Early renderings didn't quite match the final design.
Dear Vance: Who the heck was Admiral Benbow, and what happened to all those motels here that were named after him? — J.F., Memphis.
Dear J.F.: Just like Colonel Harland Sanders with his Kentucky Fried Chicken empire, John Benbow (1653-1702) was a real person, an admiral in the British Royal Navy. During a long career at sea, he served as the commander of several vessels against various enemies, ranging from Barbary pirates to the French fleet, and I don’t have the time or energy to go into that here. Benbow died from injuries received in battle, with a biographer noting the cause of death was “the wound of his leg, never being set to perfection, which malady being aggravated by the discontent of his mind, threw him into a sort of melancholy.”
The admiral was buried in Jamaica, and his fame was so great that Robert Louis Stevenson, author of the 1883 classic, Treasure Island, named a tavern in his book the “Admiral Benbow Inn.”
Many years later, another enterprising gentleman in Memphis would do the same.
Allen Gary
Allen Gary was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1913. Somehow he ended up in Memphis, as so many men and women from the Magnolia State do. In the mid-1930s, he attended Central High School and Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College). At some point, he met up with a business partner, George Early, and together they converted a nineteenth-century stable on Bellevue into a popular eatery called, quite naturally, The Stable. When it opened in 1941, it might be considered one of this city’s first theme restaurants. Not only was it decorated, inside and out, like a rustic barn, but the menu for this “Dispenser of Southern Horse-pitality” included such dishes as the Stagecoach, Hack, Hansom, Buggy, Surrey, and Sulky.
By all accounts, the Stable, located at Union and Bellevue, was a success, and quite a few readers have asked about it over the years, remembering good meals and good times there. But Gary and Early decided to branch out, forming other enterprises. Gary had befriended two of this city’s leading “hospitality men” — motel king Kemmons Wilson and drive-in operator Harold Fortune — and after serving for a time as manager of Fortune’s Belvedere, one of the chain’s largest and fanciest locations, Gary worked out an arrangement with Wilson to open restaurants at Holiday Inns around the South.
The first Admiral Benbow Inn — a restaurant, not a motel — opened in 1950 on Union Avenue.
This wasn’t quite enough, though. In 1950, Gary and Early converted a brick cottage at Union and Willett into a cozy restaurant that they named the Admiral Benbow Inn. So the first Admiral Benbow in Memphis, or anywhere else for that matter, wasn’t a motel. Newspapers admired the new venture, noting that “its interior furnishings are completely modern in contrast with the fifteenth-century atmosphere.” Even though the tiny building sat just 20 feet from Union, “in the Terrace Room, eating pleasure blends with the busy traffic scene.” Just like in the fifteenth century!
At some point, it seems Early dropped out of this enterprise; I don’t know why. By 1960, Gary was operating 18 restaurants, an accomplishment that earned him a place in American Restaurant magazine’s Hall of Fame. A story about Gary in that publication — perhaps you saw it? — observed, “A restaurant operator whose receipts his first day in business totaled $7.10 [they are talking about the Stable] is today doing a business volume that exceeded $2 million in the fiscal year that just ended, operating restaurants in hotels in six Southern states.”
That still wasn’t enough for Gary. He next conceived Benbow Snack Bars, free-standing diner-type establishments, which often had little more than a counter and 12 stools, much like the nationwide chain of Toddle Houses. These were designed to be erected near motels that had no restaurant of their own, you see, but I was never able to determine how many Benbow Snack Bars were actually constructed. American Restaurant magazine, packed with helpful information, does say that Snack Bars “have been added in Memphis and in Laurel, Mississippi, and Gary is currently studying sites in 10 states” but didn’t say where, exactly, the Memphis locations were.
A 1960s postcard showing a typical Admiral Benbow — exact location unknown.
In 1960, Gary returned to his roots. He tore down his first venture, the old Stable, and erected the first Admiral Benbow Inn — this time a motel — at Union and Bellevue. The modern styling was certainly eye-catching, with lots of white concrete, bright colors, and suspended walkways linking what was considered this city’s first two-story motel. Of course, it included a restaurant along with a lounge called the Escape Hatch. He soon opened others — on Summer, next door to Imperial Bowling Lanes, and on Winchester, close to the airport.
As you can see from the images here, the Admiral Benbow Inn was certainly a nice-looking place and stood out from most of the hum-drum motels being constructed at the time. During its first years, it boasted occupancy rates of 100 percent. But for reasons that I don’t fully understand (since the Lauderdales never frequented such places), the motel developed a bad reputation. In fact, by February 2000, Admiral Benbow had declined to the point where my pal Jim Hanas wrote a Memphis Flyer cover story about his brief stay there. With a title of “Broken Palace: The Last Days of the Admiral Benbow,” you can tell it’s not a flattering portrait.
“Unlike Memphis’ celebrated hotels,” Hanas wrote, “the Benbow does not represent anything prized about the city or its history. It is not a monument to the civil-rights movement, the birthplace of rock-and-roll, or Memphis’ role as a universal crossroads. Instead, it represents another side of the city, a side of people who draw paychecks keeping quiet, a side that’s as old as the city’s days as a rough river town and crime capital of the known universe. … If the Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of The Peabody, then it just might end somewhere in the tomblike parking lot here at the Admiral Benbow.”
Hanas called it “tomblike” because guests actually parked beneath the building and noted that the motel’s unusual design may have played a role in its decline: “The Benbow’s seediness comes only in part from its dilapidation. Part of it is a matter of architecture. The elevated rooms, once a clever parking solution, create a claustrophobic above-ground subterrain ricocheting with shadows and echoes. A series of catwalks makes you feel as though you may already be in prison, so, well, what the hell anyway?”
It was here, in fact, at the Admiral Benbow in Midtown that a fellow named Malcolm Fraser woke up one morning in 1986 to find himself without clothes, luggage, or money. Now this would be disconcerting for anybody, but Fraser just happened to be the former prime minister of Australia, in town for a business visit, and was supposed to be staying at The Peabody. The whole matter was never sorted out, but it’s typical of the decidedly unusual events that seemed to plague the Admiral Benbows in Memphis over the years.
Colorful patches adorned uniforms worn by Admiral Benbow employees.
So what happened to them? Well, first of all Gary had died in 1965, leaving his chain of motels and restaurants rudderless, to continue that nautical theme. Most of the properties were sold to Morrison’s, which showed more interest in running cafeterias than motels, so one by one they were shuttered or sold to other owners. Oh sure, there were attempts to revamp them; after all, most of them had been constructed at prime, high-traffic locations. The original Admiral Benbow here was refurbished and converted to a Village Lodge, but that was only a temporary fix. Today, that address is a parking lot for the Southern College of Optometry. The two others in Memphis are now vacant lots.
At least one Benbow has survived — well, sort of. The location in Jackson, Mississippi, has been transformed into a retirement center, called — what else? — “The Admiral.”
A history website called Cardboard America sums it up this way: “Kemmons Wilson and Allen Gary knew each other, and both had gigantic plans for expansion. Holiday Inns was an unprecedented success. Admiral Benbow is a failed franchise lost to the annals of time.”
