Mallory-Neely House

The house is a story of long ownership and a late rescue. The last resident, Daisy Neely-Mallory, died at 98 in 1969, and by her wish the mansion went to the Daughters, Sons, and Children of the American Revolution. It opened as a house museum in 1973. In the 1880s and 1890s it had been stretched from two and a half stories to three and its tower enlarged, with parquet floors and stenciled ceilings added by the Neelys. The city closed it in 2005 over funding and repairs, and a re-roofed building reopened in November 2012.

What the plaque says

Mallory-Neely House Built circa 1852, this 25-room Italian villa-style mansion was home to the Isaac Kirtland, Benjamin Babb, James C. Neely, Daniel Grant, and Barton Lee Mallory families between 1852 and 1969. Extensively renovated during the 1880s and 1890s, it contains original furnishings and carefully-preserved decorative treatments which illustrate the Victorians' love of lavish interior décor. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, it became a museum in 1973.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sun Studio — 0.4 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• Beale Street — 0.8 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.
• National Civil Rights Museum — 1.3 mi
  The Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, kept as a museum of the civil rights movement from the nineteenth century to today.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 1.3 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.

More markers nearby

• Woodruff-Fontaine House — steps away
• Luke Edward Wright — steps away
• The First Railroad in West Tennessee The LaGrange & Memphis Railroad — 0.4 mi
• Nathan Bedford Forrest — 0.4 mi