The City on the Edge of the City

For more than 90 years Boyle Investment Company has left its mark on Memphis, but few developments changed the face of this city as much as Ridgeway Center.

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When Boyle Investment Company first opened its doors in 1933, local business leaders were already familiar with the family who founded the new firm. After all, J. Bayard Boyle Sr., B. Snowden Boyle, and Charles H. Boyle Jr. could trace their ancestry all the way back to Judge John Overton, one of the three men from Nashville who founded Memphis in 1819.

The three brothers’ father and uncle, Edward and Charles Boyle, respectively, had started out practicing law, but soon turned to property sales and developments. In 1907, they embarked on an ambitious real estate project. Working with the city’s best architects, they created Belvedere Boulevard, then as now considered one of the most beautiful streets in Memphis.

The new Boyle Investment Company, however, initially served as agents and mortgage loan specialists for out-of-town insurance companies, including New York Life and Nashville Life and Accident Insurance. They also began to manage residential properties for these companies: financing, rentals, loan payment, and other services.

The firm expanded quickly, outgrowing its original headquarters at 148 Monroe and moving to an impressive building at 42 S. Second, which still stands today as the Cadre Building. Along the way, they embarked on other business ventures, in the 1950s working with local builders to develop subdivisions such as Sherwood Forest, known for its Robin Hood-themed streets and school, and Pleasant Acres at Poplar and White Station. Then, teaming up with wholesale grocers Malone & Hyde, Boyle began to finance, develop, and construct shopping centers around town, among them Park Plaza and Cloverleaf Shopping Center.

As the company enjoyed steady growth, Boyle hired a new, younger generation who would play strategic roles in the projects that would follow. J. Bayard Boyle Jr. joined the firm in 1960, after graduating from Washington & Lee University and attending law school at the University of Virginia. Henry Morgan, the son of First Tennessee Bank president Allen Morgan Sr., came aboard after graduating from the University of North Carolina. Another family connection was considerably more important to Henry; when he came home from college, he married Elizabeth Snowden Boyle — known to everyone as Snow, the daughter of Bayard Boyle Sr.

Russell Bloodworth, trained as an architect at the University of Virginia, with additional studies at Yale and other schools, joined the Boyle team in the 1960s. Known to everyone as Rusty, his particular interest was preserving the natural environment. In 1974, Southern Living featured him in a story called “A Tree Fanatic in Memphis.” Other new team members included Albert Fulmer and Edward Sappinsley, both experts in land acquisition. Fulmer, in fact, had developed a close relationship with area farmers. A previous job had him traveling around the Mid-South, selling them Curly Tail Hog Feed.

By the late 1960s, with all of this expertise, and looking for new opportunities, Boyle Investment Company was poised to create one of the most important developments in the history of Memphis. They focused on a unique property at Poplar and I-240 that The Commercial Appeal would later call “The City on the Edge of the City.” Memphians know it today as Ridgeway Center.

The Boyle family liked to tell the story about Bayard Sr. piling his wife and kids in their car and going on Sunday drives. While these outings beyond the city limits may have been pleasant, they were actually work days for the father, who was scouting the landscape for new properties his company could acquire and develop.

During those drives into the county with his family, Bayard Sr. surely noticed Ridgeway Country Club. He was an avid golfer, after all, but he had more ambitious plans in mind than a sunny day on the links. In fact, he and his team would create what might arguably be considered the most important commercial development in this area’s recent history — the first mixed-use development (commercial, retail, residential, and more) in the Mid-South.

The country club had a long history. In 1861, a group of young men formed the Southern Club, a social organization located above the Lyric Theatre on Madison Avenue. In 1862, when Union forces took control of Memphis, they objected to the club’s name, so members changed it to the Rex Club, erecting a handsome brick clubhouse at Madison and Dunlap. In 1919, as the University of Tennessee medical division expanded in that area, the club purchased 178 acres of land on Poplar far beyond the city limits. When more members joined, in the 1930s they added a golf course and swimming pool.

“Ridgeway Center was really the beginning of my career. I enjoyed getting into that, and it was a fun, exciting time. It was an opportunity to get in a lot of development, and we had the best suburban office site in East Memphis, with a nice blank canvas to work with.” — Henry Morgan

Members also changed the name to the Rex Ridgeway Club for its proximity to the Ridgeway community, which had its own station on the nearby Southern Railroad. Newspapers of the day carried news of sorority and fraternity parties, weddings and receptions, Cotton Carnival events, and other social activities there. By the 1950s, the name changed again, to Ridgeway Country Club.

Around this time, construction crews were looping a new federal interstate system around Memphis, and the eastern portion of I-240 passed between the club and Memphis Memorial Park cemetery (taking with it some acres of the club). The busy interchange at Poplar and I-240 would drastically increase the amount of traffic at the old country club.

In 1966, club members pondered a move east, while Bayard Boyle Jr. and Eddie Sappinsley began negotiations to purchase 154 acres of the golf course property, at the same time working with the city to rezone the entire property.

As head of Boyle’s newly formed Office Development Team, Henry Morgan recalled, “Ridgeway Center was really the beginning of my career. I enjoyed getting into that, and it was a fun, exciting time. It was an opportunity to get in a lot of development, and we had the best suburban office site in East Memphis, with a nice blank canvas to work with.” Developing the new project would involve almost every member of the Boyle company, and some new faces as well.

Born in Chicago, Mark Halperin’s family moved to Memphis in 1959. He attended Memphis University School and graduated from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville with a degree in accounting. During college, he met Henry Morgan, who helped him with a real estate course project, and Morgan persuaded him to join Boyle in 1973.

Halperin soon became part of the Office Development Team, mentored by Bob Loftin, the company’s longtime chief administrative officer. He joined the firm just as Ridgeway Center was being developed, and took primary responsibility for filling almost all of those buildings — some 130,000 square feet of office space, which grew to more than 2,000,000 — and other Boyle developments.

A key part of that job had always been keeping the tenants happy. “We really motivate ourselves to think like owners,” Halperin said, “to treat our customers as if we’re the owners of the buildings. And I think our customers really respond to that and appreciate that.” Apparently, they do. “In all these years, we have never lost a transaction over a lease issue,” he said. “We’re just not going to let that happen.”

Halperin shared the opinion of so many others about the genius of Bayard Boyle Sr. “He could just see way down the road,” he said. “A lot of investments that the company is benefitting from today, he made maybe 40, 50, or 60 years ago.”

After earning a degree in political science from Washington and Lee University, Joel Fulmer also joined Boyle in 1973, when the company embarked on the Ridgeway Center development. He was the son of Albert Fulmer, who had played a major role in acquiring much of the farmland that later became Boyle’s most high-profile developments.

Joel Fulmer eventually became involved in the company’s industrial properties, developing factories and warehouses for international clients such as Cargill and Hunter Fan, and taking charge of leasing Century Center and the South Perkins Business Center, among others.

Speaking about Bayard Boyle Sr., the younger Fulmer shared the same respect of his colleagues who joined the company in the early 1970s. “His business acumen was remarkable,” he said, “and his ability to relate to people, encourage them, and inspire their loyalty was unmatched.”

Bloodworth was tasked with developing an overall scheme for the Ridgeway land. Not satisfied after climbing the club’s water tower, he took a helicopter flight for a bird’s-eye view of the entire property.

“My sense,” he said, “was that the existing terrain and vegetation, carved originally for a golf course, offered us a rare opportunity to preserve ancient oaks while enhancing environmental processes.”

The first task was to design a traffic plan for the development, and Boyle came up with three main streets to circle the development, with only a few cross streets. Despite the eventual large number of tenants, the general effect was (and still is) an uncongested, and quite beautiful, office park.

The first phase began in 1973, with the construction of a two-story building close to the Poplar Avenue entrance to Ridgeway Center. Boyle Investment Company moved their entire operation into this building, leaving behind their office Downtown.

Other buildings quickly followed, most of them designed by noted Memphis architect Francis Mah. For the most part, they were two- or three-story structures, featuring buff brick exteriors and tinted glass windows. Wherever possible, thanks to Bloodworth’s efforts, the oldest and largest trees on the property were preserved, creating an office park with plenty of mature greenery.

Halperin worked with clients to move their offices to Ridgeway Center. Among the earliest residents were UMIC, Buick, National Bank of Commerce, New England Life, and Rhea and Ivy. Established in Midtown in 1939, First Evangelical Church erected a new sanctuary in the early 1970s, hard to miss with its soaring white steeple. The Malco chain, operating movie theaters in Memphis for decades, opened its Ridgeway Four cinema in 1976, with its distinctive hand-painted lobby mural depicting movie stars, past and present.

“The tenants we brought to Ridgeway Center have been a who’s who of American business. I don’t think people truly understood at the time what a huge project this was for Memphis.” — Mark Halperin

What made this project so unusual was its variety. At the time, Memphians didn’t go to church, drop their kids off at school, walk to their office, and then go home to their nice condos or visit relatives staying in a major hotel — all in the same business center. These tasks usually required drives all over town. Ridgeway, and the projects that followed, changed all that.

An essential component of the new development was the revamped intersection at Poplar. Boyle estimated that some 4,000 cars entered and left Ridgeway Center on a daily basis, so traffic planners, civil engineers, and the Boyle team conceived the Poplar Avenue overpass, to allow easy entrance and exit, and quick access to the adjacent interstate.

From a driver’s point of view, said Halperin, it remains “the only unencumbered left turn the entire length of Poplar.” That was a remarkable feat considering that Poplar is this city’s longest (and one of its busiest) streets, stretching from the riverfront all the way (as Highway 57) to Collierville and beyond.

The Commercial Appeal colorfully but correctly described as “the maypole around which East Memphis will revolve.” Designed by Walk Jones and Francis Mah, the distinctive hotel opened in 1975. More than 400 guest rooms occupied the round tower, all of them reached by a feature that was, at the time, unique to Memphis: glass-walled elevators mounted outside of the tower. These would whisk guests and visitors to their rooms or to the top-floor restaurant, Hugo’s.

The hotel interior was a rather complex design. After praising the “pure mirror-glass cylinder that rises from a reflecting pool,” the authors of Memphis: An Architectural Guide, described it this way: “Inside, the space is shaped like a fan, each blade raised above the other to allow daylight to pour into the interior.” They noted the spacious lobby, the formal Regency Court cocktail lounge, a more casual entertainment area called the Joint Venture, mirrored escalators to lower levels, and even a bridge that carried guests and visitors to the elevator tower. Those elevators “open your view to the surrounding landscape as you go up to your room, thus providing the final panorama in this clever promenade of changing space and perceptions.”

On the lower levels, The Commercial Appeal praised the “large, convex windows in the Garden Café, [which] give a picturesque of the man-made lake which nearly surrounds the hotel tower.” The reporter concluded his appraisal of the new building: “Overall, the new Hyatt Regency reflects an eye for detail. When the lake was finished, the management knew exactly what was needed — some graceful swans. But locating them proved to be difficult. For the hotel’s grand opening, two white swans had to be flown in from Boston.”

The grand opening took place on September 15, 1975. A giant red ribbon with a bow was tied around the tower, which Bayard Boyle Sr. told reporters “symbolized that the hotel was a gift to the whole Memphis community.” The society columnist for The Commercial Appeal called the black-tie event that evening “one super party,” saying that “guests ran out of superlatives to describe the party and the surroundings.” So great was the demand to attend the event that members of the Boyle family, as well as the hotel manager, Hugh Andrews, served as hosts for two separate events that night. Guests enjoyed “an enormous tiered table, with pianists playing twin baby-grand pianos on the top tier. Below were ornate ice carvings of seahorses and swans, with tables overflowing with quiches, steak tartare, stuffed mushrooms, and shrimp.”

Local VIPS enjoying the food and festivities included Meg and Norfleet Turner, Jean and Frank Norfleet, Sara and George Humphreys, Wilda and Herbert Humphreys, Abe Plough, Pat and Ned Cook, Alice and Tiff Bingham, and more than 500 other business and civic leaders.

When the Hyatt Regency first opened, Boyle Investment Company owned the property. Over the years, it was sold to other owners, first becoming the Omni Memphis (1989), then Adam’s Mark (1992). Since 2004, it’s been part of the Hilton chain.

“The tenants we brought to Ridgeway Center have been a who’s who of American business,” said Halperin. “I don’t think people truly understood at the time what a huge project this was for Memphis.”

And Boyle was just getting started. While adding more properties along Shady Grove and Sweetbriar Roads, the company planners took on the challenge of providing a new east-west artery linking Memphis and Germantown. In the 1980s, working with other landowners in the area, Boyle developed Humphreys Boulevard, a beautifully landscaped corridor running parallel to the Wolf River. At the intersection of the new road with Walnut Grove, they created The Shops of Humphreys Center, a $150 million commercial project adjacent to Baptist Memorial Hospital that became home to medical facilities, retail, restaurants, and multi-family residences. Advertisements promoted its unique features, such as “outside benches, a beautiful lake and fountain. Classical music in the air. Striking architecture and a feeling of elegance.”

In the wooded acreage east of I-240 and between Walnut Grove and Poplar, Boyle laid out some of this city’s most distinctive neighborhoods. River Oaks came first, with more than 500 single-family homes. The 73-lot Gardens of River Oaks would follow, and then the Cloisters of River Oaks, with 65 homes. “The concept is to leave the land heavily wooded with rolling hills,” noted The Commercial Appeal, “and enhance the natural terrain.”

The northeast corner of Poplar and Shady Grove had remained an open field, owned by the Erb family of Memphis for generations. Boyle Investment Company acquired this property and transformed it into a specialty retail center, The Regalia, with the 212-room Embassy Suites hotel just to the north.

Two founders of Boyle Investment Company passed away in the early 1990s. Though no longer active with the company, B. Snowden Boyle died in 1991. He had remained involved with civic affairs here, serving as finance chairman of the board of Rhodes College and board member of the Crippled Children’s Hospital.

J. Bayard Boyle Sr. passed away in 1995, while on vacation in Michigan. The Commercial Appeal lauded him as a “real estate pioneer,” and his front-page obituary noted that he had “transformed Shelby County.” His son, Bayard Jr., said, “He was a genius at buying property, and he had wonderful relationships with people. They all liked him and trusted him.”

Other business associates echoed that sentiment. “He started the development of all of East Memphis,” said Allen Morgan Jr., and Neely Mallory observed, “If Boyle Investment Company was doing it, it was always done right.”

In the 1990s, a new generation joined the company, and they moved into leadership roles. Bayard Boyle Jr. remained actively involved as chairman emeritus, along with Henry Morgan Sr. Paul Boyle, the son of Bayard Jr. and Elizabeth Hudson (“Huddy”) Boyle, was named president in 2013 and chairman in 2022. After graduating from Washington and Lee, he had started his career at Boyle by working construction on the U.S. Postal Service Southeastern Headquarters in Humphreys Center, later selling lots for the Cloisters of River Oaks.

“Our company philosophy is to attract the finest people and give them the opportunity in a friendly, team-oriented environment to advance themselves, their families, and their teammates further in life than they might elsewhere,” he said.

Meanwhile, two sons of Henry Morgan and his wife, Snow, came aboard. After graduating from Mississippi State, Henry Jr. had first worked at Ridgeway Center, “doing anything the property manager requested,” he says. “It was actually very valuable work, because it was great time spent with tenants, getting to know them and forming relationships.” He also held positions with Boyle-owned Mid-America Construction Company, and then became property manager at Humphreys Center.

“The key to the company’s success is hiring and keeping the right people,” said Morgan. “It’s all about people and relationships.”

Younger brother Bayard Morgan studied art and anthropology at the University of Mississippi. He also began his Boyle career with Mid-America Construction. “My dad told me, ‘You need to learn this business from every angle,’ he says, “and that was my start.” After running his own pottery business for several years, he joined Boyle, where he became actively involved in environmental efforts, especially with the Wolf River Conservancy.

“With an unwavering commitment to innovation, sustainability, and customer satisfaction. Boyle has set new standards for what it means to build environments where families flourish, dreams come alive, and businesses thrive.” — Matt Hayden

“I’m especially proud that Boyle has developed our properties,” he said. “Since Boyle’s founding in 1933, the company has emphasized the preservation of the natural elements in the communities we develop.”

Today, both Henry Jr. and Bayard serve as company vice presidents and members of the Boyle board of directors.

Then Boyle began to look eastward. In 1998, the company broke ground on one of its most impressive projects — Schilling Farms in Collierville. Originally the distinctive white fences along Poplar set off a sprawling cattle ranch and Ford tractor demonstration farm owned by Neal Schilling, a well-known Lincoln-Mercury dealer in Memphis. After his death, the rolling pastures passed into the hands of his business partner, Harry Smith, who approached Boyle about developing the site.

The result was a 443-acre mixed-use development that included a wide range of residential neighborhoods that would be home to more than 1,700 families, along with a YMCA, corporate headquarters buildings, retail centers, restaurants, medical offices, a church, a school, and more.

“Our emphasis was on creating a real community,” said Gary Thompson, who was involved in the initial planning. An artifact left over from the original farm, an old sheet-metal water tower, was restored and relocated to serve as the centerpiece of a carefully designed section of Schilling Farms to be called — quite logically — Water Tower, with design elements borrowed from some of the best residential areas of cities in Europe.

Other major Boyle projects in the Collierville area include Price Farms (home to the Carriage Crossing shopping center), and Spring Creek Ranch, an exclusive neighborhood which has twice served as home for the annual Vesta Home Show.

During this same period, Boyle Investment Company had been involved in full-scale developments even farther to the east, which would change the face of the Nashville area. In 2001, two key players with Trammel Crow, area director Jeff Haynes and retail division manager Jeff Fawcett, joined the Boyle team.

“Phil and I had several potential paths when we decided to leave Trammel Crow,” Haynes explained, “and we ultimately chose Boyle Investment Company. We had competed against [them] in Memphis and had tremendous respect for their integrity, reputation, and long-term vision.”

Nashville Business Journal called, “a great piece of property.” Meanwhile, in Nashville itself, Boyle developed Capitol View, which included residential and commercial space, as well as the new Frankie Pierce Park.

The most recent change in the Boyle leadership team took place in 2022. For years, Matt Hayden had been senior vice president for Wunderlich Securities and before that a top official with Morgan Keegan and Ernst & Young. He joined Boyle in 2014 as deputy treasurer. When Charles Claiborne, the company’s longtime chief financial officer, retired Hayden was promoted to CFO. In 2022, he was named president and chief executive officer — the first non-family member to hold this position in almost 90 years.

“With an unwavering commitment to innovation, sustainability, and customer satisfaction,” said Hayden, “Boyle has set new standards for what it means to build environments where families flourish, dreams come alive, and businesses thrive.”