THE STRIP: NORTH SIDE, PART I

Of the two sides of Cumberland Avenue, the North side has experienced less modernization and renovation. If you were to walk down that side of the street, you would notice that the buildings are built right up to the sidewalk. Parking and alleys are in the back. Newer buildings across the street are set back with room for extra parking, drive-thru windows, and landscaping in the front. In the case of some of these businesses, they only thing that has changed over the years are the tenants. Brick and mortar remains the same!

The Varsity Barber Show has been a Cumberland Avenue establishment for well over 40 years. Here is a picture shot through the window from the UT yearbooks.

It doesn't look like much has changed. According to an online review, Jack, the barber, is great and will even shave the back of your neck.

Next to the Varsity Barber Shop is this FedEx. It is very cozy with another building that butts up to the back of it. I've often wondered who would open a FedEx that blocks half an apartment building, then I realized that the FedEx wasn't always a retail space. Yearbook ads led me to this picture.

Traffic on The Strip -- a pain since the 1970s.

to be continued....

A HOUSE DIVIDED

Even the littlest sports fan needs some team gear. Last week I whipped these up for a friend. She loves UT and her husband cheers for Alabama. I compromised.

ADVERTISING

One of the things I've learned from my Dad is that digging through old newspapers and phone books for ads is a good way to find out what business was previously in an old building. As it turns out, yearbooks are great too.  Tennessee's yearbook, The Volunteer, was first published in 1897.  While it has little in the way of candid photographs that tell about student life, there are ads in the back. Most of the ads were for businesses on Gay Street, which was the main commercial area in Downtown Knoxville.

from 1910

 The student life sections showing street shots and students out in Knoxville didn't really start to appear in The Volunteer until the late 50s, but I did find some great early ads this weekend that tell what used to be on Cumberland Avenue. Ads were phased out of The Volunteer sometime in the mid 1960s.

The first few ads are from the 1929 yearbook. Before UT became such a large university, it shared a yearbook with the UT Medical College in Memphis. Therefore, some of the ads are for Memphis businesses, some are for the more popular stores on Gay Street, but a few were for buildings on The Strip.

From 1935:

From 1942:

From 1946:

From 1963:

From 1965:

Hope you enjoyed this smattering of what used to be on The Strip!