The Wilholte Home

Transportation drove development in all major US cities including Memphis. Early on, streetcars provided convenient transportation to downtown. Unlike the nearby Annesdale Park neighborhood which was created as a smaller, single subdivision; Central Gardens is composed of many subdivisions including the Mathews Land Company subdivision and the Bonnie Crest subdivision (unrecorded), both of which are included in the tour today.

Central Gardens has homes that families have lived in for succeeding generations. One such property is located on Lot 61 of the Matthew’s Land Company’s Subdivision. The first owners were Josephine Moore and William L. Wilholte who purchased it from the subdivision developer himself in 1917. William was the supervisor of the Agencies Reliance Life Insurance Company and Josephine was a homemaker. Josephine died in 1967 while still living at this address. She willed the property to her two sons Thomas and Lawson. Thomas became the owner and lived there with his wife Virginia until 1972 when they sold it out of the family after fifty-five years.

The next owners were John W. Willard and his wife Ann. In 1991 they sold the property to Dr. Jeffrey D. Nesin and his wife Diane. Nesin was the director of the Memphis College of Art which was born near the end of the Great Depression. The James Lee Memorial Art Academy — the institution that gave birth to the Memphis Academy of Art, which became the Memphis College of Art — took a distinctly 19th-century approach to art education, aiming to shelter students from the corrupting influence of Modernism. In the mid-1930s, a progressive splinter group broke away from the Lee Academy, and as the older institution went down, the new school was awarded physical and financial support from the city of Memphis, establishing a public/private partnership that endured into the 1990s. When the Nesins returned to New York in 2010, he had led the school for 19 years. The current owners, Jennifer and Robert Daniels, purchased the property in February, 2019.

The handsome, brick Prairie-style house has an asphalt shingle hip roof, a full porch supported by brick columns and a terrace on one side. The center entry has paired multi-light wood doors and the paired windows are double hung single light. The d. 1908 hipped roof, asymmetrical plan, Prairie-style house at 1364 Vinton is a vernacular example of the Eclectic House movement which began quietly in the last decades of the 19th-century as fashionable, European-trained architects began to design landmark period houses for wealthy clients. These trends gained momentum with Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, which stressed correct historical interpretations of European styles.

The Prairie style originated in Chicago and landmark examples are concentrated in that city’s early 20th-century suburbs, particularly Oak Park and River Forest, and in other large mid-western cities. This is one of the few indigenous American styles. It was developed by an unusually creative group of Chicago style architects that have come to be known as the Prairie School (1900-1920).

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s (1867-1960) early work is in this style and he is the acknowledged master of the Prairie house. Wright is unusual in that he early turned his creative genius towards the problems of domestic architecture rather than public buildings. Vernacular examples such as 1364 Vinton were spread widely by pattern books and popular magazines and they are common in early 20th-century suburbs throughout Memphis. Most were built between 1905 and 1915; the style faded quickly from fashion after World War I.

The homeowners worked with designer Maggie Clarke on decor. To honor this historic home, we accentuated its most unique features: the intricate crown molding, marble surround on the fireplace, and the custom window bench seat. Saturated colors on the walls, upholstery, and art bring this space to life. The commissioned art piece by Katherine George adds to the depth of the space, telling a story of the family’s multi-generational legacy.