Les Jones

East Tennessee > In Praise of Lost Buildings

MetroPulse's Jack Neely kicks more ass when he weighs in on Knoxville's most important icons. Bonus: did you know that the Fountain City Duck Pond was once just an adjunct to a hotel?

The duck pond is, in fact, all that remains of the three-story Fountain Head Hotel, an extravagantly luxurious, alcohol-free resort which was widely known and very nearly gave temperance a good name. Fountain City was "where the morals are as pure as the bracing atmosphere and life-giving water," and to emphasize that sentiment, in 1891 they built a large pond in front of the hotel. Tradition has it that it's roughly heart-shaped because Fountain City had a reputation among Knoxvillians as a place for the young and sober to fall in love.

Well, the hotel was nice while it lasted, with running water in all the rooms from clear First Creek, but in the more practical 20th century it became a sanitarium, and then burned to the ground. The duck pond, and the name Hotel Avenue, are all that remain.

It sucks how old stuff tends to, like, ya know, burn to the ground and stuff. Jay and I went to summer camp at YMCA Camp Montvale. It was once the grounds of Montvale Springs, where the elite would travel to the sulfur-infused springs to recoup. It was there that Sidney Lanier wrote his book, "Tiger Lilies." Of Montvale Springs, he wrote:

What an assemblage of facilities for enjoyment. I have up here in the mountains, -- kinsfolk, men friends, women friends, books, music, wine, hunting, fishing, billiards, tenpins, chess, eating, mosquitoless sleeping, mountain scenery, and a month of idleness.

(The description reminds me of one in "Cold Mountain," which I don't have handy right now, of the soldiers and Indians living a life of ease in the mountains after the Civil War. )

There are several remains of the hotel at Camp Montvale. One is the stone steps of the hotel's entrance, which are adjacent to the flag pole. Also visible are the twin house - a symmetrical building - and the clay house, which was the staff lounge when I was a counselor-in-training in 1985.