Photo courtesy Special Collections, University of Memphis Libraries.
ccording to neighborhood historian Joe Walk, the building shown here originally housed a string of business, including a drug store and tiny movie theater. In 1934, Walter Venoy Fortner opened a furniture store, expanding it until his company finally occupied the entire complex.
At some point, on the corner of his building he erected what was surely the largest clock in Memphis, a bright red disk with white neon numbers and hands. The old Press-Scimitar files, now archived at the University of Memphis, contain the image shown here, which depicts the building in 1960, as it looked before the giant clock was installed. Fortner died in 1981, and the furniture store closed a few years later.
Most Memphians probably remember the place as the long-time home of Bo-Jo’s Antique Mall, though the clock stopped running years before that, its giant hands stuck at 1:37 until the building was demolished to make way for a Dollar General store.
The old clock, missing all its neon and with quite a few bullet holes in its face, is in storage.
