The Sterick Building is an office building in Memphis, Tennessee. It was designed by Wyatt C. Hedrick & Co., and was completed in 1930—its name is a contraction of the original owners' names, R.E. Sterling and Wyatt Hedrick. It is a gothic-style tower, 111 m (365 ft) tall with 29 floors. When it opened it 1930 it was called the tallest building in the American South, It was the tallest building in Tennessee until 1957. It is now the fifth-tallest building in Memphis. It stands at the corner of Madison Avenue and North B.B. King Boulevard. Early history Once called “the Queen of Memphis” and “the most complex, the most fabulous building in Memphis,” the Sterick Building featured a white stone spire topped with a green tile roof; its own bank, pharmacy, barber shop, and beauty parlor; and stockbrokers' offices. The first three floors were made from granite and limestone. From the lobby, which was said to “rival the beauty of a Moorish castle,” its eight high-speed elevators ferried the building's 2,000+ workers and guests to the upper floors, including the Regency Room restaurant on the top floor. The original lease of land for the property, dating from the late 1920s, required the $1,500 monthly payment to be paid in gold coin “of standard weight and fineness or its equivalent.” An unsuccessful 1975 lawsuit by the land owners sought to recalculate the rent at the then-current price of gold, or roughly $13,500 per month. Decline As new, more modern office buildings were built in downtown Memphis in the 1960s, the building begin to lose tenants and, despite a number of alterations (including being repainted from its original white and green to yellow and tan), it has been left vacant since the 1980s. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Recent events In 2006, the Memphis Center City Commission placed the Sterick Building on its list of "Top Ten Center City Redevelopment Sites". Criteria for inclusion on this list include: “A site that is important to the health and vitality of its neighborhood and of Memphis” “A site that currently has no solid redevelopment plans on the board” “A site with architecture significant in the history of Memphis” “A site where redevelopment is seen as a catalyst for future improvements” The property was appraised at $419,200 in 2005. While local desire to see the building redeveloped