Dear Vance: Where was a bar located in our city where the patrons sat on saddles instead of bar stools? The only clue scribbled on the back of this old photo is “Memphis.” — T.J., Memphis.
Dear T.J.: If someone bothered to write “Memphis” on the photo, as you say, then it seems they could have taken the time to write exactly where this place was. But it’s possible they were consumed with the same dreadful lethargy that often overcomes me while I am writing one of my long-winded columns. Why, sometimes I’ll just drop into a deep slumber, while slumped in my La-Z-Boy, and will turn in a story half-finished. Most times, nobody even notices. [We have noticed, Vance. Stop it. — Ed.]
I can’t say with 100 percent certainty, but I believe your old photo shows the unusual interior of the Stockyards Hotel, located in South Memphis at the northwest corner of West McLemore and Kansas. Either that, or it depicts the adjoining Stockmen’s Café. Where else in Memphis could this possibly be?
I remember my older relatives talking about this memorable establishment, but they never took me there. I’m sure they thought it wasn’t a suitable place for a young Lauderdale, though perched on a real leather saddle while enjoying an ice-cold Kentucky Nip would have been a treat.
With its simple furnishings and lots of bare wood, it definitely had a rustic atmosphere, as you might expect from an establishment catering to customers and employees of our city’s stockyards.
But if it was taken so that — many years later — readers of Memphis could admire the distinctive interior of the Stockyards Hotel (or the café), it doesn’t show much, does it? If I squint, I can make out some cattle horns mounted on a back wall, an electric fan, floral wallpaper, and what is either an old cabinet radio or a jukebox, but that’s all. The place wasn’t very large, with barely a dozen seats — or saddles — along the bar. With its simple furnishings and lots of bare wood, it definitely had a rustic atmosphere, as you might expect from an establishment catering to customers and employees of our city’s stockyards.
Yes, stockyards. Memphis was never in the same league as, say, Kansas City or Chicago, but in the early 1900s we had a booming livestock business here. For a while, in fact, Memphis called itself the “Mule Trading Capital of the World,” though that wasn’t a motto that the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau bandied about too much. Downtown, a stretch of Monroe Avenue was lined with rows of “mule barns,” quite handsome brick structures where sales took place throughout the year. Those old buildings, most of them vacant for decades, came tumbling down when AutoZone Park was constructed, so you could say the mules made way for the Redbirds.
But the really big stockyards were clustered along McLemore, Trigg, and Kansas in South Memphis. They were mainly trading centers for horses, cattle, mules, hogs, and even sheep. As far as I know, they didn’t operate as slaughterhouses or meat processing centers. The oldest of these, located at 465 W. Trigg, was Burnette-Carter Company, which claimed it was “one of the South’s largest commission firms.”
Others included the Memphis Union Stockyards, Dixie National Stockyards, T.D. Keltner Livestock, Lightfoot-Howse, William Lundy Company, Wade Tribble, and South Podesta Horse and Mule. At one time, there was even a street called Stock Yards Place, running south off McLemore. Other firms were located across town, such as the Dixie National Stockyards on Hollywood.
Old posts and sections of fence still remain from the old stockyards along West McLemore.
In 1923, a Mrs. Blanche Stoner purchased the property at 150 West McLemore and opened the Sterling Hotel. Two businesses — a grain company and chemical firm — occupied the site, but neither one seems (to me) easy to convert to a hotel, so I assume she built a new structure. The Sterling only remained in business until 1929, when Edward A. Laughter bought the hotel and changed the name to the Stock Yards Hotel (later melding that into one word: Stockyards) while also occupying one of the rooms.
I don’t want to say what year he added the Stockmen’s Café to his enterprise, because I’m not sure of it, but Laughter ran the place until the early 1940s, when other owners took over. If this photo was taken after 1945, by then James B. Goodbar was running the hotel, and Morris and Lula Gammon were in charge of the café.
In 1955, the old hotel became the Terminal Hotel and Café, though I don’t know why it was called that. No railroad or barge terminals are in that area. The name was appropriate, though, in another way. By 1960, the hotel was gone. That entire block of West McLemore was cleared to make way for Gordon’s Transport, a national trucking company.
Over the years, the stockyards also closed, and Memphis lost its claim as a mule-trading center. Their former locations are now parking lots, trucking and shipping firms, and home to other industries. At certain places along McLemore, though, old concrete fence posts around empty lots stand as reminders when cattle, hogs, and sheep jammed the stockyards of South Memphis.
Mystery Plate
Dear Vance: I recently bought a vintage Memphis license plate, which is unusual because it also carries the letters LE and BH. What were these extra initials for — the car owner’s name? — H.G., Memphis.
Dear H.G.: This wasn’t actually a license plate. It wouldn’t make sense for everybody in our city — not the way we drive! — to have car tags that spelled out “Memphis.” Just think of the chaos if you were reporting a wreck, or trying to identify a runaway car. What you’ve purchased was called a “plate topper,” probably dating from the early 1950s, and you bolted it above the regular license plate on your car.
And those LEBH initials? They stood for Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital. Now, I know you might think they should instead be “LBCH” but no, that’s how the good folks at the hospital wanted it, and it was one of their most profitable fund-raising campaigns. You paid extra for those plates, with the money going to the hospital.
I don’t have space here to share the incredible success story of one of this city’s most remarkable hospitals. For that, I recommend The Power of One: Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare: Our First Century (the two hospitals merged in 1995, you see).
But I have space to share this. What began in the 1920s as a women’s sewing circle, which produced sheets and garments for the Leath Orphanage, developed into the Le Bonheur Club — meaning “the good hour.” Throughout the 1930s and ’40s, the group came up with innovative ways to raise money to help this city’s needy children, and in 1952 their efforts paid off with the grand opening of Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital. The “plate topper” campaign began in the early 1950s and eventually expanded into special Le Bonheur bumper stickers and decals that were sold for the same purpose.
Thanks to other successful fund-raising efforts — the Le Bonheur Charity Horse Show (which became a nationally recognized event), profits from a popular toy store on Union Avenue called the Doll House, the hard work of the still-active Le Bonheur Club, and other special events — Le Bonheur ultimately transformed from a one-story building in the Medical Center into the nationally recognized hospital that treats hundreds of young patients every single day. In its own small way, H.G., your old plate topper played a role in that success.
Got a question for Vance?
Email: askvance@memphismagazine.com
Mail: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101
