Terry Snyder Photography

🗝️ HIDDEN MEMPHIS
The Underground Rooms Used During the Yellow Fever Years

In the 1870s, Memphis was being devastated by yellow fever. Entire families were being wiped out. Businesses were closing. People were fleeing the city.

During the worst outbreaks, doctors were forced to create emergency treatment spaces in basements, cellars, and sub-level rooms beneath downtown buildings near Court Square.

Historic accounts show that some of these lower-level spaces were used to care for infected patients away from crowded streets and businesses.

Patients were taken below street level. Some were treated in dim, candlelit rooms. Others were kept in lower floors to reduce exposure and quarantine risks.

Modern utility and construction crews have later uncovered sealed sub-levels, forgotten rooms, and passageways beneath downtown streets.

This was Memphis medicine in survival mode.

And most people walking downtown today have no idea what is still beneath their feet.

Hidden Memphis
Part 2

Would you want to know what is under your building 👀