by Ron Allen
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When the News Sentinel moved their newspaper offices to a location west of downtown, an article appeared in that newspaper indicating that they were not sure if they should say that their building was located in Mechanicsville or in West View. In fact, that facility is located nearer the community that was long known as McAnally Flats, and is actually probably closest to a place as recently as the 1940's, known as Proctor, or the Proctor Addition. For that matter, it's not far from places once known as Jay Bird and Western Heights. Although today much of the section is known as Mechanicsville, that was not always the case. But then, things have changed in Knoxville these days, since the same newspaper more than once reported when they moved to their new facility they had decided to stay "downtown". But that large building is located some distance from what most folks around here have always considered to be the downtown Knoxville area. "Downtown" historically has been bounded on the west at Broadway / Henley. The Sentinel is located farther west from downtown than the University of Tennessee, and even that institution usually is not generally considered to be a part of the downtown area. Having gotten that out of the way, this is really about the Mechanicsville community, old and new. The definition of the original location of this community is sometimes misstated in modern writings. This has been written to clarify the record as to the actual original and later locations of that community.
Mechanicsville developed in the post Civil War era, in the section west of the railroad tracks that border the city. The community ran westward to Deaderick Street, including the section west along Asylum Street (now Western Avenue), and north to around Fifth Avenue. The streets in the original Mechanicsville community included Arthur Street, Boyd Street, Deaderick Avenue, Dora Street, Hanna Avenue, McGhee Street, Mary Street, Moses Street, and Wallace Street. The community was centered nearer Fifth Avenue than it was to Western Avenue, and Hanna Avenue was the main thoroughfare of the community.
Mechanicsville originally was not a black community. The 1876-1877 Knoxville city directory lists all residents who were then living in Mechanicsville, and all of the listed families were white. Even by 1886, the city directory lists only two African American families living on streets that were then considered to be in the Mechanicsville community. That same year, while there were African Americans families living in the section west of Mechanicsville, that area would not to be known as Mechanicsville until years later. The 1886 directory also reveals that if one includes the section west of Deaderick, including University Avenue and beyond, the population of the entire area that year, including Mechanicsville, was approximately eighty-four percent white and sixteen percent African American. Over the years, that has historically been the approximate racial percentage makeup of Knoxville's population. The section north of Asylum between Deaderick and University, west of Mechanicsville, was called "Esperiendieu" in 1874, a planned residential development that failed to materialize. In fact, the name of what now is University Avenue itself was once called Esperiendieu street. Within a few years after Knoxville College was established in 1875, there was more rapid residential development in the section, including University avenue. By 1895, black residents were living on area streets including Clinton (College) and Dora streets, and , but other area streets were predominately white residents. As late as 1910 Mechanicsville even University avenue was not a predominantly African American thoroughfare, when twenty-seven white families and twelve black families were residing on that street. In 1915, all families living along Clinton Street (now College street), from Deaderick to University and beyond, continued to be African Americans. The black residential communities in that area were primarily sections that were then known by such names as McAnally Flats, not as Mechanicsville. J. H. Daves, the librarian at the Free Colored Library, wrote a small book in 1927, entitled "History of the Negro Population of Knoxville." There, Daves identifies the names of the communities throughout Knoxville where African American families were then living. That compilation provides ample evidence that even the African American residential section in this area was not considered to be part of Mechanicsville in the 1920's. Nowhere in the book does Daves mention Mechanicsville as having been a community of black residents. Instead, he mentions two communities in that same general area as African American communities. One was Jay Bird, and the other was the Western Heights section. Daves also describes in his publication the many shamefully inadequate dwelling places that existed in those African American sections in the 1920's, where often even the basic conveniences of water and electricity were non-existent.
The College Homes housing project for African American residents opened in the community in 1940, replacing the majority of those eyesores. It was a low-rent housing for Negro residents, and was opened at the same time another housing project -- originally for white residents -- was opened, between the Beaumont and Lonsdale communities, called Western Heights. The naming of that second project to the west as Western Heights today tends to create some confusion, since at that time the area that originally had been called Mechanicsville in the nineteenth century, along Deaderick from Western to Fifth avenue, and east to the railroad tracks, was then called Western Heights. Soon thereafter, the new western housing project had assumed that name, and the name of "Western Heights" as a designation for the original Mechanicsville area had been forgotten.
When the new Hope VI project was initiated in recent years, and the College Homes apartments were being demolished, some local newspaper reports actually suggested that the College Home complex had never been beneficial to that community. Apparently, whoever wrote those articles was completely unaware that the College Homes housing complex had replaced homes in what Daves had described in 1926 as slum areas, with living quarters that provided what then were modern facilities. Those newspaper writers would have done well to take a look at the Knoxville Journal issue of January 21, 1940, when the College Homes project was first opened, to see the pictures of the dilapidated homes that had been demolished when College Homes was built, and to read of the excitement among local residents who were moving from what often had been nothing but shacks, into those new facilities. By then, it had already been many years since what had originally been the Mechanicsville community was known by that name. The original area, and perhaps a small portion of the adjoining African American community, had been called the Western Heights community. But the entire section along University avenue, including the area north of Western and centered along University avenue and College street, was then a part of the community known as McAnally Flats. An entire section of the News-Sentinel, published on August 4, 1940, was devoted to describing those new housing projects in Knoxville. On page E-9 of that publication, in an article titled "Knoxville Crime Corner Wiped Out by College Homes", is found the following statement : "One of Knoxville's worst crime corners for years, the intersection of University and College street - in the heart of McAnally Flats - has come upon better days." That writer goes on to mention the years of lawlessness that had been rampant in the area, with the anticipation that a newly established corner drug store, the College Drugs, just opened at that site, would not have been possible except for the newly created housing project. The writer also reminds readers of the numerous sub-standard houses that had been demolished and replaced, activity that had greatly improved the "tone and appearance of the old McAnally Flats". Although some sixty or so years later it was undeniable that criminal and activities had returned to the area along the way, to suggest that the College Homes housing facility had never benefitted the community seems to have been a statement of facts not in evidence.
I have made no attempt to determine precisely when the name of this community -- and in fact a considerably larger area than the original community -- was once again being called Mechanicsville. The information I have managed to gather provides ample evidence that at least for much of the first half of the twentieth century, the community name of Mechanicsville generally was no longer used. I suspect that the community name was probably not resurrected until sometime around the 1960's, possibly even later. I have talked with a number of local residents who grew up in the general area in the late 1940's and early 1950's, and none remembers ever having heard the area called Mechanicsville in those times. In any event, today Mechanicsville is apparently considered to include what is left of the original Mechanicsville community, east of Deaderick and north from Western to Fifth avenue, the area west of Deaderick, including University avenue and a few blocks west of University, also from Western north to Fifth avenue.
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