Sole surviving Victorian-era residence in the South Bluffs Warehouse Historic District, built c. 1876 for Confederate veteran and clothing retailer John Alexander Austin (1842-1906) and featured on Memphis ghost-tour itineraries.
290 S. Front St., Memphis, TN 38103
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The house itself is a private commercial property and not open for tours, but the exterior is visible from the public sidewalk. Ghost-tour pricing is set by the operators (Backbeat Tours, Historical Haunts Memphis).
Access
Wheelchair OK
Downtown sidewalk in the South Bluffs district; level paved approach to the house exterior
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1876 · Sole surviving Victorian-era home in South Bluffs Warehouse Historic District · National Register of Historic Places (added 1984) · Italianate-style brick masonry townhouse · Built for Confederate veteran and clothing manufacturer John Alexander Austin · Survives from a vanished residential streetscape on S. Front Street
The John Alexander Austin House was constructed circa 1876 at 290 South Front Street in Memphis, Tennessee, in the Italianate architectural style then popular for upper-middle-class urban townhouses. Designed as a two-and-one-half-story residence with an L-shaped plan, load-bearing brick masonry walls, and a low hip roof, the building reflects the prosperity of the South Bluffs as a fashionable late-19th-century neighborhood overlooking the Mississippi River.
John Alexander Austin (1842-1906) was a veteran of the Confederate States Army during the Civil War who became a prominent Memphis clothing retailer and manufacturer in the decades following the conflict. Austin married Caroline Azalia Fowler (1851-1879) on May 23, 1871; she died on March 21, 1879, at age 27, during the period of repeated yellow fever epidemics that struck Memphis in the 1870s (the worst, in 1878, killed thousands and caused the city to temporarily lose its charter).
The South Bluffs Warehouse Historic District grew up around the Austin House in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, gradually replacing the residential street with brick cotton warehouses and commercial structures. The Austin House survived this transition and is today the only surviving Victorian-era home in the district — the rare residential reminder of what S. Front Street looked like before the warehouse era.
The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 12, 1984 (NRHP reference number 84003684). It has since been adaptively reused as a private commercial property and is a recurring stop on Memphis ghost-tour itineraries operated by Backbeat Tours and other local guides.
Sources
The John Alexander Austin House occupies a particular niche in downtown Memphis paranormal lore: it is the rare surviving Victorian house on a street otherwise dominated by warehouses, and that lone-survivor quality has helped fix it as a recurring stop on local ghost-tour itineraries. Backbeat Tours' Memphis Haunted Walking Tour and Historical Haunts Memphis both treat the property as one of downtown's most resonant haunted addresses.
Guides typically anchor the legend in the documented losses of the Austin family — John Alexander Austin's wife Caroline Azalia died on March 21, 1879 at age 27, during the era of catastrophic yellow fever outbreaks in Memphis (1873, 1878, 1879) that killed thousands and emptied entire neighborhoods. Sightseers along S. Front Street have reported sudden cold breezes near the front entrance, unexplained footsteps on the upper-floor porches, and the sensation of being watched from the windows after dark.
No single first-person account has been independently published in a peer-reviewed or newspaper-of-record source; the haunting tradition here lives primarily through walking-tour narration and aggregator coverage. We note this carefully — the documented history of grief in the Austin family is real, but the specific paranormal claims remain tour-driven oral tradition rather than corroborated incidents.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
View the only surviving Victorian-era home in the South Bluffs Warehouse Historic District from S. Front Street. The two-and-one-half-story Italianate townhouse with its L-shaped plan, brick masonry walls, and low hip roof has stood here since c. 1876.
The Austin House is a stop on Backbeat Tours' Memphis Haunted Walking Tour, which weaves together stories of yellow fever, Civil War, and downtown spirit lore. Tour operators frame the property as one of downtown Memphis's most enduring haunted stops.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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