St. Elmo: Lookout Mountain's Gateway Village
Near Chattanooga, Tennessee
St. Elmo sits at the foot of Lookout Mountain in the southernmost corner of Chattanooga, and it grew up precisely because of what is above it. The neighborhood's name comes from a popular nineteenth-century novel, and its Victorian cottages, Queen Anne houses, and brick commercial blocks were built beginning in the eighteen eighties by families who wanted the fresh air of the mountain but the convenience of the city below.
The first incline railway up Lookout Mountain opened in eighteen eighty-six, running from St. Elmo to just below the Point at the summit. It was immediately a sensation. A second incline, built under Jo Conn Guild and still operating today, opened on November sixteenth, eighteen ninety-five, with a grade that reaches nearly seventy-three percent near the top, making it the steepest passenger railway in the world. Riders in the upper cars look nearly straight down at the city of Chattanooga and the curve of the Tennessee River below.
St. Elmo's growth accelerated in the early eighteen nineties for another reason: the establishment of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in eighteen ninety, the first national military park in the United States, drew visitors from across the country and created demand for lodging and services at the mountain's base. Electric trolley service from downtown Chattanooga reached St. Elmo in eighteen ninety-three, connecting the neighborhood directly to the city and sealing its identity as a residential suburb.
The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen ninety-two. The incline still runs daily, still carrying visitors up a grade that causes grown adults to grip the handrails and reconsider their relationship with gravity. The community below it remains one of Chattanooga's most intact Victorian neighborhoods.
