PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS LIBRARIES
In 1949, Three Sisters was one of the most popular women’s clothing stores in Memphis, occupying the ground floors of the Farnsworth Building at the corner of Main and Union.
Dear Vance: My mother used to shop Downtown at a women’s clothing store called the Three Sisters. Who were the three sisters? Were they members of a prominent Memphis family? — E.C., Memphis.
Dear E.C.: This was certainly a popular store. Mother Lauderdale shopped there, spending hours browsing through its various departments spread out over six floors, while I waited out front, entertaining Main Street pedestrians by playing the oboe. Pretty much as I do today, when I’m in the mood.
You asked me a really good question. I’m sorry to say I don’t have a good answer, but that building has such a long and interesting history that I thought I’d share what I do know about it. You might as well read something, after turning to these pages.
In the early 1920s, a row of three-story brick buildings occupied the northwest corner of Main and Union, home to such establishments as Rex Billiards, Golden Eagle Clothing, the Emerson Shoe Store, and the National Shirt Shop. Those buildings would probably be standing today, except for one thing. Sidney Farnsworth worked across the street, in offices at 77 Union, and he had more ambitious plans for that site.
Farnsworth is often identified as a banker, but the city directories list him as a cotton merchant, the president of Farnsworth, Smithwick & Company. For reasons I can’t explain, since I wasn’t around at the time, in 1925 Farnsworth decided to embark on a massive building project, one of the largest Main Street had seen in many years. He enlisted two of the top architects of the day, Nowland Van Powell and E.L. Harrison, to construct a 14-story office building at 69 South Main. Years later, this same team would design Fairview Junior High School, one of our city’s most stunning Art Deco structures, so they knew what they were doing.
The Farnsworth Building opened in 1927. The authors of Memphis: An Architectural Guide described it as a “subtle building that achieves its sense of height by stepbacks in wall planes, by setbacks in the massing on top, and by using bricks that grow lighter in color as they rise from bottom to top.” I’m still not sure what is so “subtle” about the design. Among other details, they note that “the Art Deco stonework drips down the walls like angular icing.” Colorful tiles decorate the top of the building, barely visible from the street below.
While still maintaining his firm’s offices on Union, Farnsworth operated a management company on the seventh floor of his new building. Those other floors quickly filled with tenants, including the Elite Beauty Shop, Gilbertson Construction Company, Thayer Optometry, Western Union Telegraph, National Life Insurance, Campbell Advertising Art, and Miller-Hawkins Secretarial School, along with offices for doctors, dentists, accountants, attorneys, and other professionals. A Walgreens drug store occupied most of the ground floor.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY MEMPHIS & SHELBY COUNTY ROOM, BENJAMIN L. HOOKS CENTRAL LIBRARY
This view shows the Farnsworth Building in 1940. Note the smaller Three Sisters signs at street level (compared to the 1949 photo above), and the giant Colonial Bread sign mounted on the roof.
In 1938, a major change took place when Three Sisters moved into the bottom two floors. The store added their hard-to-miss signage across the façade, doors, windows, and even the awnings. The structure thus became popularly known as the Three Sisters Building, even though they were just tenants. To make sure everybody remembered who actually owned the place, Sidney Farnsworth added giant rooftop lettering shown here (opposite page), spelling out FARNSWORTH BLDG. in neon, and topped that with a huge sign for Colonial Bread (“It’s Good Bread”). I’m not sure if bread was available at Three Sisters, but the store offered plenty of other merchandise. According to an early advertisement, the high-class establishment sold “ladies and misses ready-to-wear, dresses, coats, suits, hosiery, furs, millinery, shoes, and furnishing goods.”
But Three Sisters was not a Memphis company, and the “three sisters” were certainly not Memphians. Instead, the store was a national chain, part of a retail conglomerate, the Miller-Wohl Company, based in Secaucus, New Jersey. At the time, this company owned more than 50 retail stores across the country, over the years expanding to some 400 establishments. Most of them were called Miller-Wohl, but others were named Jean Nichol, Lizzie B, Anita, and Three Sisters. Despite long minutes of research, I was unable to determine the origin of the rather unusual “Three Sisters” name. Perhaps the marketing folks at Miller-Wohl thought it had a nice ring to it, or maybe they hoped — as you did, E.C., — that customers would feel the store was indeed owned and operated by three women, who would come to their service, helping them to try on shoes and dresses, if needed.
By the mid-1950s, Three Sisters expanded here, filling the first six floors of the building on South Main, and opening two other locations in Memphis, on Jackson and in the Northgate Shopping Center. My pal Wayne Dowdy, manager of the history department at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, turned up a 1960 Commercial Appeal article reporting that Three Sisters even planned to move its national headquarters to Memphis.
But for some reason that never happened. “When this plan was abandoned,” the newspaper reported, “the building was renamed the Sixty-Three South Main Building.” Oh, really? Well, tell that to all the Memphians who continue to call it the Three Sisters Building.
“This is a knockout development. The structure is the most intricate Art Deco building in town and as interesting a renovation as anything I’ve worked on down here.” — Henry Turley
In 1960 — the same year Three Sisters canceled plans to move to Memphis — Farnsworth sold the property to the Belz family for $850,000. According to The Commercial Appeal, this purchase “will give the Belz family control of four Downtown office buildings,” including the D.T. Porter Building, the Randolph Building, and 81 Madison. Years later, of course, the Belz family purchased and renovated The Peabody.
Major changes took place in 1986 when the Memphis Business Journal, operating out of cramped offices on Poplar since it was founded in 1979, relocated to Main and Union. By this time, Three Sisters was occupying only the lower two floors of the Farnsworth Building, and the store was politely asked to leave. This probably didn’t come as a shock. The company had been closing most of its locations around the country. An internet search for “Three Sisters” mainly turns up posts of abandoned stores, many with their elaborate signage intact, in Baton Rouge, Chicago, Mobile, Minneapolis, and even Texarkana, Arkansas.
To accommodate the MBJ, developer Henry Turley, working with architect Tony Bologna, embarked on a complete upgrade of the structure, top to bottom, though still managing to keep its historic Art Deco elements. Inside, the ground and second floors were linked with an open staircase. The plan also added a “New Orleans-style courtyard” and merged three separate buildings along Union. On the roof, a red neon sign announcing “Memphis Business Journal” replaced the old Farnsworth banner, visible for miles.
“This is a knockout development,” Turley told the MBJ. “The structure is the most intricate Art Deco building in town and as interesting a renovation as anything I’ve worked on down here.”
Talking about the move to the new location, MBJ editor Barney DuBois told readers, “Tony Bologna’s preliminary design work is impressive. The only thing missing will be Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing up and down the steps. I’m sure our reporters will be tempted to wear fedoras with press cards tucked into their brims.”
Some plans for the building never left the drawing board, however, including apartments on the top floors, a drive-through teller for a ground-floor bank (now Regions), and a “sky bridge” that would link the Memphis Business Journal Building (as most people now called it) with the Parking Can Be Fun garage across Union.
I wonder if any Memphis building has changed names so many times? It has certainly kept the sign companies busy. When the MBJ moved its offices east, other firms moved in. Since 2002, yet another rooftop sign has advertised Lokion, the full-service interactive agency that fills several floors of the old building. The technology Lokion uses to assist its clients is complicated and impressive. The tenants of 88 Union Center — yes, that’s what the building is called now — have come a long way from the days when all it took was a big sign proclaiming “Colonial Is Good Bread.”
Got a question for Vance?
Email: askvance@contemporary-media.com
Mail: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38103
Online: memphismagazine.com/ask-vance
