Barber and McMurry Collection

Charles I. Barber (1887-1962) was the son of Knoxville architect George Franklin Barber. Charles was born in Dekalb, Illinois shortly before the family removed to Knoxville. He attended the Baker-Himel School in Knoxville and attended the University of Tennessee for a short time. His father supported his son’s desire for a more classical education first through travel in Greece and Italy. From 1909 until 1911 he attended the University of Pennsylvania and studied under Paul Cret, who steeped his students in the Beaux-Arts style. In 1915 George F. Barber died with little advance warning. In that same year, Charles Barber and his cousin David West Barber founded the firm of Barber & McMurry, in partnership with Benjamin McMurry (1885-1969), also an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1920s and 1930s the firm won commissions to build many of Knoxville’s most elegant houses and some outstanding churches. In the 1930s Barber designed some public buildings, most notably at Norris for the Tennessee Valley Authority and the headquarters building for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and several buildings for the Arrowmont campus in Gatlinburg. The firm, now Barber McMurry, still exists today.