Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Lost Memphis Poplar and Perkins in 1951 - From the Air!
Posted by Vance Lauderdale on Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 3:55 PM
Several weeks ago, I wrote about White Station, the little train depot at Poplar and Mendenhall. See "Elvis Presley's Mystery (Train) Station." According to various biographers, Elvis got off the train there after returning to Memphis after his 1956 appearance on the Steve Allen Show, and then strolled all the way to his home on Audubon Drive, just south of the park.
Now, at least one writer said that Elvis walked across "a big field" on his way home, and several people have pondered just where that was. I surmised it could have been any of the subdivisions under construction at the time.
But my pal Ed Frank, director of Special Collections at the University of Memphis Libraries, has studied maps and aerial images of that area taken in the early 1950s, and has decided that the "big field" was Audubon Park. He provided me with the great aerial photos shown here (click on them to enlarge them). Poplar Avenue is the big street running diagonally across the bottom of both pictures. The view is looking towards the southwest, and that other big street, at the left, running north and south, is Perkins. This was years before Perkins Extended was pushed across Poplar. That's present-day Cherry Road cutting across the park.
Elvis would have walked west (to the right in the photo) down Poplar, turned south at Perkins, and then crossed Audubon Park to get to his home, which would have been towards the top of the photo.
What's really interesting, if you study the detailed view (below), is all the little businesses and homes that once stood along Poplar that are long gone. Look closely and you'll see a tiny cottage-style gas station at the corner of Poplar and Perkins, a nursery company, and — this is a real mystery — a very large, four-columned, two-story house standing in the middle of a well-groomed lawn. Farther along the street is a smaller building that once held a fire station and a grocery store, then clusters of houses. I know this only because I checked old city directories, not because I have Superman vision and can tell what they are in the photo. And although Sienna College was in operation at the time, I can't make it out here; it may be hidden by the trees.
Way in the distance, in the top left, you can barely see the mansion that later became the administration building for Harding Academy. And dimly visible in the far right background are the rows of buildings that composed Kennedy Hospital.
But in the detailed view of Poplar and Perkins, as far as I can tell, not a single one of these buildings has survived. The same view today would show office buildings and Oak Court Mall.
Who, I wonder, lived in that big house? The city directories don't give much of a clue.
And here's an even bigger mystery. We know that in the 1950s, there was a train station at Mendenhall called White (or White's) Station. But I've turned up old train schedules and tickets that suggest there were other depots farther west, including Eudora Station, Cherry Station, and Goodlett Station. So why did Elvis get off at White Station if he could have left the train a few blocks later, and wouldn't have had to walk so far?
Here's a detail from the photo above:
Comments (13)
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Audubon Drive is about halfway between Perkins and Goodlett, so it would not have made much difference which stop he got off at. Also, depending which train he was on, the train may not have stopped at all stations. I believe White Station was located in the building that now houses a small bookstore at the southeast corner of Poplar and Colonial.
Sienna College is just out of our field of vision to the right in the larger photo.
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Getting off at Perkins (if the train stopped there) would have made more sense than getting off at White's Station, which (according to all accounts I've read) was located at Mendenhall, not Colonial. Either way, it really wasn't that much farther to walk.
Maybe Elvis was just too excited to be home and couldn't sit on a train another minute.
Good stuff. It's always weird to see how things used to look, before it was all built up. This was the burbs, back in the day.
That four-columned manse almost looks like a tomb.
I think the grounds of Sienna College (or what would become the grounds) are most of the area between Poplar and the RR.
The triangle of woods and homes at the 3 o'clock position on the big photo is Williamsburg (west of Cherry) and the Barboro Cherry Rd Subdivision
(east of Cherry). That makes the "bottom" of the wedge the 400+ ft deep lots east of Cherry. The backline of the Sienna College property ran for 1000+ ft along the RR/Southern Ave. There were three or four residences along Poplar east of Cherry, with Poplar frontage of about 500 ft.
Ergo. A lot (most?) of the area between Poplar and the RR in the lower right of the big photo is (or would become soon) Sienna College.
Hi Vance! Could the big house with the columns be the old Perkins plantation house? I've heard they sold land on both sides of Poplar that later became Laurelwood Shopping Center. My parents built a house off Perkins and Cole Rd. in 1958 and I always heard about this from neighbors. What a great photo! Thanks a bunch! :)
Sienna College was at the current location of the Oak Court Mall. It closed in the '70s (I think). Oak Court opened in September 1988.
Great photo, Vance! Thanks!! Ed Williams, Shelby County historian, told me that the Perkins plantation house was located where Christ United Methodist Church is now. That would put it on the other side of Poplar from the columned house in the picture. Also, since the Perkins house dated back to pre-Civil War days, I'm guessing it would not have been still standing in 1951?
Ed Williams also said the stables for the house were roughly where White Station High School is now, so that would also be on the north side of Poplar. Perhaps the columned house was a later-era antebellum home, maybe from 1900-1910. I have been told the land for Audubon Park was once part of one giant farm, so maybe the old house is left over from that.
Wouldn't you just give anything to be able to go back in time and walk through it???
Don't thank me, bkourvelas. Thank Ed Frank over at the U of M Special Collections for sharing the photo. And yes, it would be cool to walk back in time, as long as I could come back whenever I needed to visit the dentist, drive a car that didn't need its spark plugs replaced every 3,000 miles, or enjoy central air-conditioning.
Maybe Elvis purposely got off at White Station to avoid being mobbed by waiting fans??? If he was expected to return to town on that day, fans would have been waiting at the station closest to his home. From what I've read, he was constantly followed by crowds of fans that monitored his every move.
Yes, I too have heard that the Perkins Plantation house was where Christ Methodist Church stands. Until recently, there was a small house behind the church that might have been part of the farm/grounds. I have also heard — maybe it was Memphis Memoirs on WKNO — that Audubon Park and the old Colonial Country Club (now Target, etc.) land was part of the Snowden and Heard properties.
1) As for Eudora Station — might that explain why city maps show a public street running south from Poplar Avenue to the tracks behind Schnuck's? That street has had me wondering for years!
2) Does anyone know about General Sherman drilling Yankee troops where White Station High School now stands?
Many thanks!
— Christopher
You want to see sweet airshot views of Memphis? Check this site out: http://tnsos.org/tsla/imagesearch/index.ph…
