Krutch Park
Krutch Park is the legacy of Charles Krutch, the last survivor of an eccentric and talented family. When they first arrived in Knoxville in the 1850's the proud German clan spelled their name Krütsch (the name is pronounced Krootch). Several of the Knoxville-raised Krutches were prominent in the arts. Oskar Krutch became a classical pianist. His sister, Lou Krutch, was a music teacher and idiosyncratic pants-wearing feminist who shocked some by taking long solo hiking trips in the Smoky Mountains which were then wild, remote, and little known to Knoxvillians. Her brother, Charles Christopher Krutch, also a hiker and camper, was a church organist but better known as an accomplished painter of the Impressionist school; many of his canvases were landscapes of the Smokies.
Their nephews Charlie and Joe grew up on Cumberland Avenue. After graduating from UT, Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1969) went on to become the best known of the Krutches, as a critic, biographer, iconoclastic philosopher, and groundbreaking naturalist, author of several highly regarded books (The Modern Temper, The Measure of Man), and hundreds of essays in major publications like The Nation.
His often sickly brother, Charles E. Krutch (1887-1981), stayed in Knoxville with his mot[her?] and seemed destined for a modest life—until in middle age he developed a fascination with the camera. Through a combination of luck and talent that seemed inborn, Charlie Krutch became the photographer who documented the early engineering achievements of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Many admired his black-and-white compositions of generators and spillways as art. Hailed as “extraordinary” in photographic journals, some of his prints were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
When he died at an advanced age in 1981, few knew that humble, thrifty old Charlie Krutch was a wealthy man, or that he had left a major bequest to the city of Knoxville: to establish a “quiety retreat…for the pleasure and health of the public.”
Outer ring inscription: We need some contact with the things we sprang from. We need nature at least as a part of the context of our lives. Without cities we cannot be civilized. Without nature, without wilderness even, we are compelled to renounce an important part of our heritage.