If you go
› What: Ferger Place home tour.› When: 2-5 p.m. Saturday.› Where: Ferger Place fronts Main Street at Morningside Drive and Eveningside Drive. Shuttles also will pick up from MainX24 festivities from Main and Adams streets.› Admission: $20.
Ruth Ann Graham is up front about why she wanted to help organize a tour of homes in the Ferger Place neighborhood where she lives.
"I want to see that house," she said of one particular home on the tour.
The house in question has an upstairs ballroom that was once a speakeasy.
Graham said she is also looking forward to meeting a member of the family who used to live in the house she currently lives in. She's heard through social media that the person plans to attend.
Did you know?
Ferger Place is one of four residential neighborhoods in the city that are regulated by the Chattanooga Historic Zoning Commission. The others are St. Elmo, Fort Wood and Battery Place.Source: www.chattanooga.gov
Ferger PlaceWhile there have been other home tours around the city, few can match Ferger Place when it comes to architecture, history and familiarity. Many Chattanoogans either lived in the neighborhood or knew someone who did over the last 100 years or so.
"That's true," Graham said. "We hear from people all of the time who have some connection to the homes here."
Ferger Place is the oldest planned subdivision in Chattanooga and one of the oldest south of the Mason-Dixon line, she said.
The 11 homes on the tour were built between 1910 and the 1920s. The tour coincides with MainX24, the neighborhood block party along Main Street that runs from 8 a.m. Saturday morning to 8 a.m. Sunday morning.
The tour is scheduled from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday.
A shuttle bus will take people from the party to Ferger Place, or you can simply show up at the entrance to the horseshoe-shaped neighborhood. Cost to attend is $20.
"Every dime will go to our neighborhood park and bringing it back to life," Graham said.
This is the fourth tour, and Graham said the neighborhood association continues to grow and become active.
The neighborhood features a variety of styles including foursquare, Italian Renaissance, craftsman, Tudor and Colonial revival. The tour will include tours of the homes as well some history into when they were built and by whom.
Graham's house at 108 Eveningside Drive, for example, was built in 1910 by German brewmaster Carl Neidhard. It was home to Clyde and Mary Ann Steiner Hendee and their 10 children beginning in the 1950s.
Starter homes in Ferger Place would have cost $3,000 in 1910.
The neighborhood is 1.5 miles from the heart of downtown. The distance doesn't seem all that far by today's standards, but the horse and buggy were still popular modes of transportation at the time.
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.