A Chickasaw Classic

Realtor Lynda Biggs Baddour occupies a piece of Chickasaw Gardens history.

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Lynda Biggs Baddour did not set out to sell herself a house. “We used to live in Hedgemoor, which I loved,” she says. “This was kind of an accidental move for us.”

She and her husband, Drew Baddour, intended to update their cottage in the neighborhood off Walnut Grove, which was her home before they were married. “[Architect] Charles Shipp had drawn plans for renovations to the house — redo the kitchen, expand our master bedroom, just give us more space,” she says. “We were moving forward with all that, and then a friend called and asked me to help price this house.”

Baddour is a veteran realtor, who entered the business in 2007 after a stint working in sales for Contemporary Media, Inc., the parent company of this magazine. “I thought if I could sell someone an ad, I could sell someone a house,” she says.

She immediately discovered an affinity for real estate. “I like people, and like the interactions,” she says. “And I like houses, and the flexibility. It’s not like I have to be at a desk from nine to five, but I work pretty much all the time. Being from Memphis, I have a really good referral base, and then there’s all the new people I’ve met who have become friends over the years.

“It’s a real connection to the community,” she continues. “I was talking to somebody yesterday and they said, ‘You’re branded.’ People will say, ‘Maybe I don’t know her, personally, but I know who she is.’ And it makes me get out more than I probably would otherwise, because I remember when I first started working, Joel [Hobson] said, ‘You’re not going to sell houses by staying home every night.’ And it really is true.”

Baddour has been a collector of art for years, and the home’s ample wall space allowed her to finally show off many of her pieces that had been languishing in storage. “People say to me all the time, ‘You have so much new art!’ No, I don’t. You just didn’t see it before.”

Baddour has weathered the ups and downs of the Memphis housing market. She was relatively new to the real estate business during the “down” years of the 2008 financial crisis. The past few years have definitely been on the “up” side. “If someone bought their house in the last four years — and I mean literally every single one of those people — you’re going to sell it for a hundred thousand dollars more than you paid for it,” she says.

After spending most of her career with Hobson Realtors, she recently joined the new firm of Ware Jones. Despite pressures such as higher interest rates, increased inflation, pandemic-related supply-chain problems, and uncertainty brought by the war in Ukraine, she says that prices remain high, and the market remains bullish. “It’s not as busy as it was last summer, when I’d have a listing and get maybe nine offers on one house. Now, maybe I have two, but they’re still full price.”

One of the biggest effects of two years of sustained home-buying frenzy is that many available homes have been sold. “There is no inventory, so that’s really difficult. I’ve got tons of buyers, and nothing to sell,” she says. “I do think a lot of people have given up, especially first-time buyer situations who think they can’t compete. But most of my people, because prices are so high, have been able to sell their house high. So they’re paring down into a much more expensive house than they would have had prices been stable, because they have $100,000 or $200,000 in equity in their house. Even though they’ve bought a much more expensive house, they can afford it. It’s definitely competitive. Memphis has finally caught up with the rest of the world, price-wise.”

Three-and-a-half years ago, when the market was still taking off, Baddour came to the aid of a fellow realtor who was trying to price a Chickasaw Gardens home. She was impressed by the rambling ranch house, which was similar to her Hedgemoor home, but larger. She asked her husband to drop by. “I wanted him to see how the kitchen was laid out, because that’s kind of what we were planning,” she says. “He hadn’t seen the vision of it, what could be done.”

But instead of taking inspiration from the home’s classic, 1950s-era ranch style and renovated kitchen, Drew simply said, “Why don’t we just buy this house?”

The more she thought about it, the more it sounded like the right thing to do. The renovations to the Hedgemoor home were estimated to take nine months (“That means more like a year,” says Baddour), and they would have had to move out while the work was in progress. The Chickasaw Gardens home was bigger, but unlike many couples with adult children, the Baddours were not looking to downsize. “We have six children between the two of us, and five grandchildren. Our family is getting bigger.”

The extra bedrooms would come in handy during summers and holidays. So, Baddour says, they decided to go for it. “We sold ourselves a house.”

A Little Piece of History

When someone describes a house as “rambling,” they mean it covers a lot of ground and has several distinct sections. This describes the Baddours’ home to a tee. A casual observer driving by might think it is more than one house. “It’s one of the biggest lots in Chickasaw Gardens,” Baddour says.

The house was built in 1952 by Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson, who at that time was a prominent Memphis realtor and developer. It was originally a fully furnished show house, full of the most modern furniture and state-of-the-art-appliances. More than 10,000 people paid to tour the home, with proceeds going to fund the Memphis Home for Incurables. After that tour ended, the house was quickly purchased by a prominent local surgeon, selling for almost twice the amount of other Chickasaw Gardens homes.

Baddour says the home’s history is not lost on her. “It feels like Chickasaw Gardens. It’s a classic, you know? And I feel really responsible for it.” 

One wing of the house consists of bedrooms and bathrooms laid out along a long hall which Baddour calls “the bowling alley.” At some point in the intervening years, previous owners extensively renovated the property. The couple’s primary bedroom, with a bath and walk-in closet, began life as a dining room and kitchen. Baddour believes the current kitchen was crafted out of a garage, “because no one would have had a kitchen this big back in those days.”

The spacious kitchen is what originally attracted Baddour’s attention, and it remains her favorite room in the house. “I live in this kitchen,” she says. “My computer’s here, so if I’m not showing houses, I’m working right here.”

The cramped kitchen of their former home in Hedgemoor didn’t lend itself to hanging out. This one is a magnet for guests.  “One thing I love the most about this house is this table,” she says of the modest spot snuggled up against a banquette. “Because now, when we have people for casual dinner, we eat in the kitchen, where we never did that before. Come, listen, and eat here — because everyone is in this room all the time, anyway.”

The centerpiece of the formal dining room is a table large enough to accommodate the extended family at holiday dinners. Baddour believes this was originally a den or rec room, because of one very special feature. A concealed window opens to reveal a copper-topped bar, with vintage light fixtures and knotty-pine paneling on the walls. “I think this is why my husband really wanted to buy this house,” she says.

Baddour says she has never wanted a big house as a status symbol. But once she and her husband were in the new home, she began to relish the extra space. “I just didn’t realize how out of room we were,” she says. “We could kind of breathe easier here. Everything’s really light and open.”

The west-facing windows in the dining room and den are great for flooding the home with sunlight, but the backyard’s landscaping is designed to mitigate the summer heat. “The natural light is amazing here,” she says. “But by the time the sun’s high and hot, it’s behind all those hedges. So we still have really great sun, but we’re not getting pelted with it.”

The vast majority of the furnishings came from the couple’s old home, and filled the new rooms surprisingly well. “I have had all this furniture forever,” she says. “Most of it came from my mother. I like it because it’s not straight from the showroom. Most of it has been recovered a few times, and it all has some kind of meaning.”

One couch in the living room has been green twice. Now, it is blue. Baddour did her own decorating, and her tasteful placement proves you don’t need “big, McMansion furniture” to fill up spacious rooms. She wanted to make sure her color palette was varied, but tasteful.

 Baddour has been a collector of art for years, and the home’s ample wall space allowed her to finally show off many of her pieces that had been languishing in storage. “People say to me all the time, ‘You have so much new art!’ No, I don’t. You just didn’t see it before.”

One of her most prized pieces is a sketch by Peter Max, who is known as one of the most prominent practitioners of Pop Art. Unlike Max’s famous multicolored canvases, this sketch is relatively minimalist, although still highly stylized, painting of a woman’s face in profile. “It’s a portrait of his muse,” Baddour says.

Another intriguing piece is a rare mixed-media print by Arkansas artist Carroll Cloar, the surrealist who was educated in Memphis at Southwestern and the Memphis Academy of Art (now Rhodes College and the defunct Memphis College of Art, respectively). This piece, which hangs in the kitchen, was a poster print that was repainted by the artist late in his life. Painter Mary Sims, who taught art at Southwestern in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is also represented on the walls of the Baddour home. Two striking abstract paintings by Irish bohemian John Ryan grace the living room and dining room.

One of the more whimsical pieces of art in the home is a sculpture of a pair of ceramic pigs dancing on their hind legs. The joyful porcines were created by prominent California ceramic artist Pat Hopper, who was the mother of one of Baddour’s close friends. “They’ve been with me forever,” she says.

Location, Location, Location

Baddour is a longtime Memphian, but this is the farthest west she has ever lived. “Back in my day, if you grew up in East Memphis, you stayed in East Memphis. If you grew up in Midtown, that’s where you chose to live. Now, people want to be in Midtown and Downtown. More and more people wants to be an urbanites.”

Baddour says she and Drew have really warmed to the neighborhood. “I really love living here, because I’m just that much closer to Midtown. If we want to go to a football game, we can just walk. Everything we want to do is west, so it’s all ten minutes closer. In the summertime, if we want to go to Railgarten or something in Cooper-Young, we’ll ride bikes. We wouldn’t have done that in Hedgemoor.”

Baddour grew up in a ranch home from the 1950s, and this Memphis classic is a return to her roots. She says she gets offers from other realtors all the time, but she won’t part with it any time soon, saying, “I just think it feels like home.”