With the convention center, trolley, and now the FedExForum almost finished, how strange that the next big proposed downtown project hinges on interpretation of a document written in 1828, when wild bears and Indians roamed the town.
The Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC) wants to remake downtown’s front door or promenade by replacing some public buildings and parking garages with an apartment building and an office building up to 40 stories tall. Over half of the promenade would remain public park, sidewalks, or open space. A group called Friends of the Riverfront opposes the plan.
In 20 years of writing about downtown, I have heard numerous references to the city founders and “the heirs” and the founders’ bequest that created the promenade between Front Street and the Mud Island parking garage. But until last week I had never looked at the original document itself or a copy of it. It was long past time to check the original sources.
So I visited the Shelby County Archives, where archivist John Dougan dug into the Shelby County Register’s Office deed book of 1828 and produced a handwritten copy. The problem was that some of the writing was hard to decipher and some was illegible. A trip to the Memphis Room at the Central Library, however, turned up a transcription in J.M. Keating’s History of the City of Memphis and Shelby County, published in 1888.
Memphis was founded in 1819 — a date that splits the difference between the appointment of commissioners for the Chickasaw Treaty in 1818 and the opening of a land office on the bluff in 1820. The names to remember are Overton, McLemore, and Winchester. John Overton was a judge. Marcus Winchester was the first mayor. And John McLemore was, according to historians, one of the most influential and enlightened men of his day. Together they were known as “the proprietors” of the land on which Memphis was founded.
What happened between 1819 and 1828 is relevant and instructive to what is happening today with the RDC and the riverfront.
Charles Crawford, professor of history at the University of Memphis, says the proprietors were “hardheaded, realistic businessmen.” But they did a remarkable thing. They dedicated a web of squares, alleys, streets, and the promenade to public use while keeping the rights to operate a ferry or two at the waterfront.
Crawford agrees with Keating’s judgment that “Up to that time (1820) no scheme, plan, or plat had ever been made for an American city on so generous a scale. Every emergency in the life of a leading commercial point was provided for.”
So, did the early citizens of Memphis rise up in gratitude and call them blessed? No.
“The people of Memphis were opposed to the proprietors and did everything they could to hinder and hamper them,” wrote Keating in 1888. One sore point was the promenade and access to the river. Someone cut a road through it to the river, then another, dividing the promenade into three parts.
In 1828, Judge Overton wrote a letter to William Lawrence and Winchester expressing his concern about the division of the promenade. He complained about the “great want of appreciation of the liberality of the proprietors in laying out the town” and suggested his critics were “stupid.” Imagine a public official talking that way.
The proprietors, “having been informed that doubts have arisen in relation to their original intention,” decided to restate their vision and file it in the record books. The language is a little cumbersome but worth quoting since it is likely to come up in public meetings, City Council sessions, and maybe even another court case:
“In relation to the piece of ground laid off and called the ‘Promenade,’ said proprietors say that it was their original intention, is now, and forever will be, that the same should be public ground for such use only as the word imports, to which heretofore, by their acts, for that purpose, it was conceived all right was relinquished for themselves, their heirs, etc., and it is hereby expressly declared, in conformity with such intention, that we for ourselves, heirs and assigns, forever relinquish all claims to the same piece of ground called the ‘Promenade,’ for the purpose above mentioned.” (The entire document can be seen at the Flyer Web site, MemphisFlyer.com.)
It was 1828. No one contemplated that bridges would some day be built across the river, much less the arenas and condominiums that followed.
Today, one thing Memphis arguably lacks is a skyline and Front Street worthy of its blufftop location. For better or worse, the vision of the proprietors is responsible for that.
E-mail: Branston@memphisflyer.com
