Crosstown Concourse (1927/2017), Memphis, Tennessee
Built in 1927 as a Sears, Roebuck catalog distribution center and retail palace, the ten-story Crosstown building stood dark for twenty-four years before reopening in 2017 as the Crosstown Concourse — a 1.5-million-square-foot vertical urban village housing arts organizations, a medical clinic, apartments and independent businesses under one roof.
At a glance
The building that Memphians call Crosstown occupies a city block at 1350 Concourse Avenue in the historic Crosstown neighborhood, named for the convergence of rail lines that made it the crossroads of mid-South commerce. George C. Nimmons, the Chicago architect who designed Sears catalog stores and distribution centers across the United States, gave this 1927 commission an industrial scale — ten stories, a basement, and approximately 1.5 million square feet — combined with Art Deco ornament in terra cotta and brick that lifted the building from pure utility to civic presence. The building’s seven-story tower and broad horizontal profile were visible across miles of flat Memphis topography. When Sears closed the store in 1993, the building’s silence lasted nearly a quarter century. The 2017 reopening as Crosstown Concourse transformed it into one of America’s most ambitious adaptive reuse projects: a self-contained vertical community that has become a driver of neighborhood renewal across the Crosstown district.
Key facts
- Built: 1927 (Sears, Roebuck & Co.) / reopened 2017 (Crosstown Concourse)
- Architect: George C. Nimmons & Company, Chicago
- Style: Industrial Art Deco — brick and terra cotta, clock tower, horizontal massing
- Size: approximately 1.5 million square feet; 10 stories
- Address: 1350 Concourse Avenue, Memphis, TN 38104
- GPS: 35.1519°N, 90.0101°W
- Status: National Register of Historic Places; active mixed-use vertical urban village
History
Sears, Roebuck and Company was one of the most powerful retail and distribution enterprises in early twentieth-century America, and its catalog order business required regional distribution centers at strategic points in the rail network. Memphis in the 1920s was exactly such a node: a city at the intersection of north-south and east-west rail corridors, with a regional market stretching from Arkansas through Mississippi and into Tennessee. George C. Nimmons, who had worked with Sears since the early 1900s, designed a building whose scale matched the ambition of the Sears operation: large enough to contain a full retail floor, a mail-order processing operation, and a warehouse distribution system under one roof.
The Crosstown Sears opened in 1927 and at its peak employed thousands of Memphians, serving as one of the largest employers in the mid-South. Its retail floor was a destination in its own right — Sears stores of this era carried everything from tools to baby grand pianos, and the Crosstown was a place where Memphians of many backgrounds spent Saturday mornings. The catalogue business shrank as television and later internet retail eroded the mail-order model, and Sears closed the Memphis Crosstown store in 1993, leaving the massive building dark.
The twenty-four-year closure left a 1.5-million-square-foot void in one of Memphis’s most central neighborhoods. The transformation into Crosstown Concourse — led by a coalition of nonprofits, anchor institutions and private developers — required a $200 million investment and opened in August 2017. The result placed under one roof Ballet Memphis, the Memphis Teacher Residency, Crosstown Arts, a Church Health medical clinic, ground-floor retail and restaurants, and dozens of market-rate and affordable apartments. The NRHP listing protected the building’s historic fabric through the conversion.
What you see
From Concourse Avenue, the building presents a broad red-brick elevation whose horizontal courses are articulated by bands of tan terra cotta ornament at the string courses and window surrounds. The clock tower rises seven stories from the northwest corner, its face visible across the surrounding neighborhood. The Art Deco ornament — geometric panels, stylized plant forms in the terra cotta spandrels, angular metalwork at the entrance canopies — is applied with the restraint characteristic of industrial commissions: enough to signal civic ambition, not so much that it overwhelms the building’s warehouse character.
Inside, the conversion preserved the building’s structural grid of concrete columns and made it the organizing element of the public spaces: a full-height atrium of light wells runs through the building’s center, with balconied galleries on each floor looking down into the market hall below. The retail and food operations on the ground floor are arranged along corridors that follow the original layout of the Sears floor plate, with the column rhythm visible throughout. The result is a building that reads simultaneously as monument and infrastructure.
Practical information
- Access: 1350 Concourse Avenue, Memphis TN 38104 — open daily; ground floor retail, restaurants and atrium spaces publicly accessible
- Highlights: Crosstown Arts gallery (free admission), Church Health museum exhibits, ground-floor market hall and food vendors
- Transit: MATA bus service on Cleveland and Overton; the building is approximately 3 miles from downtown Memphis via Union Avenue
- Parking: free surface parking lots on the north and east sides of the building
- Time needed: 1–2 hours for a thorough tour of the public floors; plan longer for exhibits and dining
Getting there
The Crosstown Concourse sits 3 miles north of downtown Memphis via Cleveland Avenue or Union Avenue, in the Crosstown neighborhood roughly equidistant between downtown and the University of Memphis campus. Memphis International Airport (MEM) is approximately 10 miles south via I-240 or US-78 — 20–25 minutes by car. There is no direct rail connection from the airport; taxi or rideshare are the most practical options. By car from downtown, take Union Avenue west and north to Crosstown; the building has free surface lots on the north side. Sun Studio, a major Memphis heritage destination, is approximately three miles southeast via Union Avenue.
Nearby
- Overton Park — the 342-acre urban park half a mile east of the Concourse on Poplar Avenue, containing the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, the Memphis Zoo, and the Old Forest old-growth woodland.
- Memphis College of Art — the independent art and design college adjacent to Overton Park, a short walk east of Crosstown.
- Sterick Building (1929) — downtown Memphis’s landmark Art Deco skyscraper at 8 Third Street, 1.5 miles southeast via Union Avenue. See the CHO guide.
- Orpheum Theatre (1928) — Memphis’s great French Baroque movie palace, 3 miles southeast on South Main Street, with a full performing arts season. See the CHO guide.
Sources
- Crosstown Concourse official site — history and tenants
- National Register of Historic Places nomination, Sears Crosstown, Memphis
- Commercial Appeal archives — 1927 opening coverage and 2017 reopening
- James M. Mayo, The American Grocery Store: The Business Evolution of an Architectural Space — Nimmons and the Sears store program
- Urban Land Institute case study — Crosstown Concourse adaptive reuse (2018)
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