The Heritage Trail Behind Stirling's Is Getting a Gallery Show This Fall, and a New Leg Toward 41A

"Gave life to these places and made them sites of joy and neighborly warmth." The University Art Gallery picked that phrase to frame its late-fall exhibition. The places it refers to are five spots spread across the St. Mark's neighborhood, a few minutes on foot from Stirling's Coffee House. At most of them, the building the marker describes is gone.

That gap explains how the Heritage Trail has developed. Since 2022, a small trail with few physical remains has relied on artists, students and storytellers to make its sites visible. This fall that work goes on display indoors, and construction on Hwy 41A has started on the trail's first purpose-built connection.

Five Stops Along Ordinary Streets

The trail isn't a dedicated footpath. The official story map, updated in early 2026, describes a self-guided walking or driving route linking five interpretive sites. Each site has its own parking area. Each marker has a QR code that links to more history. In the story map's numbering, the sites are:

1. Willie "Six" Sims Field, next to St. Mark's Community Center on Alabama Avenue. It's named for Willie Sims, a trainer for Sewanee's football team from 1909 to 1947. He got the nickname from a secondhand jersey with a number six on the front.
2. The former swimming pool on Oak Street. It officially opened in the summer of 1957, and the St. Mark's neighborhood called it "The Swim Pool."
3. St. Mark's Mission Church on Palmetto Avenue. It was built in 1936, renovated in 1950, and held services until 1968.
4. Kennerly School, also on Palmetto Avenue. The Civic Association dedicated it on August 28, 1949, in honor of teacher and community leader John M. Kennerly.
5. The African American Cemetery, near the Georgia Avenue entrance and Kennerly Road. Its oldest legible headstones date to 1900.

The story map gives two ways in. From State Route 41A, turn north on Alabama Avenue, and the field is a quarter mile up on the right. From campus, turn east onto Georgia Avenue at the blinking light on University Avenue. Drive a quarter mile to Kennerly Road, just past Stirling's, turn right, then turn onto Palmetto Avenue for the cemetery and the rest of the sites. A 2023 Mountain Messenger article named Stirling's and St. Mark's Community Center as the trail's two end points.

What Is Actually Left to See

The story map says plainly how little of the original fabric remains. All that's left of Willie Six Field is the basketball court and its two goals. In the late 1950s and 1960s, the field drew families from Sewanee and nearby communities for softball, soccer, basketball and the playground. One marker quotes two community members: "It was the highlight of Sewanee for us."

At the pool site, the frame for the diving board is still standing. Varsity swim coach Ted Bitondo and athletic trainer John Kennerly Jr. fitted the pool with a ladder, changing rooms and that diving board. Sewanee alumni and neighbors raised the money to build it, and it operated for only seven or eight years.

The church and the school are gone. After St. Mark's Mission Church closed in 1968, the building deteriorated, and the University demolished it several years later. The exact date isn't recorded. Kennerly School closed after a 1964 federal court ruling forced Franklin County schools to desegregate. The building later housed a Head Start center and was demolished in 2010.

The cemetery is the one site with the most still visible. Remnants of the stone wall that once divided it from the University Cemetery stand near the Georgia Avenue entrance. In 1964, University students dismantled the wall, and its stones were reused along the cemetery's edges. About 170 people buried there can be identified by name. A ground-penetrating radar scan in spring 2022 found somewhere from 90 to more than 130 graves that can no longer be seen.

So three of the five stops are mostly absence, a fourth has one diving-board frame, and the fifth has unmarked graves. The trail's history since 2022 has largely been about finding ways to make those sites readable.

Art Has Been Filling In What Was Torn Down

The Save Sewanee Black History project started in spring 2019. Its committee brought together people connected to Sewanee's historic Black neighborhoods, other community members, and University faculty and staff from the Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation. The five markers were unveiled on July 3, 2022. The project credits the Bonner Foundation's Racial Justice Fund, the Sewanee Bonner Program, graphic designer Steve Keetle, Facilities Management staff William Shealy and John Brewster Jr., and members of the St. Mark's community. Roberson Project researcher Andrew Maginn built the online story map that serves as the self-guided route.

Artists have kept adding to the trail since then, and most of the work has centered on the pool:

• Fall 2024. Artist Vesna Pavlović worked with the Roberson Project and University Facilities Management to plant a Spanish-bluebell garden at the former pool site, with more than 2,000 corms in the ground.
• April 26, 2025. A University Community Engaged Theatre class led a guided walk of the trail with Woody Register. A student-created performance and a reception at the Community Center followed.
• May 4, 2025. The garden led to "The Air We Breathe Is Not Invisible," a free community celebration with storytelling and photography at the pool site and St. Mark's Community Center.
• February 15, 2026. Artist Colby Caldwell and writer Hannah Palmer held a workshop that started at the Community Center. Participants scanned the pool site as a first step toward a topological map.

The bluebells bloom in spring, so the garden won't look like much in October or November. The pool site is still the trail stop where most of the recent creative work has happened.

October 27 Through December 11 at the University Art Gallery

The University Art Gallery's exhibition "Art, Storytelling, and Creative Placemaking on the Saint Mark's Heritage Trail" runs from October 27 through December 11, 2026. It supports the work of the St. Mark's Community and the Roberson Project. The gallery says the show will display the creative projects already on the trail, serve as a forum for new class work, and present a storytelling map by Atlanta artist Joe Veazey.

The University's listing doesn't give an opening reception date. The gallery's regular hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. It closes during summer and academic breaks. With Thanksgiving inside the exhibition window, check before making a late-November visit.

The Leg Being Built Toward 41A

The trail's physical change this fall is happening along the highway. The University's employee apartments project sits on a leasehold of about 6.4 acres off Hwy 41A. It calls for two three-story buildings with 24 apartments each. The project also includes building a section of the Heritage Trail from St. Mark's Community Center to the sidewalk on Hwy 41A.

Arlington Construction of Birmingham is leading the work, along with Barge Civil Engineering and Baker Barrios Architects. Construction started in June 2026, and the University expects to finish in fall 2027. The Mountain Messenger's September 17 update said foundations were underway and vertical construction would start within weeks. The University's August 12 update described the trail extension as part of the project, not as a route that's open yet.

Today, the story map's recommended approach from 41A is a turn onto Alabama Avenue by car. The planned segment would connect the Community Center end of the trail directly to the 41A sidewalk, and it would be the first piece of the Heritage Trail built as a trail and not marked onto existing streets. Until crews finish, plan on the Alabama Avenue approach.

Walking It This Fall

The self-guided route needs nothing more than the story map on your phone and the QR codes on each marker. Parking at every site makes it easy to drive the loop in one visit or split it into a few short walks. The cemetery and the Palmetto Avenue sites are closest to Stirling's. The field and the pool are closer to the Community Center end.

If you'd like a guide, the Roberson Project leads St. Mark's Heritage Tours on request. Email [email protected], ideally a week ahead, and ask for the St. Mark's Heritage Tour, not the Campus Memorial Tour. Each tour takes about an hour, and the project usually runs tours on Homecoming and Family Weekends. One good plan is to walk the five sites, then see Joe Veazey's map in the gallery before December 11 and compare the two.

Melissa Hubbard keeps track of how the Domain changes, from the new buildings rising on 41A to the trail segment being built alongside them. If you have questions about what this construction means for your part of the mountain, Let's Connect.