Historical Marker
Fountain City Schools
Knoxville, Knox County · Tennessee
Hassie K. Gresham, a Holbrook Normal College graduate, became principal of Central High School in 1919 and is reported as the first woman to head a high school in Tennessee. She held the post until 1947. Holbrook Normal College opened in 1893 near the Fountain Head Hotel, and Knox County bought it in 1906 for Central High. The school moved to Jacksboro Pike in 1971, and this campus became Gresham Junior High, later Gresham Middle School.
What the plaque says
Fountain City Schools This thirteen-acre campus was the site of Holbrook-Tennessee Normal College from 1893 to 1904, and of Knoxville Central High School from 1906 to 1971. It was the site of Fountain City Grammar School from 1917 to 1931, when the school was moved to Grove Drive. In 1971 Central High was relocated to Jacksboro Pike, and this campus was designated as Gresham Junior High School in honor of Hassie K. Gresham, Central High principal from 1919 to 1947. In 1979 it was renamed Gresham Middle School.
Where it stands
36.03959, -83.93550 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 5.1 miKnoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
- Blount Mansion — 5.5 miThe 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.
- Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 12 miThe 1935 school in Clinton that sent twelve Black students down Foley Hill to desegregate Clinton High School in August 1956, now a museum with bronze statues of the Clinton 12.
- Museum of Appalachia — 12 miJohn Rice Irwin's 65-acre collection of moved log cabins and mountain objects north of Knoxville, opened in 1969, with a cabin believed to be Mark Twain's father's.