Memphis, Tennessee is home to many historic landmarks. Like Graceland, and Beale Street. But one of their biggest tourist magnets is their Bass Pro Shops. Usually, Bass Pro is the place to buy hunting and fishing gear. But the one in Memphis, it’s less of a store, and more of a camo-colored amusement park. On the main floor, there are fiberglass cypress trees that are about 100 feet tall, and there’s an enclosure with baby alligators. They have a fake swamp filled with real fish. And making it double strange, is the fact the store itself is a 32-storey stainless steel pyramid.
The building itself is about two-thirds the height of the Pyramids of Giza, and the base is about the size of three Wal-Marts, situated right in the heart of the city’s historic Pinch District. But the Memphis Pyramid hasn’t always been a Bass Pro. 35 years ago, civic leaders in Memphis had a totally different plan for it, and it’s had a few tenants over the years before becoming a woodsy mall.
Egyptomania
Egyptian influence has been present in the architecture and design of the west for the past two hundred years. “ After the French invasion of Egypt in 1798, you can see a lot of influence in architecture, art, furnishings, and so forth,” says Dr. Chris Elliott, an Egyptologist, who is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Southampton. “I’m fond of paraphrasing the famous lines from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It appears that any nation in possession of an empire must be in want of an obelisk.
This trend, called “Egyptomania,” jumped over to America in the 19th Century. Designers were putting sphinx heads on chairs, and constructing public buildings with faux Egyptian accents. “I think part of this was showing that you weren’t just nouveau riche,” says Elliott, “You were travelled, you were educated, you had taste as well.”
In the United States, Egyptomania can be seen on public buildings, like court houses and city halls made to look ‘Egyptian.’ The Washington monument is just one big ole’ Egyptian obelisk. And the city of Memphis, Tennessee is perhaps the peak of this trend. Memphis was named after the capital of Ancient Egypt, and the city’s founders picked that name because Memphis Tennessee is nestled beside America’s most powerful river, the Mississippi, often called “The American Nile.”
In keeping with this namesake, the city built a wooden pyramid in 1897 to represent Memphis at the Centennial Fair in Nashville. The wooden pyramid wasn’t used for anything after the fair, so they tore it down. But a local artist revived the pyramid idea about half a century later, in the form of a series of bronze pyramids that never came to fruition.
The Pyramid Scheme
For years, the idea of building a pyramid in Memphis was just a quirky, unrealized civic project. But in the mid-80s, the planets finally lined up. The city needed a new downtown landmark, since the college basketball team, the Memphis Tigers, were selling out all of their home games, and needed a bigger arena.
City and county officials formed a public building authority, and announced they would spend $39-million dollars on a brand new basketball arena in the shape of a giant pyramid. The Memphis building authority chose to construct the Pyramid with stainless steel instead of bronze.
In 1988, the city and county voted to build the Pyramid in the Pinch District with public money. A unique aspect of the Pyramid’s shape is that it would have a lot of unused space around the arena. And all this space attracted a couple of enterprising businessmen, named John Tigrett and Sidney Shlenker.
The two men were interested in building some attractions inside the building, like a museum and a Hard Rock Cafe. But despite a major publicity campaign, the two men left the project amid a public falling out, and their dreams were never realized. In 1991, the actual building was completed without Tigrett and Shlenker. In the end, it was just an arena.
Rise of Fall
When the Pyramid opened, it was the largest pyramid in America, and the sixth largest pyramid on earth. But the project was over budget, costing the public $65-million instead of $39-million.
The Pyramid opened to great fanfare in November 1991. But it was clear, there were some unusual kinks to work out. Take for example, what happened on opening night, when country music legends Naomi and Wynonna Judd played a concert to launch the new venue.
Russ Simons was the general manager of the Pyramid on opening night, and he says one aspect of the building that wasn’t ready on opening night was the plumbing system. Before the Judds took the stage, the toilets overflowed and immediately flooded the building. The stage had to be sandbagged to stop water from getting into the electrical equipment. Simons remembers how, despite this, the Judds heroically got on stage and did their show.
“Myself and our head of guest experience, Rick Ferdet, we used a fireman’s carry to lift Naomi and Wynonna Judd to the stage,” he says. “They had carried their shoes. They got on the stairs. They got their shoes on. They sort of told me ‘good luck’ and they got up there and brought the house lights down and played their show from beginning to end. We lost a lot of shoes that night.”
After the toilet flood, and issues with the building’s acoustics, by early 1992, Memphians came out in droves to see concerts, but also the arena’s major draw, college basketball. In 1992 the college basketball team, the Memphis State Tigers, were led by a young phenom named Penny Hardaway. They made the NCAA tournament, and their success drew rabid fans to the new stadium, which they nicknamed The Tomb of Doom.
The Pyramid became a place to be in Memphis. The Tigers had great crowds, and the arena drew in big names for concerts, like Bruce Springsteen and the Grateful Dead, and later, a prize fight between Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis. But while basketball had made the Memphis Pyramid, a decade later, basketball nearly destroyed it.
Abandoned
Civic leaders in Memphis had always wanted a big league sports franchise. And in 2001 they finally got their chance, when the owner of the Vancouver Grizzlies NBA team moved the franchise to Tennessee.
The Grizzlies played their first three seasons in the Pyramid. But the NBA made it clear the Pyramid could not be a long-term home for the Grizzlies, because it simply wasn’t up to NBA standards. Basketball in North America was becoming a big money sport. And that came with a lot of expectations. Arenas needed luxury boxes, but they also needed fancy modern training facilities, and a massive digital scoreboard, and spacious locker rooms, and lots of things the Pyramid lacked.
So the Grizzlies ownership made a fateful choice. They decided the Pyramid wasn’t worth the hassle. A new arena was built using public money, and The FedEx Forum, opened in 2004. It became the new home for the Grizzlies, and eventually the Memphis Tigers as well.
The Memphis Pyramid went from a center of civic life, to having zero tenants, and zero prospects. Nobody wanted to move in, largely because of its unconventional shape. “It could have been a museum, like you could have put attractions in there,” says former general manager Russ Simons, “But at the end of the day, why would you want to own the whole thing? And clearly it never made sense to anybody.”
It seemed like the Great American Pyramid had become the city’s great folly. Nobody wanted to knock it down, but nobody wanted to move in, either. That is, until someone took up residence, and completely transformed the space.
Bass Pro
In 2010, the hunting and fishing store Bass Pro Shops announced a plan to buy the Pyramid, and use it as their new flagship location, which turned out to be the biggest Bass Pro Shops in America. The city of Memphis was more than happy to lease to Bass Pro, because they were thrilled that anyone was interested in taking over the property.
In 2015, the new store, dubbed “Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid” was opened. Legend has it that Bass Pro bought the Pyramid because their CEO, Johnny Morris, was on a fishing expedition that caught a thirty pound catfish on the Mississippi River, which he saw as a good omen. While we at 99% Invisible have a lot of questions about this story, Morris and Bass Pro did not respond to our requests for an interview.
Many urbanists believe the Memphis Pyramid has become a success story, as it represents a productive reuse of a very unusual building. The Memphis Pyramid is proof that no matter what architects and planners and dreamers envision for a place, ultimately, every building has to find its own way.