Preservation in Mississippi
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Katrina Survivors: Beauvoir
After last week’s long trail of lost landmarks, I thought we should brighten up the mood a little with a few survivor stories that show that all was not lost. There are still historic places on the Coast (and inland) in need of repair and renewal, and many dedicated people have spent much of the … Continue reading
Lost to Katrina: Tullis-Toledano Manor (1856-2005)
from National Register nomination, August 1976: As one of the most substantial and elaborate of the vacation homes constructed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast during the early peak period of the area’s popularity in the 1850s, the Pradat/Toledano/Philbrick/Tullis House is both architecturally and historically significant. Architecturally, the Tullis House is important as a sophisticated blend … Continue reading
Lost to Katrina: Farnsworth Summer House, Pascagoula (1898-2005)
from the National Register of Historic Places nomination, 1991: Originally from Kentucky, [R.A.] Farnsworth acquired the Hunter-Behn Lumber Company and renamed it Farnsworth Lumber Company. . . .901 Beach was built as a summer home or beach house, as the Farnsworths lived in an elaborate Queen Anne cottage (now demolished) in town. Farnsworth owned the … Continue reading
Lost to Katrina: Louis Sullivan House (1890-2005)
From The Architectural Record, June 1905, “The Home of an Artist-Architect–The Place of Louis Sullivan“: Down in the sunny South, between New Orleans and Mobile, where the sparkling waters of the Gulf of Mexico makes one of its beautiful indentations, Biloxi Bay girt by beach of golden sand and dark green pine trees, there lies … Continue reading
Lost to Katrina (etc.): East Ward School (1921-2008)
The Mississippi Coast has such a rich 19th-century history that sometimes the 20th century gets short shrift, and maybe the fate of East Ward School, built in 1921 and designed in an eclectic combination of the Prairie and Craftsman styles by local architectural firm Shaw & Woleben (a practice carried on by the original principal’s … Continue reading
Lost to Katrina: Pass Christian Town Library (c.1853-2005)
From “Project Description, Pass Christian Town Library & School,” by the Pass Christian Historical Society, 2003: ‘Mrs. Roosevelt was so much impressed with your library she made me go around to see it myself. You are doing just the kind of work in which we most emphatically believe. Faithfully yours, Theodore Roosevelt (June, 1915)’ The … Continue reading
Lost to Katrina: Elmwood Manor, Bay St. Louis (1812-2005)
From the National Register summary (1986) One of the earliest, extant buildings in Bay St. Louis, Elmwood Manor is a significant example of the French Colonial style of architecture in the community. No other buildings remaining from the early 19th century are as architecturally intact as this house. It is believed that the construction of … Continue reading
Roll Call of Landmarks Lost to Katrina
This coming Saturday will be the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s destructive rage across Mississippi’s Coast. In the spirit of the newspaper clipping re-printed here for the Camille anniversary, I’ll begin this week of remembrance with a listing of Mississippi’s landmarks that have been confirmed as destroyed during Katrina or demolished afterward. The list confirms … Continue reading
MissPres News Roundup 8-21-2009
The official song for this week’s News Roundup is . . . “Cocacabana.” Begin humming as we whirl around the state of MS: The Summer 2009 issue of “The Wellspring” (scroll to page 5) gives a nice update on the progress at the Drew Rosenwald school up in Sunflower County. Although called “Lil Red” this school … Continue reading
Abandoned Mississippi: Yazoo County Agricultural High School
In 1912 the Yazoo County Agricultural High School was located at Benton, and it is one of the largest and best of its kind in the state. [A] few years later a Consolidated High School was located here, graveled roads were built in every direction from Benton. [W]ith this added educational facilities and good roads … Continue reading
Oh yeah? Well our Capitol has electric lights!
I saw this postcard on eBay (which I usually try to avoid in order to flee temptation) and had to buy it because it seemed a little spooky (it’s actually a little darker in real life). When I got the card, I realized the reason the sky was a little twilight-ish is that they were … Continue reading
SAH Civil Rights Memorial Study Tour
The Society of Architectural Historians has recently announced an intriguing tour of Civil Rights memorials in Georgia and Alabama, October 8-12, 2009. According to the SAH website, the four-day tour will begin in Atlanta, visiting Auburn Avenue and the Atlanta University Center (where Morehouse, Spelman, and Morris Brown are located), and of course the Martin … Continue reading
Remembering Hurricane Camille
From the Biloxi Daily Herald, “Landmarks Lost During Camille,” by Emily Germanis, August 16, 1970: “Historically speaking, the Mississippi Gulf Coast received a great blow as a result of Hurricane Camille. At least 15 well known landmarks were wiped out, others impaired. . . . . After a survey of historical buildings on the Coast, those … Continue reading
A few bloggy changes
I’ve been told unequivocally that “Change is Bad.” However, I’ve been a busy little beaver this weekend adding a few gadgets (or widgets as we bloggers call them) to Preservation in Mississippi. First, you’ll notice over at the top right a little blurb about the blog for new visitors. Below that, you find ways of … Continue reading
MissPres News Roundup 8-14-09
Well, what’s been going on this week around our fair state? Before we begin, let me just put this fact out there: August is my least favorite month, so I’m liable to be especially cranky and hard-to-please, so bear with me if you will. August 5, 2009: The Northside Sun reports that renovations to convert … Continue reading
The International Style: Conformity, not Individualism
You have reached the end of a four-part series about The International Style by Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson. If you missed the earlier posts, you can find them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. ———————————————————— Way back in the 1990s, I picked up an old hardback novel at a book sale in … Continue reading
The International Style: Regularity, not Symmetry
Since I spend a good part of my life writing and reading descriptions of buildings, I naturally love symmetrical buildings. It’s so easy and simple to describe, say a Georgian Revival building, even a big building: center entrance with transom and sidelights and broken pediment is sheltered under a full-height portico and flanked by four … Continue reading
The International Style: Volume, not Mass
For me, the last concept to click about Hitchcock and Johnson’s definition of the International style was the subject of the very first chapter, “A First Principle: Architecture as Volume.” I’m guess I’m not enough of a physicist or whatever kind of scientist that would be, to have really thought about the difference between “volume” and … Continue reading
Book Quotes: The International Style
It’s been a while since we did a book quote series, and since the three earlier series included a diatribe against Modern planning principles (Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of the Great American Cities), a polemic against Modern architectural design (Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House) and a complaint about the lack of flexibility of Modern … Continue reading
An Architectural Bonanza in the Clarion-Ledger
Was I in heaven this weekend? Was it a dream? I think there were not one, not two, but three really informative articles about architecture in the Clarion-Ledger. I know I usually leave such things to Friday’s News Roundup, but this was just too good to pass up. In Saturday’s Style section, an article by Billy … Continue reading
Yankee Stadium Update
There’s an interesting follow-up by Paul Goldberger on the future of old Yankee Stadium in this week’s New Yorker, in which the debate appears to be whether to save one gate or not. These guys don’t deserve Yankee Stadium anymore–may the ghost of Babe Ruth, followed in course by Lou Gehrig, knock them all on … Continue reading
MissPres News Roundup 8-7-2009
Well, get out your event calendars, Ladies and Gentlemen, because we’ve got a lot of ‘em coming up announced in the last week or two: August 25, 2009 will find you sitting impatiently in front of the television, with your antenna carefully positioned to pick up Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s premiere of Building Blocks, a documentary about … Continue reading
Lost Mississippi: Benton Elementary School
You may remember from Monday’s post “Mississipp’s Outstanding Post-War Schools” that the elementary school at Benton in Yazoo County was included in a list of Mississippi’s best school buildings constructed between 1945 and 1951. I also noted that this particular building was no longer standing. But thanks to a remarkable survey of schools completed by the State Dept. … Continue reading
Back from Lexington
In yesterday’s post, we drove up Hwy 17 and got into Lexington where we saw the courthouse, the jail, the hospital, and the old stagecoach inn. Today we’ll complete our whirlwind tour by heading out from the square and looking at a few of the many other delights to be found in this little hill town hovering … Continue reading
To Lexington (Miss.) and Back
Well, I haven’t done a “To . . . and Back” posting of late, mainly because when summer really comes in, I usually don’t get much farther (or is it “further”?) than my front porch–anything else just takes too much effort. But since the weather’s been so reasonable lately (which reasonableness ended, I think, yesterday), … Continue reading
Mississippi’s Outstanding Post-War Schools
It’s totally normal (I’m sure you would agree) to collect books like American School and University, and as I was flipping through the 1950-51 (22nd annual) edition, I came across a chapter called “America’s Outstanding School Buildings (built since 1945).” In that chapter was a series of school photos and a longer listing of “best” schools … Continue reading
Visitor Centers-Bah!
For your Sunday afternoon reading pleasure, and in light of my recent musings on the National Park Service and on the fate of heritage sites, may I suggest this article from Architectural Record’s March 2009 issue, “Rolling out the unwelcome mat for visitor centers” by Martin Filler. The author objects to the new visitor center behemoths because … Continue reading
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