Bleak House, Knoxville, Tennessee

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Bleak House
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location:	3148 Kingston Pike Knoxville, Tennessee
Added to NRHP:	November 8, 1984
NRHP Reference#:	84000369

Bleak House is an antebellum house in Knoxville, Tennessee. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The house was first occupied by Robert Houston Armstrong and his wife, Louisa Franklin. It was built for the couple as a wedding gift by the bride's father, Major L.D. Franklin. Robert Armstrong's father, Drury Armstrong, gave them the land. The Armstrongs named the house after Charles Dickens' novel of the same name. {{Fact}|} The brick house used slave labor to mold the bricks on-site.^{[citation needed]}

The home was used by Confederate General James Longstreet and General Lafayette McLaws as their headquarters during the 1863 Battle of Knoxville. Three Confederate soldiers in the house's tower were killed by Union cannonballs. (Two of the cannonballs are still embedded in the walls.) There are also sketches in the tower from the Civil War era of the slain soldiers.

The home now belongs to local Chapter 89 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and is commonly called Confederate Memorial Hall.

[edit] References

• Knoxville: Fifty Landmarks. (Knoxville: The Knoxville Heritage Committee of the Junior League of Knoxville, 1976).

[edit] External links

• Confederate Memorial Hall - Historic Bleak House homepage
• National Register of Historic Places
• http://www.restoreknoxville.com/Neighborhoods/KnoxvilleCollege/tabid/890/Default.aspx
• http://www.discoveret.org/kcwrt/sites/sm-text.htm
• State of Tennessee: East Tennessee Civil War Sites

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