The Wright Idea

Meet the Man Who Dedicated a Lifetime to Preserving Victorian Village

By James Cox, Memphis Magazine

Unless you grew up in Memphis before 1960, it's difficult to imagine Adams Avenue as it might have been 150 years ago. Today, only a handful of Victorian-era homes, with their soaring rooflines and tall windows, offer visitors a look back into Memphis history, the days when Mississippi riverboats meant big business, and cotton profits lined the pockets and purses of the families up and down Adams. In its former glory, the street and those around it, in an area now known as Victorian Village, were flanked with many such homes, leading locals to call the neighborhood "Millionaire's Row." >

In the city's infancy, Adams rose up out of the riverboat landing on the banks of the Mississippi, continuing east into the fertile delta wilds. As landed gentry sought country estates worthy of their kingly cotton status, stately farmhouses and mansions sprang up along the avenue. The first home of Millionaire's Row, the Massey House, was built between 1844 and 1849 by a lawyer named Benjamin Massey, and became an outpost just outside Memphis' bustling commercial district.