Rescuing One of Memphis’ Oldest Homes

How Jarred Price transformed a derelict home on Poplar into a Victorian vision.

by

For the current owner of this Victorian Village home, it was love at first sight.

“I pulled up immediately and went, ‘Wow!’ That was my first reaction when I stepped out of the car,” says Jerred Price. “I saw a three-story, 1800s brick home that no one had lived in since the 1960s. It had been other things since then. It had been a restaurant. It had been a law office. And during [Hurricane] Katrina, they even had bunk beds in here. There were bars on all of the windows. I walked in and saw potential.”

He says he immediately felt at home. “It was a very odd feeling for me; I thought, ‘This is cozy.’ And everybody was looking at me, like, ‘What?’ The floors had so much dirt on them, you could barely tell that they were hardwood. Pieces of the ceiling [were] falling in. But I saw the crown molding. I saw the medallion above the chandelier. I saw a beautiful church out of the window. I saw a huge backyard in downtown Memphis, which is rare. I saw old marble fireplaces. I said, ‘This does not need to continue to be unloved.’”

At the time, in 2014, the Victorian Village home was owned by a church, who considered it a white elephant. The Bradford-Maydwell House, as it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is a mixture of the Federal and Italianate styles of architecture; construction began in 1859. Price said, “I’m going to do a low-ball offer on this, and I’m just going to throw it in the air and see if it sticks. And they accepted. That was the start of the journey.”

“Circle of Life”

Price’s personal journey to the Bluff City began in Anchorage, Alaska, where he was born into a military family. He grew up in northeastern Arkansas and got a job as a manager at the local Lowe’s while still a teenager. He was transferred to the Memphis area, and got a house in Lakeland.

“I always think it’s funny how every piece of my life has led to where I am now,” he says. “Everything that’s ever happened, even in life in general, but career-wise has been a step towards where I’m at today,” he says. “Lowe’s, for five years as a senior manager in five different stores, taught me about the products — the paint, lumber, flooring, all the stuff you needed to fix this house.”

While in Lakeland, he discovered Memphis’ charms. “I found myself coming into the city, wanting to hear music and capitalize on Memphis culture,” he recalls. “I wanted to get to know the city. I thought, ‘This place doesn’t seem nearly as bad as everybody makes it out to be. I want to experience it.’”

Memphis in 2012 was recovering from the Great Recession. “I saw music playing in venues that once sat vacant. I saw people, I saw patrons, and I said, ‘I want to be a part of this.’ This city is trying to make a comeback. It’s trying to do better for itself. And, you know, you could sit back and complain about Memphis all you want to, but you have to be the change you wish to see.”

That’s when a friend pointed him to the crumbling house in Victorian Village. The rest is history.

“I’m Still Standing”

Price didn’t just want to take in the cultural life of the city. He wanted to contribute. “I started playing music when I was three or four years old. I had this little keyboard — a Little Tikes kind of thing — and it played little bells as you hit the keys. I was always mesmerized with that thing.”

When his grandmother saw him playing around with her piano, she encouraged him. “Granny showed me what a chord was,” he says. “As soon as I learned chords at the age of nine or 10, it was like a light bulb went off. I started playing by ear. If I knew the song in my head, I could sit down and find the chords that make up that song. My fascination with Elton John started around that same timeframe.”

If Price looks familiar to you, it’s probably because you’ve seen him perform as Almost Elton John. Price started out by himself, belting Bernie Taupin’s lyrics as a solo piano act at parties and small clubs, before adding the band: “Walter Polk is on drums, Eric Westby on bass, John Gilreath on the keys. David Ogle on guitar, and Hope Clayburn on backing vocals, saxophone, flute, tambourine, and everything else.”

Almost Elton John regularly appears in the Memphis Flyer’s Best of Memphis live music categories. “We’ve been blessed with that,” he says. “It’s an honor for us because that means people are enjoying our music, and they love what they hear and they support us. I think music brings people together. When you’re on stage and look out, there’s people of all races, all backgrounds, Democrat, Republican, gay, straight, white, Black, Asian, any background. And everyone’s not worried about that at that moment. They don’t care about skin color, they don’t worry about politics, they just smile. They dance with one another. They have some drinks and a good time. That’s a very rewarding thing for me.”

You can catch Almost Elton John at Lafayette’s on Overton Square on the first Friday evening of every month. The other Fridays, you can find him at the piano in the front corner of his living room, unwinding with a glass of wine and some tunes. “The piano becomes my escape,” he says. “It’s my pride and joy in this room.”

A couple of Christmases ago, Price put a Harry Potter-inspired Hogwarts village on the piano, complete with flying candles suspended from the ceiling above. It’s been there ever since. “When it came [time] to take it down, all of my friends were over here for New Year’s, and they were like, ‘Do not take that down. It’s cool as hell. Just keep it up! You love Harry Potter. It’s your house: You do whatever you want. I ain’t gotta follow the rules!”

Price is an admitted Anglophile. “My family’s Welsh. everything I like is British: Harry Potter, Elton John, Adele, Paul McCartney; it’s all British. I can definitely tell it runs through my blood.”

The desk where he works most days is a replica of one of Queen Elizabeth’s. The Italian leather sofas are Chesterfields. The chandelier is imported from England, better to match the ornate medallion.

“This crown molding I haven’t touched at all,” Price says. “I came in and it was up there. It was part of the character I saw when I walked through the doors and I said, ‘This has got so much potential.’ I haven’t painted it. I haven’t had to repair it. The only thing we did was blow off some construction dust. That’s just plaster, you know. It’s crazy how well it’s held up after 166 years.”

The marble fireplaces in the living room and dining room are original to the house. Price says that James Maydwell, the home’s first owner, was in the business of shipping imported marble from the port of New Orleans up the Mississippi River, and acquired some choice pieces for his own dwelling. The buffet in the dining room is from the Victorian era. “I didn’t even have to refinish it,” Price says.

But the dining room table is a contemporary purchase. “This isn’t historic at all, but it fits the character of the home,” he says. “So one of the things I wanted to do was keep the character of the home alive. And in the pieces that I bought, I didn’t want to stray too much into modern. I wanted to blend modern and Victorian together.”

“Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters”

One day, a Lowe’s customer was so impressed with Price’s knowledge and efficiency that he offered him a job as an insurance adjuster. “I didn’t even know what that was,” Price says. “I took the job because it got me out of retail hours. I did that [insurance] for nine-and-a-half years. Then I finally decided, why am I working for someone else?”

Price leveraged his experience in cost estimation and management, the practical skills he had acquired during the renovation, and his impressive social media following into his new contracting business. “I became an entrepreneur in 2021, and it was probably one of the best things I’ve ever done,” he says.

These days, his home is in a perpetual state of renewal, with new projects popping up as soon as the last one is finished. “I’m constantly upgrading, changing something, keeping it maintained,” he says.

The kitchen area was the most difficult part of the downstairs, he says. Luckily, the plumbing had been completely revamped in the 1980s, during the home’s brief stint as a restaurant. But in the kitchen, all that survived was a plastic sink and a freestanding range in the corner.

“The floor was covered in linoleum with asbestos glue. You could not see the hardwood. We started peeling back that linoleum tile, and we saw a piece of the hardwood underneath it, covered in black glue. I asked my flooring guy at that time, ’Can you save this?’ He goes, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re going to make me scrape off all of this?’ And I said yeah. But he accepted the challenge.”

Underneath the tile was an unusual pattern of hardwood, which Price’s flooring contractor had never seen in 30 years of experience. Price added the marble-topped island and modern appliances.

As he shows me around the kitchen, he reveals plans for a drastic rethinking of the space. It would not be the first time he radically changed a room.

On the second floor, Price transformed a little-used guest bedroom into a spacious, luxurious bathroom. The first thing you notice is the shower in the middle of the room. Price says the unusual configuration was out of necessity. “Most of the time, when you see a bathroom, the shower is in the corner,” he says.

But the corners of this room all have windows. “I had to create a freestanding, three-sided, glass shower.”

The unique shower arrangement also has another advantage. “I’m claustrophobic,” he says. “So to me, this is the best solution possible. I have one wall of tile and three sides of glass.”

“Harmony”

I love being Downtown, because it’s the heart of the city,” Price says. “When you have a strong downtown, you have a strong rest of the town.”

Price is president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, an organization he first joined in 2019. “It’s probably bigger than it’s ever been right now,” he says.

Price says the DNA’s first priority has been lowering crime rates downtown. He cites the recent double-digit percentage point drop in reported incidents as signs of progress. “If Main Street is strong, the rest of the town is strong. If you drive through a town that has stores all up and down Main Street, you feel it’s more alive. It’s more vibrant. If you drive through the downtown of a big city, if it’s alive and vibrant, full of people in stores, you feel safer. The city is more alive.”

His other priority is restoring the Mud Island Amphitheater to its former glory. “It’s a wonderful venue, unlike anything in the world,” he says. “You’re sitting out there in the middle of a river, the city skyline behind the stage. There’s the sunset, and bridges to your left and right. We know it needs to be activated.”

Nowadays, Price sees construction cranes sprouting outside his windows. “I love living down here, because I am 30 seconds to interstate access,” he says. “I can be on the I-240 loop and go anywhere in Memphis within 20 minutes. It’s an ideal location, and I think people are starting to realize that, because when I moved here, this neighborhood had no development going on. I can’t wait to see what this neighborhood looks like in even five years.”

If he has his way, this is only the beginning. “I’m going to be the change agent I wish to see,” he says. “I don’t owe anything to anyone in the city. I own my own business. I own my own home. I do my own thing. I play my own music. I really don’t mind ruffling feathers when need be. And that’s a good thing.”