Central Gardens, Memphis
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An American Craftsman style home in Memphis' Central Gardens historic neighborhood Central Gardens is a historic Memphis neighborhood in Midtown.


Geography

Central Gardens is bound by York Avenue on the south, Eastmoreland Avenue on the north, Rembert Street on the east, and Cleveland Street on the west.


History

Listed on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
, Central Gardens was built primarily between 1850 and 1930 and originally served as home to the city's wealthy middle-class residents who moved east during the heyday of the cotton boom along with the expanding city limits, which by 1900 shifted to East Parkway in what is now Midtown.Viser, Barbara B. ''Central Gardens - stories of a neighborhood''. Memphis, TN: Central Gardens Association, 1998, pp. 3-4. Originally part of the estate of Solomon Rozelle, who had settled in Shelby County in 1815 on 1,600 acres of then wooded wilderness, the land that became Central Gardens was inherited by Rozelle's children upon his death in 1840, according to historian Barbara B. Viser.Viser, Barbara B. ''Central Gardens - stories of a neighborhood''. Memphis, TN: Central Gardens Association, 1998, p. 4. Records from 1853 document that C. W. Rozelle owned 30 acres of what became Central Gardens. Also in 1853, Judge William Roland Harris bought 40 acres from B. L. Rozelle and built his home, Clanlo Hall, on what is now Central Avenue. Clanlo and the Rozelle House on Harbert Avenue, both c. 1853, were the only two homes in the neighborhood at the time. They are the oldest homes in Central Gardens. Unlike the nearby Annesdale neighborhood, which was created as a smaller, single subdivision, Central Gardens is made up of several subdivisions, such as Merriman Park, the Harbert Place subdivision, Bonnie Crest, as well as several large estates that were subdivided. Viser identifies 1900-1929 as the "boom years" for Central Gardens, the period in which it was "the newest, most prestigious neighborhood" in Memphis, with homes ranging from "elegant mansions to Queen Anne cottages and cozy bungalows." Streetcars provided convenient transportation to downtown Memphis. Central Gardens has been home to Mayor E. H. Crump, Clarence Saunders, Mayor
Walter Chandler Walter "Clift" Chandler (October 5, 1887 – October 1, 1967) was an American politician from Tennessee and a United States House of Representatives, Representative for the ninth district of Tennessee. He served as mayor of Memphis, Tennessee f ...
, Memphis grocer Frank Montesi Sr.,http://www.memphismagazine.com/gyrobase/Magazine/Content?oid=oid%3A2323154 photographer
William Eggleston William Eggleston, (born July 27, 1939) is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition of color photography as a legitimate artistic medium. Eggleston's books include ''William Eggleston's Guide'' (1976) and ''The ...
, Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, U.S. Representative Steve Cohen, entrepreneur Abe Plough, preservationist June West, and Crissy Haslam, wife of Tennessee governor
Bill Haslam William Edward Haslam (; born August 23, 1958) is an American billionaire businessman and politician who served as the 49th governor of Tennessee from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, Haslam previously served as the 67th mayor of ...
.


Culture


Churches, schools, and libraries

Grace-St. Luke's Episcopal Church, built in 1912, is located in the center of Central Gardens Grace-St. Luke's Episcopal Church (constructed in 1912) and the Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (1938) are located in Central Gardens. Both the church and the cathedral have adjoining schools. Central Christian Church, located at the corner of South McLean since 1924, is part of the
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination in the United States and Canada. The denomination started with the Restoration Movement during the Second Great Awakening, first existing during the 19th ...
denomination. Grace-St. Luke's Episcopal School, a coeducational parish day school established in 1947, serves over 500 students in PK - 8th grade. Known as GSL, the school is located at the corner of Belvedere Boulevard and Peabody Avenue. Immaculate Conception Cathedral School, located on Central Avenue, is a coeducational elementary school and an all-girls college preparatory high school. Idlewild Elementary School is part of the Memphis City Schools system. Just outside Central Gardens is Central High School, a public high school (grades 9-12) in Memphis, Tennessee. It was founded in 1897 and is considered the first high school in Memphis; Central is often called "THE" High School. It is a part of the Memphis City Schools Optional School system where it is recognized as a school specializing in college preparatory programs. Central High's building is on the List of Registered Historic Places in Tennessee. From 1955 until 2001, the main library of the Memphis Public Library System was located in Central Gardens at the corner of Peabody and South McLean.


Architecture

Central Gardens, composed of approximately 83 blocks, 1,540 structures and in
Midtown Memphis Midtown is a collection of neighborhoods in Memphis, Tennessee, to the east of Downtown Memphis, Tennessee, Downtown. Midtown is home to many cultural attractions, institutions of higher education, and noteworthy pieces of architecture. The ...
, has an architectural style that is highly eclectic. It reflects the prevailing tastes among early twentieth century middle class Memphians, and the best in urban residential community planning and architecture of that period. The wide variety of architectural styles works well because of uniform setbacks, cornice heights and massing, and the characteristic use of such details as front porches, bay window,
porte-cochère A porte-cochère (; ; ; ) is a doorway to a building or courtyard, "often very grand," through which vehicles can enter from the street or a covered porch-like structure at a main or secondary entrance to a building through which originally a ...
, and leaded glass. The building materials include brick, limestone,
stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...
, clapboard, and wooden shingles, with many houses constructed of a mix of two or three of these. Workmanship is of a consistently high quality, and the detailing is extremely rich and well-conceived. With only a few exceptions, the architecture is more "mid-American" than "Southern"; according to architectural historian Vincent Scully, Central Gardens houses bear a closer resemblance to those in
Oak Park, Illinois Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States, adjacent to Chicago. It is the List of municipalities in Illinois, 26th-most populous municipality in Illinois, with a population of 54,318 as of the 2020 census. Oak Park was first se ...
rather than to those in
Natchez, Mississippi Natchez ( ) is the only city in and the county seat of Adams County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 14,520 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located on the Mississippi River across from Vidalia, Louisiana, Natchez was ...
."Neighborhood Map" published by The Central Gardens Neighborhood Association. The most prevalent architectural forms found in the district are the
American foursquare The American Foursquare (also American Four Square or American 4 Square) is an American house vernacular under the Arts and Crafts style popular from the mid-1890s to the late 1930s. A reaction to the ornate and mass-produced elements of the ...
and
bungalow A bungalow is a small house or cottage that is typically single or one and a half storey, if a smaller upper storey exists it is frequently set in the roof and Roof window, windows that come out from the roof, and may be surrounded by wide ve ...
. Principal styles include
Colonial Revival The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture. The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the arch ...
,
American Craftsman American Craftsman is an American domestic architectural style, inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, which included interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts, beginning in the last years of the 19th century. ...
, Eclectic, Mediterranean Revival, Mission, Neoclassical,
Prairie School Prairie School is a late 19th and early 20th-century architectural style, most common in the Midwestern United States. The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped i ...
, Queen Anne,
Tudor Revival Tudor Revival architecture, also known as mock Tudor in the UK, first manifested in domestic architecture in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture, in rea ...
, and
Shingle style The shingle style is an American architectural style made popular by the rise of the New England school of architecture, which eschewed the highly ornamented patterns of the Eastlake style in Queen Anne architecture. In the shingle style, Engli ...
. While this architecture is fairly common, the superior quality of design, workmanship, materials and details is significantly uncommon. The mix of architectural styles contained in a typical district block achieves a very strong compositional harmony because virtually all houses adhere to the same rules of massing, scale, and cornice height setback and lot size. Since 1967, the architecture and the stories behind selected homes in the district have been shared publicly each September during the neighborhood association's annual Central Gardens Home and Garden Tour.Wilemon, Tom. "Architectural stories: home and garden tour chronicles Memphis styles," The Daily News, September 8, 2010.
The tour is usually attended by more than 2,000 people. Among the architects whose works are represented by homes in the district are * Neander M. Woods, who "may have been Memphis' most inventive architect of the first quarter of the 20th century," * Mahan & Broadwell, who designed many of the Tudor and Italian homes on South McLean near Central, * Walk C. Jones Sr. and Max Furbinger, partners "from 1904 to 1935, the peak of Midtown's construction boom," * J. Frazer Smith, whose own Peabody Avenue home reflected the same antebellum plantation design that inspired his history of Southern Architecture, ''White pillars: early life and architecture of the Lower Mississippi Valley country'' (1940) and * Francis Gassner, whose Harbert Avenue home's design reflected the Modernist International Style of the mid-twentieth century.


Gallery of homes in Central Gardens

File:Central Gardens 10.jpg File:A Home in Central Gardens - Memphis, Tennessee.jpg File:CentralGardensMemphisHome02.jpg File:A Home in Central Gardens 2 Memphis, Tennessee.jpg File:A Home in Central Gardens 4.jpg File:CentralGardensMemphis03.jpg


Historic preservation and annual home and garden tour

Central Gardens is one of Memphis' three historic conservation zones. The designation means that a property owner seeking a building permit for exterior work must receive a Certificate of Appropriateness (COA) from Memphis Landmarks Commission. Design Guidelines are available for all projects that require a COA. ''
The Commercial Appeal ''The Commercial Appeal'' (also known as the ''Memphis Commercial Appeal'') is a daily newspaper of Memphis, Tennessee, and its surrounding metropolitan area. It is owned by the Gannett Company; its former owner, the E. W. Scripps Company, also ...
'' wrote the "inner-city neighborhood offers an elegant, inspiring reminder of how urban decay, middle-class flight and mind-numbing architecture don't have to rule the day. Central Gardens dazzled last week's home-tour crowd with its leafy green, walkable and surprisingly diverse urban landscape. You couldn't help but envy the people who live there. It's beautiful, well-maintained and 100 years old."


Arboretum status

Central Gardens was designated as a level 3
arboretum An arboretum (: arboreta) is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees and shrubs of a variety of species. Originally mostly created as a section in a larger garden or park for specimens of mostly non-local species, many modern arbor ...
by the state of Tennessee in 2008 and recertified in December 2019.Morton, Ted. "Central Gardens Arboretum," ''Central Gardens Newsletter'', Summer, 2008, Central Gardens Neighborhood Association. One of just two in Tennessee, it is the only level 3 arboretum in West Tennessee. The designation noted that "many of the trees are well over 80+ years and this arboretum has well over the 90 different species of trees needed to be considered a level 3."''2010 Tennessee Certified Arboreta List'', Tennessee Urban Forestry Council (2010).
"Since arboretums are usually found in a botanical garden or park, what makes the Central Gardens Arboretum so special is its neighborhood context," Ted Morton wrote. "Residents and visitors can see the trees in an urban setting, amid houses and streets and in ideal growing conditions." The status "officially recognizes the critical role trees play in defining the unique character and beauty of " Central Gardens. File:Central Gardens Arboreta.JPG, The intersection of Carr Avenue and South Willett Street is an example of Central Gardens' designation as a level 3 arboretum, one of only two in Tennessee File:Central Gardens entrance Belvedere.JPG, The Belvedere Boulevard entrance to Central Gardens


References


External links


Neighborhood Association website
{{coord, 35.1346, -90.0087, display=title Neighborhoods in Memphis, Tennessee