Gay street

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In 1872, Swiss immigrant Peter Staub completed his grand Staub’s Opera House, facing Gay Street. It drew national attention, and some gibes from humorist Mark Twain. Learn more about this wild tale during a tour at the Mabry-Hazen House, one of Knoxville’s seven Historic House Museums.

Gay Street was the setting of one of the South’s first Decoration Day (later Memorial Day) parades, and by the 1870s, of more joyous St.

Patrick’s Day parades. Today, it’s home to one of the oldest and largest Veterans Day parades in the nation.

Because of its preservation and contributions to Knoxville's economic base and vibrant arts scene, the American Planning Association designated Gay Street as one of 10 Great Streets under the organization's Great Places in America program.

Several downtown streets have been renamed over the years, but Gay Street retains its original name, perhaps because, from the very beginning, the street has been known as the place where Knoxvillians come for fun and entertainment.

GAY STREET

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In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes gave a speech to a more peaceful crowd at the same location. Further reports of shaking and vibrations followed in the summer of 2021, and DOB inspectors were dispatched along with forensic engineers to assess the property the following November” 2021.

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1860s, was known as Mozart Hall. The properties became the responsibility of the city during probate.

According to research by the YIMBY blogsite article by Michael Young and Matt Pruznick, “the first revelations of 14 Gay Street’s precarious structural integrity came in early 2020, when the Department of Buildings (DOB) fielded numerous complaints about the building’s rundown state, including its leaning and bowing cellar wall.

The demonstrations were all successful without notable violence.

Gay Street has also been the home of multiple department stores, including Miller’s, which maintained a presence in its original beaux-arts brick building on Gay for 70 years. Today, as day turns to night, theatre lights still lure you down Gay Street for a variety of performances and cinematic entertainment at some of the region’s most popular venues.

Live Radio Shows

Gay Street also witnessed the early days of live-audience radio, as country stars like Roy Acuff, Chet Atkins, the Everly Brothers, and Dolly Parton got their starts on radio stations WNOX and WROL.

Live music can still be found on Gay Street today at the WDVX studios located inside the Knoxville Visitors Center.

The station’s popular Blue Plate Special is a free, live performance radio show that takes place Monday-Saturday at noon with music ranging from blues to bluegrass, country to Celtic, folk to funk, rockabilly to hillbilly, local to international.

Side note: Television was introduced to the region with a broadcast in 1953 from WROL studios in the Mechanics Bank building on Gay. Country stars like Don Gibson, Archie Campbell, and Flatt and Scruggs were among the attractions of early Knoxville television.

Claims to Fame

Gay Street and events that took place on it have been mentioned in the works of novelists James Agee and Cormac McCarthy, humorists Mark Twain and George Washington Harris, and poet and essayist Nikki Giovanni.

Gay Street was a setting for parades by the 1850s, and was the scene of many dramatic events, including several gunfights, most notably the Mabry-O’Conner gunfight of 1882, in which all three combatants were killed.

Today, Mast General Store, located in the early 20th-century Newcomer’s building, carries on the department store tradition into a new century.

Knoxville’s Theatre District

Gay Street has always been home to Knoxville’s finest theatres. Those who have performed shows in Gay Street theaters between 1880 and 1940 include Sarah Bernhardt, Lillie Langtry, Will Rogers, George M.

Cohan, Ethel, John, and Lionel Barrymore (separately), John Philip Sousa, Tallulah Bankhead, Cab Calloway, Helen Hayes, Tom Mix, Glenn Miller, Desi Arnaz, and the Marx Brothers. It would host orchestral performances, vaudeville, opera festivals, and lectures for decades. Credit: Gay Street Revival Initiative 1 LLC.

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It was the first of several theaters that kept Gay Street lit up at night.

The street was always the center of vaudeville in Knoxville.

All of them still stand.

The skyscraper race commenced again in the late 1970s, when the steel and glass United American Bank building, later known as Plaza Tower, soared above the Andrew Johnson, and Riverview Tower, almost as tall, rose near it.

From 1960 to 1963, Gay Street was the site of dozens of civil-rights demonstrations, first sit-ins at all-white lunch counters, then demonstrations outside the still-segregated movie theaters.

There followed several other bridges, lost in floods or storms, culminating in the 1898 bridge that carries automobile traffic today.

Almost all public visitors to Knoxville made an appearance on Gay Street.

A History of Gay Street

History in the Making

Gay Street was the site of the 1796 Constitutional Convention that resulted in the founding of the state of Tennessee and was a focal point for the early political activity of both the city and the state of Tennessee.

It was home to the headquarters of furniture giant Sterchi Brothers, whose logo has become a signature of the Gay Street skyline, and today is one of downtown’s largest and most popular residential buildings. In the backyard, the properties connect to Christopher Street properties also getting renovated. The exterior will be clad in brick, and the building culminates in cornice-lined parapets matching the original configuration, including 14 Gay Street’s pitched roof and dormer, and includes using the original construction materials from the demolished structure.

Nevertheless, it seems inconceivable that LPC would approve a design that obliterates the former two-home façade with separate doorways for each.

This drawing for the façade of 14 & 16 Gay Street obliterates the doorway for 14 Gay Street.

Union Gen. William Sanders died as the result of wounds in the Lamar House on Gay. Several years after the war, former Confederate Gen. James Clanton of Alabama was killed in a gunfight with a former Union officer.

After the war, Gay Street saw extensive commercial development as railroad construction brought an industrial boom to Knoxville.

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