If you enjoyed that photo of the 100 North Main Building under construction, I thought you’d enjoy this one too. It shows workers building Sears Crosstown in the mid-1920s, and this was one helluva job. I’ve heard that one million bricks went into this structure. I don’t know if that’s true, but goodness, who’s counting?
Look — they even ran railroad tracks down Cleveland (or Watkins) to bring materials to the site.
The authors of Memphis: An Architectural Guide note that this was the biggest building in Memphis at the time, and when it opened in 1927, “Sears proudly proclaimed that it covered more ground than the Great Pyramid in Egypt.”
And like those pyramids in Egypt, it stands today as empty as a tomb.
