National Register of Historic Places
Gayoso-Peabody Historic District
Listed federally as Gayoso--Peabody Historic District
Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee
The record
- Listed
- May 7, 1980
- Type
- Historic district
- Address
- Roughly along S. Main St. from McCall Pl. to Monroe Ave., Memphis
- County
- Shelby
- State
- Tennessee
- Period of significance
- 1875 to 1924
- Contributing resources
- 51 buildings
- Coordinates
- 35.14223, -90.05320
- Reference number
- 80003863
Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.
The outline is the area recorded for this listing in National Park Service map data, drawn approximately.
David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesBarry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries
The story
Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com
The Gayoso--Peabody Historic District is a commercial historic district in Memphis, Shelby County, running along South Main Street from McCall Place to Monroe Avenue. It was listed in the National Register in 1980, with 51 contributing buildings on about 17 acres. Its buildings range from Victorian Italianate and Richardsonian Romanesque through Italian Renaissance Revival and Art Deco-Modernistic design.
Why it's listed
It was listed under criteria A and C, with local-level significance in commerce, architecture and social history. The nomination gives its period of significance as 1880 to 1927, reflecting construction that ran from about 1880 to 1927.
Physical character
Many storefronts keep cast iron piers, friezes and ventilation grilles below cornices of paired brackets and dentils. Walls range from black and white glazed brick and dark reddish-brown brick to rose colored brick, some fronted with glazed cream colored terra-cotta. A commercial-style facade was added to one building in 1910, the Austin Building's facade was modernized in the 1950s, and Silver's on Monroe kept a facade from about 1925.
Historical context
The Gayoso Hotel dated from 1842 and the Peabody Hotel from 1868, and an 1892 fire destroyed the entire block. The Peabody Hotel was rebuilt on its present site in 1924, opened in 1925, and closed in the 1960s, while the Gayoso Hotel closed for good in 1962. The Business Men's Club became the Chamber of Commerce in 1913.