About Charles I. Barber
Jul 7, 2026
Early Life
Charles Irving Barber was born October 25, 1887, near Chicago. His parents — George Franklin Barber and Laura Cheney — relocated to Knoxville the next year. He had two siblings: George Jr. and Laura.
George was a globally successful architect during the Victorian era, marketing his residential designs through mail-order catalogs and the later magazine American Homes. Hundreds of his homes still stand today, including dozens in Knoxville neighborhoods Parkridge, Fourth and Gill, and Old North. George shuttered his firm, then called Barber & Kluttz, in 1913.
Charlie followed in his father’s footsteps. He worked with George at least as early as 1907, when he helped George renovate General Lawrence Tyson’s home into an Italian villa style (the building is now UT’s Tyson Alumni House).
Charlie traveled through Greece and Italy before attending college, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1911, where he studied the Beaux Arts style under Paul Cret. Returning to Knoxville, he worked with Dean Parmelee and E. A. Seahorn.
Charlie's graduating class at Pennsylvania, 1911. Charlie is in the back row, second from the right.
Young Naturalist & Designer
In 1906, Manly Dewitt Barber took his sons and nephews to Chattanooga — by rowboat. The group of six made the trip in two rowboats. Charles was 19, and the next year would leave for a four-month visit to Europe to study great architecture.
Charlie tested his design skills by inventing a portable and collapsible cot, which repeatedly collapsed on him while he was sleeping, much to the delight of his family. Manly wrote a detailed journal account of the trip, available through the Calvin M. McClung Collection. Manly’s stopping to dig up fossils is of note; an amateur geologist, some of his finds are now owned by the Smithsonian.
The Barbers were frequent hikers in the Smokies, which at the time was accessed by taking the Southern Railway line from Knoxville to Walland, then transferring to logging trains to be dropped off near Elkmont. Charlie and his family and friends were ultimately driving forces behind founding the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club, which directly led to founding of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Architecture Before Barber McMurry
Charles designed buildings that were part of the Appalachian Exposition of 1910 and the National Conservation Exposition in 1913, both held in Chilhowee Park. He is credited as the architect of the Southern States Building, pictured below, and has been recognized as a consultant architect on detailing of the Fine Arts Building, for which the chief architect was the young J.R. Graf.
In 1912, Charlie married Marion Carlyle Lawrence.
Charlie and Dean Parmelee designed First Christian Church on Fifth Avenue in 1914. George, a member of the church and on the building committee, worked for his son as a draftsman on the project. During this time, Charlie worked in an upstairs bedroom of his father’s house on Washington Avenue, then in a shared office with Sehorn & Kennedy civil engineers.
Charles worked for his father intermittently before, during and after attending college, but ultimately refused to take over his business. Charlie has been recorded as loving his father but disliking his "gingerbread" house designs, and objecting to the idea that professional architects would sell home plans through catalogs. After George shut down his firm, he briefly worked for Charlie despite being effectively retired and in ill health.
Laura and George died within nine days of each other in February 1915. The first funerals held in First Christian Church, which had just been completed, were theirs. Charlie became the guardian of his younger sister, Laura, who was about 14.
Founding Barber McMurry
Later that year, Charles opened Barber McMurry (operating as Barber & McMurry) with friend Ben McMurry — another Penn graduate. His cousin, David West Barber, joined the firm in 1919 after serving in World War I. On his draft form, Charles listed having a wife and three “orphan children” at home. In addition to becoming caretaker for his sister, Laura, Charlie and Marion appear to have become guardians for two of Marion's nieces or nephews.
Marion passed away in 1949. Charlie married Blanch Goodlove McKinney, herself a widow, at Church Street United Methodist in 1953.
Charlie was known as a Beaux-Arts designer, but his designs were far-ranging in style — from the Italianate Lindsay Young YMCA and Craiglen, to the ornate Collegiate Gothic Hoskins Library, to the Tudor-inspired Worsham House, to the neo-Gothic Revival Church Street United Methodist.
While many of his notable residential designs are monumental — someone has said they "look like a house dreaming about being a castle" — just as many are modest, charming and intimate. No matter the purpose or scale of the design, Charlie's work was never formulaic.
Charles was President of AIA Tennessee in 1936 and served as Chairman of the Committee on Preservation. He was President of the Knoxville Technical Society in 1928 and served on the City of Knoxville Planning Commission from 1940 through the 1950s. He was a member of the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association and the Church Architecture Guild of America. He first served as a consultant to Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933, and was chief architect from 1935 to 1936.
Charlie died in 1962. He donated his extensive library of architectural books to the University of Tennessee, hoping they would assist students like him — without the means for extensive travel — as a window into the world of great, global architecture. In the years following his death, Blanche and Barber McMurry worked with UT to create the Barber McMurry Endowed Professorship with a combined gift of $1 million from the firm and the Blanche Barber estate. The Professorship brings global practitioners to UT to lead cross-sectional studios for students at the College of Architecture + Design.
Charles continues to be honored as an architect and a pillar of the Knoxville community. In 1992, he was posthumously inducted into the Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame.