Sears Crosstown Building

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Coordinates: 35°09′07″N 90°00′54″W / 35.152021°N 90.015002°W / 35.152021; -90.015002

Sears Crosstown Building
General information
Architectural style art deco high-rise building
Address 495 North Watkins Street
Memphis, TN 38104

The Sears Crosstown Building is an art deco high-rise building in Memphis, Tennessee. The building was designed by Nimmons & Co., and construction was completed in 1927. It was one of the first Sears stores designed to attract customers by being situated in a relatively open area of the city and providing a large amount of free parking.[1] The Crosstown Building was a premier Sears retail store for more than 60 years.[2] The building became vacant in the early 1990s after Sears closed many of the buildings it had constructed in the 1920s:[3] the store that had occupied the lower floors was closed in 1983, and the catalog distribution center in 1993.[4]

Attempts by various organizations have begun to repurpose the high-rise.[5] The Crosstown Arts project is working on resurrecting the building as a "mixed-used vertical urban village." Developers received commitments from nine prospective tenants called "founding partners" to fill more than 600,000 square feet of the building with various uses, most notability health care.[6] The rebirth is based on a series of Sears reconstructions, most notably the Midtown Exchange in Minneapolis, which was a Sears retail store and was then completely repurposed.

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Jackson, Kenneth T. (1985). Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504983-7. , p.257-58
  2. ↑ Wolf, Cindy (2011-02-27). "Abandoned Memphis: Sears Crosstown, before the doors closed". The Commercial Appeal. Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  3. ↑ "Will Sears Crosstown rise again? - Memphis Business Journal". Bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  4. ↑ Rushing, Wanda (2009). Memphis and the Paradox of Place: Globalization in the American South. New directions in southern studies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 102. ISBN 9780807832998. 
  5. ↑ Bailey, Thomas. "'Founding partners' commit to lease most of Memphis' Sears Crosstown Building". The Commercial Appeal. Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  6. ↑ "Sears Crosstown takes early steps to rebirth - Memphis Business Journal". Bizjournals.com. 2012-08-21. Retrieved 2012-08-25. 

External links


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