Victorian era mansions still line the streets of Memphis. Huge sprawling homes with the ornate details letting all those who view them know prestige had lived there - money made before and after the Civil War and when the industrial revolution spawned new avenues for capitalism.
Prior to my first visit Memphis in 2014 my only frame of reference for the area and the landscape came from textbooks, movies, and articles. After moving here to live in a home within the Glenview Historic District, I realized everything I had once known was just a summary of events, and a poor one at that.
When looking back in time, perhaps you're like me and envision upper class women taking long strolls with their parasols protecting their fragile white skin. Men in suits bustling about, waiting for the next deal to latch on to - while "other" segments of the land is where the poor live, namely Black Americans whose fathers and mothers were born into slavery. A few did well, or as well as they could, adapting to the capitalistic world around them while others wanted nothing to do with the greed that once enslaved their families, and still, for the most part keep a hold.
This would have been around the time my own grandfather left his childhood home in East Prussia to make a journey on the promise of a better life, in a country where opportunities reportedly were to be had for anyone who worked hard. A veteran of WWI he knew strife - he knew pain. And, after returning home to a ravaged land after from the war, he witnessed and experienced great poverty - hunger - and despair. America was the hope for a new life and once settled he would send for the young woman he loved, my grandmother. They would wed in America and build a foundation to raise a family. That is exactly what they did.
After working the coal mines of West Virginia, to be followed by a horse farm in Kentucky, Grandpa finally settled in Evanston, Illinois where he attained a maintenance job at Northwestern University. He was then finally ready for the future and grandma received word it was time for her to make the trek. They wed at St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Church where one day it would where I would attend mass and also the school attached to the church. That was back in the days when I would sit up in my room, in that Victorian era apartment building - on the 3rd floor and look out among the tree tops and wondering about all the lives before me who had witnessed the same scenes from those old windows.
Often I would think about my grandparents' journey and be in awe of the courage and strength they showed. I couldn't imagine just how hard life must have been for them to want to leave their homeland and families for a risk on the possibility, not the promise, of better tomorrows.
I still wonder about what those days must have been like - I've been thinking of them quite a bit, especially since stuck and isolated on the 2nd floor of the historic home I now reside. Stuck, waiting and with some anger in me that this shouldn't be, I shouldn't be looking out these wavy glass windows with no break and the only reason that I am is someone forgot to care. They forgot to care about this home and the people living in it - we should have never been placed in this position to isolate from downstairs while mold remediation due to the neglect of a property management and/or owner not taking care of the old plumbing in this house. Stuck in a small apartment with my adult children and two dogs, while Covid surges in Tennessee and while the downstairs waits to become livable and pretty much for the first time since we've been here.
Maybe I should be grateful for those windows looking out at life and into the past - doing so had helped to fill my time with research.
The Glenview Historic District has a winding road of a history. After the turn of the century and while waving good-bye to the Victorian era, Memphis placed focus on building out to accommodate the new money and increase of the middle to upper class.
They reached to the outskirts, building parks and new regal homes for the newly well-to-do. Trolly cars could easily transfer the breadwinners of any family into the heart of the city and back to their tranquil home. Throughout the country cities focused on building up new communities, Memphis was not alone in this venture. Pictured is just one the many trolly cars that would transport Memphians throughout their day. This one is on Netherwood, which is just a few blocks from where we no reside. The photo dates back to the early 30s. The home we now rent would have been just a few years old.
The earliest reference I could find to where we now call home, was in 1927 and it appears the first family to reside in the home was the family of SF Moorehead. Mr. Moorehead was a salesman with a wide territory. He sold the goods from the Wm R Moore Dry Goods enterprise - his area of expertise was in rugs and floor coverings.
Si F Moorehead, Jr. was born December 28, 1922 and died May 17, 2009. Dr. Moorehead was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Si F. Moorehead, Sr. and Lou Ella Shears Moorehead. He graduated from Riverside Military Academy in 1941. He attended Memphis State College and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in 1946. He was a Phi Chi in medical school. He served his internship at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, NY from July, 1946 to June 1947. He chose to take a sponsored military residency in Orthopedic Surgery. His last 1 1/2 years of training was spent at Duke University, Durham, NC. He was sent to San Antonio, Texas Air Force Base and was Assistant Chief Orthopedic Surgeon for 3 years.
In 1955 he was sent to Alaska as Chief Orthopedic Surgeon of the Alaskan command and resigned from the Air Force December, 1956. He entered private practice in Lynwood, CA and retired from his practice in 1982. He moved to a horse ranch approximately 70 miles southwest of Reno, Nevada where he raised game birds, hunted, fished and raised quarter and thoroughbred horses. He was a member of private hunting clubs in California and Utah and also went on two 21 day safaris in Africa. He reunited with his high school sweetheart, Alice Palmer Samuels of Memphis. They were married and Dr. Moorehead moved to Memphis.
Societies in which he was involved consists of Diplomate of American Board of Orthopedic Surgery, Fellow American College of Surgery, American Academy of Orthopedic Surgery, Piedmont Orthopedic Society, Western Orthopedic Association, Pan American Medical Association, AMA associate Los Angeles County Medical Association. He leaves his wife of 11 years, Alice Palmer Moorehead, 3 children, Si. F. Moorehead, III, Taylor Moorehead and Connie Moorehead Geiser, one step-son, William P. (Billy) Samuels, 8 grandchildren and 8 great- grandchildren.
Dr. Moorehead went home to be with the LORD on Sunday, May 17, 2009 after a long illness. Funeral services will be Tuesday, May 27, 2009 at Germantown Baptist Church Faith Building. Visitation will be at 11 AM with services at 12 noon. There will be a reception at the church following the services. The family has requested in lieu of flowers that memorials be made to the Memphis Union Mission.
The very room I am sitting in now, looking out those old wavy glass windows, is most likely the very same room and are the windows he looked out, taking breaks from his studies. My isolation room from the toxic mold downstairs and the Covid that lurks outside, provided part of the foundation for an extremely successful physician to grow. Funny how that works.
Archived newspaper clipping help to provide some insight to those years when this house was young. Lou Ella held parties which would garner the attention of society columns. At some point the upstairs of the home, the apartment area, was rented out (or so it appears) to an older couple, Frank and Augusta Arling. As to their story, I really do not know much other than he worked for a funeral home. Perhaps they were friends of the Mooreheads, perhaps relatives, or maybe extra rent income was needed to get through those trying depression era years.
"...Architectural styles commonly found in the area include Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival and Craftsman Bungalows. Glenview continued to develop as an "automobile suburb" throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and it had several notable residents, including former Memphis mayors H.H. Litty and Rowlett Paine. A local theater group also staged Tennessee Williams first play, "Cairo! Shanghai! Bombay!" in the garden of 1780 Glenview in 1935, while Williams was a student at Rhodes College. "
That address, 1780 Glenview, is just a few doors down from me. With a history like that, the people creating the building blocks for a city growing after the turn of century, one would think that is why the Glenview Historic District holds such a significant role to local history- but that is not the reason this area made it on the National Registry for Historic Places. The real reason includes the cycle of growth and struggle - pain and achievement, journeys against all odds and a demographic of people who found their strength, their voice, and their pride in what we call now the Civil Rights Movement, which includes a shame known as "white flight -"
Many hands and of all colors and backgrounds have touched the walls in this home, looked out these windows, with worries and dreams floating in their heads......
Check back for part 3 of History Shrouded in Mold - the 50s and 60s.
As for this post's video, once again I am going to utilize Super Brick, the band that resides with me in this home...aka.... "the kids." Kyle, my youngest, wrote this song with his best Gabe who also is the drummer. They wrote it back when Kyle was mainly performing and focusing on the Blues - the entire reason we are all down here in Memphis. The song is called '27 Flood.
In 1927 a tragedy hit the area , this would be the same year of the oldest reference I can find for this Glenview home. The melting snow from the north and torrential rains across the south, the Mississippi River surged over its banks and in doing so took many innocent lives.
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927
"According to Wikipedia: "....was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States, with 27,000 square miles (70,000 km2) inundated in depths of up to 30 feet (9 m). The uninflated cost of the damage has been estimated to be between 246 million and 1 billion dollars.
Ninety-four percent of more than 630,000 people affected by the flood lived in the states of Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana, most in the Mississippi Delta. More than 200,000 African Americans were displaced from their homes along the Lower Mississippi River and had to live for lengthy periods in relief camps. As a result of this disruption, many joined the Great Migration from the south to northern and midwestern industrial cities rather than return to rural agricultural labor."
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