About this property
Bleak House is an antebellum Classical Revival style 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 in 1858 for the couple as a wedding gift by the bride's father, Major Lawson D. Franklin. Robert Armstrong's father, Drury Armstrong, gave them the land. The Armstrongs named the house after Charles Dickens' "Bleak House" novel of the same name. The bricks in the house were molded on-site using slave labor. The home was used by Confederate Generals James Longstreet and Lafayette McLaws as their headquarters from November 17 to December 4 of 1863 during the Battle of Knoxville. Three Confederate sharpshooters who were stationed in the house's tower were killed by Union cannonballs. Two of the cannonballs are still embedded in the walls, and Civil War-era sketches of the slain soldiers are displayed on the walls of the tower. The home now belongs to local Chapter 89 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and is commonly called Confederate Memorial Hall. Crescent Bend, built by Robert Armstrong's father, Drury, and Westwood, built by Robert's daughter, Adelia Armstrong Lutz, still stand a few blocks from the Bleak House on Kingston Pike. Knoxville: Fifty Landmarks. (Knoxville: The Knoxville Heritage Committee of the Junior League of Knoxville, 1976). Confederate Memorial Hall - Historic Bleak House homepage http://www.restoreknoxville.com/Neighborhoods/KnoxvilleCollege/tabid/890/Default.aspx https://www.bleakhouseknoxville.org/who-are-we Archived 2018-06-27 at the Wayback Machine
Location
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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Questions about this property
When was Bleak House listed on the National Register?
Bleak House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 8, 1984.
What type of historic resource is Bleak House?
Bleak House is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Bleak House?
The period of significance for Bleak House is recorded as the early_republic era.
Can I research the history near Bleak House?
Yes. Aubrey Research reports search National Register listings, battlefield records, land patents, and other primary historical sources within any radius of a US address. A report for an address near Bleak House will include this listing and all other historical records in the area.
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