John Shearer: Missionary Ridge House Being Auctioned Also Had Doctors And A Lawyer As Owners

  • Friday, July 21, 2017
  • John Shearer
The 6,866-square-foot home that is to be auctioned off on Saturday, July 22, has been promoted as the home of the Campbell family of MoonPie snack fame.
 
But a look in some city directories shows that the stucco structure at 326 S. Crest Road has also had a number of other owners over the years, including a couple of doctors, a lawyer and a local industrial plant manager, among others.
 
The Henry B. Glascock Company, which will conduct the auction at 11 a.m. at the property, has given the date of construction of the white stucco home as 1900.
 
Part of its style almost looks more like the time period from about World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression, and UT-Chattanooga art and architecture professor Dr.
Gavin Townsend agrees. He said that if it does date to the turn of the previous century, it has been modified over the years to look more like houses built in later decades.
 
“The result of the additions and modifications make it difficult to squarely identify a single style,” he said. “It's an eclectic mix combining mostly the Colonial Revival with double-hung windows with shutters and the American Craftsman with nested gables supported by brackets.
 
“The end result points the house in the direction of ‘Neo-Eclectic,’ a style of the late 20th century associated with the ‘McMansion,’ though this house retains much of its early 20th century character.”
 
While the outside does not give the home an overly large look, the inside does and includes probably the home’s best features. After viewing the home during the recent open houses that have given Chattanoogans and others a somewhat rare opportunity to view a showplace home, I would call the living room in the front by far the nicest feature.
 
With exquisite wooden casing on one of the large windows and nice paneling, it reminds me of some of the rooms in the former mansion of Coca-Cola bottler Cartter Lupton I used to visit in Riverview when the Schmissrauter family lived there.
 
I also love the Missionary Ridge home’s two staircases, its large dining room, and its northernmost den, which looks like it was added in the mid-20th century with all the knotty pine paneling. Also interesting is a horizontal ceiling door to the attic on the top floor.
 
Another living wing sits over the carport, and out back is a nice-but-small swimming pool, some rock walls, and what has to be one of the largest and oldest crepe myrtles found in Chattanooga.
 
While the home’s beauty and potential are clear, its history is apparently not nearly as well known to the dozens who have visited the open houses in recent days.
 
Chattanooga Bakery and MoonPie executive Sam Campbell IV said in an interview that he believes his great-grandfather, Samuel Henegar Campbell Sr., was the first family member to live in it. Whether he was the first owner is not known.
 
A check in an 1891 city directory shows that he was already then living on Missionary Ridge, or Mission Ridge as it was then known.
 
He was a part owner of Mountain City Mills, which produced flour for the connected company, Chattanooga Bakery, the product line of which included the MoonPie. That snack was introduced in 1917 – 100 years ago.
 
If Mr. Campbell Sr. was living at that home when the product was launched, one can only wonder if he brought some snack pies home about that time and enjoyed some in one of the rooms.
 
Mr. Campbell IV said he is not sure of his great-grandfather’s connection to Chattanooga Bakery at the time the MoonPie was introduced. He died in 1931 at the age of 61 after suffering some strokes, and the Rev. James Fowle of First Presbyterian Church officiated the funeral at his home.
 
By at least the late 1930s, Sam Campbell Jr. was living in the South Crest Road home. He died in 1950 at the age of only 44 as the chairman of Chattanooga Bakery, which was on King Street before moving to Manufacturers Road.
 
But during his short life he had also owned radio stations, gas stations and an oil distributorship.
 
His wife, Harriet, who had formerly lived in Knoxville and did not die until 1989, continued to live there and remarried Edward Cooper, a manager of DuPont. They sold the home around the late 1950s after he was transferred to Wilmington, Del., and later Buenos Aires.
 
The next owners were neurosurgeon Dr. Warren H. and Joanne Kimsey and their children.
 
Dr. Kimsey lived there until about the mid-to-late 1970s, when the home was apparently empty for a period. Dr. Kimsey later lived in Arkansas until his death in 1986.
 
Bill and June King, the operators of the Lookout Mountain Motel and the Sky Harbor Motel, resided in the home in the early-to-mid 1980s.
 
The ridge-top residence was then lived in for a period by the Dr. Leonard Carroll Jr. family.
 
By the mid-1990s, it was moved into by attorney Fred and Teresa Hanzelik, and was later resided in by Mr. Hanzelik and a later wife, Misty, whom Mr. Hanzelik married in Las Vegas in 2006, according to an article found online.
 
Mr. Hanzelik died in 2014, and an estate dispute between Misty Hanzelik and two of his sons made news in 2015.
 
And now the home is ready for another chapter in its diverse history with Saturday’s auction.
 
Mr. Campbell IV, who is now in his late 50s, was too young to remember when his grandmother lived there, but he did visit the home a few years back out of curiosity when another open house was held.
 
And he liked what he saw.
 
“It’s an interesting place,” he said. “I don’t think we’d ever want to live in it, but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
 
“It’s a very handsome home,” he continued. “The nicest thing about it is you have views on both sides.”
 
And on clear winter nights, the moon can likely be seen from this home made more distinctive by the MoonPie.
 
Jcshearer2@comcast.net
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