Status: Preserved
Location: Roughly bounded by Highland and Goodlett Streets and by the Southern Railway and Park Avenue; includes portions of Buck Street and Carnes and Douglass Avenues; Echles, Goodlett, Goodman, Graham, and Houston Streets; Kearney Avenue, Loeb Street, Marion Avenue, Normal Circle and Park Avenue; Patterson and Shotwell Streets; and Spottswood Avenue and Watson Street, in Memphis
Built: Mid-1920s, 1940s-1950s
Architectural Style: Various: Colonial Revival, Craftsman, Minimal Traditional, Massed Ranch, Minimal Ranch, etc.
Original Function/Purpose: Residential
History: Normal Station Historic District is roughly three-quarters of a square mile in size, located south of the University of Memphis. The area was a farm community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that grew into a small town with the coming of West Tennessee State Normal School and Southern Railway’s Normal Station, and into a middle-class “automobile suburb” in the 1940s and ‘50s, helped then by the arrival of Kennedy Veterans Hospital and the later growth of Memphis State / University of Memphis. The area was annexed by the City of Memphis in 1929. A major developer of mass affordable housing in this district was John B. Goodwin, following his work in the construction of the Veterans Hospital. Fifty-seven percent of the district’s housing stock was constructed in the 1950s, and of 1096 principal buildings, 867 contribute to this listing.
Maps:
City Council District: 5
Super District: 9
County Commission District: 13