Friday, July 10, 2009
Mysteries The Tallest Building in the South?
Posted by Vance Lauderdale on Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 11:33 AM
Even though this amazing postcard (found on eBay recently) calls this a "proposed skyscraper," I'm pretty sure that plans for "The Tallest Building in the South" never left the drawing board.
Just look at this thing! What were they thinking? Most architects try to make a building relate, in some way at least, to its environment. But boy, whoever planned this structure just decided that a soaring 20-story building would fit right in among its humble two-story neighbors.
The postcard doesn't give the proposed location for this building, but it looks like Main Street or Front Street to me. And there's no date, but the teeny-tiny horse-drawn cart and open roadster in the street (can you see them?) suggests it's from the early 1900s.
And what a strange design! Barely three bays (or windows) square, and with all that ornamentation around the upper floors, the building looks extremely top heavy to me. A strong wind, like we had here a few weeks ago, would possibly blow the thing down, so it's probably a good idea it was never built.
Though it would have looked very fine on the horizon, I guess.
Comments (14)
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I don't want to get weird or anything, but the architect definitely had manhood issues. That is the most phallic building I've ever seen. Even down to the rather bulbous building to the right. (Gonad National Bank?) Maybe this is what passed for a "dirty" postcard in the Bible Belt back then. Or maybe I'm just, well, perverted.
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I think you're right about it appearing very phallic. Gives new meaning to erecting a building lol. It does resemble that tall building in Montevideo, Uruguay, however.
Please, both of you, seek help immediately. Do you want to turn out like me? I think not.
Looks like an early rendering of the Lincoln-American Tower. I believe at the time it was the tallest building in Memphis.
If it is indeed a rendering of the Lincoln-American Tower (originally the Columbia Mutual Tower), they certainly got the proportions all wrong. The L-A Tower, erected in 1924 and modeled after the Woolworth Building in New York, is seven bays wide at the street level, and gradually becomes more narrow and graceful as it reaches skyward. The building shown here, as I've already noted, looks impossibly skinny and extremely top-heavy.
whoever planned this structure just decided that a soaring 20-story building would fit right in among its humble two-story neighbors
Much like the Clark Tower/UP Building combo on Poplar.
Vance, me and my grandmother (who manages the LA Tower and the rest of CSC), did some looking and found that this is supposed to be the LA Tower. If ya look closely (VERY closely), you can see that the ornamentation closely resembles the pop of the tower, spare a few minor details. And you can also see that the base of the building is slightly wider than the rest of the tower, if the artist had brought this up to the 16th floor and made it quite a bit wider, it would be more correct. And at the time the Columbia Mutual tower was built it was the tallest building in Memphis — not the south — he must have got the 2 confused. The background was probably just drawn in, since it was just a proposed building at the time, they probably did not have a location for it yet. As for the 3 window wide thing ... I dunno, maybe the artist was just stone-stupid.
If it was an early concept for the site of the L/A tower, the artist really botched the context. Notice the building in the foreground across from the tower. That would be the location of Court Square. Vance can correct me, but I was under the impression that the square has never had a structure located on the northwest corner.
Actually the building is remarkably similar to the tower section of the now demolished Singer Building in Manhattan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singer_Buildi…
With the L/A being an interpretation of a scaled version of the Woolworth, I guess Memphians had a thing with building locally scaled-down versions of Manhattan high-rises. I guess it�s nothing short of a miracle we didn�t end up with a scaled-down version of the Statue of Liberty�oh wait�
What about the relatively significant structure 3 buildings further down the block — the one with the tower? Can anyone identify that structure?
If you look very closely at the ornamentation on the top it looks almost exactly like the top of the CM (now LA) Tower. And yes the artist did indeed botch, well, everything.
I got it! The top of the L.A. Tower is 3 windows wide, the artist must have gotten confused and thought the whole tower was to be this way.
Vance,
The building in the near background with the tower looks like a building that used to be located on the north side of Madison between Front and Main, which would put this building at the northwest corner of Front and Main, where a gym is now located.
