Building footprint.
The area used by a building structure, defined by the perimeter of the building plan.
This is the reconstruction of a building footprint, a very particular building in the center of Knoxville commerce from the last century, and of universal American character.
This 1866 drawn map shows the center of the busy town of Knoxville, Tennessee. There is the very long and linear Market House, in the exact middle. It had several iterations, the most recent one built in 1901. It was razed in 1960 and not replaced. An open plaza is all most of us have known in the center of town.
The Market House presence is invisible, but affecting. There is an etheric and emotional footprint I felt drawn to re-enact somehow.
The large open space that remains is lovely, but what if we had a sense of that huge central building with its massive presence and we were able to imagine the bustling life and connections among Knoxville’s earlier generations?
I delineate, with tarpaper and bricks, the footprint of this building. Text gleaned from my research on its history is posted in key locations, for reflection on this place as a center of public, economic, and social life — and as a meditation on the impermanence of all things.
The installation took about 10 hours and in itself became a performance of sorts. Children (who do what adults wish to do) ran and played along the “inside” and “outside” footprint boundaries, climbed on bricks, rearranging the taller towers, leaving white footprints of dust on the black tarpaper, and in demonstrating their delight, allowed adults to approach me too as I worked, with the question, “I’m sorry, you’ve probably been asked this a million times, but what are you doing?”
Texts:
I have hunted wild rabbits on the very spot where this building now stands.
—Col. Wm. A. Henderson, 1897
This fair city invites our filial respect and affection. We should love her and guide her as sons a mother… we will always prefer the lawful rights and powers and the general welfare and lasting happiness of the city of Knoxville over the interest, claims, or pretenses of any person, cabal, clique, or corporation.
—Judge Ingersoll, 1897
We are a city set upon a hill and cannot hide our light if we would.
—Judge Ingersoll, 1897
Sales stalls covered the entire ground floor: cheese in paper containers, homemade butter, plump dressed chickens in pans of ice, wild game, lima beans, eggs, vegetables, flowers, country sausage, catnip, wild grapes, mint from the crick…
From the second floor podium and hall, musicians played and orators spoke. Market House represented a truly public space.
WITH THANKS TO:
McClung Historical Collection, Knox Co. Library System for Market House plans, Baumann & Baumann Architects, 1897 • General Shale Brick • Ross/Fowler P.C. Landscape Architects • Philip Knight
Reviews:
I have just seen your project in Market Square and your leaflet about it. This is a wonderful effort and I wish someone had done it years ago. […our present Market Square was never intended to be its current shape…too long to be a square and too wide to be a street…], it was intended to have a Market House in the middle. All we need is a developer and a receptive city administration.
—Design director at a prominent Knoxvilld architecture firm
Older folks who remembered the building before it came down loved telling their memories of life in the 1950s on Market Square. I wish I’d foreseen that Part Two of this temporary installation could have been oral history interviews!