Our Mission

Upper school students and faculty at St. Mary’s Episcopal School created the Memphis Legacy Project in 2014 to photograph and document culturally significant buildings in the city, especially those that are in a state of neglect before their anticipated restorations. Our first visit was to the Sears Crosstown Building in October 2014 and we have since photographed and toured the Tennessee Brewery, the Mid-South Coliseum, and the Clayborn Temple.

We returned to what is now the Crosstown Concourse in February 2017 and these pictures and captions document the before-and-after views of that building. We also returned to the Brewery after it was renovated into apartments and offices. Our documentation of Clayborn Temple is still in the process as renovations continue. There are currently no plans for the future of the Coliseum.

The faculty co-sponsors of the Memphis Legacy Project, Nancy Prillaman and Dalton Lyon, would like to thank all of the students who have photographed and written about these buildings. In the process, all of us have learned more about the history of Memphis and seen how important preservation and restoration are.