Soddy-Daisy’s Poe’s Tavern gets 19th-century style furniture

Staff photo by Mark Kennedy / From left, Michael Clark, Brandon Lebanon and Bill Carney pose Wednesday with a heart-pine table destined for Poe's Tavern, a historical replica building in Soddy-Daisy. The table was handmade by students Clark and Lebanon at the Chattanooga Woodworking Academy on Market Street.

By Mark Kennedy February 24, 2024 3 min read

Poe’s Tavern, a pine log replica of Hamilton County’s first courthouse and post office in Soddy-Daisy, is getting some new furniture.

Students at the Chattanooga Woodworking Academy at 1604 S. Market St. on Saturday delivered a handmade table constructed of 300-year-old heart pine wood to the Poe’s Tavern replica building in Soddy-Daisy.

Bill Carney, the director of the woodworking academy, said wood for the table was salvaged from the old Chattanooga Rescue Mission at the corner of Main and Market streets, which was torn down and relocated in 2012. The table is worth about $4,000 in labor and materials, he said.

“I had this one (heart pine) board I’d been saving all these years, that I thought would make a terrific table top,” Carney said in an interview. “We hadn’t made anything to go in Poe’s Tavern, so we thought, ‘Let’s build something that would have been period specific.'”