Lyles, TN
General Description (1919 report):
"A mile south of Lyles, 50 miles southwest of Nashville, Tenn., the Bon Air Coal & Iron Corporation
were increasing their wood distillation plant and manufacturing calcium acetate and wood alcohol used in the fireproofing of airplanes, with charcoal as a by-product. The Bon Air Corporation had already put up a 20-room hotel and four small houses. To house the needed employees necessitated the creation of a complete new village in the heard of the Tennessee Mountains, since no group of habitations was in the vicinity except Lyles, which is only a small village...
"There is a store and commissary and boarding house where the main road leaves the plant. The hotel and the better houses of the proposed development overlook the valley. There was to be a combined school, church, and community building at the northeast corner of the project, but it the village were enlarged this building would be near the center...The houses follow the direction of the streets with such setbacks as topography permits. There is some heavy grading, but both streets and houses generally fit the ground. Every yard is enfenced, as it is the Tennessee law that stock may overrun such property as is not fenced. The yards and streets are planted with trees, shrubbery, and vines, and each yard had its vegetable garden though sometimes on land of considerable slope."
