Fort Sanders (Knoxville neighborhood)
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Fort Sanders Historic District
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| Location | Roughly bounded by White and Grand Aves. and 11th and 19th Sts. Knoxville, Tennessee |
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| Coordinates | 35°57′37″N 83°55′54″W / 35.96028°N 83.93167°WCoordinates: 35°57′37″N 83°55′54″W / 35.96028°N 83.93167°W |
| Area | approximately 105 acres (42 ha) |
| Built | 1880–1930 |
| Architect | multiple |
| Architectural style | Queen Anne, Bungalow/Craftsman, Georgian Revival, Italianate |
| NRHP reference # | 80003839 |
| Added to NRHP | September 16, 1980 |
Fort Sanders is a neighborhood in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, located west of the downtown area and immediately north of the main campus of the University of Tennessee. Developed in the late 19th century as a residential area for Knoxville's growing upper and middle classes, the neighborhood now provides housing primarily for the university's student population. The neighborhood still contains a notable number of its original Victorian-era houses and other buildings, several hundred of which were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 as the Fort Sanders Historic District.
Fort Sanders is named for a Civil War-era Union bastion that once stood near the center of the neighborhood, which was the site of a key engagement in 1863. In the 1880s, several of Knoxville's wealthier residents built sizeable houses in what is now the southern half of Fort Sanders, then known as "White's Addition," while the northern half, known as "Ramsey's Addition," was developed to provide housing for plant managers and workers employed in factories along Second Creek. Fort Sanders was incorporated as the separate city of West Knoxville in 1888, and was annexed by Knoxville in 1897. In its early years, Fort Sanders residents included some of Knoxville's leading industrialists and politicians, as well as professors from the University of Tennessee.
Fort Sanders was the childhood home of author James Agee, and provided the setting for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Death in the Family. A ten-fold expansion of U.T.'s student body after World War II brought about the need for student housing, and many of the old homes in Fort Sanders have since been converted into apartments.
Fort Sanders and the University of Tennessee campus straddle a hill that is bounded by Second Creek on the east, Third Creek on the west, the Tennessee River on the south, and a declivity now traversed by the Southern Railway tracks and Interstate 40 on the north. The university occupies the southern half of the hill, overlooking the river, while Fort Sanders occupies the northern half. Cumberland Avenue (part of U.S. Route 70), commonly called "The Strip," is the approximate boundary between the two. Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center occupies the western half of the Fort Sanders neighborhood.
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