page_title: Market Square, Knoxville
section_title: Culture
hierarchical_section_title: Market Square, Knoxville / Culture
caption_attribution_description: English: Farmers' Market vendor canopies at Market Square in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA.
context_page_description: Market Square is a pedestrian mall located in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Established in 1854 as a market place for regional farmers, the square has developed over the decades into a multipurpose venue that accommodates events ranging from concerts to political rallies, and has long provided a popular gathering place for artists, street musicians, war veterans, and activists. Along with the Market House, Market Square was home to Knoxville's City Hall from 1868 to 1924. Market Square was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
  Land for the market place was given to the city by William G. Swan and Joseph A. Mabry. Farmers from the surrounding area would bring their wagons to the Market House, where they sold their produce and wares. During the Civil War, the Union Army used the Market House as a barracks and magazine. Knoxville's post-Civil War population boom brought about continued development in Market Square, most notably the construction of Peter Kern's confections store in 1876 and Max Arnstein's seven-story department store in 1906.
context_section_description: Musicians have been a staple of Market Square since at least the late 1860s, when Peter Kern employed brass bands for various festivities.  In the 1880s, "Dr. Lighthall's Mexican Band" first appeared on the Square, and Tennessee politician and fiddler Robert Love Taylor began performing with the "Market Hall Fiddlers."  Promoter Frank Murphy held fiddle contests in Market Hall in the 1920s which drew the likes of Charlie Bowman, Earl Johnson, and the Tennessee Ramblers, and during same decade the St. James Hotel (at the northeast end of the Square) hosted the studios of WNOX.  By the 1980s, diverse styles such as bluegrass, jazz, folk, and punk were being played in Market Square's clubs.  The Sundown in the City concert series, established by AC Entertainment in 1997, regularly drew crowds of 10,000 or more before its conclusion after the 2011 season.
  In his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1957 novel, A Death in the Family, James Agee recalled going into a noisy Market Square bar with his father while they walked through downtown Knoxville in 1915.  In a later scene, he mentioned his preference for the Market Square store Harbison's, which his mother considered "vulgar," preferring instead Miller's on Gay Street.
  Cormac McCarthy gives vivid descriptions of Market Square in both his 1965 novel, The Orchard Keeper, and his 1979 novel, Suttree, both of which are set in Knoxville and its vicinity.  In the first, one of the characters walks to Market Square, where he witnesses a street preacher "screaming incoherently and brandishing a tattered Bible," before traversing the market house and eventually buying traps at a hardware store.  In Suttree, the title character sells his fish to a Market Square fish vendor, passing along the way "derelict trucks," "pariahs," "blind singers," "organists," "psalmists," "beggars," and "wild street preachers."  In a later scene, the character Gene Harrogate peers into the Golden Sun Cafe while on a stroll through the downtown area.
  Other books that mention Market Square include Anne Armstrong's 1915 novel, The Seas of God (which is set in a fictional town based on Knoxville), Joseph Wood Krutch's 1962 autobiography, More Lives Than One, and David Madden's 1974 novel, Bijou (also set in a fictional town based on Knoxville).  More recently, the Square figures in Richard Marius's An Affair of Honor (2001), Ken Mink's "Knoxville: A City Born in Blood and Flames," featuring Civil War era action involving the city's richest family, the Armstrongs, and the use of their homes as military headquarters and later as a hospital for wounded soldiers, and Richard Yancey's The Highly Effective Detective (2006).
  Political groups have been active at Market Square since at least 1876, when politician William F. Yardley spoke before a gathering of Radical Republicans. Temperance activists were among the most vocal in the early 1900s, when temperance leaders such as William Jennings Bryan, Edward Ward Carmack, and Frances Willard gave speeches at Market Hall.  Women's suffragist Lizzie Crozier French was active on Market Square as early as the 1880s, and today is depicted in the Square's Women's Suffrage Memorial.  Socialist politician Harry McKee spoke at the Square in 1904, and Booker T. Washington delivered a speech on civil rights at the Square in 1909.  In 1980, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan spoke before an audience of 6,000 at Market Square.  Democratic candidate Walter Mondale spoke at the Square in 1984, but managed to draw just a few hundred.
caption: Vendors at Market Square's Farmer's Market
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