South High Senior Living, a recently-completed BarberMcMurry project, has won the City of Knoxville Mayor’s Award as part of Knox Heritage’s East Tennessee Preservation Awards. The awards recognize outstanding projects, people and organizations who contribute to historic preservation efforts in East Tennessee. 

BarberMcMurry designed the original South High in the 1930s. After the school closed in the 1980s, the building fell into disrepair before finally landing on Knox Heritage’s Fragile Fifteen list. 

Working with Dover Signature Properties, BarberMcMurry led the design for the adaptive reuse of the school into an assisted living and memory care facility. The renovation respects the iconic architecture and grand scale of the original building while modernizing the facility and utilizing common-sense sustainable design strategies. 

City of Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon said, “Rick Dover and BarberMcMurry took it on and have turned this into a beautiful facility. The end result exemplifies the respect crews have when marrying the past design into current standards.” 

Rick Dover said, “BarberMcMurry was all in on this from the beginning. This was a fantastic team effort.”

See the stunning before-and-after photos on our project page!