Woodruff-Fontaine House

Two architects and a rescue explain this house. Edward C. Jones and Matthias H. Baldwin designed the Second Empire mansion in 1871, and the same firm later enlarged the neighboring Goyer Lee House. After the house stood empty for years, the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities acquired and restored it in 1962. It was listed on the National Register on February 11, 1971, together with the adjacent James Lee House under the title Lee and Fontaine Houses of the James Lee Memorial, and it is also a contributing property in the Victorian Village district.

What the plaque says

Woodruff - Fontaine House Built in 1871 along "Millionaires Row", this French Victorian mansion was home to two prominent Memphis families. Amos Woodruff, a successful carriage maker, built the house for his family. Noland Fontaine, an established businessman, purchased the house from the Woodruffs in 1883, where they lived until 1929. In 1930 the house was sold to Rosa Lee to expand her art school that moved to Overton Park in 1959. The house remained vacant until 1961 when the APTA restored the mansion and opened its doors as a museum.

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

• Mallory-Neely 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