The Mannen Home

This handsome residence is located on Lot 48 in the Bonny Crest subdivision (unrecorded). Percy L. Mannen was the first owner in 1912. He was a sales agent at the National Cash Register Company. Three years later in 1915 it sold to second owners Hugh Ford and his wife Sallie. Hugh was manager of the Pioneer Pole and Shaft Lumber Company.

In 1921 it was purchased by Eva Nall, a widow. She and her son William and his wife Edna and their son William, Jr. all lived here. They ran a family business called Gray & Nall. William, Sr. died in January, 1943. It was later purchased by Martha McFadden Miller who sold it in January, 1969 to Randolph and Carolyn Holt.

The Holts only lived there two years before selling it to Beverly Goodwin Sousoulas in June, 1971. Beverly had married Frank George Sousoulas, an American military man from Memphis. The two of them moved to Panama under Frank’s diplomatic status, living on the American base for the next couple of years. By 1956, the two of them had since relocated to Memphis and begin their family that resulted in three sons: James, Earl Frank, and Frank George Jr.

Over the next thirty years, Beverly became immersed in Greek culture within the greater Memphis area, and was an active member of Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, including her work with the longstanding Memphis Greek Culture Food Festival. During this time, Beverly also became very active in the Memphis arts, working with many well-known composers, dancers, musicians, and fine artists. She attended the old Memphis College of Arts, where she met her “adopted fourth son” (as she referred to him), the fine art painter, Jay Worth Allen. In 1990 she sold the property to Betty Brooks. Sadly Ms. Brooks lost the property to foreclosure three years later.

It was then sold to Clementine Brooks in August of 1994. She lived there over two decades before selling it to Joshua Haralson in 2006. Mr. Haralson sold it a year later to David Solecki and Maria GomesSolecki, who have lived here in Central Gardens since that time. Dr. Gomes-Solecki is as professor of microbiology at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences. She is known in the field of Lyme disease research as an expert developer of oral vaccines based on commensal bacteria (i.e. Lactobacillus sp. and E. coli). David Solecki, PhD is a member of the St. Jude faculty with a specialty in Developmental Neurobiology.

The c. 1912 Tudor-style house is a great vernacular example of the Eclectic 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. The Tudor style is loosely based on a variety of early English building traditions ranging from simple folk houses to Late Medieval palaces. Most of them empathize high-pitched gable roofs and elaborate chimneys but other decorative detailing is drawn from Renaissance or even modern Craftsman traditions.

The Tudor Revival style of domestic building was used for a large proportion of early 20th century suburban houses and apartment buildings throughout newer parts of Memphis. It was particularly fashionable in the Midtown subdivisions. During the 1920s and 1930s only Colonial Revival rivaled it in popularity as a vernacular style.

Distinctive Tudor features on this house include stucco and wood shingle wall cladding, a crenelated parapet bay and an incised porch centered on the second story of the facade, false half-timbering in the front gable and unique rubble stone and stucco columns supporting the porch and port-cochere. The stained glass window on the right side of the porch is derived from the Craftsman tradition. The triple windows are distinctive multi-lightover-one double-hung wood framed.