Memphis Icons
Only in Memphis
from September, 2007 MEMPHIS DOWNTOWNER
by Devin Greaney and Terre Gorham
Travel writers are asked to avoid the word “unique.” It is toooo cliche. But
we'll break that little rule and find some different, one-of-a-kind — you know,
<<unique>> — places that make Memphis exclusively Memphis. Yes, we have the
Mississippi River. But so do a lot of cities in the Central U.S. We have parks.
Ditto for the rest of the country. But some things do come together to make
something unique — and uniquely Memphis.
Beale Street
Memphis’s original Main Street — a business and entertainment mecca for blacks,
with colorful culture and original Memphis music — made Memphis history, became
a deserted ghost town, then roared back to life again. That is the story of
Beale Street in one sentence. Today, it is the city's most-visited tourist
attraction.
Here, the Hard Rock Cafe sits just up the block from the W.C. "Father of the
Blues" Handy statue. Rock-and-roll Elvis looks down the street to bluesman B.B.
King’s place. Karaoke meets New Orleans zydeco, and if there's a way to make
music out of something down here, someone will figure out how to do it. Music,
people, food, and neon make four blocks on this historic street like no other
local entertainment district anywhere.
Belz Museum for Asian and Judaic Art
Belz Museum for Asian and Judaic Art
Tour guides call it "the hidden museum," where 1,000 rare and precious pieces of
history make up one of the largest collections of 19th century Chinese art in
the country. The artistic legacy of the Qing Dynasty include finely detailed
artworks and exquisite treasures in jade and semiprecious stones, ivory, and
cloisonne.
Regally displayed on the lower level of Pembroke Square Downtown, the private
collection of Jack and Marilyn Belz — philanthropists and city innovators —
shares a remarkable sample of the Belz's 9,000-plus valuable and historically
significant pieces — a collection that exists solely in Memphis.
Center for Southern Folklore
Judy Peiser, Center for Southern Folklore
Back in the late 1960s when the state of Mississippi was asking, “Why do we not
have much in the way of ballet or opera here?” Judy Peiser started asking, “What
about the culture we <<do>> have?” Since that time, Peiser has devoted her life
to protecting, preserving, and sharing the culture of the South — in ways not
found elsewhere.
Her private, nonprofit organization documents the lives and artifacts of
Southern bluesmen and musicians, moonshiners and quilt makers, rivermen and
artisans, and many others who are disappearing or gone altogether. The real
treasure, she says, are those who have shared their stories.
The center's Folklore Hall showcases folk art, photography exhibits, media
shows, and live performances. The Folklore Store provides the best exposure to
folk art, crafts, books, music, and Southern foods — a must-have is the homemade
peach cobbler, another Southern staple.
Chuculissa Archaeological Museum
Here is the spot where, in 1541, Hernando de Soto defeated the American Indian
tribes of the Memphis area and first spotted the Rio Espiritu Santo – now the
Mississippi River.
Well, sort of. Historians are not sure exactly where de Soto first spied the
river, and the Indians never stopped resisting him. But certainly, with the
rediscovery of a Mississippi mound complex in the area being cleared to create
T.O. Fuller State Park in the late 1930s, park workers knew they had an unusual
archeological treasure on their hands.
We see in Chuculissa things we see in Memphis of today. The clay of the river
made pottery both decorative and functional. The high bluff over the river still
attracts visitors today. The flood plain makes for fertile agricultural land,
and the forests and river still attract hunters and fishermen.
Reconstructed buildings give context to what the village must have looked like
centuries ago, when a group of Native Americans unknowingly built a unique,
historic treasure trove for Memphis.
Graceland
Okay. We all know the jokes about Elvis’s "taste" in decorations — sort of an
Austin Powers meets Liberace. But considering that time stops at Graceland in
1977, those old enough to remember that year remember that subtlety was not in
fashion.
There was only one Elvis, so there can be only one Elvis mansion, and it happens
to sit in Memphis, now a designated National Historic Landmark. And the mansion
is filled to overflowing with one-of-a-kind Elvis memorabilia, awards, costumes,
furnishings, mementoes, and prized possessions.
It is a fascinating overview of the life of a poor Mississippi kid who grew into
great fame and fortune — and into the hearts of millions — beginning in Memphis.
Mud Island
Samantha Uride of El Paso, TX with her dog, Tishi.
It started off as a sandbar and kept growing. What to do with it? Officially, it
was City Island, but everyone called it Mud Island. After years of talking about
and around it, Memphis opened the Mississippi River Museum on the Fourth of July
weekend in 1982, complete with a walkable five-block scale model of the Lower
Mississippi. Try walking "1,000 miles" from Cairo, IL, to the Gulf of Mexico,
where a one-acre "Gulf of Mexico" awaits!
The museum showcases 10,000 years of history in the Lower Mississippi Valley,
from area tribes traveling in cypress canoes to the Civil War battles on the
river, to culture and geography along the Muddy Mississippi. One display shows
artifacts from Napoleon, AR. Never heard of it? That's because the river started
cutting away at its bank, and day by day, different buildings of Napoleon
dropped into the river. Fortunately, Mud Island has escaped that fate and today
offers a wide array of green space, water sports, and outdoor events.
National Civil Rights Museum
Controversy will always be there, but according to the official story, just
after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray leaned out of the bathroom window
of a second story rooming house at 418 South Main and pulled the trigger on his
30.06 rifle. Approximately 1/20th of a second later, that bullet brought down an
American Civil Rights Movement leader and hero, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as
he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.
The motel languished for the next 20 years before construction started on the
museum, which opened in 1991. The main museum chronicles key episodes of the
Civil Rights Movement through its collections, exhibitions, and educational
programs, celebrating civil and human rights efforts globally. It's an inspiring
story that ends with King’s motel room, No. 306, as it appeared on that dark
day. An expansion across the street opened in 2002, leading visitors into the
building — and the aftermath — of the shot from Memphis that changed the world.
National Ornamental Metal Museum
National Ornamental Metal Museum
Memphis is home to a generous sprinkling of unusual metal sculptures — both
indoor and out, decorative and functional — and metal artists. Metal creations
begin at the city's front door and flow east through Downtown, Midtown,
Cooper-Young, and beyond. But before the fires were stoked for these unusual
pieces, there was the National Ornamental Metal Museum.
Opened in February 1979 on an abandoned piece of property that was formerly a
part of the U.S. Marine Hospital constructed during Roosevelt's Works Progress
Administration in the mid 1930s, it is still the only museum in the country
dedicated to the preservation of fine metalwork.
The museum's front gates are unique, as well, made in scroll and rosette
components that represent the work of more than 160 metalsmiths from 17 nations.
Both inside and out, traditional pieces are displayed along with avant-garde,
covering a 500-year time span. Some pieces weigh in at a few ounces; others look
to weigh several tons.
Out back, the working smithy is a hothouse of activity and learning. In addition
to demos for museum visitors, staff metalsmiths create commissioned works, teach
classes, restore and repair existing metalwork, and offer conservation services
to other institutions.
The Peabody Hotel
Sure, there may be other Peabody Hotels in the nation now, but Memphis is home
to the original Peabody Hotel — first opening in its modern grandeur in 1869 at
the corner of South Main and Monroe, built by Colonel Robert Campbell Brinkley,
a Renaissance man by all accounts. He named the hotel after George Foster
Peabody, a well-known humanitarian and American patriot who Brinkley met by
happenstance on a ship bound for England.
After a colorful, magnificent, and sometimes difficult life, the original hotel
was demolished in 1923. But its spirit would live on when the Peabody we know
today on Union between Second and Third streets was opened in 1925.
You can imagine the grand opening: Model T’s pulling up, gentlemen exiting in
black-tailed tuxes, their hair parted in the middle, and ladies draped in fur
stoles. Only the fashions and memories have changed since.
But what about those ducks? They're another uniquely Memphis tradition, marching
between Duck Palace on the hotel roof and downstairs lobby fountain twice a day
to the tune of John Philip Sousa's <<King Cotton March>>. The tradition
reportedly started after a duck hunting trip by the hotel's general manager in
the 1930s that involved too much Tennessee sippin' whiskey and live duck decoys.
The Pyramid
This is one of Memphis's most prominent one-of-a-kinds, soaring skyward with 32
stories of stainless steel on the western edge of Downtown. The former
21,000-seat sports and entertainment facility, however, is not Memphis’s first.
We did it once before, creating the Memphis Shelby County Pavilion in the
Tennessee Centennial Exhibit in Nashville in 1897.
Memphis, being named for the ancient Egyptian city on the Nile, wanted to do
something to pay homage to its namesake. A pyramid made sense, and in 1989, a
groundbreaking ceremony marked the beginning of a two-year construction project
that culminated in the world's third largest pyramid — currently empty, but
ready to receive its next tenant.
Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum
The Smithsonian Institution in Memphis? Well, it is. At the FedExForum, the
Smithsonian displays how rock and soul grew in Memphis — and only in Memphis —
telling the story of music pioneers who overcame racial and socioeconomic
barriers to create the music that shook the world. How did the music of
farmlands come together in a place called Memphis? How did Memphis produce what
is often called the first blues song and the first rock song?
Memphis music, only in Memphis.
Shelby Farms/Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park:
Meeman- Shelby Forest State Park
Two places with similar names are both quite different, but both contributing
their share to making Memphis one of a kind.
Shelby Farms is the largest urban park in the United States — 4,500 acres that
include horses, trails, lakes, playgrounds, and even buffalo! This spot is a
favorite for the jog-bike-skate types and picnickers alike. It feels like being
in the country — but you're still in the city limits.
Shelby Farms
Meeman-Shelby Forest is 13,487 acres of bucolic beauty in a forest planted
primarily during the 1930s by the Civil Conservation Corps on farms that were
suffering from out-of-control erosion. Walking along the challenging Chickasaw
Bluffs trail, you can occasionally see pieces of old farm homes, now pieces of
brick and concrete.
Stax Museum of American Soul Music
The <<Theme from Shaft>> or perhaps <<Soul Finger>> will be running around your
head when you leave 926 East McLemore. At this former movie theater turned
recording studio, many legends created hits that remain defining pieces of
Memphis lore — all in a one-of-a-kind neighborhood called Soulsville.
An authentic 100-year-old Mississippi Delta church has been reassembled in the
museum, a salute to gospel and Southern churches and their significant influence
on the music of Stax from its early days forward until hard times hit and the
studio officially closed in 1976, torn completely down an unlucky 13 years
later.
Happier times are here now, and the 17,000-square-foot museum celebrates music
icons of the world that found their foothold in only one place: Memphis.
Sun Studio:
Here’s how to find the place that launched the music careers of Johnny Cash, B.B.
King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and, of course, Elvis Presley
— look in the same direction that all the tourist cameras are pointing. A neon
sign at Union and Marshall also helps. Here is where Sam Phillips wanted to
capture the unique Memphis sound, and in the process, launched some unique
Memphis legends.
[break]
Government and universities gave Memphis Chuculissa, Mud Island, The Pyramid,
parks, and the revitalization of Beale Street. But there is another component at
work in these one-of-a-kind places … one-of-a-kind individuals. Jack Belz's and
Jim Wallace’s commitment to art. Judy Peiser’s dedication to documenting
Southern culture. A hotel manager and a spontaneous whim after a duck hunting
trip.
As long as Memphis has one-of-a-kind people, there will be no shortage of
one-of-a-kind places that help define Memphis as uniquely, exclusively Memphis.
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