Unearthed: Memphis

Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story, the Tale of the Memphis U.S. Marine Hospital. 

The year was 1798 and President Adams decreed there needed to be a hospital for the sick, injured, and disabled maritime men. This Marine Hospital cared for the seamen who worked on the Mississippi River. Unfortunately, the original plot of land, in Napoleon Arkansas, washed away when the river changed course and the new hospital was built in Fort Pickering, south of Memphis in 1884.It consisted of a stable, two wards, the surgeon’s house, nurses’ quarters, and an executive building. This hospital was the city’s first federally-funded public health facility and the only government hospital in the area at that time. It remained so until after WWI.

Not only did the hospital treat those who worked the river, it also served Civil War Veterans and Yellow Fever victims. The hospital played a vital role in trying to find a cure for Yellow Fever. 

Be sure to come back for season three which is all about Yellow Fever and learn why this sickness had such an impact on our city and why we wanted to find a cure. 

In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration built a new hospital building on the site, moving the remaining original buildings 300 feet to the west. Over the years, the facility was used by the Coast Guard, active military, public health officials, cadets from state maritime activities, Army Corps of Engineers, and government employees injured in the line of duty. 

The hospital closed in the 1960s and part of the grounds were leased to the Metal Museum in 1979. As recently as the 1990s, the grounds were used to house Desert Storm soldiers. Sadly, the hospital sat derelict until a developer decided to purchase the buildings and land in 2003. It wasn’t until almost 20 years later that anything was done with it after that. 

So what about the spooky parts?

So a little history as to what happened in the area now known as French Fort. 

Battles of the Civil War raged along the Mississippi River in the area around where the Marine Hospital was to sit. The Confederate army set up camp in the area and turned one of the ceremonial mounds into an artillery bunker. The Union army then quickly overtook the area and turned it into a camp.Battles mean tragic death and tragic death generally means restless spirits. 

Since its inception, over 100,000 soldiers were treated at the hospital and 40,000 died there. There were also over 10,000 deaths from Yellow Fever. 

So it’s fair to say, from all the death that occured on the land as well as in the hospital itself, there is bound to be some paranormal activity. 

We watched an episode of Ghost Asylum for research and while it was a little campy, what ghost hunting show isn’t, they seemed to get a lot of evidence of spirit activity. 

Supposedly, a civil war soldier by the name of Henry Wood haunts the second floor of the hospital, wandering the hallways.Maybe he was a soldier killed in battle and couldn’t find his way home. Or maybe he was a former soldier that was treated at the hospital but succumbed to an illness and since he was well cared for at the hospital, he just stuck around. 

There was also a presence felt in the basement. One of the investigators was talking to the spirits and he felt something pass behind him. The basement housed the morgue, which assuredly is haunted. Or at least I think it would be. All of the lives that were lost passed through that room. But there was also something more strange down there, cages. The cages were apparently used for keeping the yellow fever victims separated. 

It’s April, 1865… The Sultana has been docked in Vicksburg, MS, preparing to load far more passengers than the steamer is equipped to hold. The passengers are almost entirely Union soldiers who are being paroled from the Cahaba or Andersonville Confederate prison camps, in which they have experienced hellish living conditions - not to mention already having experienced the unimaginable horrors of battle. 

The Sultana’s chief engineer, Nathan Wintringer, has learned from a local boilermaker R.G. Taylor that substantial repair needs to happen to one of the steamer’s boilers, and Taylor refuses to sign off on its departure from Vicksburg until the necessary repairs have been made. Wintringer finally convinces Taylor to only patch the boiler, with the promise that the full repair will be done when the steamer is finally docked in St. Louis. 

The steamer is hastily being prepped for its journey north, skipping over pretty much anything that might make the journey comfortable for its passengers, and orders are being delivered to load all of the 1,400 passengers presumed to be awaiting transport, which will severely overload the steamer. This order comes, in part, from an attempt at personal monetary gain, and part from misinformation passed along about the actual number of potential passengers present at that time in Vicksburg. The federal government was offering to pay $5 per enlisted man and $10 per officer for any vessel willing to transport the parolees up the Mississippi on their way back home. Colonel Ruben Hatch - Chief Quartermaster of the Union Army in Vicksburg, promised J. Cass Mason - Captain of the Sultana, as many paroled prisoners as he could supply, presumably in exchange for a cut of the profits. Hatch already had a sordid history in regards to accepting kickbacks and bribes during his time in service, and would eventually be relieved of his duties for that exact thing. 

Captains George Williams and Frederic Speed seemed to be determined to expedite the Sultana’s passenger loading by whatever means necessary, but their haste had a cost. Bedrolls, wrapped together with personal care items, were meant to be distributed to each paroled prisoner loaded onto the Sultana. This process was started, but quickly seen as something that might delay the steamer’s loading and departure, risking their personal monetary gain. Since the bedrolls were not prepared ahead of time, they were not able to use the distribution of those items as a gauge of how many people had been loaded onto the steamer. This is not the sole reason for the overloading of the Sultana - no, THAT was a volatile mixture of greed, incompetence, and negligence - but this certainly contributed.

So, finally the Sultana is fully loaded, or rather - OVERloaded, and powered by compromised boilers, prepared to depart from Vicksburg. This steamer, with its maximum passenger capacity of fewer than 400, was now carrying around 2,500 passengers - most of them paroled prisoners of war. More than a few times, opportunities arose for them to pass off some of their passengers to other steamers that left the Vicksburg docks at less than capacity - opportunities which were tragically passed up for personal gain. 

The prisoners aboard the Sultana were in great spirits upon departing Vicksburg, thinking they were out of harm’s way - many of them singing songs, dancing, laughing, and sharing with each other the many things that they were going to do upon their arrival at their homes. Their spirits were not dampened, even by the limited rations of hard bread and salted meat they were given to eat aboard the vessel. When Captain Mason ordered a stop at Helena, Arkansas to bring on more supplies, a photographer who was stunned by the massive number of people aboard the Sultana, took a very famous photograph of the steamer.

If you were to mention the word “Titanic” to a random stranger today, and asked them to tell you what that word means to them, there’s a very high chance that you would get one of the following responses from them… 

That Celine Dion song that was overplayed to death...“I’m the king of the world”“Paint me like one of your French girls”There was totally room for Jack on that plank of wood, and Rose basically caused his death...Ooooorrrr, big boat that hit an iceberg, and due to arrogance and poor planning, lots of dead folks 

The point is, people would know that it had something to do with the deadliest maritime disaster that they are probably aware of. Well, little do they know that there was another water vessel tragedy that was even more deadly than the Titanic. 

On April 27th, 1865, the SS Sultana floated north on the Mississippi River loaded with almost 2300 passengers, many of which were Union soldiers that were recently liberated from Confederate prison camps. At approximately 2:00 in the morning, the recklessly overloaded SS Sultana exploded just north of Memphis, Tennessee, becoming the worst maritime disaster in US history.

Side note, since I was curious and looked it up… the deadliest maritime disaster in world history was the wartime sinking of the German military transport ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff during WWII, by a Soviet sub. This disaster had an estimated loss of around 9,400 people. Jeez… Nine thousand four hundred people… 

Anyway, I thought that was interesting…  and really SAD. 

So…  on with the story.

The SS Sultana was a paddle steamer, built in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was built originally for Captain Preston Lodwick, at a price of $60,000, and launched on January 3rd, 1863. 

The name “Sultana” is derived from the original Arabic word for a wife, mother, or sister of a sultan. Just as a little superstition side-note, this name was not exactly attached to good maritime fortune…  three other ships had been made before this one with the same name. All three previous ships were destroyed in accidents. This was not connected to a common builder or designer or anything of the sort. It was merely a coincidence.

The Sultana was one of the largest business steamers ever built for its time. It was 260 feet in length, with a 42 foot beam (that’s the width at its widest point), and had a hold that went 7 feet deep. Its weight was registered at 1,719 tons. The steamer held a regular route between New Orleans and St. Louis as a trade vessel.

The steamer had a carry capacity of 1,000 tons, making it ideal for transporting trade cargo. In addition to the cargo area, it could accommodate 76 cabin passengers and 300 deck passengers. So, that means that its largest capacity for passenger transport, with all safety measures in place, would be 376 passengers. Keep those numbers in mind… At that time, however, the Sultana only had two lifeboats and 76 life preservers, as it was only set up to carry cargo, not passengers. 

On the deck of the Sultana were four high-pressure tubular boilers, measuring 18 feet in length  and 46 inches in diameter. These boilers were smaller and lighter than the boilers found on conventional steamers, but were made to produce steam more efficiently. The Sultana’s engines powered two water wheels that were each 34 feet in diameter, which were mounted on the sides of the steamer.

The cabin of the steamer featured a long, narrow saloon, lined on each side by a row of staterooms. Each stateroom was luxuriously-furnished, and the saloon was stocked with fine china and glassware. 

The vast majority of the passengers aboard the Sultana...

Hey everyone and welcome back to Unearthed Memphis!

I’m Alan and I’m Tara

We hope you enjoyed our last episode about Memphis Hoodoo and the St. Paul Spiritual Holy Temple. I did! I’m still googling things about it. It’s just so fascinating! 

We even got a facebook thank you from the Secret History of Memphis Hoodoo Author, Tony Kail,  for mentioning his book. 

Admittedly, I got a little low key excited. Haha! After I read the comment, I looked at his Facebook page and  found out there is a conjuring shop on Summer Ave. We’re going to have to check them out soon!

In our last episode, we talked about the Elmwood Cemetery Cinema Event. Well, we went and it was fantastic. The first film they showed was a filmed version of this year’s Soul of the City tour. Since we missed it, I’m glad we got to see the film. The actors did a great job, as always. Hopefully next year we won’t have quite so much going on and we can make it to the tour. 

Then we watched the original 1922 version of Nosferatu. I hadn’t ever seen it all the way through. 

And I hadn’t seen it since college, so my memory of it is a little foggy. 

Turns out, it was far more comedic that I remembered. Being that it is a silent film, there are title pages and subtitles (at least in this version) and some of them linger over multiple scenes. Tara took the most amazing picture of one of those scenes. We previously posted it on our social media, but we’ll add it to this page for your viewing pleasure. It’s still making me laugh thinking about it. 

The stage makeup and exaggerated expressions made for some entertaining moments as well. But it really was a great film for its time, a truly classic horror film that I think everyone should watch.

But I am glad technology progressed like it has. 

Alright, I know what you’re thinking… yall, two episodes in one month, don’t tease us! 

I know, but it’s spooky season and we wanted to get in a little more spooky before the month was over. 

So, we thought we’d do some Halloween shorts. We found a few stories that didn’t have quite enough info for a standalone episode, but we didn’t want to not tell them. 

We want to give a shout out to another great local author, Laura Cunningham. She has two books, Haunted Memphis and The Ghostly Tales of Memphis, that we used for some of our research. Definitely check them out. 

The first story is about Claude Pugh and the Court Square Fountain. 

A little backstory on Court Square. The park is located between Main and Second Streets at Court Avenue. The plan for the park was to have the courthouse built in it, but no courthouse was ever built there. The park, however, has existed there since the early 1800s and it did eventually become home to the first school house. 

The Court Square fountain was built in 1876. Hebe, the Greek mythology cupbearer to the gods, stands tall atop the fountain. The Hebe Fountain, as it is actually called, is cast iron, 20 feet tall, and weighs about 7000 lbs. Originally, the basin of the fountain was 6.5 feet deep and filled with fish, turtles, and allegedly, an alligator at one time. It also had no fence around it. Clearly a safe place to be. Nothing bad could possibly happen...

Noooo… nothing bad at all...I don’t know about you, but if there were no sea creatures in it, that sounds like a great place to go swimming! Or get tetanus...

Well, in 1884, a 10 year old little boy named Claude Pugh was possibly thinking the same thing… swimming,

Since it’s spooky season, I thought we could talk a little about a Memphis urban legend…

What do you think is one of the most well known urban legends?

I’d probably say, Voodoo Village. 

That’s exactly what I was thinking. And I think pretty much everyone who grew up here or has lived here for any amount of time has heard about or even ventured out to the community known to locals as Voodoo Village.

So what are some of the rumors you’ve heard about this place?

I’ve heard that when you drive there, they pull a school bus behind your car so you can’t leave. They come out and chase you with bats and machetes. There are dead animals hanging from trees. There are weird yard art objects and masonic and voodoo symbols all around the property. It’s all just very strange and spooky. 

I’ve heard all those things too, and even believed them for a very long time. Admittedly, I was too freaked out to actually go all the way there to see for myself. I believe it was my friend Neeraj and I who ventured that way late one night, but we eventually turned around and came home. 

But years later, I had read a little about the so called “Voodoo Village” and learned it was actually called St. Paul’s Spiritual Holy Temple. I have also read it as St. Peter’s, but I do believe it’s St. Paul’s. 

As it turns out, the history behind St. Paul’s is more complicated than we thought. To understand it, we have to start with Memphis’s beginnings. But I promise we’ll get back to it. 

Most of the information I got for this episode was from a book by Tony Kail called, appropriately, “A Secret History of Memphis Hoodoo”. This really is a fantastic book. It’s informative and a quick read. It made me want to dig deeper into the subject, thus this episode’s topic. It’s a really cool book. I suggest checking it out. You can find it in the local section at Novel.

Memphis is known by many names. The Bluff City. The Home of the Blues. The Birthplace of Rock n Roll. The Cotton Capital of the World. The BBQ Capital of the World. But it’s also called Mojo City. 

The word “mojo” comes from an object used within the practice of Hoodoo. Memphis’s Hoodoo history is not extremely well known or frankly understood, that is of course, unless you’re actually in the know. 

So we started this episode talking about voodoo and now we’re talking about hoodoo. What is the difference?

Voodoo (Vodou), meaning spirit, is considered a religion or religious practice. It is similar to Hoodoo, and in one video I watched, it said that Hoodoo was born out of Voodoo. It was brought from Africa, through Haiti, and then to America during the slave trade. It is a blend of Catholicism and African cultural and traditional beliefs. The type of voodoo we are going to be talking about for this episode is what is generally practiced in New Orleans. 

There is structure and hierarchy in Voodoo. There is one God, but they do not interfere with life. But there are numerous spirits that do, and they call these spirits Loa or Lwa. Each Loa has its own area of life that it is responsible for, for example agriculture or money. Practitioners connect with these spirits when they need their assistance. 

There are priestesses and priests in Voodoo. A popular Voodoo priestess was Marie Laveau. She made a name for herself by helping people from all walks of life in New Orleans. She was a hairdresser by day, but her other “side hustle” was to help people achieve their desires through her voodoo practice. She was known to help black, white, rich and poor people. 

This episode came from an idea in a book I saw at Novel, our wonderful locally owned and operated bookstore. While browsing in the Local Memphis section, I saw this book, “Memphis Castles - Former Homes and Stories of Prominent Memphians.” And as I was flipping through the pages, I saw my sister’s house. I immediately took a picture and sent it to her and she was extremely excited her house was something special. And I was jealous. 

So why is her home special? 

Well, it was once owned by a man named Lorenzo Pacini, an immigrant from Valdottavo, Italy. He arrived in Memphis in 1887, after hearing stories his father told about the city. His father, Amanze, had been through Memphis in the 1840s and described it as a grand, romantic place. Lorenzo knew he had to go to Memphis. So, after he got out of the Italian army, he made his way here. 

Lorenzo Pacini

When Pacini arrived in Memphis, he needed a job, like ya do. And he found one at Pee Wee’s Saloon on Beale Street. 

Fun fact, the sign outside Pee Wee’s said P. Wee’s because the sign man misspelled it. 

Pee Wee’s was owned by Vigelio (I’ve also read Virgillo or Virgelio or Vigello) Maffei, a man who stood about 4.5 feet tall, nicknamed Pee Wee. He arrived in Memphis from Italy, via New York City in the 1870s. He started out working as a bartender at the Gallina Exchange.

Let’s tangent to the Gallina Exchange Building for a moment. 

Charles Gallina was a 31 year old judge in Shelby County with a love of horse racing. Apparently, he won so much money betting on horses, he decided to use that money to build a magnificent building on Beale Street. The three story building would house a saloon and gambling hall, a second floor courtroom, a 20 room hotel, and his family would occupy the third floor. The saloon was open 24/7, so patrons could have fun all day and night. The business thrived for years but eventually, Gallina would pass away and the building would go to family members. When it was sold, it became various shops until a fire broke out and destroyed the inside. And then a windstorm took down all but the front. You can now find the facade of the Gallina Exchange Building, supported by metal beams, outside of Silky O’Sullivans. 

Gallina Exchange then and now

Alright, back to PeeWee… according to legend, he started out with only a dime in his pocket and managed to gamble his way to make enough money to open his own saloon in 1884. The original location was the corner of Hernando and Beale, but eventually moved to 317 Beale. Naming the saloon after himself, Pee Wee’s was THE hangout for musicians and gamblers at the time, as it was also open 24/7. 

Along with the actual bar up front, in the back there were billiards and card and dice tables, as well as a cigar stand. Even though most saloons on Beale had gambling, there were still periodic raids by the police. In an effort to protect themselves, Pee Wee set up a warning system. He had a front doorman who was a lookout with a buzzer under his shirt. If they saw anyone suspected of being the fuzz, they alerted the staff. He also had men that played dominos all day watching out as a backup. Pee Wee’s was, in fact, raided one time, but they ended up letting everyone off the hook. 

After Pacini had worked for Pee Wee for a while, he found his way into the family business by marrying Pee Wee’s daughter (I’ve also read sister, but it makes more sense that it was his daughter) and he ended up running the saloon with his brother Angelo. Eventually, Pee Wee headed back to Italy in 1913 and he let the brothers continue his legacy. 

We have to thank a supporter/friend that we’ve yet to meet, Jerry, who sent us kind of a suggestion for this topic. On one of his daily walks, he took a picture of a plaque on the side of the Evergreen Theatre. It was commemorating the 1969 Miss Memphis Review pageant. Having not ever heard of this, we decided we’d investigate and thus it became our Pride Month episode.

The Miss Memphis Review, which later came to be known as the Miss Gay Memphis, began as a protest to the city ordinance that banned crossdressing.

But let’s take a step back in time to talk about the aforementioned theatre location before we get to the pageant. The current Evergreen Theatre has gone through a few owners and name changes over the years. We’ll start at the beginning, in 1927 (or 1928), the Ritz Theatre was built as a 900 seat movie theatre. It showed mainstream films and foreign films. It remained so until around 1955, when there was a fire and it was damaged. When rebuilt, it became known as the Memphis Guild Art Theatre. It was still showing foreign films but by the 60s, when Bill Kendall began running it, the shows became a little edgier. 

The Guild Theatre showed what people would consider arthouse films. They were foreign films, LGBTQ films, and other films the city considered illegal “smut”. Kendall was known for bringing eccentric movies to his theatres, he had another theatre on Highland that had midnight showings of the most controversial films, actual gay films. The flamboyant cinephile was even indicted on several indecency charges, luckily they were eventually dropped. 

Bill Kendall

So who was William “Bill” Kendall? Well, we know he was born in Memphis and attended Southwestern College, which is now Rhodes. He was also a WWII veteran.  

I can only imagine what it would be like to be a gay soldier during WWII. According to a Memphis Flyer article, he was unafraid to be loud and proud about being gay. 

When Kendall managed the Guild, it became, as he called it, a safe space for self expression. Clearly, he was not afraid to show movies that were considered controversial. When he showed “I Spit on Your Grave”, it caused “one of the most hotly contested obscenity cases in Memphis.” 

I’ve not ever seen that movie, so I looked up the plot to see what all the hubbub was about. That being said, look up the 1959 film, not the 70s film because that is a waaaay different story. 

According to the TMC website this is the synopsis of the film... 

Joe Grant is a vengeful light-skinned black man who leaves Memphis (MS) and moves to a small town in New Jersey after his brother is brutally lynched for attempting to marry a white woman. Joe's skin is so light that he is able to pass himself off as Caucasian and find work in a local bookstore. To get revenge on white society, Joe seduces a rich young white girl and then plots her death. At the same time, Joe discovers that the bookstore where he works is a front for an extortion ring. A short time passes and he finds himself falling in love with the girl. She too loves him until she learns that he is of African descent. Knowing this complicates matters (she is engaged to another man), but loving him just the same, she suggests they run away together to avoid the blackmailers. After Joe is beaten by the blackmailers, he decides this is a good idea and together the lovers flee. Back in town, the girls enraged fiance organizes a posse loudly claiming that Joe has abducted the girl and plans to rape her. Tragedy ensues just as the fugitive lovers are about to cross the Mason-Dixon Line.

It doesn’t seem too scandalous to me,

So today we’re going to cover a topic that hits really close to home for us…  and by that, we mean that it helps to literally pay for us to live in our home. We are, of course, talking about a place of employment. We are both gainfully employed by fantastic, privately-owned, local companies that have rather long histories. And both companies are hitting huge milestones this year and next. Memphis Dermatology, where Tara works, will hit 50 years this next year… That’s an amazing achievement for any privately-owned business! I’m sure you’ll hear us talk more about them in the future. Tara has been with them for 13 years now, so it’s a regular topic in our conversations anyway. 

Alan’s place of employment for the past 16 years, Amro Music Store hit a gigantic milestone this past month. And that is the topic of our episode!  As of April 10th of this year, Amro Music has been open, and owned and operated by the same family, for one hundred years! Wow… such an amazing accomplishment! 

We went to their 100 year celebration a few weekends back and it was a lot of fun. It’s amazing to me when companies are able to withstand the test of time. Someone is doing something right. One of the reasons we try to mostly buy local is because most local companies give back to their communities and Amro is no exception. From what I know, as a previous band kid, and what I have heard from other band parents and children, if you want to be taken care of, you go to Amro. They are a pillar in the Midsouth music community.

Amro Music is the largest band, orchestra, and piano retailer in the Mid-South, and is actually one of the largest in the nation as well. They began renting musical instruments for student use more than 50 years ago, and they now supply a large majority of the band and orchestra instruments found in school programs in the Mid-South. Amro is widely respected for its long history of service to music education and Mid-South musicians, the high quality of its employees, its involvement in and assistance to the local music community, and its long-term stability as a business.

Amro is also one of the most prominent piano retailers in the Mid-South, providing pianos and organs for both rental and purchase, with a highly qualified team of experts to help people find the perfect instrument for their home or institution. Amro has also been a Steinway & Sons piano dealer since 1964. Being a Steinway dealer is a big deal…  not every dealer gets to represent Steinway pianos. They’re the only concert piano manufacturer whose products are still handmade in the United States. 

And didn’t Steinway make a fancy 100 year celebratory piano for y’all to have in your showroom?

They did!

I think that’s pretty cool…they must like you guys a lot...

So how does a company that serves so many communities, take care of all of those customers?

Well, Amro has 8 educational representatives, many of whom have formal music education training and years of teaching experience, that regularly visit most of the schools in the mid-south. They provide support for the band and orchestra programs within their respective territories, providing advice, product support, and basically anything else to make sure that the students and directors have everything they need to succeed in their instrumental music learning and teaching efforts. They are an amazing resource for both new and seasoned music educators.

Additionally, an in-store team of band and orchestra experts, known as Director Services (this is what I (Alan) do at Amro) act as a music educator call center to provide support for school music educators, as well as the Amro educational representatives (so the ed reps can spend ...

Most Memphians will agree on one fact about their home city. Memphis has great tasting water. The water supply in Memphis comes from natural reservoirs hundreds of feet below the ground, and most of that water lies in sand aquifers that sit between layers of clay. The sand acts as a natural filter, slowly removing many of the water’s impurities. While all water contains at least small levels of contaminants, Memphis water has very low levels of fluoride, nitrate, lead, and copper. 

According to a Memphis Light Gas & Water report from 2015, there’s actually no detectable lead at all in Memphis’s source water. The water is so pure when it comes from the wells that it only has to be aerated to eliminate iron and dissolved gasses. After that, it is filtered, chlorinated, and fluoridated. I’m realizing that “filtered, chlorinated, and fluoridated” sounds like something that happens to hashbrowns at the worst Waffle House restaurant in existence. “Scattered, smothered, and covered” sounds way better…  and I think that’s also a Hootie and the Blowfish album. The addition of fluoride and chlorine is a legal requirement for public drinking water, so that our teeth don’t rot out of our heads. Because the layers of clay protect it, groundwater from Memphis is ideal for many industrial uses. And it also makes some really great beer…  It also makes for really great tasting distilled spirits, but that’s a subject for a later episode. Don’t worry, we’ll get there. We’re very much looking forward to doing “research” on how good bourbon tastes when it’s made from Memphis water. 

So, brewing in Memphis began in 1877, when G.H. Herbers organized the “Memphis Brewing Company,” located at the intersection of Tennessee and Butler streets in Downtown Memphis. In 1890, the brewery was acquired by J.W. Schorr, Casper Koehler, and the brewery was expanded to the structure that stands today. The name was then changed to “Tennessee Brewing Company,” and they began using water from Memphis’s naturally-filtered sand aquifer to produce their beer. 

The first beer that was marketed by Tennessee Brewing was a Pilsner, but at that time, most breweries did not name their beers - they were known by their type instead. Ads from around 1890 list the brewery’s offerings as Pilsener, Export, Tennessee Pale, Bavarian, and Budweiser (which must have been a reference to the Bohemian style of beer made in Budweis in the Czech Republic since the 13th century, not the Budweiser brand name). Employing more than 1,500 workers, and producing more than 250,000 barrels per year, Tennessee Brewing Company became a titan in the brewing industry. By 1903, they had become the largest brewery in the south.

Unfortunately, Prohibition took its toll on the Tennessee Brewing Company, closing its doors for more than a decade - but all was not lost. For a couple of years, the brewery tried to stay open acting as an icehouse and by brewing and bottling a drink called “NIB,” which stood for Non-Intoxicating Beverage. If you’ve ever tasted O’Douls or any of the other “near beer” beverages, you’ll understand why that didn’t work out for them. They’re kinda gross. When Prohibition ended, and producers of alcoholic beverages were given the greenlight to reopen, John Schorr, the son of J.W. Schorr, got the brewery back up and running at full capacity. Their best-selling beer for many years was called “Goldcrest,” and in 1938 it was renamed “Goldcrest 51” to honor more than 51 years of success in the industry. Goldcrest was a bottled beer until 1947, when they switched to cans. (and Tara grumbles...) 

The Tennessee Brewing Company closed its doors for the last time in 1954. The building remained vacant for just more than 50 years,

Opening in the 1890s, the Bon Ton Cafe has been operating in some form or fashion in downtown Memphis. Apparently the cafe was originally a saloon in the late 1800s, but was then turned into a restaurant in 1904. Tony Angleos and Charlie Skinner, two cousins who immigrated from Greece, opened the first manifestation of the Bon Ton Cafe, called The Hole in the Wall. This eatery was located behind the original location of the Peabody Hotel on Monroe. In 1923, the cousins renamed and reopened the Bon Ton Cafe, as it is known today. Apparently Elvis really liked to visit and perform in the basement. The cousins owned the restaurant for 41 years before selling in 1945. 

Now, you’ll notice on the plaque, which will be posted on the website, that it says The Hole in the Wall opened in 1911. But like any good history retelling, dates are going to be a bit dodgy.

The Bon Ton Cafe was purchased and reopened in 1950 (or 1945 as I have also read) by the Zambelis family. Mike Zambelis, also a Greek immigrant, took over the cafe and their breakfast and lunch specials have been staples in the downtown community ever since. When Mike passed away in 1998, his son Sam took over the business. Sam kept his father’s legacy alive by running the restaurant exactly like his father did, like a family dining room. Bon Ton was a place where you could get good food and have good conversation, and according to one member of the “Breakfast Club”, a group of people that had been eating breakfast there for decades, it’s a place where they figured out how to “solve the world’s problems, if only anyone would listen”.

Sam Zambelis suddenly passed away in 2008 and the restaurant closed for a few years. 

In 2011, the Bon Ton Cafe was reopened by Mac Edwards, the previous owner of McEwans. This time, Ewards added dinner to the menu. According to Edwards, breakfast will be nice and sunny, lunch is all business, and dinner will have the lights turned down low for a sexy vibe. You can get a nice, inexpensive dinner, but also high quality spirits. He also wanted to support the local community by providing a farm to table philosophy, buying as much as he could from local vendors. 

Currently the Bon Ton Cafe is doing private events and catering.

Next up is the actual oldest still operating restaurant in Memphis. This also surprised me because I had always heard it was another restaurant, but we’ll get to that later.  

The Little Tea Shop is located at 69 Monroe Ave and is open Monday through Friday, 11am to 2pm. This lunch only cafe is another staple in downtown Memphis. 

The Little Tea Shop was opened in 1918 by Lillie Parham and Emily Carpenter. They wanted to have a place where their friends could come get lunch while they were having an outing downtown. The ladies served finger sandwiches and made change out of a shoebox at the front of the shop. Obviously at the time, two women owning and running a business wasn’t terribly common.

Originally, the shop was located in the basement of the Memphis Cotton Exchange Building. While the men were upstairs conducting business, their wives could shop downtown and then come in for a light snack and socializing before heading home to do whatever wives of wealthy cotton traders did. 

In 1935, the shop was relocated to its current location. It’s said there was no disruption to the service either. After closing time one day, the employees packed everything up and moved it down the street. They were serving lunch the next day like nothing had ever happened. 

The ladies sold their shop in 1946 to an amatuer golfer named Vernon Mortimer Bell.