The James Park House sits on what was originally Lot 59 in Charles McClung's 1791 plat of Knoxville. 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. Due to financial difficulties, however, he abandoned the house's construction, and moved to his farm at Marble Springs, on the city's periphery. Sevier sold the lot to his son, George Washington Sevier, in 1801, and the younger Sevier in turn sold it to South Carolina merchant James Dunlap in 1807.