The third choice, then, was the current structure, which Harrover conceived as a sort of fort overlooking the river - a structure more impervious to flooding, but still connected to the river. ![]() “The second idea I had was the Ponte Vecchio,” Harrover says, referencing the famous medieval bridge spanning the Arno River in Florence, Italy, renowned today as home to a varied collection of shops, art merchants, and retailers that make it an integral part of the city. “Fill up the Wolf River, turning the whole thing into an open, green, formal, city park - then turn it over to the public.” But that required a lot of dirt (even more than had already been displaced), and it would cover the cobblestones on the riverfront - an option Harrover loathed. “The first plan was perfectly obvious,” Harrover remembers today from his Midtown home. “Mud Island is a unique land area with unparalleled views westward across the Mississippi, of the green fields and woods of Arkansas, and eastward, across the 250-foot Wolf River channel, of the dramatic skyline of Downtown Memphis,” he wrote in 1976, clearly understanding the island’s importance and potential.Īnd there were his suggestions. ![]() His resume was already impressive, including Memphis landmarks such as today’s Memphis College of Art and the Memphis International Airport - internationally acclaimed for its forward-looking “airport in the air” design.Ī look at the plans that Harrover showed the Memphis mayor and city council proved they had made the right hire. But the best choice had to be Roy Harrover, a Yale graduate and Nashville native. There were a number of choices, of course, as the project intrigued designers worldwide. It was obviously a big task, and it needed a designer and architect with demonstrated ability to change a progressive vision into reality. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968. In the early ’70s, the city made the breakthrough decision to develop the island in an effort to continue its battle to rebuild a Downtown devastated by the aftermath of Dr. The aesthetics of the pile of mud were then left to the City of Memphis. ![]() The outcome was a big ol’ pile of mud - albeit one that did not impede river traffic and better prevented flooding. At the same time, needing a place to dump the mud, the Corps placed it on top of the remaining island, effectively raising the island’s height so it permanently sat above flood stage. So with the full intensity of terra-forming titans, the Corps dug up half the island, moving north to south, and created a more slender, horizontal form. In the mid ’60s, they determined that the island’s width blocked river traffic, thanks to the “pier” placement for the new Hernando de Soto Bridge (that many still call the “new bridge”), which opened in the early ’70s and carries I-40 across the island and the river. It was this girth, in part, that brought about dramatic changes, courtesy of the U.S. The island (which is actually a peninsula, by the way) was about twice as wide as it is now, with its expanse extending west toward Arkansas. Worse, the low-lying sandbar was frequently submerged by the ever-changing Mississippi River. In the very early ’60s, it was a glorified sandbar with ramshackle squatters and a small, struggling airstrip that was used, among other things, by Germantown-to-Downtown commuters. The reality is that the place really is a big pile of mud. To be sure, there have been efforts to rename the place, maybe as Volunteer Bicentennial Park or perhaps just Volunteer Park. ![]() The name Mud Island is actually pretty appropriate, given its history.
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