While renovating the downtown buildings collectively referred to as 4 Market Square, Knoxville architect Gregor Smee found yet again there’s nothing easy when it comes to modernizing century-old structures. Between fulfilling the broader vision for Market Square revitalization, serving the needs of the buildings’ tenants and navigating a labyrinth of zoning regulations, Smee and his team had their work cut out for them.

Anyone who visits Market Square today, of course, can’t help but enjoy the fruits of those efforts—a thriving restaurant, a popular live-music venue and upper-level spaces that house a variety of organizations and businesses. The finished product is a monument to the philosophy that historical sites can indeed be renovated to serve today’s users while preserving their original beauty and structural integrity.

But when the firm of Smee + Busby Architects was recruited by 4 MS, LLC—owners of the 4 Market Square buildings—it had a rough canvas on which to begin its work. The two buildings involved (the double spaces of 4 and 6 Market Square and the adjacent 8 Market Square) were in various stages of either partial renovation or decay.
“The 8 building was about two-thirds on the way toward becoming apartments, while the 4 and 6 buildings were in pretty rough condition,” Smee recalls. “Some of the floors were rotted, there were basement leaks and pigeons had taken over the ground level.”

Today, the first floor of the double space is occupied by Café 4, which was launched by Knoxville restaurateurs Jim and Lori Klonaris earlier this year. Behind the café sits The Square Room, a 300-seat auditorium space that hosts music concerts as well as weekend church services. The venue is accessible from the restaurant but has a separate main entrance behind the restaurant, off the courtyard adjacent to the 8 building.

The structural interface between Café 4 and The Square Room consists of a large, soundproof bank of angled windows, which allows Market Square pedestrians to see through the restaurant, all the way to the performance stage. Such is the case during WDVX’s live Blue Plate Special broadcasts on Fridays, although for most ticketed music events, curtains are drawn across the windows and the speakers piping the live feed into the café and its outdoor patio are cut off.
The entrance to Café 4 is actually in the 8 building, where guests are also greeted by a cozy bakery and coffee shop. But not wanting to sacrifice restaurant seating for coffee-house patrons, Smee + Busby ingeniously recaptured some of the space overlooking the bakery counter, converting it into mezzanine-level seating for guests who just want to kick back with a cup of Joe, a laptop or a sweet treat.

The two upper floors on 8 Market Square now provide housing for Knoxville Fellows, a Christ-centered leadership and internship program for recent college graduates, and the two floors above 4 and 6 Market Square contain business and church offices as well as a library and conference room that can be rented out as meeting spaces.
Throughout the project, architects were faced with the design challenges aplenty. For example, they found a 12-inch height differential between the second floors in the 6 and 8 buildings—a situation rectified by gently sloping ramps—and contractors had to cut through nearly three feet of solid wall and install steel lintels to create the windows overlooking the courtyard and each of the interior openings between buildings.

“Adding all these features to a 100-year-old building is neither cheap nor easy,” says Smee. “That is the nature of historic re-use and renovation. You never know exactly what you are getting into.”
Other measures included designing two complex waste disposal systems, installing a multilevel exhaust system, locating much of the kitchen storage and prep areas in the basement and creating a completely fireproof deck area on the rooftop.
“For all of the challenges and complexity, this has been a tremendously rewarding project. It was a long and circuitous path from vision to reality, but that just makes the completion that much sweeter. It’s great to see the positive impact on Market Square. After all, this is our neighborhood, too.”