This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.
Students working with Girls, Inc. of Hamblen County, Morristown, Tennessee, helped produce this story about urban renewal and downtown planning in mid-century Morristown, Tennessee.
Speaker 1 (00:00): Morristown, Tennessee is located in the Northeastern corner of our state. With a population of almost 30,000, the town has always been a commercial hub for the Appalachian region. If you visit downtown Morristown, you may notice something unique, overhead sidewalks. We have so many questions, when were these built but, more importantly, why?
Jim Claborn (00:28): 1960s, downtown Morristown was really crowded, especially on Saturdays. People came from White Pine, and Bean Station, and Russellville, and Whitesburg, they all came to together in the town. It was normally really, really crowded on nights and on weekends. The early stores in Morristown were formed up on the hill, near Rose Center, right down where the library is, because that Turkey Creek, sometimes it would flood. Even when I was a teenager, like you all, it flooded one time and the water came up, in some of the buildings downtown, up to my chin.
Jim Claborn (01:09): And I remember going through town and they were having sales because everything in the store had been soaked. And you could buy a pair of pants or a shirt for 10 cents. They were just trying to get rid of it. Most everybody came to downtown to do their shopping. Stores would stay open late at night and all the store windows would be all decorated for holidays, and so the downtown part was just a big shopping center. And then here comes Radio Center and they take away some of that business. And then other shopping centers like Crescent Center, and then another one, we call it the Sky City Shopping Center, and these shopping centers were stealing away the business.
Speaker 3 (01:58): To encourage economic development in and around downtown, Morristown followed other cities with its own urban renewal program. In the 1960s, this federal program included their recreation of the downtown area in large part by Morristown Housing Authority.
Jim Claborn (02:18): Urban renewal. We had down where Morris Boulevard is, the street that Girls Club's on, we had some real bad structures, they were in bad condition, and some stores where the parking lot is in Morristown now that were in bad condition. So they took those houses and some of the stores down to make the town more attractive. We built new homes for folks that really couldn't afford to buy a house and we tore down a lot of stuff that just looked unappealing. You build a project, you have to tell the people that live in the houses around here, they have to pay more taxes, and they had to convince everybody that it was a good idea to keep people wanting to come to downtown. So there was some opposition, yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:21): Morristown's overhead sidewalks or Sky Mall became part of the urban renewal of the downtown area. The Sky Mall was designed by architect [inaudible 00:03:35], who got the idea from an older business district in Chester, England.
Asset ID: 2022.10.01
Find a complete transcript: www.museumonmainstreet.org
