1007 Circle Park, Knoxville, Tennessee

My mother, Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson, grew up at 1007 Circle Park Drive, Knoxville, Tennessee. This address does not exist any more. In the mid-1960′s, the whole neighborhood was torn down to make room for the University of Tennessee. You can check out Circle Park on Google Maps: the satellite view shows that Circle Park itself is still there but the round street around it is now called Circle Park Drive SW or Circle Park Drive. Originally, Circle Park was a private open space owned by the houses around it.

It is surprising how much of a presence a house that does not exist still has. 1007 Circle Park stood on its own acre of land. It had towers, secret passages (an air gap between inner and outer walls), and a teardrop-shaped carriage drive in the side yard with a porte-cochere to keep the rain off. There were stables and three servant quarters in the back. My great grandfather, Walter Van Gilder, bought the house around 1910. It was ornate Victorian in style, built around the time of the American Civil War.

After 1965, when Evelyn Van Gilder Creekmore and Robert Elmond Creekmore (my grandparents) knew that their home would be torn down, they took as much of the house with them as they could when they moved. This included doors, architectural trim, windows, banisters, and ironwork as well as furniture. Over the years those pieces have been installed in a variety of our family’s houses in California and Tennessee.

My husband, John Plocher just finished bolting the extremely heavy black iron fireback (featuring Poseidon and seahorses) into the exterior wall of his new workshop. In our house, we also have furniture carved by Ellen Bolli Van Gilder (my great grandma), a parlor screen with six paintings by my ancestress Mary Esperandieu, the newel post from the 1007 Circle Park staircase, a heater grate, a metal fire screen, several panels of stained glass and clear leaded glass, and a variety of mirrors that Walter Van Gilder made himself for 1007 Circle Park.

The bottom left photo shows the front door of 1007 Circle Park on the day my mother married my father in 1952. In the picture, she is being escorted to the wedding by her father, R.E. Creekmore, flanked by my other grandparents (B.W.O. Dickinson and Gladys Grace Oakes Dickinson) and Ellen Bolli Van Gilder. The doors and stained glass panel in the back of that 1952 photo are the same doors and stained glass panel in my parents’ house in San Francisco now, shown on the right with my mother at the door. Walter Van Gilder made the glass panel.