June West: Protecting the Sense of Place

As she prepares to hang up her hard hat at Memphis Heritage, West reflects on efforts to save the city's built environments.

by

June West’s earliest memories of Memphis involve driving over the old I-55 bridge from her home in Proctor, Arkansas. “I remember coming over to the Enchanted Forest at Goldsmiths. We parked in the garage where AutoZone is now, and walked through a tunnel under the street to get to Goldsmith’s.”

West was a farm kid who loved horses. “I was raised on a farm but went to school in Memphis, so I had the best of both worlds,” she says. “It was a great childhood. I brought all of my friends around who hadn’t ever seen cotton or been in the back of a trailer, and we had hayrides.”

Her high school years at Lausanne Collegiate School coincided with the 1960s of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. “I grew up in a very conservative family,” she says. “As a kid, I was so weird. I would ask questions like, ‘Why are the cowboys fighting the Indians?’ People just thought, ‘She’s crazy”, but that was my mentality.”

While other kids at Lausanne had firm career plans, West says she was a generalist. “I had a great art teacher, Randy Jones, at Lausanne. He pretty much was the first person to tell me I could be anything I wanted to be.”

She enrolled at Memphis State University after high school. She had left home at 18 over a disagreement about the Vietnam War and decided to become a sculptor. “I always say I went into it more from rebellion than talent. But it was a great experience for me.”

After two years of college, she left to work for Melanie Smith, who owned a Germantown horse farm. “Horses have been my life for a long time. If you ask any young girl, once horses are part of your life, they never leave,” she says. “Smith asked me if I wanted to go on the road with her to help take care of the horses at a horse show in Florida. It was in mid-December. What person wouldn’t say yes? So I dropped out of college, and my parents about killed me.”

West traveled the horse show circuit for several years before taking a job at a farm in Maryland. When the oil shock recession of the mid-70s hit, she returned to college, this time at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. “I was a back-to-the-land hippie at that point,” she says.

Upon graduation, she had a solo art show at Circuit Playhouse (now the Evergreen Theater), sold two pieces of sculpture, then took a job as a social worker with the Department of Human Services’ Aid to Families with Dependent Children division. “I loved my clients,” she says, “but I hated the system.”

By 1978, she was working with seniors at the newly opened St. Peter’s Manor. “My friends would ask why I was doing this,” she says. “It gave me a great deal of patience. I had been raised right, so I did have respect for my elders. But it taught me that not all the people you meet were brought up the same way.”

Through the 1980s, West would be instrumental in beginning the first assisted living program in Tennessee. When the nursing home industry saw assisted living as a threat to their business model, she got first-hand experience lobbying government officials.

By the late ’90s, she was building new senior facilities all over the Southeast for the Cara Company. Although she didn’t know it a the time, her experience as a developer would prove invaluable. By the end of the decade, when Cara was bought by a publicly traded company, West knew it was time for her to get out. “I totally understand a proforma,” she says, “but when you’re dealing with human lives, chasing the dollar does not always work.”

She heard the historic preservation organization Memphis Heritage was looking for a new director. “I had been going to Memphis Heritage’s architectural auctions for ages. My back yard looks like a building graveyard. There’s part of the old Gayoso, that’s part of the old Chisca, there’s part of Ellis Auditorium. I’ve always loved stuff like that.”

After negotiations with the board, she decided to take a pay cut and become their first full-time executive director. “They would have hired someone right out of college who didn’t have the kind of experience and knowledge of Memphis that they needed. I said, ‘Let’s try this, and see what happens.’ Seventeen years later, I’m still here.”

Cities have been in a state of constant change ever since the first mud huts rose on the banks of the Euphrates River. America is a young country that, until recently, never gave much thought to preserving its past. “Memphis was a spec city to begin with,” says West. “It was begun by developers to spec and sell. If you look back during the yellow fever epidemics, when we lost our city charter. The people who were left were the bawdy cotton men, the lumber men, and the developers.”

There was also a population of former slaves who couldn’t leave. “If you had the money, you got the hell out of Dodge,” she says. “If you didn’t, you probably died.”

After the city started to rebuild in the 1890s, Beale Street became a center of black culture and entrepreneurship. The urban renewal movement in America, which began in earnest with the Housing Act of 1954, sought to clear slums and economically invigorate cities. But the people who bore the brunt of change were often poor and black. By the 1960s, Beale Street was in the sights of the redevelopers. “If you look at images of Beale Street when they decided they were going to ‘renew’ it, so to speak, there are very few of the original buildings left,” says West.

“Our sense of place is a huge part of what makes us the type of human being we are. If you tear everything down and start with a clean slate, you have no residual memory of what was there, what it made you feel like, and where you came from.”

The rise of the suburbs and the phenomenon of “white flight” was already emptying out Downtown when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968. After that, the process accelerated. In a few short years, Downtown was a ghost town. “It left abandoned old, historic buildings in Downtown Memphis that were not exciting to anybody, so they kind of went into mothballs,” she says. “South Main is a perfect example of that. All the buildings are still there; they still have the original facades. They boarded them up or they were used for storage. People just walked away, and didn’t think twice about them.”

The next big loss for the city was Union Station on Third Street, which was torn down in 1969. “It was a sad day,” says West. “Railroads were being used for freight, so there was no need for a big station like that. Missouri Pacific was losing money, so they sold it to the city.” A post office stands on the site today. “Union Stations throughout the country have been remade into malls and hotels, like in Nashville. We kept Central Station, which is where Amtrak comes in now, but it’s not nearly as beautiful as Union Station, which was all marble. … A lot of boys went off to war and came back at Union Station.

“We’ve lost a lot,” says West. “Memphis Heritage was created in 1975 by a group of volunteers. After urban renewal did its damage to Memphis and other cities, they said, ‘No more.’ A group in Knoxville had created Knox Heritage, which kind of gave us the concept and the idea. It was a volunteer effort completely. They started upstairs at Stewart Hardware, because an architect had his office up there. Three guys met regularly, and then they got some more volunteers. If you look back at the stationery, way back when, it was a who’s who of Memphis. The people who were on the board and the advisory committee, every known old Memphis name was on it. Beale Street was on the National Register of Historical Places. The federal government wanted to remove it, because it had lost so much. Memphis Heritage fought to keep it on there.”

For the past 17 years, as life (and development money) has returned to the older areas of Memphis, June West has been on the front lines, protecting the heritage defined by our built environment.

“Our sense of place is a huge part of what makes us the type of human being we are. If you tear everything down and start with a clean slate, you have no residual memory of what was there, what it made you feel like, and where you came from. You can go to a museum, and see how things used to be, but it’s not the same. When we don’t try our best to restore, repurpose, and reuse our buildings that have historical and architectural merit, we’re losing who we are. It’s bigger than a building. I’m not talking about bricks and mortar. I’m talking about a sense of place.”

In 2006, she scored her first coup, when Hal Howard contacted her out of the blue. He had renovated a house on Madison Avenue, and was looking for an organization to take it. “I came over here, and just about blew a gasket,” recalls West. “He became such a dear friend. He is such a generous philanthropist in Memphis. He will always be a part of Memphis history, because of his generosity.”

It took months of negotiation with the city and the neighborhood to work out the terms; by January 2007, Memphis Heritage had moved from cramped offices on South Main to what West dubbed Howard Hall. “We protected the neighborhood,” she says, “but we were kind of doing something we usually stand against.”

As a former developer herself, West knows the power of the bottom line. “But in my opinion, the greater good is to take positions like Memphis Heritage does. ‘Whoa, let’s talk about this.’ Not just ‘Don’t do it!’ but ‘Let’s talk about it.’ Our whole mission is to both educate and advocate. If we can’t convince somebody why we’re doing this, then where are we?”

West has led high-profile fights over places like Overton Square, which came very close to being replaced by a grocery store. “I think we started seeing a big turn when Overton Square was saved, because it was people pressure versus money pressure,” she says. “The people pressure was so passionate and dynamic. Everybody had a story about Overton Square. It was as much about the place as the buildings. … There was so much history and memories there.

“But that’s not what should drive preservation. We look at The Three E’s. Environment — where’s this stuff going if you tear it down? Economic — what can we springboard off of this saving? And then Emotion. It’s important, but you have the other two ‘E’s to think about.”

West says her organization is always out-financed and “out-politicized.” Figuring out which properties to fight for and which ones to let go has taught her the power of compromise. “If we can see an out from demolition through some other means, then let’s talk about those other means. I pride myself in being pragmatic that way, and trying to look at all sides. But people have been very critical of us.”

One example of that pragmatism can be seen on Union Avenue, where the facade from the Cumberland Presbyterian Archives building surrounds a Chick-fil-A restaurant. “It looks better than if it were an open parking lot, which is what it was going to be,” says West. “We looked at the building and realized it was poured concrete. It was built in the 1950s. It wasn’t something they could re-use as a restaurant. Then they asked, what if we preserved the facade? We jumped at that.”

Some Memphians weren’t happy with that compromise. “You’ve got pure preservationists who say, don’t save a piece of a building,” West says, “but I think that everything in its pure form has problems. …I’ve changed my attitude about some things while I’ve been here, after learning more. But I still feel that there’s a certain amount of compromise necessary to win battles in this field.

“I understand the need for a good tax base. I’m a taxpayer. But I think there are ways of doing things that can work for everybody. Maybe not 100 percent, but it can work. We can see that. If it couldn’t be done, we’d have no examples. When Bob Loeb saved Overton Square, he’d always had an interest in it, and buildings around the Square. But when he filled it up to 100 percent much sooner than he expected, it proved it could be done.”

West knows the solutions aren’t always perfect. “Yes, it was complicated,” she says, “ and yes, the buildings had problems. But look at it now, and look at what it could have been if it was just a grocery store with a parking lot. How would that have permanently changed the texture of Midtown? That’s what I’m talking about.”

Builders today can’t duplicate the real thing. “You can’t even get the materials to build them any more. Not that you can’t afford it — you can’t find it. Heart pine? Not available. When you think about the construction of buildings from the late 1800s to the first part of the twentieth century, you have to take that into consideration. You can have something that can last for hundreds of years. What you build today is not going to last fifty.”

Those success stories are often interwoven with losses. “Ironically, almost simultaneously, we lost Union Avenue Methodist Church. That was the biggest loss we had during my tenure. It could have been saved, and it should have been saved. It had value. It had the capacity to fit right into the theater district. It had acoustics second only to the Cannon Center, according to Kallen Esperian, who sang there. It was not in horrible shape structurally at all. You have people who take pictures of plaster falling and saying that’s structural damage, but that’s insane.”

Battling this mindset happens on a regular basis. “We spend so much time debunking arguments like ‘This building has outlived its usefulness. It’s too dangerous to go in.’ Those are all arguments we heard about Overton Square. It’s almost like a syllabus that developers look at and go, ‘Use this language!’ But it doesn’t work any more. Give me an engineering report.”

She perceives a change in attitude towards historic buldings. “I think we have turned a bit of a corner when it comes to commercial buildings, as far as seeing their potential for re-use. The mayor is using as branding a conversation we had with him last year. We keep our old buildings Downtown, not like Austin and Nashville. If we move from that, we’re going to lose our authenticity. That word has been thrown around a lot. But it’s true. That’s what people want to see out of a city. Not the hustle-bustle. Not a Starbucks on every corner. … You can’t bring them back.”

Builders today can’t duplicate the real thing. “You can’t even get the materials to build them any more. Not that you can’t afford it — you can’t find it. Heart pine? Not available. When you think about the construction of buildings from the late 1800s to the first part of the twentieth century, you have to take that into consideration. You can have something that can last for hundreds of years. What you build today is not going to last fifty. It’s like everything else we have now—it’s built to have an end-date. Those buildings were not built to have an end-date. It’s only because of us that we give them an end-date.”

One structure that was built to last was the Sears warehouse that became the Crosstown Concourse, which West sees as an ideal case of creative re-use. “I remember when Crosstown Arts first started. We were there cleaning up and doing architectural auctions before they were even in the building. They brought people in from all over the country who had dealt with art areas in their town, just as an educational tool. I think if that hadn’t happened, it would not have been as successful as it is today.”

Now, after almost two decades, West has decided it’s time to pass the reins of Memphis Heritage to a new generation.

“This job is a real wild ride,” she says. “You can have your day planned out all you want, then you get a call that there’s a backhoe in somebody’s yard. I still love my job. But I’ve got to plan for the future. I’ve seen too many nonprofits not set up a succession plan.”

West decided to step back from the hiring process and allow the board to find her replacement. She plans to spend 2020 raising funds to leave the organization with a nest egg for the future. “I’m very proud of the members of Memphis Heritage who are members every year, who keep us going financially.”

West says the historic neighborhoods inside the Parkways will be her successor’s first battleground, as multi-unit apartment development tries to push out single-family neighborhoods.

“I’m not saying that none of it should happen at all, but I do think they need to proceed with respect to the neighborhoods, and in communication with the neighborhoods, even if they have a right to build it based on where that land is.”

She offers a last reminder: “We are a developer’s city. We are built by and for and through developers. Not all developers are bad, and not all of them are good, but they should all be held accountable. And if government won’t hold them accountable, then surely the people have to hold them accountable.”