(First in a series on historic homes in Chattanooga)
Read more Chattanooga History Columns
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- Robbins: The old Richardson's house and the Civil War
- Gaston: James Williams was a man of the world
- Raney: Mason Evans, the 'Wild Man of the Chilhowee'
- Gaston: The legacy of Adolph Ochs endures
- Martin: Ed Johnson said, 'I have a changed heart,' the day before his lynching in Chattanooga on 1906
- Thomas: The inventiveness of Judge Michael M. Allison
- Moore: Chattanooga's first Chinese community
- Summers, Robbins: Chattanooga's Tuskegee Airman - Joseph C. White
- McCallie: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says so!
- Gaston: John McCline's Civil War - from slave to D.C. parade
- Raney: Exploring Chattanooga businesses in the Green Book
- Elliott: Remembering the Freedmen's Bureau in Chattanooga
- Gaston: Nancy Ward was a beloved, respected Tennessean
- Martin: Prohibition - the noble experiment
- Elliott: 'A shameful, disgraceful deed': The destruction of the Sewanee cornerstone
- Gaston: Robert Cravens was ironmaster, Chattanooga area's first commuter
- Robbins: Dr. T.H. McCallie's Christmas 1863
- Robbins: Journalist writes of a trip to Missionary Ridge in 1896
- Summers, Robbins: Mine 21 disaster - gone but not forgotten
- Elliott: Collegedale incorporates to avoid Sunday 'blue laws'
- Gaston: 'Marse Henry' Watterson's journalism fame began in Chattanooga
- Robbins: Orchard Knob battle recalled in 1895
- Elliott: Chattanoogans joined in an 'orgy of joy and gladness' on Armistice Day, 1918
- Thomas: Noted service, speakers are marks of Rotary Club of Chattanooga since 1914
- Summers and Robbins: Remembering noted Tennessee author North Callahan
- Raney: 'I auto cry, I auto laugh, I auto sign my autograph'
- Gaston: Sequoyah's alphabet enriched Cherokees
- Robbins: A look at Sam Divine's life during the Civil War
- Robbins: Memories of a Confederate nurse
- Robbins: More notes from Bradford Torrey's 1895 visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Robbins: Journalist in 1895 details visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Elliott: Telephone exchange firebombing was distraction for grocery store robbery
- Gaston: Worcester brought Christ's message to Cherokee at Brainerd Mission
- Robbins: 1896 travel diary: 'A Week on Walden's Ridge'
- Gaston: Elizabeth Strayhorn, WAC Commandant at Fort Oglethorpe
- Robbins: The history of the Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park
- Moore: Do you own a Sears Roebuck home?
- Summers and Robbins: Camp Nathan Bedford Forrest in World War II
- Gaston: Hiram Sanborn Chamberlain remembered
- Elliott: Daisy the center of tile, ceramic manufacturing in Hamilton County
- Gaston: FDR inaugurates the Chickamauga Dam
- Summers, Robbins: Interned WWII Germans had it easy at Camp Crossville
- Elliott: A war correspondent on Lookout Mountain
- Gaston: Chickamaugas finally bury hatchet in Tennessee Valley
- Gaston: Chickamaugas in Chattanooga
- Robbins: The history of the Riverbend festival
- Raney: Sadie Watson, the first woman elected in Hamilton County government
- Moore: Remembering Chattanooga's Hawkinsville community
- Elliott: Welsh coal miners transformed Soddy after the Civil War
- Gaston: Chattanooga's best-kept secret
- Elliott: Cabell Breckinridge loses his horse
- Raney: Martin Fleming is the people's judge
- Gaston: The amazing career of Francis Lynde
- Martin: Hamilton County's Name Sake: Alexander Hamilton
- Summers, Robbins: The crosses at Sewanee
- Bledsoe: The fiery truce at Kennesaw Mountain
- Moore: Talented architect's life cut short by tragedy
- Rydell: Chattanooga's place in soccer history
- Robbins: Tennessee Coal, member of the First Dow Jones Industrial Average
- Raney: In the barber chair
- Lanier: Becoming the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association
- McCallie: John P. Franklin: Living history among us
- Barr: Chattanooga's first railroad: The Underground Railroad
- Summers, Robbins: Charles Bartlett was a Pulitzer Prize winner, Kennedy confidant
- Rainey: 'We have seen it'
- Elliott: Feinting and fighting at Running Water Creek and Johnson's Crook
- Gaston: The Spring Frog Cabin at Audubon Acres
- Raney: Wauhatchie Pike was moonshine motorway
- Robbins: Oakmont was home of venerable Williams clan
- Summers and Robbins: Rebirth of the Mountain Goat Line
- Elliott: Bad investments led to Soddy Bank failure in 1930
- Summers and Robbins: Pearl Harbor attack left football behind
- Gaston: Jolly’s Island namesake had long ties with Sam Houston
- Return Jonathan Meigs, Indian Agent
- Moore: Did you know about St. Elmo's other two cemeteries?
- Summers: Orme - Marion County's almost lost community
- Davis: Spooky revival at Sharp Mountain in 1873
- Robbins: The story of Longholm
- Raney: Women labored to help the U.S. win World War I
- Even in the city, the 'wheel' changed everything
- Murray: Confederate dilemma after Chickamauga
- J.B. Collins — Newsman extraordinaire
- Robbins: The Story of the Lyndhurst Mansion
- Chattanooga artist and wife lost on the Lusitania
- Chattanooga History Column: Battelle, Alabama and the Battelle Institute
- John Ross, a founder of Chattanooga
- Hamilton County casualties in World War I
- Chattanooga Power Couple
- 'Somewhere in France'
- The Ray Moss family
- Battery B from Chattanooga
- Ulysses S. Grant, Clark B. Lagow, and the Chattanooga Bender
- Songbirds Museum Timeline
- Hamilton County World War 1 roster
- The Soddy Girl and the Memphis Belle
- Blues icon Bessie Smith was the Empress of Soul
- Women's Army Corps at Chickamauga
- Emma Bell Miles' life at the top of the 'W'
- The Tivoli Wurlitzer is one of Chattanooga's priceless assets
- Chattanooga in struggle for freedom during Civil War
- October 1918, Chattanooga paralyzed by Spanish flu epidemic
- Eli Lilly and the Ditch of Death
- One hundred years ago, Chattanooga goes to war
- The legacy of Anna Safley Houston
- Harriet Whiteside was ahead of her time
- Southern Adventist University
- Chattanooga native's writings aided Civil Rights movement
- Zion College, Chattanooga's only African American College
- The North Shore's hidden past
- Mayme Martin -- Businesswoman and community leader
- Thomas Sim's epic struggle for freedom
- Top of Cameron Hill was price of rerouting interstate
- Cameron Hill has rich history
- Temperance movement included Harriman university
- The sweetest music this side of Heaven
- Conquistadors at Chattanooga
- Chattanooga and the 'General'
- Chattanooga's first Thanksgiving, 1863
- Chattanooga's greatest flood caught city unaware
- Opening the Cracker Line
- European trip in 1900 enlightens Sophia Scholze Long
- Sophia Scholze Long spoke out when others were silent
- Little South Pittsburg and its big silent movie stars
- Lot attendant recalls hottest job in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's Forest Hills is final resting place for known, unknown
- Burritt College -- Pioneer of the Cumberlands
- Chattanooga's nicknames trace city's evolution
- The 25th annual meeting of the Tennessee Press Association
- Clemons Brothers Furniture Store
- The Short Life of the USS Chattanooga
- Ellen Jarnagin McCallie lived a truly remarkable life
- Dr. Jonathan Bachman was a revered city father
- Second guessing the Confederate failure on Missionary Ridge
- Nancy Kefauver, ambassador for the arts
- William Gibbs McAdoo kept his Southern roots
- Chattanooga's Secretary of the Treasury
- Howard Baker remembered as a statesman/photographer who snapped history
- Tivoli's last picture show
- The history of one of Chattanooga's oldest businesses
- Chattanooga's roller derby skaters
- Myths of Coca-Cola in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's neighborhood grocery stores
- The tale of the Scottsboro Boys
- The people's history of Chattanooga
- Howard School is Chattanooga's reminder of Reconstruction
- Elevator operator, painter, mystery man: meet Rice Carothers
- Raulston Schoolfield made enemies amid his rise to power
- Website lets users peer into Chattanooga's past
- The flood of 1917
- Chattanooga's 'wickedest woman' buried at Forest Hills
- History of Cummings Highway
The Lyndhurst mansion in Riverview once stood as one of the largest and most elegant in the area. Its story began over a century ago.
Many patent medicines were concocted after the Civil War, and one in particular made out of kola nuts and coca leaves took off.
A young attorney and entrepreneur, John Lupton, who was treasurer of the Chattanooga Medicine Co., befriended two fellow Chattanooga attorneys, Benjamin Thomas and Thomas Whitehead, who had the idea for widespread bottling of this emerging beverage.
Lupton had the foresight and the capital to bottle and distribute what became one of the world's best known consumer products, Coca-Cola. His funding came from activities in real estate and his involvement in the Chattanooga Medicine Co., which was prospering from its own Wine of Cardui and Black Draught potions.
John Lupton had married Elizabeth Olive Patten, the only daughter of Zeboim Cartter Patten, founder of the medicine company in 1879, and his first wife, Mary Rawlings Patten. (Legend has it that John's concern that the popularity of "sugar water," Coca-Cola, could fade encouraged his investments in Dixie Mercerizing Company and Volunteer State Life Insurance Company.)
The fruits of Lupton's success were directed in 1910 into a grand home on 30 acres surrounded by Hixson Pike as well as Riverview, Hillcrest, Lexington and Dorchester roads. Many thought that only the Biltmore mansion in Asheville, N.C., was grander. The Lyndhurst mansion was named after a picturesque village in the south of England that the Luptons enjoyed visiting.
Their new home on gently rolling land overlooked a broad sweep of the Tennessee River. Cream-colored brick and terra cotta accompanied an imposing facade in front of 34,000 square feet of living space divided into more than 30 rooms.
The visitor entered Lyndhurst through a long corridor lighted by carved clusters of candles and a large group of lights from a dome over the middle entrance. Great mahogany bookcases lined the walls of the library and surrounded a frieze depicting the Lady of the Lake.
The living room with its open fireplace and large mahogany table had wide doors that opened onto an enclosed porch with ferns, palms, and furniture overlooking formal gardens and a miniature lake. Each bedroom on the second floor depicted a period of English history. The large ballroom had a pipe organ.
Jack Lupton, the grandson, was quoted in a Chattanooga News-Free Press article as saying "it had absolutely everything, ballroom, indoor swimming pool, bowling alley, gymnasium, elevator and millions of rooms." His grandfather's heart condition was thought the reason for athletic facilities.
Lyndhurst was in the pre-Depression years the center of social life in Chattanooga, when entertaining was done on a grand scale. Jack's grandmother, Elizabeth Patten Lupton, presided. Family members gathered at Lyndhurst, and several including Jack's parents (Cartter and Margaret Ann Rawlings) lived there until after the youngster was born in 1926.
Jack concluded that the mansion was terribly overwhelming but a good place to play and roam.
As soon as Lyndhurst became a fixture in Riverview, it began to fade. John Lupton passed away in 1933 and his wife Elizabeth in 1941. Cartter, their only child, had built his own mansion close by and left to serve in World War II. Jack's sister, Elizabeth, said her family kept a Victory Garden and animals during the war, and it was her job to bring in eggs every morning.
Lyndhurst became increasingly difficult to maintain. The family kept the heat on at the shuttered abode, but the roof began to leak, causing damage to the wooden floors.
The Luptons decided against donating the mansion to a hospital or other public organization in order to preserve the private character of the property.
In 1960, Cartter Lupton approached developer Tommy Lupton, his cousin, and they agreed on a plan to raze the structure and develop 15 one-acre lots in a first-class subdivision. Tommy noted the demolition of Lyndhurst's 18-inch walls required as many as five rounds of dynamite. After each explosion, somebody in the demolition crew must have shouted, "What a blast!" The magnificent structure vanished with hardly a trace.
Today a beautiful group of homes sit on the Lyndhurst site. As another part of its legacy, the Lupton family through the Lyndhurst Foundation and private philanthropy have helped make Chattanooga special.
Frank "Mickey" Robbins is an investment adviser with Patten and Patten. For more visit Chattahistoricalassoc.org.