Quick Facts
- Date: August 27, 1927
- Location: 495 North Watkins Street, Memphis, Tennessee
- Event: Official opening of the Sears, Roebuck & Co. retail store and catalog distribution center (later known as Sears Crosstown)
- Key figures present: Julius Rosenwald (Sears chairman), Mayor Rowlett Paine, Philip Canale (Memphis Chamber of Commerce president), and W. L. Ackroyd (Sears Memphis general manager)
- Architecture: Art Deco/Moderne, designed by Nimmons & Co.
- Scale at opening: Approximately 650,000 sq. ft.; reported as the largest building in Memphis when it opened
Main Story
On August 27, 1927, Memphians gathered at North Watkins Street for the formal opening of a new kind of urban landmark: Sears Crosstown, a combined retail store and catalog distribution center. The project reflected a national shift in Sears’ strategy—bringing its mail-order infrastructure together with an in-person shopping experience—and it positioned the Bluff City as a logistical hub in the Mid-South. University of Memphis photographs document the dais that day: Chamber president Philip Canale addressing the crowd; Mayor Rowlett Paine on hand; and featured speaker Julius Rosenwald, the company’s board chair, marking the moment in Memphis history.
The building’s Art Deco/Moderne massing and ten-story profile with tower were designed by Chicago firm Nimmons & Co. When doors opened, the facility encompassed roughly 650,000 square feet—by contemporary accounts, the largest building in Memphis—and housed both a bustling sales floor and a regional catalog operation. Its scale and services exemplified early twentieth-century retail and distribution in the Bluff City, far from Beale Street but very much part of the city’s growth story.
Legacy
Sears Crosstown’s retail store closed in 1983, and the complex was fully vacated after Sears ended its catalog operations in 1993. Recognized for its significance, the property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 18, 2013. A community-led reinvention followed: in August 2017, the building reopened as Crosstown Concourse—a mixed-use “vertical urban village” for healthcare, education, arts, and living—showcasing Memphis resilience and adaptive reuse in the 901.
Today, the former “Wish Building” stands as a touchstone of Memphis history, connecting past innovation to present-day community life in the Bluff City.
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