Brian Hanlon is a classically-trained world-renowned master sculptor, and 70 of his works have graced the Major League Baseball and National Football League stadiums.
But Hanlon says it's the seven bronze statues he sculpted for Covenant Health Park in Knoxville that stand out to him amongst all the others.
Most of the statues pay tribute to the 1920s Knoxville Giants, an inaugural Negro league team, and team leaders like Walter Claude "Steel Arm" Dickey and Forrest "One Wing" Maddox.
The Beck Cultural Exchange Center guided the process and worked closely with Hanlon and the Knoxville Smokies baseball team to make sure the historical interpretation was accurate and contextual.
It was important to all the project partners, including the City, that with the opening of Covenant Health Park — where, decades ago, a historically black neighborhood known as “The Bottom” had once stood — that homage be paid to those who were there playing ball there first: The Knoxville Giants.
Hanlon, the Smokies and the Beck Center all shared the same hope — that the statues will help preserve a piece of little-known local history while also bringing connection and recognition for the Giants' achievements from across the community.
“The simplicity is beauty, and the simplicity here is that we’re telling the truth of what happened there, and celebrating excellence,” said Hanlon.
The construction of a stadium in a blighted, long-vacated part of East Knoxville also created an opportunity to increase awareness of the experiences of the Knoxville African-American families and business owners who had lived and worked in "The Bottom," the area near First Creek. Five decades ago, the Riverfront-Willow Street Urban Renewal Project decimated that part of Knoxville's Black community.
The statues in a public plaza on the northeast side of Covenant Health Park "empower us to learn and move forward with correctness and acknowledgement,” Hanlon said.
With warmer weather (and baseball season) approaching, and the recent renewed interest in understanding all of Knoxville's history, there is hope that school groups will begin to take advantage of historical artifacts and statues at the stadium.
Chris Allen, CEO of Boyd Sports, said that the team hopes this spring to begin making the stadium more available outside of game-time hours.
Owner Randy Boyd was one of the driving forces in Knoxville and Knox County jointly building a MLB-quality publicly-owned stadium with four public plazas — as well as incorporating local history throughout the stadium, including Hanlon's sculptures.
“Randy Boyd envisioned all of this, envisioned it since the day he bought the team,” Allen said.
Boyd doesn't seek credit for his role in personally funding many of the stadium's amenities. So his contributions sometimes go unspoken. But without his support and insistence on partnering with the Beck Center, it is safe to say the century-old Knoxville Giants would have gone underrepresented at Covenant Health Park.
“It takes someone like Randy Boyd to have the spiritual, intellectual fitness to follow through with this meaningful display,” Hanlon said.
- Written by Reagan Murphy, a University of Tennessee sophomore and 2026 spring semester intern with the City's Communications Department