Fort Sanders is a neighborhood in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, located west of the downtown area and immediately north of the main campus of the University of Tennessee. Developed in the late 19th century as a residential area for Knoxville's growing upper and middle classes, the neighborhood now provides housing primarily for the university's student population. The neighborhood still contains a notable number of its original Victorian-era houses and other buildings, several hundred of which were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 as the Fort Sanders Historic District.
Fort Sanders is named for a Civil War-era Union bastion that once stood near the center of the neighborhood, which was the site of a key engagement in 1863. In the 1880s, several of Knoxville's wealthier residents built sizeable houses in what is now the southern half of Fort Sanders, then known as "White's Addition," while the northern half, known as "Ramsey's Addition," was developed to provide housing for plant managers and workers employed in factories along Second Creek. Fort Sanders was incorporated as the separate city of West Knoxville in 1888, and was annexed by Knoxville in 1897. In its early years, Fort Sanders residents included some of Knoxville's leading industrialists and politicians, as well as professors from the University of Tennessee.
Fort Sanders was the childhood home of author James Agee, and provided the setting for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Death in the Family. A ten-fold expansion of U.T.'s student body after World War II brought about the need for student housing, and many of the old homes in Fort Sanders have since been converted into apartments.
Location
Fort Sanders and the University of Tennessee campus straddle a hill that is bounded by Second Creek on the east, Third Creek on the west, the Tennessee River on the south, and a declivity now traversed by the Southern Railway tracks and Interstate 40 on the north. The university occupies the southern half of the hill, overlooking the river, while Fort Sanders occupies the northern half. Cumberland Avenue (part of U.S. Route 70), commonly called "The Strip," is the approximate boundary between the two. Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center occupies the western half of the Fort Sanders neighborhood.
The World's Fair Park, the site of the 1982 World's Fair, lies opposite Second Creek to the east. The Mechanicsville neighborhood lies on the other side of I-40 to the north. West of the L&N tracks, Cumberland Avenue becomes Kingston Pike, which continues into West Knoxville.
History
Battle of Fort Sanders
In November 1863, Confederate forces under General James Longstreet marched north from Chattanooga to Knoxville in hopes of dislodging Union forces under Ambrose Burnside, who had occupied Knoxville a few months prior. After a brief skirmish at Campbell's Station (Farragut), Longstreet's forces approached Knoxville from the west along Kingston Pike. Delaying maneuvers executed by General William P. Sanders gave Union forces in the city time to complete fortifications, although Sanders was mortally wounded on November 18, and died at the Lamar House the following day. With Union fortifications in place, Longstreet decided to surround the city and starve Union forces out.
During the Siege of Knoxville, Confederate pickets stretched roughly along what is now Twenty-First Street between Cumberland and Forest avenues. Union fortifications included Fort Byington atop "The Hill," Battery Noble at what is now the intersection of Melrose and Seventeenth, and Battery Zoellner near the intersection of Highland and Eleventh. Fort Sanders, originally "Fort Loudon" but renamed in honor of the deceased General Sanders, was an earthen fort that spanned Seventeenth between Laurel and Clinch, and continued along Laurel and Clinch eastward to Sixteenth Street.
On the morning of November 29, 1863, after a two-week siege, Longstreet ordered three brigades under General Lafayette McLaws to attack Fort Sanders, in hopes of breaching Union lines. The attackers marched from what is now the intersection of Nineteenth and Forest, southeastward across the intersection of Eighteenth and Highland, toward the fort's northeast corner at the intersection of Seventeenth and Laurel. They were unable to overcome a deep trench at the base of the fort, however, and retreated with heavy casualties. The battle, which lasted just twenty minutes, effectively ended Longstreet's chances of taking the city, and he retreated shortly afterward.