John Shearer: Exploring A Historic Glenwood Home For Sale

  • Wednesday, December 24, 2014
  • John Shearer
For several months, a handsome and stately home built in 1911 has been for sale at 357 Glenwood Drive – a short distance south of Memorial Hospital.
 
The two-story home – which features four bedrooms and two full bathrooms -- looks like the kind of historic house found on nearby Missionary Ridge, North Chattanooga or Fort Wood, or perhaps even Riverview or Lookout Mountain.
 
Its price of $299,000 would likely be quite a deal in those neighborhoods and it would probably have been sold long ago, especially in its almost completely restored and updated condition.
 
But it is in the older, less-expensive, less-posh -- but-still-prideful -- neighborhood of Glenwood, and so it has been on the market for more than a year.
 
Part of the reason is that it is 3,699 square feet.
That is a little big in size compared to the other Glenwood homes, many of which, however, seem to be just as big in charm with their bungalow porches and diagonal rooflines.
 
About the only other home in Glenwood that big is the residence at 211 Glenwood Drive, which was once the home of former Tennessee Gov. J.B. Frazier Sr. and his son, U.S. Congressman J.B. Frazier Jr.
 
“It takes a certain kind of person to buy this house,” said Cathy Barclay, who along with Debbie Downs has been listing the 357 Glenwood Drive home for The James Company, which is headed by Ms. Barclay’s brother, James Perry.
 
The two cheery-mannered agents and retired kindergarten teachers – who enthusiastically offered a tour of the home recently along with current owner Maria Silvey – say they have shown it to a number of interested people. But so far that person or persons who love old homes and enjoy all the experiences a more urban neighborhood encompasses have not stepped forward.
 
The two listing agents and Ms. Silvey think it would be ideal for a young professional couple who don’t mind climbing the stairs, even if they might have to ask their parents to help purchase it while they are still climbing the ladder economically.
 
Or someone who holds a professional healthcare job at the nearby Memorial Hospital or Parkridge Medical Center and enjoys a short commute might be ideal, they say. Someone with a past connection to the neighborhood might also be a good candidate, or just someone who is a historic preservation advocate.
 
“I think it is a privilege to live in an old home,” said Ms. Downs as an endorsement for the latter person.
 
While a home on a somewhat busy street in an area that is not zoned for the top public schools academically might limit the potential buyers, architecturally nothing seems to be holding it back, even though it is now missing a front porch. The latter happened after a vehicle crashed into it at night not long after Ms. Silvey bought it more than a year ago.
 
Besides some stately tan brick, interesting windows and an old-fashioned colonnaded carport on the outside, the inside features a wide stairway, as well as narrow strips of oak flooring on the lower floor and pine flooring upstairs. Also, a pocket door leads into the dining room, and plenty of artistically pleasing radiators and doorknobs can be found along with unique chandeliers.
 
The kitchen was recently remodeled by Ms. Silvey, while the knotty pine paneling in the upstairs study and the tile in a bathroom suggest that the home was probably partly remodeled in the mid-20th century.
 
According to University of Tennessee at Chattanooga art and architecture professor Dr. Gavin Townsend, the home is stylistically eclectic, which he said is typical of the time period in which it was built.
 
“We can see a bay window over the front door, a vestige of the Queen Anne Revival,” he said. “The small rectangular panes in the windows are typical of the Craftsman style.”
 
He went on to say that neoclassical touches include the porte-cochere at the side (the overhanging carport area supporting by Tuscan columns), and the raised brick quoins, or detail, on the corners of the building.
 
Dr. Townsend also said the home’s symmetrical façade gives away the fact that it has a central hall.
 
“It’s a house with one foot in the 18th century and one in the 20th – and maybe a cane in the 19th,” he quipped of the home, the architect of which is apparently unknown.
 
Of the former Frazier home, which looks like an architectural cousin of the home at 357 Glenwood Drive, Dr. Townsend said it is even more eclectic, with a craftsman-style porch and Beaux Arts-style horizontal window arches, among other diverse features.
 
That home was later lived in by pioneering black businesswoman and community advocate Addie Dozier, and now by city of Chattanooga economic and community development department director Donna Williams.
 
As for the 357 Glenwood Drive home, it covers a variety of eras historically as well as architecturally. Ms. Barclay and Ms. Downs found some information saying the home was first lived in by Walter S. Allen when it was built slightly more than 100 years ago.
 
According to his obituary after he died on April 20, 1968, at the age of 94, he had been a real estate broker, builder and developer in Chattanooga with his brother, Arthur Allen, after arriving in the Scenic City in 1899.
 
Born in Decatur, Ill., he later moved with his family to Danville, Ky., and was a graduate of Centre College. He married Frances Morris in 1905 and they had three sons, Walter Jr., Eugene and Arthur M. Allen.
 
Mr. Allen was one of the early members of the Chattanooga Golf and Country Club, which was founded in 1896, and was also active at First Presbyterian Church. Officiating at his funeral was none other than Ben Haden, who had just arrived in Chattanooga from Florida as minister there a few months earlier.
 
Mr. Allen was buried in Forest Hills Cemetery. At the time of his death, he had moved to 816 Oak Street in Fort Wood.
 
He apparently did not live in the Glenwood Drive home a long time, but one or two families did. From at least the 1920s to the early 1950s, the residence was owned by J. Hardin Jones, the general manager of the Durham Coal and Iron Co.
 
The Rev. J.C. Jernigan then owned the home, and from the 1960s into the 1970s, it was resided in by E.E. Delaney of the Delaney Furniture store in the 3200 block of Brainerd Road.
 
By 1980, the Rev. Ed N. Bates of Greater 2nd Baptist Church lived there, with his family continuing to reside there for a number of years.
 
Ms. Silvey said she bought the home more than a year ago, but she had noticed it for years after having attended Notre Dame High School. The former dance instructor and flight attendant was not interested in residing there, as she and her husband, Darrel, have a home built in 1927 in Battery Place that they love.
 
But she has still felt quite at home there as she has prepared it to be sold.
 
“This house feels so good when you walk in,” she said.
 
While she did do some work like putting in central heat and air and, as mentioned, redid the kitchen, she did not want to compromise the home’s historic character.
 
“I leave it an old house,” she said, adding that she enjoys doing some of the physical work herself.
 
According to Lisa Clark Diller, a Southern Adventist University history professor who has lived in Glenwood behind the Frazier home for 13 years with her husband, Tommy, the charming houses in Glenwood usually sell pretty quickly. But the one at 357 Glenwood Drive is a little larger and more expensive than typical, and that may be slowing down its sale.
 
During a delightful telephone conversation, Dr. Diller was full of praise and positive facts about the Glenwood neighborhood. Among them are that its layout of curvilinear streets was kind of a pioneering concept in the United States at the time, and that it might have the oldest neighborhood association in Chattanooga.
 
She also said it has several residents still living there or nearby who attended the long-gone Glenwood School, and that it has long been known for its ethnic diversity, pointing out that it had a number of Jewish families living there in its early years.
 
A glance at a Chattanooga city directory from 1929 shows a variety of successful business and professional people living on Glenwood Drive.
 
They included Dr. H.H. Hampton, dry cleaning operators J.J. Bryan and D.G. Miller, U.S. Geological Survey manager W.R. King, Tepco production manager Orris J. Miller, Acme Hat Cleaners operator Harry Strotz, Isaac Shavin of Shavin Coal Co., Isaac Kopetovske of Star Clothing Co., L.R. Rubenstein of Brener’s department store, and Dr. W.R. Buttram.
 
By 1929, T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital had also already moved nearby.
 
Another of the neighborhood’s residents while growing up in the pre-World War II years was Lee Anderson, the retired editor of the Chattanooga Free Press and editorial page editor with the Times Free Press.
 
Dr. Diller said Glenwood today has a variety of races and ethnic groups living in it, as well as different educational and economic levels. But she said a sense of neighborliness and community still strongly exists.
 
“It is a neighborhood full of people looking out for each other,” she said. “Those things hold us together when our personal lives might be different.”
 
Also still around is the restored old home at 357 Glenwood Drive, which Ms. Silvey and agents Ms. Barclay and Ms. Downs no doubt hope to sell soon to someone wanting to enjoy the unique and historic culture of Glenwood.
 
“There’s nothing else in this area that compares to this house,” said Ms. Barclay enthusiastically. “The right person will come along.”
 
jcshearer2@comcast.net
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