[2] Sevier purchased the lot and began construction of the brick foundation of the house in the 1790s, and completed a portion of the wall facing Cumberland Avenue.

[1] Due to financial difficulties, however, he abandoned the house's construction, and moved to his farm at Marble Springs, on the city's periphery.

[3] In 1812, the lot with its unfinished house was purchased by James Park, a Scots-Irish merchant from County Donegal, Ireland, who had arrived in Knoxville in 1798.

The younger James Park graduated from East Tennessee College in 1840 and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1846, after which he was licensed as a Presbyterian preacher.

[2] He briefly served as co-principal of the East Tennessee Female Institute before moving to Rogersville in the 1850s to preach at that city's First Presbyterian Church.

[2] He returned to Knoxville in 1860 to accept a position as principal of the Tennessee School for the Deaf (then located in what is now Old City Hall).

[2] In late 1863, General James Longstreet, whose army was attempting to retake Knoxville from an occupying Union force, dined at Park's Cedar Springs house.

[1] In 1945, the Knoxville Academy of Medicine, headed by prominent physician Herbert Acuff (who was also instrumental in constructing the nearby Medical Arts Building), purchased and renovated the house.