Dear Vance,
My aunt graduated from Siena College, but there is no trace of such a school in Memphis today. Where was it, and what happened to it?
— J.B., Memphis.
Dear J.B.: Anyone seeking a higher education in Memphis has a selection of fine schools: The University of Memphis, Christian Brothers College, LeMoyne-Owen College, and Rhodes College come to mind. But over the years, we have lost a few institutions of higher learning. Space (and heartbreak) prevent me from telling about the sad demise of the Lauderdale University and School of Harvesting, closed by a court order, but another one that has vanished from the local landscape is Siena College, and I don’t mind talking about it, if you pay attention. It has a long and rather complicated history.
The school’s origins actually go all the way back to 1851, when a Catholic order called the Sisters of St. Dominic of the Community of St. Catherine of Siena — did you get all that? — established St. Agnes Female Academy in an impressive building downtown at Vance and Orleans. As the name indicates, this was an all-girls school that quickly established a reputation as one of the finest institutions in the South. Opened with just 35 students, St. Agnes grew and prospered, and though it suffered terrible fires in 1878 and again in 1900, the campus expanded to include a chapel, auditorium, and even a school of music.
St. Agnes College opened next to the school in 1922, initially offering a bachelor’s degree (an odd title for a diploma presented to women, don’t you think?) in music, but later expanded to a more traditional curriculum. It was the first Catholic women’s college in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi, and to avoid confusion with the Academy, St. Agnes College became Siena College in 1939.
With all these students, from grades one through the senior year of college, space became cramped at Vance and Orleans. In 1947, newspapers announced that Siena College would move to a large new campus on Poplar, just east of Cherry, on roughly 25 acres of land St. Agnes had owned since 1925. According to the Memphis Press-Scimitar, “Arrangements are being pressed to erect the first new unit, a $500,000 central building, in time for the 1947 school year. However, the ultimate outlook, over the years, is for a completely cloistered women’s college, having several buildings and second to none in quality in the South.”
The newspaper explained that the new campus was “in a fashionable district” and “no expense is being spared to design a physical plant architecturally equal or superior to the finest homes nearby.” The school would incorporate the Abe Scharff residence, a large private home that would ultimately house classrooms. But the main administration building, Barry Hall, would be brand-new, following “the design motif of Tidewater Virginia, more commonly known as Williamsburg.” Other buildings would include dormitories, a sisters’ home, library, auditorium, and dining hall. Newspapers announced, “Many prominent Memphians of all faiths have been working diligently for months with Sister Remunda, president of the college, in bringing to fruition plans for an institution from which all institutional feeling has been removed.”
From the beginning, Siena College was never planned to be a large school; enrollment was planned for only 250 students. Even so, old yearbooks show a thriving college campus, with Greek societies, annual festivities like Miss Siena’s Court, a weekly newspaper, basketball and volleyball teams, fashion shows, May Day processions, faculty/student tea parties, Cap and Gown Day, sophomore picnics, the Siena College Choir, and all sorts of clubs and events.
Siena also established links with Christian Brothers College, with its Footlights Club co-producing and performing plays together, and Siena women served as cheerleaders for the various CBC teams.
The campus expanded, with the addition of the Benincasa Faculty Residence, Shea Hall, and Sansbury Dining Hall. Along the way, for some reason the architects abandoned the Williamsburg design, and dormitories such as Xavier Hall were constructed in a stark modern style that, to my eye, clashed with the other structures. It’s sad nobody consulted the Lauderdales about such matters.
Students earned a bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degree in such traditional subjects as English, Spanish, chemistry, mathematics, biology, and social studies.
But the school really never grew as planned. An Echoes yearbook from 1964 shows only 27 seniors. The year before, the school had 30 seniors — and 30 members on the faculty. I’m not an expert on these matters, but I suspect that a student faculty ratio of 1:1 — though good for the student, I suppose — is probably not sustainable, from a money-making viewpoint.
By 1970, the little school was losing $50,000 a year. And so it came to pass that readers of the Press-Scimitar noticed the headline on March 4, 1971: “Siena Sadly Gets Order to Close.” The Dominican Order in Louisville, Kentucky, which had taken over the operations of the college, said “financial difficulties” were the main reason for the closing. Classes would continue until December, but the last degrees would be handed out in May 1972, which would allow current juniors and seniors to graduate. Freshmen and sophomores would have to transfer to other schools. Rita Foster, a senior, told a reporter, “It’s a shame. It is a fine liberal arts college, and the blow will not be felt until the school is gone and it is too late to do anything about it.”
The buildings remained standing for several years, looking empty and forlorn, but they were finally bulldozed in the mid-1970s. Developers, eager for the prime Poplar Avenue location, transformed the former campus into Oak Court Mall, and an adjacent building houses executive offices for First Tennessee Bank.
Gilmore Seafood Cafe
Dear Vance,
I turned up an old menu for the Gilmore Seafood Cafe. I know it was located at 1901 Madison, but what happened to it?
— G.H., Memphis.
Dear G.H.: It actually became a Memphis landmark, probably admired as much for its architecture as its food. And now? A vacant lot.
In 1934, Mary Berryhill opened the Madison Beauty Shop at the corner of Madison and Barksdale. By the 1940s, the Fashion Beauty Shop moved to that location, remaining in business until 1952, when a father and son, Jack Dorsey Peeples Sr. and Jr., purchased the property and opened the Gilmore Seafood Cafe there. They had established their restaurant in 1944, just down the street on the ground floor of the Gilmore Apartments.
I really like the artwork on your old menu, with the antennae of a giant lobster framing a salmon snagged on a hook. “Seafood Is Our Specialty” was the cafe’s motto, and it was a good place for Memphians to find it. But the cafe stayed open for only four more years.
In 1956, well-known Memphis restaurateur Herb Anderton purchased the Gilmore and converted it into the pink-and-green showplace it remained for years. Newspapers described the interior design as having “an air of quiet elegance.” That’s not what I would have called it, but I guess they really didn’t know how to describe a place that had a pirate ship as a bar, modernistic cloudlike blobs floating over diners, and a blue-glass panel etched with sea creatures. Anderton’s East remained one of the city’s most popular restaurants until it closed in 2005. The building was pulled down after it was damaged during a storm.
Got a question for Vance?
Email askvance@memphismagazine.com
Or write: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis magazine,460 Tennessee Street #200, Memphis, TN 38103
