Kingston Pike is known as Knoxville’s ‘Miracle Mile’
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Sometimes called the “Miracle Mile,” the shaded two-mile stretch of Kingston Pike east of Bearden is home to 10 different houses of worship. Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and other churches neighbor two different synagogues.
But why there? It turns out the placement of churches and synagogues among the stately older houses is not a coincidence.
Residents today wouldn’t recognize the Kingston Pike of the 1950s, Knoxville History Project Executive Director Jack Neely told Knox News. Many of the religious establishments there now existed downtown for Knoxville’s first 150 years. In fact, Neely said, downtown churches were built to serve congregations for centuries.
But they didn’t.
“In the postwar era a new god, the automobile, changed American lives in ways that evangelists might envy,” Neely said in an email.
With new transportation came a new need for free parking, and the supply downtown simply wasn’t meeting the demand. But Kingston Pike did. Now, 10 different congregations – Christian and Jewish – call the street home.
While the demand for free parking was rising, Kingston Pike was going through a transformation. At that time, families who owned multiacre estates were leaving, so that land became available for those who could afford it.
A July 1956 article in the Knoxville News-Sentinel declared that Kingston had “gotten religion” courtesy of five churches planned or under construction along Kingston amid the grand “ante-bellum mansions.”
First United Methodist Church bought its Kingston Pike plot from the Sanford family in 1964 after deciding its
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downtown building was too much to maintain.
“It’s six acres on the river,” longtime member Bill Tapp told Knox News. “You don’t find that ... there’s no more property like that.”
For its part, Calvary Baptist was being pushed west by the University of Tennessee at Knoxville’s expansion. In the 1960s, Calvary moved from its original location (which is now UT’s campus health facility) to its site on Kingston Pike.
Not directly downtown or on campus, Kingston Pike offered a quieter alternative to the hustle and bustle of the churches’ and synagogues’ former locations while also keeping them connected to that area’s growing population.
“For all those thousands of new westside residents, churches on that stretch of Kingston Pike would be closer than downtown, with acreage for surface parking, but without looking like a commercial strip,” Neely said.
Some, like Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, were drawn to Kingston Pike because of its established reputation for housing religious establishments.
The Rev. Chris Buice said the Unitarian Universalists sought out a location where their church could be visible to the community. In the late 1950s, at a time when segregation was common, the integrated congregation wanted to be a prominent leader in the community.
The Unitarian church is sandwiched between Temple Beth El, which moved from downtown to Kingston in 1957, and Second Presbyterian Church, which moved from downtown to Kingston by 1958. Buice said he often attends events at both.
“I remember when I first came to
Knoxville and drove Kingston Pike, I was like ‘It’s pizzas, hamburgers, all the different types of foods,” Buice said. “And then you go a little further and it’s like all the varieties of spiritual foods ... it’s kind of a celebration of religious freedoms.”
Allie Feinberg reports on politics for Knox News. Email her: allie.feinberg@knoxnews.com and follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @alliefeinberg.