History
Downtown is the oldest part of the city and includes the riverfront and the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi river. The founders of Memphis dedicated the riverfront to the public "now and forever" as long as the public use continued. The land overlooking the riverfront was originally planned to become a "public promenade" to be called Mississippi Row. The upper riverfront became the site of the river landing where steamboats were loaded with cotton and other goods in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Between 1844 and 1886 the river landing was paved with limestone and granite cobblestones brought in from the upper Midwest. This created what is today the largest intact Mississippi River landing still in existence, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The explosion of the SS Sultana in 1865 near Memphis is one of the worst marine disasters in history.
There are several historic residences downtown, particularly in the Victorian Village neighborhood. Other historic homes include the Hunt-Phelan House (1830), the Magevney House (ca. 1835) and the Burkle Estate (1849). The Burkle home and the Hunt Phelan House (533 Beale Street) were reputed to have been part of the underground railroad by which escaped slaves made their way to freedom prior to the Civil War.
Read more about this topic: Downtown Memphis, Tennessee
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)