or the first one hundred and twenty five years of its existence in Knox County, the Fairmont-Emoriland Neighborhood was part of the rolling farm country north of Knoxville. Nestled south of Sharp's Ridge and southeast of Sharp's Gap, the present neighborhood was almost equidistant between Knoxville and what became the village of Fountain Head, later renamed Fountain City. The neighborhood began as part of a large tract of land accumulated by pioneer settler Andrew McCampbell (1754-1825) around a 1793 land grant for 350 acres from the state of North Carolina. Tradition says that the fortified log residence of Andrew McCampbell stood northeast of the present intersection of Emoriland Boulevard and Orlando. Andrew McCampbell and his family are buried in the nearby McCampbell Cemetery, located just off Tecoma Avenue.

In 1882, the Reverend Isaac Emory (1830-1904) purchased a tract of forty-eight acres of land from the McCampbell family, which extended from the present-day Walker Boulevard east to what is now the Knoxville Utilities Board power line right-of-way south to just past Fairmont Boulevard and west to include the ox-bow of First Creek (Knox County Deed Book W iii, pp. 269-270). This land became the Emory family's truck farm, at one time called Emoryland, also later the name of one of the neighborhood streets. A native of Fulton, New York, and a graduate of Lane Theological Seminary, Reverend Emory came to Knoxville after 1865 as an American Sunday School missionary and is credited with establishing over one thousand Sunday schools throughout the state of Tennessee. He was especially active in churches in the mountains of East Tennessee. He was killed in the legendary New Market train wreck on September 24, 1904 just north of Knoxville on the Southern Railway line. His passing was much lamented. Reverend Emory was buried in Old Gray Cemetery two miles south of his home on Broadway, the pike which ran by his house. The square opposite Old Gray Cemetery was named Emory Place in his memory.

In 1890, Reverend Emory gave a right-of-way along present-day Walker Boulevard for a short-line steam railway to run from Knoxville to Fountain City. The small train, which left Knoxville from Broadway near Gray Cemetery [now Old Gray Cemetery] and ran to the park in Fountain City, functioned like a street-car line and was hence called the "Dummy Line." The land included in the right-of-way was to be returned to the Emorys if it was no longer used for the railway. When the city converted the railway to a true streetcar line in 1906, the land was not returned. The resulting dispute was not settled until the 1960s. The dummy line was one of the most popular short excursions from Knoxville, and its hourly trips helped fuel the growth of the city northward. The suburban development of Lincoln Park was growing to the west of the Emory farm in the 1890s near the Arlington Depot, a stop on the dummy line just west of Broadway at its intersection with present-day Emoriland Boulevard. A second neighborhood stop on the dummy line was locally known as the "Apple Tree Station." It was located near the present-day intersection of Powers and Walker Boulevard. There was no "station," only a large apple tree to mark the stop. The dummy line ran up what is now Walker Boulevard to the Whittle Springs Hotel, immediately north of the present neighborhood. This hotel was located at one of East Tennessee's most popular mineral springs at the turn of the twentieth century and remained one of Knoxville's most popular hotels for many years. In 1920, one of Knoxville's first golf courses and its first swimming pool were built at the hotel.

Some time prior to the Reverend Isaac Emory's death in 1904, Charles M. Emory, Sr., began to operate the family truck farm, also called Arlington Gardens, adding a substantial greenhouse to the operation (Knoxville Journal and Tribune, September 16, 1904). In 1917 the city of Knoxville annexed the incorporated communities of North Knoxville and Park City and all adjacent land north to Sharps Ridge, including the Emory farm. Between 1922 and 1923, Charles Emory changed his occupation from farming to real estate, partly because the new city taxes made farming unfeasible. In 1924 and 1926 he converted the family farm into what is now the Fairmont-Emoriland neighborhood. He laid out the streets, surveyed lots, and sold them in public auctions. The 1924 auction sold forty-three lots for a total of $25,000, a record price for the auction company handling the sale. The east-west streets Fairmont and Emoriland were laid out as broad streets. Emoriland was divided down the center as a boulevard. Fairmont was an unusually broad street, with a large (ten foot) verge or green strip on each side of the street. Both boulevards were eventually lined with large elms, maples, and other trees. In 1926 Charles Emory founded the Emory Construction Company. In 1927 he built a new house for his family at 103 Emoriland (now 1517, and listed on the Knoxville Historic Register). After his death in 1933, the house remained in the family until 1996. Other new houses began to appear in the new neighborhood in the 1920s.

In 1927 McCampbell School, designed by the local architectural firm Barber & McMurry, was built in what is now the 2000 block of Emoriland Boulevard. This school remained a vital part of the neighborhood until it was closed in 1981. Named for Knoxville physician and school board member, Dr. H. H. McCampbell, the school preserved the historic link with the pioneer McCampbell family. The school building sat vacant and unused from 1981 until it was demolished in 1994. The loss of a significant piece of local architecture and a beautiful building was tragic for the city and for the neighborhood, which had fought the closing of the school. New residences were built on the thirteen original lots left vacant by the demolition.

Two other neighborhood institutions are the Arlington Baptist Church and the Arlington Church of Christ. The Arlington Baptist Church was established in 1925 in a wooden building at the corner of Broadway and Pembroke, which burned in 1932. A new brick church building, the present chapel of the church, was built on Fairmont Boulevard that same year. The larger adjacent church building was constructed in 1957. The Arlington Church of Christ was organized in 1943. The church congregation first met in the old Broadway Movie Theater in Arlington. The church building, which fronts on Tecoma Drive at Clearview Avenue, was constructed in two major building projects in 1948 and 1957. The architects for the church building were the distinguished Knoxville firm of Baumann and Baumann. The house at the present 1731 Emoriland Boulevard served as the parsonage of St. John's Lutheran Church from 1940 to 1973.

The growth of the neighborhood was slow and steady. Houses continued to be built in the 1930s and 1940s, although the Great Depression and World War II slowed building in the city. Over ninety per cent of houses in the neighborhood were built before 1950. The only significant new construction to date occurred in 1997, when seven new houses were constructed on Emoriland Boulevard on the lots left vacant by the demolition of McCampbell School.

The neighborhood setting is park-like. The wide main streets, Fairmont and Emoriland, are lined with sidewalks. The lots on the north side of Emoriland adjoining First Creek are very deep, with very large old trees lining the flood plain of the Knoxville's most historic creek. The large trees along the streets and the creek screen the neighborhood from the noisy flow of traffic and the bustle of commerce on nearby Broadway and other busy streets.

Probably the most "famous" resident of the neighborhood, although she would have been embarrassed by that designation, was poet Jane Hess Merchant (1919-1972), who lived at 2034 Emoriland Boulevard from 1950 to 1972, the last twenty-two years of her life. All ten of her volumes of poetry were published while she lived in this neighborhood. The beauty of the outdoors, which she observed from this house where she was confined as an invalid much of that time, inspired many of the powerful images drawn from nature in her poems.

The architecture of the neighborhood shows a delightful individuality. Designs drawn from several styles, including Craftsman, Dutch Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, Mediterranean Revival, Colonial Revival, Ranch, and Minimal Traditional, present a variety of design distinctions that blend into a consistent unit. Set-back lines, lot coverage, and mature landscaping help to blend individual architectural distinctiveness, while illustrating an earlier period of design and construction. The neighborhood has been consistently well-maintained over its seven decades of existence-- even in recent years when it became fashionable to move much farther away from the center of the city and city taxes. In recent years, the neighborhood has experienced a rebirth, as new homeowners have been attracted to invest in the neighborhood's houses, drawn by its proximity to downtown Knoxville and the distinctive appearance and unique architecture of the neighborhood.