Landmark Achievement Award Winner 2004

Sequoyah Hills

Click on the photos to open more detailed views.

The land along the Tennessee River now known as Sequoyah Hills was first purchased in 1794 for a farm, and later changed hands when a businessman decided to locate a steel mill there. A recession shortly before 1900, however, ended his plans.

The next major development occurred when a North Carolinian named E.V. Ferrel took an option for a tract along Kingston Pike in 1925. He planned a residential subdivision set apart from the “trolleyburbs” already established between downtown and Fountain City.

Ferrel named the new development Sequoyah Hills after the famous Cherokee scribe, and the major winding road through it was named Cherokee Boulevard. Sequoyah Hills was quite unlike the grid layout of other residential areas of that era. The developer was influenced by such landscape architects as Frederick Law Olmstead and John Nolen, who blended their roads to contours of the natural environment and nestled the house lots into wooded settings— pioneering concepts a century ago. Other innovations included placing all utilities underground, constructing entrance gates, and providing a variety of park spaces.

In designing Sequoyah Hills, the developers worked with Earle Draper who was educated as a landscape architect and became one the foremost planners of the 20 th century. Draper had previous helped lay out Kingsport, Tennessee and Charlotte’s finest neighborhood, Myers Park. He later became the director of TVA’s regional planning division (responsible for the creation of Norris, touted as being the best planned town in rural America) and went on to head the planning division of the Federal Housing Administration .

In 1929 another developer, Robert Foust, began selling lots for a 100-acre area in Sequoyah Hills called Talahi. Foust was disillusioned with the “shotgun” style houses being built then, and fashioned Talahi on a grand scale. He put in concrete streets narrower than ordinary width but wider at intersections for buses. He anticipated the need for a commercial center that would be buffered by apartments, and included open spaces for recreational uses. He also specified that all housing be built in English, Early American, or Colonial styles, and that a committee of the American Institute of Architects approve all housing plans before construction.

Continuing the Native American theme, Talahi was a Cherokee phrase for “in the oaks,” and was planned as a forested hideaway with several parks. The commercial center was envisioned as a Tudor village among the trees. Unfortunately the stock market crash of 1929 occurred just months after the lots were offered for sale, and the only lot sold during Foust’s lifetime was 940 Cherokee Boulevard, the current location of the University of Tennessee president’s mansion.

Other developers have since contributed to the urban area identified today as Seqouyah Hills, and one resident has identified at least 12 separate subdivisions.

As the community approaches its 80 th anniversary, Seqouyah Hills is still valued as a remarkable place known for its variety of homes, mature trees and green areas, and proximity to downtown and the University of Tennessee.

The Kingston Pike/Sequoyah Hills Neighborhood Association is in the process of considering a Neighborhood Conservation Overlay; a portion of the neighborhood is already designated a historic landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. The present challenge is finding a balance between new infill development and the remodeling of existing homes while preserving the area’s special historic and design elements.