page_title: Cornstalk Heights
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Cornstalk Heights / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The Russell-Jackson House in the Cornstalk Heights Historic District in Harriman, Tennessee, USA. Built in 1891 in the Eastlake architectural style by W. H. Russell, the house is believed to be the oldest in Cornstalk Heights. Russell was the second general manager of the East Tennessee Land Company, following Frederick Gates.
context_page_description: Cornstalk Heights is a neighborhood in Harriman, Tennessee, United States. Platted in the early 1890s as a residential area for Harriman's upper and professional classes, the neighborhood contains over 100 buildings added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991 as a historic district for their architectural and historical significance. The neighborhood is named for the home of Harriman founder Frederick Gates, which once stood near the eastern end of the district.
  Harriman was envisioned as a large-scale industrial center where the application of late 19th-century social reform principles, namely prohibition, would create an ideal living environment. The East Tennessee Land Company, led by Gates, designed the city in late 1889, including in the design several larger, more expensive lots in what is now Cornstalk Heights. Most of the district's earliest houses cost over $3,000 apiece, with some as high as $10,000— enormous sums for the period. Throughout the 1890s and early 1900s, Harriman's affluent residents built dozens of Victorian homes, most of which are still standing.
context_section_description: Before 1890, what is now Cornstalk Heights (and much of Harriman) was part of a large farm owned by Robert K. Byrd.  That year, the East Tennessee Land Company, formed by northern Temperance activists led by Frederick Gates and General Clinton B. Fisk, purchased the land from Byrd's widow for $26,000.  The company hoped to establish a large industrial center that would attract businesses, while at the same time demonstrate the benefits of barring the sale or consumption of alcoholic beverages.
  On Christmas Day, 1889, the East Tennessee Land Company platted a 343-acre (139 ha) section of Harriman that included most of what is now Cornstalk Heights.  These lots were sold in late February 1890 at an auction attended by over 4,000 prospective buyers from across the country.  In the Cornstalk Heights section, lots along Cumberland Street and the section of Walden Avenue between Cumberland and Clinton streets typically sold for over $2,000.  Lots along Clinton Street typically sold for over $1,000.   The deeds to these lots required that lot owners construct frame or brick houses with at least six rooms.  Over the next two years, fourteen contractors began building homes in Cornstalk Heights, using primarily materials from new industries that had been established across town along the Emory River.  The homes of Gates and Gates' successor as the East Tennessee Land Company's general manager, William H. Russell (1857–1911), were probably the earliest homes built in Cornstalk Heights.  Gates' house was demolished in the 1950s, but Russell's house still stands at 525 Cumberland Street.
  Although the East Tennessee Land Company went bankrupt in the wake of the Panic of 1893, it had succeeded in attracting enough new industry to help Harriman survive.  Many of the heads of these new companies built homes in Cornstalk Heights.  Henry Winslow, manager of the Harriman Land Company and Harriman's primary developer after the departure of the East Tennessee Land Company, built his house at 802 Clinton Street.  David Gibson, owner of Gibson Agricultural Works, built at 403 Walden Avenue.  V. G. Farnham, manager of the Harriman Tack Company, built at 813 Cumberland Street.  S. K. Paige, owner of a lumber company, built the house now known as "Bushrod Hall" at 422 Cumberland Street. In the 1920s, Tom Tarwater— manager of the Roane Hosiery Company— built at 709 Cumberland Street.
  The Reverend Alexander Killeffer, a photographer for the East Tennessee Land Company, founded Harriman's St. Andrews Episcopal Church in the early 1890s, and helped build its original meeting house at 630 Trenton Street, where the Open Bible Baptist Church now stands.  The original design of Harriman included a park along Cumberland Street, originally named Fisk Park, but eventually renamed "Killeffer Park" after Killeffer's son, Louis, a long-time resident of Cornstalk Heights.  The site along Clinton Street now occupied by the First Presbyterian Church was originally the site of a school, which operated from 1891 to 1917.
caption: The Eastlake-style Russell-Jackson House (525 Cumberland St.), believed to be the oldest house in Cornstalk Heights
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