapman Highway intrigued so many people, we thought we'd share other views of it from the 1930s, soon after it was built. See more historic images of Knoxville and East Tennessee at online at the McClung Historical Collection.

06/15/2026

A view of Kern's Bakery looking north along Chapman Highway (then still named Broadway), June 1936. The Bakery was built just five years prior to Kern's ordering this photograph taken by Thompson Brothers.

Graystone Presbyterian Church is visible to the north of Kern's, on the corner of Broadway and Blount Ave. Church Street United Methodist Church, also built in 1931, can be seen in the distance on the opposite side of the street, across Henley Street Bridge.

From the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection.

06/12/2026

Ross Flats, Church Avenue, Knoxville, TN, circa 1931. Jim Thompson Co. Snap Shop to right of building. Photograph by Thompson Brothers, from the McClung Historical Collection.

In his latest Ghost Walking column for Inside of Knoxville, Paul James explores Walnut Street from from W. Church to Union. Among the buildings he calls attention to is the striking Ross Flats, on the northeast corner of Walnut and W. Church. The building was demolished in 1973, and today is a surface parking lot.

You can read the article at this link, and view more historic images online at the McClung Digital Collection: https://insideofknoxville.com/2026/06/ghost-walking-another-section-of-walnut-street-w-church-to-union/

06/08/2026

Views of downtown Knoxville and the surrounding areas circa 1980s can be seen in this Super 8mm film from Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound (TAMIS).

The reel was shot by Knoxville artist Eric Sublett (1951-2018). Eric worked in just about every artistic media imaginable, including film and video. He videotaped many local artists and musicians in the 1980s and 1990s, capturing a unique audio-visual record of Knoxville's creative culture at the time. He also kept shooting Super 8mm film after most people had traded it in for video.

From the Eric Sublett collection at TAMIS, this reel was shot from a car during drives across the Henley and Gay Street bridges and surrounding areas of downtown Knoxville.