Corner Picture Window
WEEK 45 – Union Avenue OfficeMax, Set I
(cont.) At the front corner of the building, just across S McNeil Street from the Danver’s-turned-Cook Out we saw in our teaser photo on Sunday, survives perhaps the single coolest architectural element of the building original to the Julius Lewis days: this grand floor-to-ceiling window, complete with a dramatic angular overhang that really pronounces the corner.
Continues Vance (from the article referenced in the previous description), “Reporters and dignitaries were enthralled by the new store, with the Memphis Press-Scimitar proclaiming it ‘truly a beautiful store, the very last word in modern design.’ Calling the architecture ‘Swedish modern,’ staff writer Mary Allie Taylor noted the crab orchard stone and ranch brick on the exterior, but saved her praise for the interior: ‘a sweeping panorama of gay and interesting specialty shops, each a unit in itself and yet all coordinated through skillful blending of color schemes and fixtures. Curves, angles, and straight lines have been combined with deft touches of color to create unusual effects.’
“Even Mayor Watkins Overton, who attended the grand opening, was dazzled by it all, telling the newspapers that he had to keep looking out the door ‘to make sure this really was in Memphis.’” Julius Lewis eventually opened several additional locations, including a return to downtown with “the same ultra-modern exterior that was a hallmark of the company;” a five-story location at Eastgate Shopping Center; and an outpost at Hickory Ridge Mall, the latter two opened under the ownership of Jack Lewis, who took over the company when his father Julius retired. However, over time, Julius Lewis suffered “the same fate that affected all the other family-owned ‘big name’ stores in Memphis,” entering bankruptcy in 1983 and going out of business soon after. “The building has survived,” Vance writes, “its striking exterior relatively unchanged, but the lovely interior gutted. It’s now home to OfficeMax.”
(c) 2021 Retail Retell
These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)
Corner Picture Window
WEEK 45 – Union Avenue OfficeMax, Set I
(cont.) At the front corner of the building, just across S McNeil Street from the Danver’s-turned-Cook Out we saw in our teaser photo on Sunday, survives perhaps the single coolest architectural element of the building original to the Julius Lewis days: this grand floor-to-ceiling window, complete with a dramatic angular overhang that really pronounces the corner.
Continues Vance (from the article referenced in the previous description), “Reporters and dignitaries were enthralled by the new store, with the Memphis Press-Scimitar proclaiming it ‘truly a beautiful store, the very last word in modern design.’ Calling the architecture ‘Swedish modern,’ staff writer Mary Allie Taylor noted the crab orchard stone and ranch brick on the exterior, but saved her praise for the interior: ‘a sweeping panorama of gay and interesting specialty shops, each a unit in itself and yet all coordinated through skillful blending of color schemes and fixtures. Curves, angles, and straight lines have been combined with deft touches of color to create unusual effects.’
“Even Mayor Watkins Overton, who attended the grand opening, was dazzled by it all, telling the newspapers that he had to keep looking out the door ‘to make sure this really was in Memphis.’” Julius Lewis eventually opened several additional locations, including a return to downtown with “the same ultra-modern exterior that was a hallmark of the company;” a five-story location at Eastgate Shopping Center; and an outpost at Hickory Ridge Mall, the latter two opened under the ownership of Jack Lewis, who took over the company when his father Julius retired. However, over time, Julius Lewis suffered “the same fate that affected all the other family-owned ‘big name’ stores in Memphis,” entering bankruptcy in 1983 and going out of business soon after. “The building has survived,” Vance writes, “its striking exterior relatively unchanged, but the lovely interior gutted. It’s now home to OfficeMax.”
(c) 2021 Retail Retell
These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)