Downtown has changed a lot over the years.
Let’s just pick a year. Like 1970. It was nearly the worst of times for Memphis, but it was finally an opportunity to work on a comeback. Memphis magazine writer Michael Finger took a look at the state of the city as the decade sullenly got under way: “In 1970, downtown Memphis was essentially dead, its stores and hotels shuttered following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just two years earlier. Beale Street was a ghost town, its once-vibrant rows of cafés and nightspots reduced to seedy pawnshops. The main shopping centers were Poplar Plaza and Laurelwood, but places like Sears and Lowenstein’s were pretty dull compared to the galleries and shops of Overton Square. And except for Ellis Auditorium and, on occasion, the Overton Park Shell, Memphis had no decent venue for touring musicians.”
– Memphis Magazine | August 22, 2019 | By Jon Sparks
LEARN MORE