The bluff came first. Everything else followed.
Elmwood Cemetery is a roughly 80-acre burial ground in South Memphis, founded in 1852 and still active today. It holds the remains of Memphis mayors, cotton merchants, yellow fever victims from the 1878 epidemic, and Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose grave was moved there in 2021 after decades in a public park. What kind … Read more
What is the Big River Crossing? The Big River Crossing is a pedestrian and bicycle path built onto the Harahan Bridge, a steel railroad bridge that has carried trains across the Mississippi River between Memphis, Tennessee, and West Memphis, Arkansas, since 1916. The walkway opened in October 2016, using one of the bridge’s old outer … Read more
The Hernando de Soto Bridge carries Interstate 40 across the Mississippi River, connecting downtown Memphis, Tennessee, to West Memphis, Arkansas. Locally it is called the “M Bridge” because its two steel tied-arch spans, seen from the side, form the shape of the letter M — a profile that is lit at night and visible along … Read more
Crosstown Concourse is a large mixed-use building in Midtown Memphis that combines apartments, offices, a school, a clinic, retail space and arts venues under one roof. Before its 2017 reopening, the building spent decades as a Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog distribution center and retail store, built in 1927 and shuttered by Sears in 1993. … Read more
The Orpheum Theatre is a historic performing arts venue on Main Street in downtown Memphis, built in 1928 as a movie and vaudeville palace on the site of an earlier opera house. It now operates as a nonprofit performance hall hosting touring Broadway productions, opera, ballet and concerts, and it is a listed historic building. … Read more
Mason Temple is a large Church of God in Christ (COGIC) sanctuary in south Memphis that serves as the denomination’s world headquarters. It is the building where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel. What … Read more
Clayborn Temple is a Romanesque Revival church building in downtown Memphis, near Beale Street, that served as the organizing headquarters for the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike. It is where the “I AM A MAN” signs were produced and where marchers gathered before walking into the city, including the march led by Dr. Martin Luther … Read more
What is the Peabody Hotel? The Peabody Hotel is a historic hotel in downtown Memphis, at 149 Union Avenue, operating continuously (under different owners) since the 19th century in an earlier building and since 1925 in its current one. It is known locally and nationally as “The South’s Grand Hotel” and for a daily event … Read more
The Memphis Pyramid is a 321-foot stainless-steel pyramid on the Memphis riverfront, built in 1991 as a sports arena for the University of Memphis and, briefly, the Memphis Grizzlies. It sat empty for a decade after the teams moved out, and in 2015 the retailer Bass Pro Shops reopened it as a store, hotel and … Read more
Beale Street is a short commercial strip in downtown Memphis, roughly three blocks long, that grew into the city’s central Black business and music district from the late 1800s onward and is now run largely as an entertainment corridor of clubs, bars and music venues on land owned or controlled by the city of Memphis. … Read more
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