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For Sale?Memphis could lose one of its most historic properties if the Hunt-Phelan Home heads for the auction block.by Mark Jordan s "Easy Terms" blinks in green and red neon behind him, Ken Roebuck is slowly, piece by piece, auctioning off bits of Memphis' history.
Somebody calls out a number, and the whole room leans forward to see who got the ball rolling. "$75. I've got $75," Roebuck says, and then with rapid-fire delivery, "$75. $75. $75. Who'll give me $100? $100? $100? $100? $100?" A man nearby, holding a small white card inscribed with a three-digit number crudely written in broad marker strokes, juts his hand quickly into the air and then back. "$100. Who'll give me $125? $125? $125? $125? $125? 125. $150? $150? $150? $150? $150? $150. Bid is $150. $175? $175? $175? $175? $175? $175. $200? $200? $200? $200? $200? $200. $225? $225? $225? $225? $225? $225? $225? $225? $225? $225? $225? $225? $225? $225. $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? $250? Sold it to you for $225." Roebuck slams his gavel onto the podium to seal the deal, and then moves onto the next item. An auctioneer with Memphis-based John Roebuck and Associates, Ken Roebuck is presiding over the live portion of last Saturday's Memphis Heritage Architectural Auction. A few hundred people are packed into the grand ballroom on the 19th floor of the Exchange Building for the event, a fund-raiser for Memphis Heritage, the nonprofit preservation group. They are here to buy the salvage of the city's historic landmarks, leftover bits from destroyed or renovated buildings as well as sundry documents old newspapers, certificates, letters, etc. There is the guestbook stand from the Memphis Funeral Home on Union, torn down to make way for a new apartment building. The cornerstones from Mammoth Livery Stable, which occupied land where AutoZone Park is now going up. Windows from the now-renovated Bruce Elementary School. Benches from the restored Central Station. Even the "Easy Terms" sign must go. Recently destroyed, along with Ellis Auditorium, for the new convention center expansion, the old Auditorium North Hall is a particularly rich source of material, providing three of the auction's most talked about items, huge 5x10-foot neon signs reading "Memphis Sounds," "Elvis," and "Jazz" that once hung there. Virtually everyone in attendance is an avowed lover of old buildings architects, preservationists, downtown residents, and developers which does little to dispel the feeling that we are all picking among the bones of the dead. In fact, on the face of it, it is hard to tell the difference between what's going on here tonight and what Bill Day, the subject of numerous hushed-yet-vitriol-filled conversations this night, has planned for the Hunt-Phelan Home, the historic mansion on Beale Street that he inherited in 1993. "What we're doing here is completely different," counters John Griffin, a Memphis Heritage board member, Flyer columnist, and preservationist known for his work in the Greenlaw section north of downtown. "We've taken pieces from places that are already lost or that have been donated. That is opposed to selling a still viable collection that's been together for more than 170 years. That's just crass." Earlier in the week, Day announced his intention to sell the 5.5-acre estate a block away from the Beale Street entertainment district and all of its contents, a collection of well-preserved antiquities that has been described as "priceless," in an auction to be held May 5-7. It is, for Day, the long-delayed final solution to the mountain of debt that has accumulated due to his inability despite expert help from the managers of another historic home, Graceland to turn the home into a self-sustaining tourist operation after almost four years of trying. "We've done everything we can," says Day, referring to the nonprofit board he put together in 1993 to oversee the house's restoration and its conversion into a tourist attraction. "We were able to save the house. I'm proud of that. But we were never able to make it self-sufficient. I've been pouring every bit of what money I do have to keep us afloat. I've been borrowing money from the banks and private sources. I've even had to sell items from my own private collection to pay the bills." But despite his good intentions, the outcry against what Day now has planned for the house has been swift and angry. "Mr. Day has managed to do what General Grant and the Union army were too polite to do," says Memphis Heritage executive director Judith Johnson. "He's basically looting the place bit by bit." Like many, Johnson is outraged that Day can so callously sell off the home that has been in his family since it was built in the 1840s, a home that has in many ways been one of the few constants throughout Memphis' history. Still others are wondering what went wrong. Why has the house been unable to make enough money to even support itself? And what has happened to the money spent to date? But instead of answers, so far there has been nothing more than lots of finger pointing at Day and suspicions of impropriety that, one way or the other, will have to be put to rest before the banging of another gavel destroys what war, pestilence, and death could not.
But the Hunt-Phelan home is as rich in materials as it is in history. The home's furniture includes several pieces of antique Hepplewhite and Chippendale from the 18th and 19th centuries and such rare items as a circa 1788 four-poster bed that has never been slept in and an 1874 Steinway grand piano. There is also a collection of one-of-a-kind sterling silver. And the home's library collection, which once included more than 10,000 books, still retains many of its valuable, rare first editions, including volumes of Mark Twain and an original copy of a guide book to the Oregon Trail. "It's hard to tell exactly what all this is worth because a lot of this stuff has never been on the market," says Day. "I've had appraisers come in and give me numbers, and then I'll take an individual piece and it'll go for four or five times what they told me." Originally a relatively modest one-story home built in the popular Federalist style of the time, the original Hunt-Phelan owner, the peg-legged George Hubbard Wyatt, lived there until 1845, when financial misfortune and the lure of the California gold rush forced it into the hands of the bank. The property was then purchased by Wyatt's cousin, Elijah Driver, who before his death in 1851 provided for the house's expansion with the addition of a two-story Greek Revival portico on the Beale side. After Driver's death, the home went to his daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, and her husband, Col. William Richardson Hunt, who presided over the home's most colorful period during the Civil War and yellow fever epidemics of the 1870s. Hunt had the addition to the back porch built, pushing the home's square footage to 8,900, and also had an 11,050-square-foot servants' quarter built adjacent to the rear of the building. He didn't get to enjoy them long as the Civil War forced Hunt, a commissioned officer in the Confederacy, and his family to flee Memphis, with Sarah Elizabeth Hunt hauling many of the house's precious possessions behind her in a boxcar. The Union troops were remarkably kind to the home, using it first as headquarters for a succession of commanders, including Grant and Sherman, and later as a camp for wounded soldiers. Following the war, Colonel Hunt petitioned successfully to have the home returned to him. The house then passed down through the generations. In 1975, Stephen Rice Phelan, great grandson of Col. Hunt, took possession following the death of his brother, George Phelan, who had been living there since the 1950s. A bachelor and recluse who held the patent for a red, white, and blue rose, Phelan painstakingly cared for and cataloged the house's possessions and recorded its history in an unpublished book. When Phelan died in 1993, the house, its holdings, and a few hundred thousand dollars went to Day. The former Commercial Appeal truck driver immediately set to work restoring the house with the goal of turning it into a tourist attraction, a living artifact of a forgotten way of life. He established the Hunt-Phelan Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit corporation to oversee the restoration and conversion of the home. The foundation's sole asset would be the home, then appraised at $112,500; Day kept all the house's contents the bulk of his inheritance in his personal possession. Day appointed himself and his mother, Sarah Phelan Day, to the board along with University of Memphis history professor Charles Crawford, attorney Thomas Buckner, and Tennessee Bank and Trust president Lee Caldwell. Another original board member, CA salesperson Jay Williams, no longer serves. Initially, Day spent much of his own money on the restoration, overseeing the work himself. But cost estimates soon ballooned past $3 million. Day needed a partner.
If everything had then worked according to plan, neither Bill Day nor the home would be where they are today. EPE set up a for-profit corporation, Hunt-Phelan Tour Company, with Day as half-owner. The Hunt-Phelan Tour Co., in turn, leased the home from the foundation and its contents from Day. A portion of each ticket (a per-person average of $7, once discounted tickets are figured in) would go to Day and the foundation as lease payment. The foundation would then turn its share back over to EPE to pay back the $1 million loan. The economics of the EPE deal, however, required 90,000 visitors a year to break even. To the managers of Graceland that must have seemed an attainable number considering how many visitors they see every year. (Officials with Graceland did not return the Flyer's phone calls concerning this story.) But in retrospect the projection seems overly ambitious. At any rate, it was certainly never reached. In 1996, its first year of operation, 55,000 people visited the home. And every year since the total has dwindled; last year 21,000 people toured the home. EPE saw the future and pulled out fast, exercising an option to back out in December 1998. Without EPE's deep pockets to keep the tour operation going, the onus fell on Day. From the beginning, Day says he has profited little or not at all from the home. In the first year of the partnership, Day was paid $29,709 for overseeing construction work on the house. Neither he nor any of the board members have ever been compensated. And since the house opened for tours, Day has routinely pumped his share of ticket sales back into the house to cover operational shortfalls. Last year, Day says he put $100,000 of his own money back into the house. There is a legend at the Hunt-Phelan Home one of many surrounding the historic mansion. Like the yarn about the Chickasaw Indian who wandered into the home following the strains of a tune emanating from the grand piano, or that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, headquartered there in the summer of 1862, planned the taking of Vicksburg from the home's stately library, this one is probably fictitious. But according to the legend, before the Hunts fled Memphis during the yellow fever epidemic of 1873, the family gave trusted servant Nathan Wilson a chest of gold to pay for the home's upkeep. Soon afterward, Wilson was found dead in his quarters, a victim of the fever. There was a shovel by his bed and his boots were covered with mud. They say Wilson buried the gold before dying and left no clue as to the treasure's whereabouts. To this day, supposedly, under the right spectrally vague conditions i.e., a full moon or on a certain date the ghost of Wilson will appear and, if you're lucky enough to see him, guide you directly to the buried treasure. If Bill Day were, perhaps, a bit more wistful, he would be on constant vigil for old Nate. The gold would certainly come in handy. Last month, Day out of money and with no new resources in sight made the decision he had been hoping to avoid. At a February board meeting, the Hunt-Phelan Foundation deeded the home back to Day in lieu of foreclosure on loans Day had made to the foundation to pay for repairs. He then called McCool and Associates, a Madison, Mississippi, auction house specializing in antebellum homes and arranged to sell the home. Day's second cousin, Stephen Rice Phelan, willed the home to Day because he knew of his love for it, and before he died he imparted his heir with the advice that "if you take care of the house, it will take care of you." Sadly, it hasn't. "When this all happened I went into my room for three days, told everybody I was sick, and cried for three days," Day says of his decision. "If people are mad hell, how do you think I feel? This is 170 years of my family's history. This is my lifelong dream." But people are mad. In the week since Day's announcement, many private individuals have announced intentions to try to save the home, including Shelby County official historian Ed Williams, who is said to be working with at least two groups on a proposal. But one group believes the Hunt-Phelan Home needs saving not from the auctioneer's gavel but from the owner himself. "We think Bill Day's been selling off bits of the house for years, but now he's tired of doing it piecemeal," says Memphis Heritage board member John Hopkins. This week, Memphis Heritage officials plan to sit down with the Hunt-Phelan board to discuss ways of saving the house from the auctioneer, including tax easement (the foundation still pays property tax despite its nonprofit status) and the possibility of Memphis Heritage buying the house. At the heart of Memphis Heritage's efforts, however, is a belief that the Hunt-Phelan Home has been badly mismanaged by Day. They claim that the board's transfer of the property back to Day and his attempts now to sell it are both violations of the rules governing nonprofit corporations. "We don't believe Mr. Day can sell the house," says Memphis Heritage's Johnson. "What he's trying to do is use a nonprofit's assets to pay off its debts. If he does that, as we understand it, any proceeds from the sale would have to be funneled into another nonprofit with a similar mission. He can't personally profit from the sale of the house." Also at issue is whether or not the attempted sale violates the terms of two grants the city made to the foundation in 1993 and 1995 to repair the home's roof. The grants totaled $146,000. Day says that there were no strings attached to the loan and that every move he has made has been scrutinized by lawyers. "I don't know anybody from Memphis Heritage. Where have they been all these years?" Day says. "Frankly, it makes me a little mad. People are mad at me, but I don't understand that because I've done everything I can to make this place viable. If it weren't for me, nobody would know about this place. I opened the doors. If I was a greedy son of a bitch, I would have split the first day when a lady came up to me and offered me a check for $2 million. I would have been like, 'Gone. See ya.' But I didn't." Day blames the house's failure on poor marketing and a city-wide tourism drop. His hope is that somebody will either help to establish a $5 million endowment for the house, the interest from which could be used to cover yearly operating operating expenses, or that someone will come and buy the home, contents and all. His preferred customer would be the city, whom he believes could give the house the kind of treatment it deserves as part of its museum system. "People think I just have unlimited resources, but I'm broke," Day says. "If Memphis Heritage or anyone else wants to come down, chip in, and help, fine. But I'm the one who's been opening his checkbook every time." If there has been an upside to all the furor, it's that it has given Hunt-Phelan the kind of publicity Day has said the house needed to draw people in. And indeed, the turnstile count has been up significantly since Day announced his intent to sell last week. On Saturday, 170 people toured the house and 120 people on Sunday. Ordinarily, Day says, the head count would be a fraction of those numbers. "Before the [Commercial Appeal] article came out we had days where we had about two people," says Day. "We would be sitting around and it would be only those of us working here looking at each other and wondering if this was worth it." The recent visitors come from all over the Mid-South West Tennessee, Eastern Arkansas, North Mississippi, and a few Memphians and they are all duly impressed by the home's many charms, if a little disappointed it's not in as good a shape as they would have liked to have found it. After a long winter, the gardens are particularly ragged looking, but Day has resolved to get out this week, if the weather stays nice, and whip them into shape. "I can't keep doing this myself," he complains. "I'm a one-man show running seven days a week. If anything gets done around here, it's because Billy does it." Late Sunday afternoon a dozen or so people are coming to the end of the last tours of the day. The final stop on the audio-tape guided part of the tour, before the visitors head out to explore the grounds, is a gallery on the second floor of the servants' quarters where visitors learn about the history of the family that has called this mansion home over the generations. There one can learn about the rakish Confederate munitions procureer Col. Hunt; his socialite daughter, Sarah; her son-in-law George Phelan's famous duel with a political rival, the last held in Memphis; the distinguished naval career of their son, Admiral George Phelan, a survivor of Pearl Harbor; and the reclusive Stephen Rice Phelan, the brother who preserved all this history. Among those working their way through this final stretch of the tour is a woman and her son, about 7 years old. The pair are standing before a portrait of George Phelan when the boy's tape ends and the player shuts itself off. The boy tugs at his mother's arms and pulls his headphones off. "Mom," the boy says, a tone of confusion in his voice. "It [the tape] said 'please come again,' but we can't." "Oh, we'll see," says the boy's mother in that reassuring way mothers can muster. "We'll see. Don't you worry." You can e-mail Mark Jordan at jordan@memphisflyer.com. A Hunt-Phelan TimelineCirca 1840 Settler George Hubbard Wyatt acquires land east of Memphis and completes the first phase of his house, which supposedly has the first gaslights and indoor bathroom in Memphis. When gold is discovered in California, Wyatt heads west. 1845 The home and 5.77 acres of land are sold to Wyatt's cousin, Elijah Moore Driver. Some years later, his daughter marries William Richardson Hunt, whose name still identifies the home. 1851 A two-story Greek Revival portico is added to the front of the house. At about this time, a kitchen, servants' quarters, repair shops, and laundry are added to the rear. Hunt, according to sources, spends $40,000 beautifying the house and grounds. 1861 The Civil War begins. Confederate General Leonidas Polk sets up headquarters in the house and organizes the Provisional Army of Tennessee. 1862 Memphis falls to Union forces, and federal troops occupy the city. Union General Ulysses S. Grant chooses the Hunt home for his headquarters. When Grant leaves Memphis, another general, T.C. Hamilton, turns the property into a camp and hospital for the remainder of the war. 1865 When the war ends, the hospital is closed. Women teachers from the north begin teaching freed slaves in a schoolroom on the property. President Andrew Johnson returns the home to Hunt and his family. 1872 William Hunt dies, leaving the property to his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Julia. 1902 George Phelan, future admiral and war hero, is born in the house. 1905 A brother, Stephen Rice Phelan, is born. A geophysical engineer, he travels the world searching for gold and oil, but spends the latter half of his life a virtual recluse. 1910 The roof catches fire, but the house and its contents are saved. 1925 George Phelan graduates from Annapolis and begins a long naval career. He is stationed at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. 1952 Stephen Rice Phelan writes a history of the old house, and the family that has occupied it for more than a century. 1957 George Phelan retires and moves back to the Hunt-Phelan Home with his wife and brother. George will live there until his death in 1975 (his wife died some years earlier). 1917 The Hunt-Phelan Home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 1975 After his brother's death, Stephen Phelan becomes a lonely recluse in the house. 1992 Bill Day, Stephen's cousin, moves into the house to help with household chores. Day, an employee of The Commercial Appeal, invites historians to see the house and establishes a nonprofit foundation to raise funds and manage the preservation of the estate. 1993 Day inherits the property when Stephen Rice Phelan dies in his second-floor bedroom. The funeral is held in the front parlor. 1994 A full-scale restoration of the Hunt-Phelan Home begins. 1995 The Graceland Division of Elvis Presley Enterprises steps in, to finance, create, and operate tours of the home and oversee a gift shop built on the grounds. Graceland becomes the managing partner of the newly established Hunt-Phelan Tour Company. The Memphis City Council approves $146,000 for the upkeep and restoration of the Hunt-Phelan Home. 1996 The Hunt-Phelan Home opens to the public. 1998 Day announces plans to allow overnight stays at the mansion. This plan involves building a 70-room inn on the Hunt-Phelan property, and converting two duplexes on Lauderdale into guest cottages. The project also calls for an additional $600,000 to move and renovate the ruins of an old school on the property, used by the Freedman's Bureau after the Civil War to educate former slaves. In December, Elvis Presley Enterprises backs out of Hunt-Phelan. "We can't honestly say visitorship blew the doors off," says EPE's Jack Soden. The Hunt-Phelan gift shop is moved to Graceland for use as a wedding chapel. 1999 Silver from the Hunt-Phelan Home is sold at auction at Sotheby's in New York, netting some $130,000. 2000 Day announces that he will sell the Hunt-Phelan Home, with all its furnishings and historical artifacts, at a public auction on May 5-7. |
