Author: Marsha Oates

The East End of Memphis, the area now known as Midtown, was a patchwork of subdivisions that flourished after the East End Street Railway connected downtown with Montgomery Park, an enormously popular public-recreation area built in 1884 on the site that is now the Mid-South Fairgrounds. The East End’s suburban “Dummy Line” ran from downtown along Madison Avenue to Cooper Street then east on Young Avenue to the park. In 1887, the new trolley company also opened its own pleasure grounds, East End Park, along the route of the Dummy Line at Tucker and Madison, near the present Overton Square.

Some of the “streetcar suburbs” such as Lenox, Idlewild, and Madison Heights became incorporated towns, surviving until the city annexed the land between North and South parkways from the Mississippi River to Cooper Street in 1897. The area between Cooper and East Parkway, including the Town of Lenox, was annexed in 1909.

The Applewhite subdivision, a 48-lot tract in Lenox, was developed in 1904 by James Applewhite, a Confederate veteran who, in addition to being a real estate speculator, was vice president of the Chickasaw Cooperage Company, a director of the Memphis Stove and Hardware Company, and president of the Idlewild Grocery Company.

At first glance, the neighborhood seems to be all Queen Anne houses, but several Craftsman four-squares punctuate the streetscape of big houses set far back on their lots. This one-and-a-half-story house is an accurate architectural expression of the early 1900s, when the Queen Anne style was beginning to fade and the Craftsman was gaining in popularity. The house has a steep, complex roof typical of Queen Anne houses, but instead of a typical L-plan porch, it has a front porch and a side porte cochere, an element often found on bungalows and other Craftsman forms. The jerkin-head, or clipped-gable, roof, the knee braces at the eaves, and the battered (tapered) porch piers are also Craftsman hallmarks.

The interior is full of delightful surprises. Years ago, the house was “remuddled” into apartments, so some original features were lost and some room configurations changed. A recent renovation has undone many of the ill-considered changes and made pleasant adaptations where the losses were irreversible. The spaces sweep rather dramatically from front to back through a series of broad, cased openings and French doors. Former attic space was opened to create a vaulted ceiling and clerestory window for a front room that could be a grand, baronial dining room or a family room adjoining the kitchen. An exposed-brick chimney separates the two spaces, with a fireplace on one side and a cook stove on the other. The kitchen is outfitted with stainless-steel appliances, but the high-tech look is tempered by wooden cabinetry and artisanal metalwork pot racks and a whimsical chandelier over the center island. An upstairs master suite has a sitting room or office, a bath, a bedroom, and unusually ample closets for a Midtown house. An intricate, seemingly vast front room has all sorts of nooks and crannies carved from attic space and tucked into dormers, and a balcony overlooks the vaulted front room on the first floor.

A tall fence with artfully embellished gates encloses a deep, park-like backyard with mature trees, shady paths, and a fountain. Access from the rear alley opens to a parking area, once the site of a garage; the spot is ready-made for a new garage or garden pavilion. After its thorough but sensitive renovation, this distinctive house is well equipped to provide a comfortable ambience for life in a quiet, historic village setting.

2181 Monroe

2,700 square feet

3 bedrooms, 2 baths

$219,000

Realtor: Crye-Leike Realtors

Agent: Tim Tanner, 276-8800 or 340-7556

This Queen Anne house with a wraparound porch anchoring one corner of Oliver at Tanglewood was built around 1902 in one of the many subdivisions in the neighborhood that eventually became Cooper-Young. Development of the area began in 1884, when the Citizen’s East End Railway trolley was extended from downtown to Trezevant Road (now East Parkway). G.H. McCaskill was a prolific builder in Cooper-Young, and this house — with its complex roof of layered hips and gables and deep, L-plan porch with a canted wall — exhibits the hallmarks of his distinctive work. At a time when Craftsman and Colonial Revival architectural styles were becoming fashionable, McCaskill’s houses clung to Victorian influences. The porch roof of this cottage is supported by Doric columns, typical of late-Victorian architecture rather than the turned posts characteristic of earlier Queen Anne houses. However, its asymmetrical plan — entrance hall, parlor, and dining room en suite; bedrooms off a separate back hall — is a Queen Anne arrangement of a sort popular in English and American houses since the last quarter of the 19th century.

The house was turned into a duplex probably just after World War II. The conversion was done with an amazingly light touch and didn’t make drastic changes to the plan or the major features. All five original oak mantels are still in place. They’re the “double-decker” type with a mirror and top shelf above the mantel shelf and the whole composition flanked by columns; builders’ supply catalogs of the period called them cabinet mantels. The elaborate front door has a full-length beveled glass-light framed by a band of egg-and-dart molding and pilasters with Ionic capitals. The entrance hall has a canted wall opposite the angled front wall, forming a three-sided bay with a fireplace — a good spot for a seating area — out of the house’s traffic pattern. Massive bi-fold doors separate the hall from the front parlor; the dining room and the parlor have smoothly gliding pocket doors between them. A short hallway leads to the kitchen, outfitted with “modern” metal cabinets. A closet in the hall has a jazzy, Art Deco-inspired linoleum floor, which could serve as inspiration for a new kitchen decorating scheme. A full bath off this hall probably was formed from the original butler’s pantry when the house was subdivided. Both this bath and the original bathroom have claw-foot tubs and Craftsman-style medicine cabinets. During the duplex conversion, the stair in the back hall was removed. If the stair were rebuilt, the vast attic could be developed as a couple of rooms with high ceilings and lots of cozy nooks with sloping ceilings. The house’s second kitchen was added directly behind the original kitchen. If the house became a single-family unit again, the two kitchens could be joined to make a huge kitchen and family room with direct access to the long, shady backyard. The one-car garage with board-and-batten siding at the back edge of the yard needs some work but would be just right for a workshop or garden shed.

Half of the front yard is filled by a magnificent dogwood, surely among the city’s champion trees. It was probably planted when the house was built and has become a neighborhood landmark, the destination of many an evening stroll when it’s in full bloom. Porch-sitting is one of the defining recreational activities of Midtown, and the big, old-fashioned front porch of this house is a fine place to sit and watch the world stroll by.

2065 Oliver Avenue

2,100 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths; $128,000

Realtor: Prudential Collins-Maury, Inc.

Agent: Joe Spake, 751-4385, 753-0700

Spake.com

The Hays Hardware Company building on Front Street was an important element in the re-emergence of downtown as a residential community. The two-story brick structure completed around 1928 was renovated about 10 years ago to create space for two businesses and two condominium residences — a bold development decision at a time when only a couple thousand people lived downtown.

The Hays building is in the South Bluffs Warehouse Historic District, an area that has been through several significant development phases in the past 150 years. After the Civil War, it became a fashionable residential district extending along Front Street from Beale to Calhoun. When the Frisco Railroad Bridge was completed in 1892, the South Bluffs became a bustling retail, wholesale, and warehouse center. By the 1920s, most of the area between South Front and the river was used for warehouses and distribution centers and had one of the United States’ largest wholesale grocery markets. The brothers Dennis, Walker, and George Hays established the Hays Supply Company in 1923, specializing in “heavy hardware” — woodworking machinery; plows, motors, and mowing machines; supplies for blacksmith shops and wagon works — and providing “practically everything that the industry and agriculture of nine states need,” as Dennis Hays stated in a 1935 interview for The Commercial Appeal. The company was noted for shipping mail orders, as well as telegraph and long-distance telephone orders, on the same day they were received.

The Hays building has both land and river fronts; the condominiums share an entrance-stair hall from the Front Street side and another entrance from the west side parking area where the condos have reserved parking. A deck provides a nice perch for watching the river roll by.

The north unit of the Hays building is a 2,000-square-foot loft with 13-foot ceilings, brick walls, exposed wooden ceiling joists, and long overhead runs of tubular duct work. With minimal internal divisions, the space has an open, airy quality and offers great functional flexibility. A wide entrance hall delineates the east and west “wings” of the residence. The west wing faces the river and includes the kitchen and seating and dining areas. The polygonal kitchen island is a combination work surface and breakfast bar. Ample expanses of pine kitchen cabinets with open shelving for top cupboards contribute to the “low-tech” ambience. A large utility room off the hall contains the unit’s mechanical and laundry equipment with lots of room left for storage.

The east wing, with a window-wall overlooking Front Street, has a bedroom area and an adjoining space that could be either a sitting room or office. A sweeping curve of wall encloses the bath and dressing area. The bath design clearly proclaims, “Bathing should be fun.” A broad ledge wraps around three sides of the extra-large whirlpool tub. The shower, an odd-shaped space tucked into the intersection of the hall wall and the curved wall, has neither door nor curtain but is so big that splashing water isn’t a problem. The ceramic floor tiles extend into the shower, covering the floor in an unbroken swath of color. The vanity counter is covered with a whimsical mix of colorful, rustic, hand-painted ceramic tiles, and the lavatory bowl is a deep, cobalt blue. The huge closet area is open to the bedroom, but it could easily be screened or enclosed.

The Hays building condominium conversion was instrumental in the effort to get people to move back to Front Street; the loft residence available now offers a unique and urbane environment in Memphis’ once-again fashionable downtown.

Hays building loft

271 South Front Street

2,000 square feet

1 bedroom, 1 bath; $259,000

Realtor: Sowell & Company

Agent: Jane MacPherson, 278-4380

www.sowellandco.com

When work began on Annesdale Park in 1903, the development was boldly publicized as the “first subdivision of real estate in the South planned upon metropolitan lines.” It’s thought to be the city’s first subdivision where streets and other improvements were paid for by developers and then deeded to the city — gas streetlights, sewers, water and gas mains, paved sidewalks, alleys and streets, and concrete curb lining the six miles of major streets. Trolley service from downtown was extended to Raleigh Avenue (now Bellevue) specifically to provide service to the new subdivision.

The area was developed by two brothers, Robert Brinkley Snowden and John Bayard Snowden, and T.O. Vinton, described as a “self-made man.” The brothers had formed the real estate firm of Snowden and Snowden; Robert B. Snowden and Vinton were vice presidents of the Bank of Commerce and Trust Company. The Snowdens’ father, Colonel Robert Bogardus Snowden, was president of the bank and of the Citizen’s Electric Street Railway. The Snowden brothers spent their childhood years at Annesdale, the Italianate villa that their grandfather bought in 1869 as a wedding present for their parents. They named their new subdivision after their nearby childhood home.

Land for Annesdale Park was acquired from descendants of Anderson B. Carr, a trader and lumber-mill owner who settled in Memphis in 1818.The first street developed in the neighborhood was named for Carr. Construction in the subdivision continued until the mid-1920s, but most of the houses were built between 1904 and 1910.

The dark-green house with a broad, wraparound porch at 1330 Vinton Avenue was one of the earliest houses built in the area, and it shows the lingering influence of the Queen Anne style of Victorian architecture. Its low-pitched hip roof with a gable dormer centered above the entrance is typical of late-Victorian residential architecture, as is the curving porch supported by Doric columns rather than the elaborate, turned posts typical of earlier Queen Anne houses.

The front entrance is a grand, oak door flanked by leaded side lights. The entrance hall has parlors with ornate mantels on both its east and west sides. Pocket doors separate the east parlor from the master bedroom, which has an adjoining bath and dressing area. An elaborate oak screen wall defines the entrance vestibule; the remainder of the vast hall, which is about 60 feet long, makes a grand sweep straight through the house, ending at a large, oak-framed window with a view to the rear garden.

The interior-arrangement possibilities in this house are marvelously flexible. The central part of the hallway has a fireplace and makes a cozy sitting room. The rear part of the center hall, now used as a dining area open to the kitchen, could also be a den or music room. The middle bedroom on the west side of the house connects with the kitchen through a short hallway and could be used as a formal dining room, with its two large closets serving as capacious china pantries. The library at the rear of the house could be a home office or small bedroom; it opens to a covered porch and has a pleasant view to the garden.

The backyard is enclosed by a high fence and is divided into three distinct areas — two square terraces separated by a square filled with specimen trees and dense understory planting, an arrangement which imparts a decidedly “secret garden” aura to the property and fulfills the developers’ goal, stated in the opening-day ceremonies for Annesdale Park in 1903, “to make it a paradise.”

1330 Vinton Avenue

3,100 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths;

$247,500

Realtor: Sowell and Company

Agent: Linda Sowell, 278-4380, 454-0540

The Annesdale-Snowden neighborhood was once part of a 200-acre estate surrounding a grand Italianate villa built in 1850 by Dr. Samuel Mansfield on Pigeon Roost Road, now Lamar Avenue. Colonel Robert Brinkley bought the property in 1869 as a wedding present for his daughter, Annie Overton Brinkley, and her husband, Colonel Robert Bogardus Snowden. The estate was named Annesdale in honor of the bride.

By the early 20th century, the once-rural property was surrounded by urban growth. Two of the Snowdens’ sons, John Bayard Snowden and Robert Brinkley Snowden, were partners in a real estate firm. In 1910, they broke up the property around Annesdale, keeping about seven acres for the house grounds and developing a new residential area called the Snowden Homestead, with streets named for the Snowden children: Agnes, Dorothy, Minna, Bayard (now Central Avenue), and Brinkley (now Sledge Avenue). Now known as Annesdale-Snowden, the area is a Memphis Landmarks district and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The house at 1409 Agnes Place is exemplary of popular middle-class housing built in the first quarter of the 20th century. It is not a “pure” style but rather a composite of elements — in this case, the Colonial Revival style, which became extraordinarily fashionable after the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, with details influenced by the Craftsman style, popular from around 1900 until the 1930s. The steeply pitched gambrel roof places the house in what is generally known as the Dutch Colonial style, but the square balusters that screen the pergola-like front porch are clearly drawn from the Craftsman and Mission styles popularized by Gustav Stickley in his magazine The Craftsman. The house has an unusual gambrel dormer over the front porch, a feature that creates interesting spaces in the second-floor bedrooms.

The first floor has a spacious and pleasant living room with a corner fireplace embellished by an original Craftsman tile surround. A wide, cased opening connects the living and dining rooms. The staircase between the living and dining rooms features a distinctly Craftsman balustrade alternating square and rectangular balusters with diamond-shaped cutouts. A short hallway between the dining room and kitchen contains a half-bath and stairs to the full basement. The kitchen has been updated but still has room for additional cabinetry or perhaps a work table or island. A breakfast room with a laundry area adjoins the kitchen. A pair of arched doorways lead from the breakfast room to a den added some years ago; this sunny, south-facing room could also be used as a dining area or home office.

The second floor has four almost identical bedrooms and a bath opening off the central hall. One of the rear bedrooms has its own full bath and a walk-in closet added at the same time as the den below.

A rear deck opening off the kitchen and den provides a pleasant outdoor living space overlooking the deep backyard; it would be positively splendid with a pergola-styled roof. The property does not have the garage or backhouse typical of Midtown neighborhoods, but it does have a big building at the rear of the lot that was once a bar patronized by workers at the commercial and distribution businesses developed across the back street during both world wars; this would be a great space for a workshop, home office, or guest quarters.

This picturesque house offers an adaptable floor plan, lots of space, and an expansive setting — a winning combination for comfortable, contemporary living in a historic but lively and stable neighborhood.

1409 Agnes Place, 2,100 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths

$129,000

Realtor: Prudential Collins-Maury, Inc., Agent: Joe Spake, 751-4385 or 753-0700

www.spake.com

Memphis’ architectural stock abounds in notable houses that are amalgams of architectural fashions. This stone and shingle house completed in 1911 skillfully incorporates elements from several styles, resulting in a composition that is a textbook illustration of American architectural eclecticism at the beginning of the 20th century.

Its stone tower with conical roof was derived from French-inspired chateau architecture and the Romanesque style popularized by Henry Hobson Richardson in the 1880s. Towers were also popular elements of the 19th-century Queen Anne style, as were the shingles used on the second story. The facade’s Venetian or Palladian window is borrowed from Italian Renaissance architecture of Sebastiano Serlio and Andrea Palladio. The strongly articulated wooden voussoirs of the central window’s arch are typical of the work of William Kent, an 18th-century English architect who reinterpreted Italian Renaissance architecture into a style known as Anglo-Palladianism. The tracery wreaths on the Palladian window and the tower’s cornice are derived from the work of Robert Adam, a major English neoclassical architect.

While no architect of record has been discovered for this house, it has many similarities to the work of Augustine Chighizola, a Memphis-born architect whose career flourished in the early 20th century. The facade design, with its steep, front-facing gable, wide front portal defined by columns positioned between broad wing-walls, and prominent bank of windows centered above the portal are also found on Chighizola’s own house, which he completed in 1909, nearby on Peabody Avenue.

Nothing on the exterior hints that the house is a variation of a four-square house plan, a form usually associated with Craftsman architecture and found in hundreds of examples throughout Midtown. In this house, the typical four-square floor plan is recognizable from the organization of the rooms. The entrance opens into a gracefully proportioned foyer containing the main stair, and wide doorways lead from the foyer to the circular parlor and dining room, which are laid out en suite and separated by pocket doors. As in most four-squares, the kitchen is in the back and all the bedrooms are upstairs.

The interior of the house is as skillfully articulated as the exterior. The Colonial Revival stair has robust paneled newels and turned balusters. Details in the recently remodeled kitchen and bathrooms complement original features of the house while providing up-to-date amenities often lacking in historic houses. The kitchen, an efficiently compact but light and cheerful space that can easily accommodate a serious cook, is open to a new breakfast room. A screen wall of multi-light, transomed French doors leads to a wraparound back porch.

All of the bedrooms are large and have more closet space than is typical of houses of this period. The master bedroom has a balcony at the side of the house; the tower bedroom with its fireplace could also be used as the master bedroom or a sitting room. One of the baths is designed to resemble a sleeping porch with a wall of windows and has both a shower and an immense claw-foot tub.

The house sits on an exquisitely manicured lot with a side parking area entered through an automatic gate. The recently constructed two-car garage is fondly known in the neighborhood as the “Garaj-Mahal.” Its facade, complete with a Palladian window, echoes that of the house, and its grand interior space is reminiscent of the barns and carriage houses of 19th-century estates. The architects of this distinctive property clearly recognized that one’s home is one’s castle.

1387 Carr Avenue

3,029 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, $397,500

Sowell & Company

Agent: Linda Sowell, 278-4380, 454-0540

Modern architecture, the capital “M” kind, is now historic. “Modern” buildings can be considered for the National Register of Historic Places because they are more than 50 years old. Modernism, also known as the International Style, touted the development of universally valid forms with no connection to the decadent styles and outmoded materials of the past. The movement flourished from the early 20th century until about 1960. Though hailed by avant-garde architects and intellectuals as the panacea for society’s ills, Modern architecture was never a big hit with the general public, its intended beneficiary. Despite its resounding unpopularity, Modernism remained the darling of architects for many years.

In 1952, Memphis architects Lucian M. Dent and Alfred L. Aydelott built an office for their firm; a Memphis Press-Scimitar article described it as “a one-story office building of extremely modern design.” Aydelott used his considerable influence at city hall to get a variance to build the office in a residential area. The site on Peabody was just down the street from Mayor E.H. Crump’s Colonial Revival house.

Dent and Aydelott seemed to be a partnership of diametrically opposed architectural philosophies. Dent, involved in restoring Colonial Williamsburg, usually worked in a Classical and Colonial vocabulary. Aydelott was an early and devoted proponent of Modernism. The design they produced for their office melds the stylistic influences of both partners.

The site is bounded by garden walls which accentuate the corner location while screening the building from view. Both the office and the garden walls are brick. A serpentine wall along Florence Street was undoubtedly influenced by Thomas Jefferson’s design for the garden walls at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. But the undulating wall also strongly resembles swoopy ’40s and ’50s designs, such as kidney-shaped swimming pools, boomerang-patterned Formica, the golden arches of McDonald’s, and New York’s Guggenheim Museum. The almost-circular end of the wall forms a garden court at the entrance. The front door is sheltered by a deep roof overhang and partially enclosed by a high brick wall perpendicular to Peabody Avenue.

The interior spaces achieve the Modern ideal of integration with the outdoors: Full-height glass walls provide protection from the weather but no visual separation from the surrounding gardens. Dark terrazzo floors with their patterns of tiny stones emphasize the connection of interior and exterior spaces and materials.

Although built as an office and studio, this dynamic composition offers exceptional flexibility in its potential uses. The original office reception area functions well as a residential entry hall. The conference room, with two glass walls and one wall of long, narrow Roman bricks of a type favored by Frank Lloyd Wright, makes a splendid living room or home office. The large kitchen is minimally equipped but has plenty of room for more appliances, storage, and work areas. It “borrows” a garden view through a breakfast room/pantry room across the corridor that was the architects’ blueprint room. Three rooms that were partners’ offices would work equally well as bedrooms with full-width, ribbon windows.

The drafting room, a 30-by-50-foot space with wall-to-wall, 15-foot-tall, north-facing windows and a clerestory on the south side, could be an artist’s studio, a home theater, an exercise room, or open-plan office for six to eight people. It has fabulous light, a pleasant view of a quiet residential street, and a door that opens into the garden.

Dent and Aydelott’s office, although half a century old, offers a dramatic setting for a home, an office, a studio, or a combination of those functions, affirming the Modernists’ belief in the enduring value of flexible, “universal” design.

2080 Peabody Avenue

3,400 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths

$2,500/month, For lease by owner, 276-9070