National Register Historic District [‡]
The Holston Avenue Neighborhood Historic District is comprised of 132 principal properties that have collective significance to Bristol in architecture and community planning and development. The neighborhood's pattern of development is associated with industrial growth and the urbanization of Bristol. With its earliest resources dating to 1900 and its most recent contributing resource dating to 1962, the neighborhood contains numerous good examples of Bungalows, Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, and Queen Anne residences along with a few other building forms and stylistic influences. Although a small city park is included in the district, it is otherwise residential. A significant number of houses have added modern siding, replacement windows, and/or exterior storm windows. In only a few instances do these alterations combine to cause a building to become inconsistent with the overall character of the neighborhood. The district retains its historic and architectural integrity.
Before it was a residential neighborhood, the area currently occupied by Holston Avenue and surrounding streets belonged to members of the King family. Born in Londonderry, Ireland in 1752, Col. James King immigrated to Virginia in 1769. Col. King was able to acquire about 50,000 acres of land in and around what is now Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia. Land belonging to Col. King was conveyed to his son, the Reverend James A. King, the founder of King College in Bristol, Tennessee. Col. James King's son was the same Rev. King who sold 100 acres of land to his son-in-law, Joseph R. Anderson, considered to be the founder of Bristol, Tennessee. The previously-described purchases made by Anderson and Goodson did not, however, include the location of the present-day Holston Avenue Neighborhood.
‡ Gray Stothart, First Tennessee Development District, Holston Avenue Neighborhood Historic District, Sullivan County, TN, nomination document, 2012, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
Street Names
7th Avenue • 9th Avenue • Clyde Reser Street • Haynes Street • Helms Street • Holston Avenue • Orchard Street • Reynolds Street • Watauga Avenue • Weise Street