The Kuhlman House

This newcomer to Central Gardens is located on Lot 20 of the Matthew’s Land Company Subdivision, platted in 1905 by James M. Goodbar and R.L. Matthews. The boundaries are Peabody Avenue, Melrose, Harbert Avenue and Willett on the east. Goodbar was a prominent Memphis merchant, real estate developer, owner of Goodbar & Co. wholesale dealers in boots and shoes. He was also the director of the Memphis Trust Company, Memphis National Bank, Chickasaw Cooperage, the Little Rock Ice Company and a member of Second Presbyterian Church. Nothing more was discovered about Mr. Matthews.

A search of the Sanborn Fire Maps reveals this lot had never had a building on it. This new residence was built in 2020 under Landmarks Commission review because Central Gardens is a Landmarks District. For most of the 1960s and into the early ‘70s, numerous historic structures and neighborhoods throughout Memphis were becoming victim to the wrecking ball in favor of new construction and in the name of progress. This trend was of great concern to many Memphians of the day, who feared that they’d eventually lose much of what they had grown up with and which made their Memphis so unique.

However local preservationists - from organizations like the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities and the Memphis City Beautiful Commission, historian and author Dr. Charles Crawford and individuals and homeowners passionate about preservation –continued to lobby the old Memphis Housing Authority and the Memphis-Shelby County Planning Commission to form the type of conservation authority allowed by the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act. What resulted, in the passing by the City Council of Ordinance 2276 in 1975, was the forming of the Memphis Landmarks Commission (MLC). The MLC in their mission was mandated to preserve and protect “the historic, architectural and cultural landmarks in the City of Memphis.”

In 1992, after the loss of the Ada Norfleet Turner Home, the Central Gardens Neighborhood Association petitioned the city for a landmark’s designation as a historic conservation district.

They also submitted detailed architectural guidelines established back in 1980 for their nomination to the National Register. There were inevitable compromises. With anything of such magnitude, which required buy-in by the majority of residents and influential neighborhood institutions, such compromises are made with the greater good in mind; moreover, it is quite possible that the historic conservation district designation would have eluded Central Gardens if not for such give and take.

“In the early 1990s, the Central Gardens Board of Directors fought to have the neighborhood designated as a Historic Conservation District. This designation gives the entire neighborhood the protections of the Historic Guidelines that are applied and governed by the Memphis Landmarks Commission,” said 2017 Association President Kathy Ferguson. “To put it simply, if (certain compromises) would not have been adopted in 1992, this district ... would not have the protections now provided under our Historic Guidelines.