image courtesy of the artwork of memphis, 1912
The James K. Porter Mansion was featured in The Artwork of Memphis, published in Chicago in 1912.
Dear Vance: Looking through a series of books published in 1912 called The Artwork of Memphis, I came across an illustration for an incredibly ornate residence, identified only as the “Residence of J.K. Porter.” Who was Porter, and where was this home? — F.T., Memphis.
Dear F.T.: It’s not common knowledge that my illustrious family originally planned for the Lauderdale Mansion to be an exact copy of the Porter Mansion. Unfortunately, we ran out of aluminum siding before we even completed the ground floor, and Lowe’s no longer carried the turret, fancy arches and chimneys, and most of the doors and windows. We managed to make the grass look about the same, though.
This is a complicated story, involving one of the most famous families in Memphis, and one of our oldest music schools, and several of our city’s most historic colleges, but I have only small amount of space, so I’ll have to provide a simplified version.
To begin with, even though the Artwork of Memphis books identified this image as the J.K. Porter home, that’s only because James K. Porter was living there in 1912 (with his wife, Margaret, and their two daughters) when those books were published. Most Memphians knew the grand residence at the southeast corner of Vance and Orleans as the D.T. Porter Home, because it was Dr. David Tinsley Porter who originally had the home constructed, sometime in the 1870s.
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve written about him before. For today’s purposes, let’s just say that he was president of the Memphis National Bank and Gayoso Oil Company, among many other businesses. In the late 1800s, all of these ventures provided him the wealth to build this castle at 657 Vance Avenue.
When D.T. Porter died in 1898, his younger brother took over the massive estate. Born in Kentucky in 1844, James Porter moved to Memphis at age 16 and began working with his brother at the bank and oil company. He must have done quite well; I turned up a newspaper story mentioning that he and Samuel Carnes, president of the Memphis Power Company, were the first two people in Memphis to have automobiles — an incredible luxury at the time — registered in their names.
After D.T.’s death, James moved his family into the property on Vance. In 1900, they purchased the Continental Bank Building on Court Square and renamed it the D.T. Porter Building in his honor. (Readers may recall a question answered in 2021 about whether mules operated the elevator at that building.) To honor their sibling’s work as a trustee with the old Leath Orphanage, they changed the name to the Porter-Leath Asylum.
Now, here’s where things get even more complicated. James Porter, in poor health for several years, suffered a fatal heart attack on May 15, 1917. His property, quite naturally, passed to his wife who after only one month gave everything — the house and her husband’s business interests — to their daughters and moved into a house on Poplar (still standing, by the way). Newspapers hinted that the young women never intended to live in the home, saying the property “had been acquired adjunct to religious purposes.
Sure enough in 1918, the Porter daughters sold the property to St. Agnes Academy, a private school for women originally established in 1851, for use as the “St. Agnes Conservatory of Music.” It made sense, since the school (shown here in an old postcard) stood just next door, in an impressive red-brick structure almost as ornate as the Porter home.
postcard courtesy of the lauderdale library
This old postcard shows how St. Agnes Academy looked in the early 1900s.
For some reason, within a year or so, the school changed the name of their newly acquired music department to the Memphis Conservatory of Music, though it remained affiliated with St. Agnes (and later Siena College). Look, I told you this was complicated!
We’ll save an account of the long and colorful history of St. Agnes for another day. Let’s focus on the Memphis Conservatory of Music, which, in just a few years, became this city’s major performing arts facility. St. Agnes even purchased a lovely home on South Orleans, just around the corner, as a spacious residence for Patrick O’Sullivan, the nationally acclaimed music director of the Conservatory. Lured here from a college in Louisville, O’Sullivan had been trained in France and Germany and headed a faculty described by The Commercial Appeal as “second to none in the South.” Classes included coursework in “piano, violin, harp, voice, harmony and counterpoint, dramatic art, and interpretive dance.”
In the meantime, the institution grew quickly, attracting some 200 pupils, most of them earning a bachelor’s degree. The same story noted, “The Conservatory stands for only the truest, highest, and best in the Art of Music, and serious, earnest attention is given to each pupil, from the Tiny Tot in the Kindergarten Department to the advanced students in the Graduate or Post-Graduate Course. Student recitals every week and faculty recitals every month tend to awaken a spirit of emulation and keep alive interest and enthusiasm on the part of every pupil.”
By 1923, the newspaper reported the school had even installed a pipe organ, “well-adapted for all occasions, and the first of its type in this part of the country.” What’s more, “Marcel Dupre, the noted French organist, has a duplicate in his Paris home.” Performances weren’t confined to local talent, either. Singers, musicians, and dancers came from across America to take part in productions here.
In the late 1920s, The Commercial Appeal described a typical performance in this manner: “At time thrilling, by the sheer volume and dramatic intensity of his voice, then tender as a mother’s croon in the lighter passage, Harry Bruton of the Memphis Conservatory of Music presented an enjoyable program last night over WMC.” Audiences, it seems, could attend elaborate productions at the sprawling complex on Vance, or enjoy them in the comfort of their own homes, by just tuning in their radios.
Meanwhile, the neighborhood was changing. Vance Avenue, long considered one of the most desirable addresses in Memphis and lined with grand homes, was attracting businesses, and many of those old residences came down to make way for them. In 1951, St. Agnes decided to seek a more prestigious location and moved to a new campus on Walnut Grove Road. Their old building became home to S.W. Owen Junior College, which remained in business until 1968, when it merged with LeMoyne College on Walker, established here in 1871. LeMoyne-Owen College, of course, has endured as this area’s only Historically Black College or University (HBCU).
In 1970, Memphis City Schools purchased the entire property at Vance and Orleans and bulldozed the Owen buildings to erect Vance Middle School. That campus, modern in every way, didn’t last very long. Suffering from maintenance issues and declining enrollment, the school was demolished in 2019.
Now, even though I wasn’t asked, here is where readers probably expect me to tell what happened, exactly, to the fabulous private mansion erected by the Porter family in the 1800s. And I hope you can sense my frustration when I tell you: I don’t know.
At some point, newspapers casually mentioned that the former home was mainly serving as the administration building for the Memphis Conservatory of Music, with most performances taking place in the St. Agnes Auditorium next door. Even so, as I pored over newspaper photos and articles, I was dreading the depressing one that told of the demolition of this stunning landmark. Well, I needn’t have worried, because such an event apparently wasn’t considered newsworthy.
But the grand home is gone. Drive by Vance and Orleans today, and you will encounter a rather unsettling sight — a completely barren field. Not a trace has survived of a mansion that was home to several generations of one of our city’s most famous families, a structure that entertained audiences for decades as the Memphis Conservatory of Music, a beautiful building that housed one of this city’s oldest private schools for young women, and a more modern campus that served the students of that neighborhood.
Today, all of that has vanished, with not even a historical marker to suggest the cultural significance of this site, and the events and activity that once took place here for decades.
Got a question for Vance?
Email him: askvance@memphismagazine.com
Write to him: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis Magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101
