Developed in the late 19th century as a residential area for Knoxville's growing upper and middle classes, the neighborhood now provides housing primarily for the university's student population.

Fort Sanders is named for a Civil War-era Union bastion that once stood near the center of the neighborhood, which was the site of a key engagement in 1863.

In its early years, Fort Sanders residents included some of Knoxville's leading industrialists and politicians, as well as professors from the University of Tennessee.

Fort Sanders was the childhood home of author James Agee, and provided the setting for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Death in the Family.

[3] On the morning of November 29, 1863, after a two-week siege, Longstreet ordered three brigades under General Lafayette McLaws to attack Fort Sanders, in hopes of breaching Union lines.

The battle, which lasted just twenty minutes, effectively ended Longstreet's chances of taking the city, and he retreated shortly afterward.

Among the earliest to build mansions in White's Addition were candy manufacturer Martin Luther Ross and Tennessee attorney general George Pickle.

The Samuels Keg Factory and the Knoxville Woolen Mills were located along the railroad tracks at the north end of Ramsey's Addition.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Fort Sanders was home to some of Knoxville's key industrial figures.

The novel opens with Agee and his father taking a walk through downtown Knoxville, making stops on Gay Street and Market Square, and passing the Deaf and Dumb Asylum and the L&N Station as they made their way back to Fort Sanders.

Agee mentioned a vacant lot along Forest Avenue where he and his father liked to look out on the lights of North Knoxville in the distance, and listen to the engines of the L&N, which "coughed and browsed" in the valley below.

[9] The book ends with Agee and his uncle conversing while standing over the "waste of briers and of embanked clay" of the ruins of the Civil War-era Fort Sanders.

Most residents are in their twenties and many go home during the summer, leaving the neighborhood virtually empty compared to its very active, and sometimes belligerent, feel during the school year.

Due to the area's younger population and proximity to a large university, the neighborhood is a hotbed for house parties and bars alike.

During the Fall football season, Fort Sanders, along with the campus itself, serves as a headquarters for Tennessee Volunteers fans' tailgating and pre-game activities.

The Fort Sanders Historic District, listed on the National Register in 1980, originally consisted of approximately 400 buildings, and covered a 105-acre (42 ha) area bounded by White, Grand, Eleventh, and Nineteenth.