Thomas Hope

Biography Hope was born in Kent, England, in 1757 and learned the house construction trade in London. During the 1780s, he moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he had been hired to build a house for South Carolina planter Ralph Izard. This house stood on Broad Street in Charleston for several decades. During the early 1790s, Hope lived in Cheraw, South Carolina, where he married his wife, Elizabeth Large, in 1793. Hope then moved to Knoxville, which at the time was the capital of the Southwest Territory, in 1795.

Hope's first project in Knoxville was the Ramsey House, or Swan Pond, a two-story Georgian-style house completed in 1797. Hope found ample work in Knoxville, a burgeoning frontier town in need of professional builders. In the decade after completing the Ramsey House, Hope built a residence known as "Trafalgar" for planter John Kain, overlooking the Holston River in Knox County. Around 1806, Hope completed the Federal-style Statesview for surveyor Charles McClung in what is now West Knoxville. In 1812, Hope built a house, later known as "Maison de Sante," for Knoxville physician Joseph C. Strong, which stood at the corner of State Street and Cumberland Avenue. In 1816, Hope received several payments from Thomas Humes, builder of the Lamar House Hotel, suggesting that Hope may have played a role in the hotel's original design (although there is little else to support this). Hope's last project was the Rotherwood Mansion, built for Presbyterian clergyman Frederick Augustus Ross near Kingsport, Tennessee. After Hope's death in 1820, his son oversaw Rotherwood's completion. Many of Hope's designs were inspired by William Pain's 1781 book, The Builder's Golden Rule, which Hope carried with him on his various projects. In his Autobiography, historian J. G. M. Ramsey, the son of Francis Alexander Ramsey for whom the Ramsey House was built, states that Hope designed a bookcase and desk for the house's library. Since then, several furniture pieces have been attributed to Hope, including a desk and bookcase once owned by early Knox County settler David Campbell.

In 1924, Hope's great-great-grandson, Albert Guinn Hope (1869–1955), built a house, "Hopecote," on what is now part of the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville. The house includes a cupboard attributed to Thomas Hope. In 2012, Hopecote was added to the National Register of Historic Places.