The Smithwick Home

The Goodbar subdivision is adjacent to the Matthew’s Land Company subdivision. It was platted in 1908 by J. M. Goodbar and his wife Mary. Goodbar was a native of Overton County and moved to Memphis in 1860. After the Civil War, he was united in marriage with Miss Mary Morgan and they had four children. By the early 20th-century, he decided to subdivide the old Goodbar home place and develop it. The 46-lot subdivision is bounded by Harbert Avenue, the rear property lines on the south side of Goodbar Place on the south, South Melrose and the former Harris Avenue, now Willett Street.

Development went slowly until the Roaring ’20s. It was 1926 when the first owners, James T. Smithwick and his wife Elise purchased the property. James was a cotton broker in the family cotton business on Front Street. His father, Presley Smithwick, chairman of the board of First National Bank, lived a block over on the 600 block of Willett. James died peacefully at home here in 1962 at age 80; Elise had preceded him in death. Their daughter, Elise Farnsworth Smithwick Miles, inherited the property and sold it to Winfred and Sara Lee Sharp in December 1964.

Winfred was born in Greenfield, Tennessee, in 1922 and educated at U of M and the University of Missouri. He served in the Navy during World War II. After the war he settled in Memphis, retiring from active duty in 1954. He returned to the Navy at the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Millington from 1954 to 1994, retiring at the rank of captain. He was a dedicated member of Idlewild Presbyterian Church Sara died in May 2003. Winfred sold the property 11 years later to Millard E. Byrd in 2014. Millard immediately sold it to Mark and Brooke Naszadi who owned it for three years before selling to Scott Bengston and his wife Nancy. The Bengstons lived there until October 2021 when they sold it to the present owner, Francis Posey.

The house is a vernacular example of an eclectic-style house, specifically Colonial Revival. The style, which has never really died, was a dominant style for domestic building throughout the country during the late 19th-century and first half of the 20th-century. After briefly passing from favor in mid-century, the style has currently reappeared in somewhat different form as a dominant Neo-Eclectic style.

The Philadelphia Centennial of 1876 is credited with first awakening interest in our colonial architectural heritage. In 1877 the fashionable architects McKim, Mead, White and Bigelow took a wide tour through New England to study original Georgian and Adam buildings. By 1886 they had executed two landmark houses in the style — the Appleton House (1883–84) in Lenox, Massachusetts, and the Taylor House (1885–86) in Newport, Rhode Island. These important examples typify the two subtypes that were most common before 1910: an asymmetrical form with superimposed colonial details and the more authentic symmetrical hipped roof shape of which the subject property is one.

For detailing on the 1926 house, the architect drew upon Colonial Revival details including an entry portico supported by slender columns; a façade with symmetrically balanced windows with double hung sashes and a double-leaf center door with a fanlight transom. It has one-story telescopic additions on either side. The boxed eave cornice is an important Colonial Revival identifying feature.