William Nowland Van Powell


William Nowland Tom Van Powell, sometimes known professionally as William Van Powell or Nowland Van Powell was an architect, painter, and historian from Memphis, Tennessee. Nowland was also a sugar broker.

Architect

Working with George Mahan, Jr. in 1939, he was the architect of the Greyhound Bus Station in Jackson, Mississippi. Working with Ben Watson White, he designed the Blytheville Greyhound Bus Station in 1937.
He is also credited as the designer of two nearly-identical Greyhound Half-Way Stations: the Greyhound Half-Way House in Waverly, Tennessee, that has been preserved, and another in Flat River, Missouri that has been substantially remodeled into a laundromat.
In 1927, he was the architect of the Venetian-inspired Memphis Steam Laundry building, formerly at 941 Jefferson Ave., Memphis, demolished in 2009.
Along with Henry Ehrensing, he was the architect of the Grand Palace Hotel, New Orleans, and promoted by its developer as "likely to be one of the greatest buildings the South has ever seen." At the time, Claiborne Towers was the South's largest apartment project, with a planned 1036 units that included air conditioning.
He was also the architect of Memphis' Farnsworth Building, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

Buildings designed

Painter, Historian, Author

Van Powell was the author of The American Navies of the Revolutionary War, a collection of his paintings, with descriptive notes by the artist published in 1974 by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.