When Memphis Fell for a Pyramid Scheme

In some buildings in downtown Memphis, offices facing the Great American Pyramid are equipped with automatic shades that lower themselves by mid-afternoon, when the sunlight glinting off the 300-foot-tall structure shifts from glowing to blinding. Drivers heading west in rush hour traffic squint, pulling down their cars’ sun visors and shielding their eyes with their hands.

The glass-and-stainless-steel-skinned building has been the city’s most unique landmark (and an irritant for office workers) since it opened as a sports arena and events venue in 1991. But it’s not the city’s first pyramid. Memphians have long sought to make symbolic connections to their city’s namesake, that ancient Egyptian capital on the Nile. In 1897, nearly a century before the opening of the Great American Pyramid, a 100-foot-tall wooden “Pyramid of Cheops” (another name for the Great Pyramid of Giza) served as Memphis and Shelby County’s contribution to the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville.