—Knoxville History Project —
Lawson McGhee Library (
west panel)
"I intend to erect a building to be used as apublic library, and at the same time, amemorial to a beloved child."-Charles McClung McGhee
The original Lawson McGhee Library was the first durable public library in Tennessee.
Knoxville's public-library movement dates back to the early 1800s, but it wasn't until 1873, following a series of short-lived projects, that several leading citizens organized a Reading Room in an old hotel. The modest library struggled financially until railroad executive and financier Charles McClung McGhee (1828-1907), lost his daughter, and made a gesture to assure that her name never to be forgotten in her home town.
In 1886, with McGhee's funds, a library organization, including what remained of the old one, completed a three-story building at the northeast corner of Gay and Vine, run on a subscription basis. In 1917 it moved into a freestanding building on the hill about a block north of Market Square, operated as a city-run free lending library. The current building and third home of Lawson McGhee Library on this block was designed by architect Bruce McCarty and completed in 1971.
John Kelley (
east panel)
Artist John Kelley grew up in Knoxville, attending
Webb School and YMCA art classes at the old Dulin Art Gallery. His mother, Evelyn, encouraged his art; a family trip to Nashville's Parthenon engendered a fascination with Greek mythology, a major theme of his best-known work. He studied art at the University of Tennessee before transferring to the famous Pratt Institute in New York. He also studied painting at the Art Students League and the New York Academy of Art. Part of a new wave of interest in figure painting, Kelley has studied anatomy to help develop his current genre, realistic images of mythological figures. He has maintained a studio in Brooklyn for many years, but he also maintains a home and studio in Knoxville.
Kelley remembers Lawson McGhee Library as "a great oasis of culture and inspiration." In 1985, he was commissioned to paint this portrait of Lawson McGhee. Lawson McGhee Williams, the daughter of Knoxville industrialist Charles McClung McGhee, died giving birth in New York in 1883. Her wealthy father, who lived on Locust Street on the hill immediately to the northwest of here, memorialized his daughter with the name of the public library he endowed, the first durable public library in Tennessee. This building, the third to house Lawson McGhee Library, was designed by modernist Bruce McCarty and completed in 1971. Originally central to a city library system, it's now run by Knox County.
Special
thanks to City of Knoxville City Counciland Knox County Public LibraryDowntown Art Wraps are coordinated by the Knoxville Historic Project, an educational nonprofit with a mission to research and promote the history and culture of Knoxville.
Discover other Art Wraps and learn more at knoxvillehistoryproject.org
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