Market Square

In 1853 William Swan and Joseph Mabry gave the city part of an eleven-acre tract on condition that it be used for a market, or it would revert to them or their heirs. The Newman and Maxwell market house opened in January 1854, but farmers dodged the three-dollar monthly stall fee and kept selling from wagons. Mayor George Dempster pushed demolition in the 1950s over objections from Carl Sandburg and Harvey Broome; the city voted for removal in November 1959, fire hit months later, and a mall with toadstool canopies followed in 1961.

What the plaque says

Market Square Market Square originated in 1853 on land donated by civic leaders William Swan and Joseph Mabry. The city of Knoxville built a brick Market House in 1854, replacing it with a three-story complex in 1897. It also held City Hall and police and fire stations. It became a thriving farmers market and commercial hub where visitors found both local produce and exotic imports. In 1863, Union forces seized the Market House for storing ammunition and housing troops. By the 1800s, many businesses such as butchers, blacksmiths, salons, and Kern's Bakery surrounded the Market House. In 1900 a journalist called Market Square "the most democratic place on Earth" due to the diversity of its daily visitors. Continued: Market Square has drawn many political events and persons, including Booker T. Washington, Knoxville's Temperance Movement, and Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign. It has also been a musical magnet, hosting Duke Ellington, Roy Acuff, and an early radio and recording studio on Wall Ave. The city demolished the Market House in 1960 for a pedestrian mall. Revitalization efforts led by business owners and the city in the 1990s and early 200s restored Market Square as a cultural hub in Knoxville.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blount Mansion — 0.4 mi
  The 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 1.3 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 16 mi
  The 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 — 17 mi
  John 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.

More markers nearby

• Burnside's Headquarters — steps away
• Civil War Hospital — steps away
• Battery Wiltsie — steps away
• First Presbyterian Church — steps away