Elliot Perry’s loft in downtown Memphis, Tenn., overlooks the National Civil Rights Museum housed in the Lorraine Motel.

Owning a building near the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King was shot in 1968 is important to Perry, a former NBA basketball player.

“My grandfather marched on a number of occasions, even after (Dr. Martin Luther) King was killed,” said Perry, 33, who now works in the athletic development office at the University of Memphis. “I can remember being in those marches with him, some of those marches in the ’70s.”

Works by black artists are prominently featured in Perry’s 4,400-square-foot loft.

A native Memphian, Perry was a second-round selection of the Los Angeles Clippers in 1991 and played 11 professional seasons with seven teams. He played for the hometown Grizzlies for a brief stint in 2001. He finished his NBA career with a 6.3 per game scoring average.

Artist Ephraim Urevbu wanted Perry for a neighbor. In 1993, Urevbu renovated a building that now houses his Art Village Gallery and Zanzibar, an art gallery, bar and coffeehouse.

Urevbu showed Perry the two-story building, which had been an old warehouse. The place was in bad shape, but Perry liked the massive steel beams and the pine floors, even though they were painted gray.

He bought the building in 1998 but didn’t move in until 2000. He hired construction workers but kept watch over everything.

One of the first things he did was get rid of the makeshift walls that divided the rooms. “We knocked everything out upstairs and downstairs and then we just started from a blank canvas.”

Elliot Perry's downtown Memphis, Tenn., loft overlooks the National Civil Rights Museum. The museum is housed in the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in 1968.

Perry turned the first floor into office space, which he leases, but he left the second floor one big room. “I wanted something different for an expression of me. I wanted a loft with no walls and to divide it with furniture. I thought that would be different. At the same time, if I ever decide to sell it years from now, somebody can still come here and do exactly what they want to do without tearing down walls.”

He had the floors stripped and refinished and the walls painted white. Track lighting was installed. He used blinds, but no curtains, on the windows.

Perry and a friend selected the 1950s and ’60s furniture. “We found this at garage sales or second-hand stores, just different places, came in, cleaned it up, wiped it off.”

Using Perry’s ideas, Jill Brogden, a blacksmith, designed the granite and steel pedestal sink in the bathroom. “It almost looks like it’s just floating.”

The standing, rectangular medicine cabinet is a simple design made of glass. “I didn’t want a traditional medicine cabinet. This clean glass cabinet, you can see everything in it.”

Works from Perry’s art collection are used throughout the loft. Urevbu, Luther Hampton, James Little and Sam Gilliam are among the artists represented.

Elliot Perry, a former NBA player, selected 1950s and '60s furniture to decorate his living room.

Perry began collecting art about eight years ago. “I decided if I’m going to be a collector, I’m going to go ahead and buy quality art, fine art. And that’s what I started doing. I started going everywhere and meeting different artists.”

His collection also includes photographs by Ernest Withers Jr., a noted Memphis photographer. Photos of Rufus Thomas, B.B. King and Elvis Presley line the wall near the inside stairway to the loft.

A special Withers photo hangs above Perry’s bed. It’s of a march during the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike and shows Perry’s grandfather, the late Jesse Perry, in the center.

“I can remember riding on his shoulders and walking through the march. I don’t really think I had any true feelings about it. I don’t think I really understood.”

With his view of the civil rights museum and his ever-growing collection of works by black artists, Perry continues to become more aware of “how far we came, what we were fighting for during those times.”