Andrew Jackson, John Overton, and James Winchester had a good idea.

It’s such a good idea, in fact, that riverfront cities across the country have been doing it, opening their riverfronts to their citizens, and bringing everybody down for the view.

They’ve been building parks on their riverfronts, museums, sports arenas, easy access to the water, walkways and gardens, theaters indoors and out, protected public spaces out of private hands.

Memphis Brooks Museum names new executive director

Memphis had the idea in 1819, in fact, it was part of the founders’ plan from day one.

We’ve been screwing it up every day since.

Our own state has been doing it. Chattanooga and Knoxville have embraced the Tennessee River, once just a place for the coal ash to settle.

Even Nashville has made the Cumberland River an attraction, building a pedestrian bridge across that big ditch to their football stadium where they used to dump wrecked cars.

In fact, you and I are about to spend a couple of billion dollars or so of our tax money to build them a new one in what used be a wasteland.

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Meanwhile, on America’s greatest and one of the world’s greatest rivers, atop a natural bluff with an unobstructed view west, above the original cobblestone wharf of the world’s greatest cotton and hardwood markets, we built parking garages — ugly even for parking garages — and a fire station.

“Brooks (Museum) was born in a park named for founder John Overton and the new Brooks will be the very center of his original vision for a city.”

Oh, we built a little park up there, too, dedicated to the Confederacy, even though Memphis was an occupied city for much of the Civil War and supplier to the Union Army.

The defense of Memphis consisted of about 20 uncomfortable minutes on the river in front of the city against the Union ironclads. We couldn’t even get the park right, putting World War I cannons in fake gunports.

The difference between us and all those other riverfront cities is that we actually have a dedicated “public promenade,” labeled as such on our founding documents and intended by the founders to be all the land along the riverfront on the bluff and below to be protected against private development and preserved for public benefit.

In 1828, according to an Associated Press piece I read, just nine years after the founding, John Overton came back to town for a visit. When he saw how badly we had already screwed it up, he felt it necessary to write a letter to our first mayor, Marcus Winchester, and to file a legal document with the Shelby County Register.

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In just one Faulknerian sentence, Overton laid it out and it remains the guiding document today:

“In relation to the piece of ground laid off and called the ‘Promenade,’ said proprietors say that it was their original intention, is now, and forever will be, that the same should be public ground for such use only as the word imports, to which heretofore, by their acts, for that purpose, it was conceived all was relinquished for themselves, their heirs, etc., and it is hereby expressly declared, in conformity with such intention, that we, for ourselves, heirs and assigns, forever relinquish all claims to the same piece of ground called the ‘Promenade,’ for the purpose above mentioned.”

Perhaps instead of “guiding document” I should have said “fighting words,” because that’s what we’ve been doing while we largely wasted the huge, 204-year head start we had on properly respecting that mandate.

“The new Tom Lee Park will soon grace the river’s edge, and graceful switchbacks access it from the bluff above.”

That’s how you get parking garages. And a fire station. And a customs house, turned into a post office, turned into a law school.

And our really interesting original library, a red sandstone castle complete with an impressive tower ... no, wait ... we tore down half of that and made the front half a mid-century modern library and the back half a red sandstone afterthought.

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Down below, a unique world-class park is taking shape. Renowned designers Studio Gang and Scape are taking their inspiration from the river in front of the park and inviting the entire city on the bluff behind it to enjoy it year-round.

But the park is threatened by a fight over who’s going to clean up the mess, and pay for the breakage, after two weekends of music, booze and barbecue.

A Frankenstein of a building, a petty fight over control of a park, an urban planning horror story blocks wide and centuries old.

Now here we are. And here’s the thing, we’re finally in a very exciting place.

Acclaimed Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, a former winner of the international Pritzker Architecture Prize for their redesign of the Tate in London in 2000, and the designers of Beijing’s Bird Nest Stadium you’ll remember from the 2008 Olympics has teamed with archimania, one of our most recognized and innovative firms, to transform an entire city block of Downtown Memphis into the new Memphis Brooks Art Museum.

What’s the plan for Tom Lee Park?

The founders' promenade will have a new beating heart, from Riverside to Front, from Union to Monroe.

From the art visible in galleries through the glass across Front Street to the river and bridges visible from the central courtyard, from every level of the museum, from the Riverview Terrace rooftop garden to the balcony over Riverside, to the suspended glass box theater with its signature River Window above the courtyard, a window that converts to a huge screen for inside or outside presentations.

It will be clad in the stuff of the bluff, grounded in the ground it’s in, and complemented by wood, a superstructure of cross-laminated timber. Cut timber used to line the cobblestone wharf below and float our river to the world.

At this point, as I gush about this project, I’ll point out that I wasn’t wild about moving Brooks from Overton Park and skeptical of the need. I am, after all, a lifelong Memphian — ergo — slow to accept change, and slower still to accept it from somebody from out of town.

Brooks has been where it is all my life, and Swiss architects are from way out of town.

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When we were chasing the NFL and considering replacing then Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, the city powers said, “We have a stadium,” and fought it.

The NFL went to Nashville.

When the Grizzlies were looking at us, they told us they would need a new arena. We built FedExForum. The Pyramid became Bass Pro.

We are teachable. Sometimes.

If you’re going to stay in the game, you have to have a place to play it properly. Sports analogies are another thing Memphians like.

I grew up learning about art at the Brooks walking through with my artist mother, and next door at the then Art Academy.

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But our beloved Brooks is too cramped for our future, unable to properly and safely store or showcase its impressive permanent collection. Its galleries are unsuited for major exhibitions, even multiple exhibitions simultaneously.

The Brooks that served us so well is on the National Register and is the largest art museum in Tennessee. We will find someone to move in, and we will move on. We will change, and we will grow.

At 112,000 square feet, the new Brooks will be at least 25% larger, have 30% more dedicated gallery space, and 600% more art-filled public spaces.

The lobby and courtyard will be open and free to the public. The entrance and block-wide front will invite public notice and participation, out of the quiet shade of a park into the bright light of a resurgent Downtown and an emerging and finally realized public promenade.

And those Swiss architects working with archimania? One on their team, Philip Schmerbeck, went to Germantown High School, and another, Jack Brough, went to Ridgeway High School. They probably both have a favorite barbecue spot.

Conaway: Looking at Tom Lee Park

Brooks was born in a park named for founder John Overton and the new Brooks will be the very center of his original vision for a city.

Walks along the bluff and the river are realities, all the way to a pedestrian and bike crossing into Arkansas.

The new Tom Lee Park will soon grace the river’s edge, and graceful switchbacks access it from the bluff above.

The parking garages and the fire station are gone. Confederate Park is gone, and Jefferson Davis has left town, his ghost, his park and his statue.

New parks, spaces and experiences have taken his place, more accessible for more of us in every way.

Conaway: I am horrified by — and proud of — my city

As for honoring history, we are finally honoring a promise our founders made to us when Memphis history began.

This column began with a meeting I had with Zoe Kahr, the new executive director of the Memphis Brooks Art Museum, and her sharing of the plans for the new Brooks.

She comes to us from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where she was the assistant director for Curatorial and Planning, literally running the show and a staff of 65 for 30-plus exhibitions per year on site, and the international touring program, including overseeing exhibition coordination, design, construction, and gallery media functions.

In short, she flat knows how to throw a party. Memphians like that.

Kahr has both a degree in art history and an MBA from Yale. Her Ph.D. in art history is from University College London, and she went to high school in Paris.

She never mentioned any of that. I had to look it up. She talked about our city, and how much she looked forward to getting to know us and bringing the new Brooks to life while honoring all that Brooks has meant.

In short, she was as easy to talk to as you or me. Memphians like that even better.

I’m a Memphian, and pretty soon, I’ll meet you on the Promenade.