History seeps into every corner of The Emporium, the art gallery on the 100 block of Gay Street.
"I'm so lucky to be surrounded by it," Liza Zenni, the executive director of Knoxville's Arts & Culture Alliance, said as her fingers traced the original 1895 brick walls of her Emporium office. "I love every inch of it." glass furnace regenerator doors
Silt from the bricks trickled down onto the old, wooden floors as she spoke about the history of the building. Her eyes lit up every time she mentioned it. She wants to make sure both The Emporium and her new project, The Furnace (opening in April 2026), are an ode to the people who walked the halls before her.
Because history is in The Furnace's walls. It's in the floors. It's even in the name.
The Furnace is directly underneath the Emporium. It will be a 5,000-square-foot immersive art experience and midsized theater space.
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The Emporium building was built in 1895, almost 20 years before Knoxville took on its most extensive construction project to date: Building up Gay Street one level. The doors that are now the entrance to the art gallery used to be the second story of the building before street construction started in 1919.
The 100 block of Gay Street was raised to solve a problem local historian Jack Neely coined "the death dip." Gay Street got more popular and the railroad got busier at the turn of the century. The downward slope of Gay Street mixed with the upward slope of a bridge over the railyard turned the area into a rollercoaster of sorts, Neely previously told Knox News.
Raising the street one level meant The Emporium's basement was left behind and what used to be the front doors were closed up. For decades, the space was literally a furnace. Coal chutes were built into the walls. Even after the space was transformed again in 2006 into a rehearsal space known as The Annex, the chutes were still there, just a little harder to see.
But in January 2020, just before "the world shut down anyway" as Zenni puts it, a storm rolled in and water poured through the coal chutes and into the rehearsal space.
"It was a stroke of luck that it hadn't flooded before," she said.
The Annex was half dance studio space and half theater rehearsal space. It was a vital part of Knoxville's art scene, booked 97% of the year, Zenni said. As water poured in from the Jackson Street viaduct through the ancient coal chutes, Zenni's heart broke seeing the space's history washed away. She knew they would have to completely gut the area, and with it, its history.
That's when The Furnace came into the picture. A space that was booked almost 365 days a year couldn't just be gutted and forgotten, Zenni thought, so she used it to fill a different need in Knoxville's art community.
For years, she said, artists had been coming to her asking for a midsized theater space. Knoxville has places for small performances, like the Old City Performing Arts Center, and massive ones too, like the Tennessee Theatre.
But what if there were a show that consistently brought in, say, 150 people every week? What if there were a gallery for works that couldn't be hung on a wall, but rather were projected? Where could this happen? Those are the needs The Furnace looks to fill ‒ an immersive art experience that combines the theater, gallery art and technology into one.
The $4.75 million renovation will create a place for artists to fulfill their wildest creative fantasies, a gathering place for Knoxville community members and, hopefully, a better connecting point for downtown and the Old City.
The two areas are kind of disconnected, Zenni said.
It can be inconvenient to get from one place to another, and Zenni imagines people walking in through The Emporium's front doors on Gay Street, strolling through the gallery, taking the soon-to-come elevator down to The Furnace, enjoying a show, grabbing a drink at one of the space's bars and then walking out onto Fire Street.
"And then there they are in the Old City," she said. "They didn’t have to go down that staircase. They didn’t even have to go outside.”
Michele Hummel, executive director of the Downtown Knoxville Alliance, told Knox News the project will bring life to the area.
"We don’t want downtown to have dead spots as you are walking through,” Hummel said. “So building (The Furnace) is a smart idea.”
At the moment, Zenni has raised $4 million of the $4.75 million needed to complete the project. The funds raised so far can be broken down like this:
That money will be used to renovate the space. The remainder will be used for sound equipment, lighting equipment, curtains and chairs. Zenni said since there is time to raise money for that during construction, it won't delay demo day. Construction tentatively will start in April, and The Furnace should open a year after that.
Zenni thought back to her time at Brigham Young University in the 1970s, and how its theater space was state-of-the-art. She thought about her time a few years later at Yale University, where the theater space was less than state-of-the-art. And yet, people came to shows both places.
"You can make magic with a paperclip and some tape," Zenni said, referring to her time at Yale.
She's leaning on that mantra while raising the last $750,000.
"If you ask me what my plan is for doing that, I am counting on luck. I just have a feeling that we’ll succeed," she said as she walked through the gutted space. “There’s just no doubt in my mind that we will find what we need."
Joanna Hayesis the restaurant and retail reporter. Email: joanna.hayes@knoxnews.com.
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