PHOTO COURTESY MEMPHIS AND SHELBY COUNTY ROOM, BENJAMIN HOOKS CENTRAL LIBRARY
When a reader first shared this old photograph of a tiny grocery store, I had never heard of Lowe’s Place and didn’t at first recognize it. As it too often turns out, some of these neat old photos don’t even depict Memphis locations.
But I immediately recognized the huge building in the background as the old factory — still standing today, and being renovated — of the W.T. Rawleigh Company, and that settled it. Yes, this is definitely a Memphis location.
Rawleigh was one of this country’s largest producers of patent medicines, cosmetics, insecticides, and spices. It seems a rather eclectic mix of merchandise, if you ask me, but they were hugely successful, and the firm has managed to survive to this day (though no longer operating in Memphis). The building in the photograph, constructed in 1912 at the corner of Illinois and Pennsylvania, was the largest Rawleigh manufacturing plant in the country.
Across the street, Lowe’s Place was decidedly more humble. The tiny wooden building, with its impressive Coca-Cola billboard and smaller signs advertising Royal Crown Cola, Hire’s Root Beer, and Spur soft drinks, originally stood at 884 Pennsylvania, just one block south of Crump Boulevard. Judging from the old car barely visible in the background, this photo was taken in the 1940s.
Looking through old city directories, which seems to be how I spend all my time lately, I discovered that a fellow named Marshall Lowe owned and operated this tiny establishment. Lowe got his start in the grocery business by working as a packer for Wagner Grocers, a large wholesale firm on Wagner Place. He opened his own establishment in the late 1930s. Not only did he work there, he lived in the back with his wife, Clara. Very cozy.
Nowadays, the area around Crump is mainly warehouses, factories, and vacant lots, but back then, this was a lively community. Lowe’s neighbors included Rosenblum Dry Goods, Loeffel’s Barber Shop, Vernon Memorial Methodist Church, and Dixie Coal Company, all tucked between block after block of houses and apartment buildings.
Lowe passed away in 1949, and his business died at the same time, but that was through no fault of his own. The Memphis-Arkansas Bridge was completed that year, and all the old neighborhoods north and south of Crump Boulevard, which was the main traffic artery to the new bridge, were obliterated to make way for entrance/exit ramps and the link with I-55 and Riverside Drive. The intersection shown here, in fact, is now an exit ramp for the expressway. The old Rawleigh warehouse looks over this interchange, but there’s absolutely no trace of Lowe’s Place.
