To see it
Home Harvest will have a private celebration for workers and volunteers today. An open house is scheduled 2-4 p.m. Sunday with listing agent Jim & Monique Lea Team Realty (423-664-1610, livechattanooga.com/5316.html).Home Harvest specs› Address: 5316 St. Elmo Ave.› List price: $409,700.› Bedrooms: 4› Baths: 3 1/2.› Square footage: 2,756.› Lot size: 101.4 by 90 feet.› Taxes: $1,345.93.› Agency: Jim & Monique Lea Team Realty
Perhaps the stately house at the corner of 54th Street and St. Elmo Avenue made a grand entrance into the neighborhood when it was built in the early 1900s.
St. Elmo was a vibrant and bustling community at the turn of the last century, and the two-story structure likely would have been – maybe, merely would have been – another notable addition to the clusters of distinguished homes that defined the area.
But the home had charm, character, a sense of purpose. It sheltered untold families over a century. Witnessed births and deaths. Reverberated with the sounds of adults in conversation, children at play, arguments, gossip, music, laughter, tears, the steady hum of life within its walls.
But its second century began without that same sense of purpose. The last family was gone. The sounds within had fallen silent, save for the buffeting of raindrops that leaked through the roof and the scurry of critters that took advantage of its emptiness. The commuters who passed along the thoroughfare paid no mind to the home’s earlier charms. There was only neglect to notice now.