After 18 years in the real estate business, Sara Price is finally going to have her own office.
The office in question will be in an iconic Blount County home on East Broadway Avenue that’s almost 100 years old. Work is already underway to turn the historic building into offices for Price’s company, The Price Agency, complete with a reception area, ADA accessibility and a room for designing potential builds.
The building itself, a two-story stone structure located at 2728 E. Broadway Ave., was annexed by Alcoa several years ago. It’s known by many as the Mary Starr home after the 20th-century radio and TV personality of the same name, who hosted a home show and published cookbooks for decades in East Tennessee. At the front of the building, a decorative star has adorned the stone façade for years.
Property records list the home’s date of construction around 1937.
In a phone interview, Price told The Daily Times she tried not to drive by the house when she heard it was on the market.
“I usually know if I love something when I drive by it,” she said. “And you just can’t drive by this stone historic home without in some way loving and appreciating it.”
Sure enough, she fell in love with the building as soon as she saw it, and finalized her purchase in November.
Renovation
Putting her nearly two decades of experience with homes to use, Price is working to convert the home into offices for her 14 employees while trying to preserve as much of the original construction as possible. The 2,600-square-foot home will keep features like its wooden floors, while builders will add some modern touches to bring the building into the 21st century.
A covered patio will function as the main entrance, while basement space will offer storage for office equipment and signage.
The Alcoa Planning Commission approved Price’s design in a meeting last month, and commissioners lauded her work to preserve as much as she could of the home rather than tearing it down and starting from scratch.
“I love that house and I’ve loved it since I was a child,” Alcoa Vice Mayor Tracey Cooper told Price during the meeting. “I love it when people don’t just tear down stuff and they keep it historic, because that building is iconic.”
Planning Commissioner Orlando LoMascolo echoed Coopers’ sentiment, saying he felt Price’s project was going to be “great for the community.”
History
Although the house is popularly dubbed the Starr home, Blount County Historian Mark Bennett said old deeds for the property show the title is actually a misnomer. Starr, whose real name was Walker, lived next door to the property Price now owns, and the star on the front of the building was added by another owner.
Starr’s name probably came to rest on 2728 E. Broadway Avenue, he said, because of oral tradition.
“When you don’t have documentation, it’s just something that somebody thought they remembered,” he said in a phone interview. “But sometimes people remember wrong.”
Regardless of the misnomer, Bennett said the home is still full of history. People back in the day, he said, referred to it as the Spears home after its most famous owners — a family that owned a furniture store in Maryville. At one point, the owners had a speaker set up inside so that they could watch movies played on the drive-in theatre that used to fill the lot behind them.
Price said she’d like to see that element of community coming back to the area. She plans to have construction done soon, with temporary occupancy beginning in the middle of June and full occupancy by the end of July.
One of her favorite parts of the home, she said, is a placard built into a door.
“It says, ‘On this site in 1897, nothing happened,’” she said. “So obviously we’re keeping it.”
Most Popular
Comments / 0