756 Jefferson Avenue, Memphis, TN 38105 For Sale

Elias Lowenstein came to Memphis in 1869 to join his brothers in the dry-goods business. The brothers had earlier opened what would become one of the city's leading department stores. Elias took control of the business after finding his brother dead and built this house on the edge of the fashionable Adams Avenue district. In 1921 his daughter Celia Lowenstein donated the property to the elite women's philanthropic organization, the Nineteenth Century Club, to be used as a boarding house for young women who had come to Memphis from rural areas to work in factories during and after World War I. The property became a treatment center for mental health outpatients in 1979. After returning to private hands for several decades, it was purchased in 2021 by preservationist Bill Townsend who looks forward to re-purposing it into a boutique hotel in consultation with Memphis Heritage. In 2024 the developer received a $300,000 Tennessee Historic Development Grant from the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.