Detail from a panoramic view of Cameron Hill shows intriguing symmetrical house design with a tall spire in the middle
Chattanooga's Cameron Hill, in its heyday, was a magical place.
A smaller image of Lookout Mountain just to the south, it rose dramatically just above downtown Chattanooga.
The town's earliest homes were either on the lower slopes of Cameron Hill or the hill just across Market Street from it.
Talk about convenience, you were just steps away from the bustling city streets - jobs and shopping and the seats of government - in between the two hills.
Boynton Park at the steep northern peak had the most dramatic view of river and mountains and sky in all directions.
Several antebellum homes long stood on Cameron Hill, and they were occupied by the generals who came to town during the Civil War. The columned Rathburn-Nottingham house was long a gracious center of hospitality. The Hooper house was one of the town's oldest residences. The Cabins that Thomas Crutchfield Sr. resided in while building the Crutchfield House hotel long stood on West Eighth Street.
Beginning in the 1870s, such an assortment of architectural styles of all types began to sprout up on Cameron Hill. It was a truism that the higher you went up the hill the finer the homes.
But there were some majestic ones on the lower slopes as well - the brick Whiteside mansion that dated to just after the Ross's Landing days, the home of the world famous publisher Adolph Ochs on West Fifth Street, and dozens more of every conceivable style built by the physicians and the successful entrepreneurs of the town. Scattered in between were smaller but substantial homes occupied by the mill workers, the railroad engineers and the bookkeepers.
The creme de la creme was at the very top on the East Terrace. D.P. Montague's Italianate mansion was the only home in Chattanooga with its own pipe organ and the grounds were landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted's firm. Capt. Hiram Chamberlain had the grandest view from the south end of the Terrace at his sprawling stone mansion. H. Clay Evans, who came close to being vice president and to being the Tennessee governor, entertained presidents at his delightful home in the middle of East Terrace.
With many of the mansions split up into apartments and many of the properties not kept up, there came a plan in the 1950s to tear them all down and to slice off the top of Cameron Hill at Boynton Park. Despite the protests of many, it was followed through.
Today, few photographs of the original Cameron Hill have survived. Thankfully, in recent months Tony St. Charles graciously shared photos taken by his father, Pat St. Charles, Jr., who was hired by the Chattanooga Housing Authority to perform appraisals for the West Side Redevelopment Project.This amazing collection of some 375 Cameron Hill homes has inspired a new examination of Cameron Hill and a search to discover who were the delightful characters who lived there.
Chattanoogan.com today begins a series of articles letting you know what we found out about the once-magical Cameron Hill.
Handsome set of homes on the lower slopes of Cameron Hill